“He ate enough to glut a python,” I said. “Quit changing the subject. How did you happen to be there last night?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” she said. “Sue Grafton’s got a new book out, and I went up to Murder Ink to pick it up.”
“You went all the way up there for it?”
“Partners and Crime was sold out, and Three Lives didn’t have it in yet. So I hopped on the subway.”
“Murder Ink’s at Broadway and Ninety-second.”
“I know, Bern. I was just there last night.”
“That’s twenty-some blocks from the theater.”
“Well, I hadn’t had dinner.”
“So?”
“So I was headed downtown, looking for a restaurant, and nothing appealed to me. I finally settled for a coffee shop around Seventy-ninth Street. You know, I think we may have been overdoing it with ethnic foods lately. I sat in a booth and had a bacon cheeseburger and french fries and cole slaw and a piece of apple pie for dessert, and I drank two cups of ordinary American coffee with cream and sugar, and the whole meal struck me as wildly exotic.”
“And after your meal-”
“I felt stuffed, so I figured I’d walk a few blocks.”
“And the next thing you knew you were in front of the Musette Theater.”
“All right, so I planned it. Is that a crime?”
“No.”
“I got there a few minutes before the show let out and stood where I could keep an eye on the entrance. For a minute there I thought I’d missed you. The two of you were just about the last people out.”
“We like to stay and watch the credits.”
“She’s a real beauty, Bern. And the way she was holding your arm, and the looks she was giving you. Forget Humphrey Bogart. I figured you were in like Flynn.”
“How long were you spying on us, anyway?”
“I don’t see why you have to call it spying,” she said. “I was just acting on some perfectly justifiable friendly concern. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “If I lurked around a dyke bar like that I’d get arrested.”
“Not true, Bern. Beat up, maybe, but not arrested. Anyway, I didn’t lurk for very long. As soon as the two of you went across the street for coffee I went home.”
“And read the new Sue Grafton.”
She shook her head. “I’m saving it until my tooth is filled. I lost the filling toward the end of the cheeseburger. I think I must have swallowed it. It won’t poison me, will it?”
“It’s probably better for you than the cheeseburger.”
“That’s what I figured. I read the blurbs on the new book, and I think it’s going to be great, but I’ll wait and read it over the weekend. In the meantime I’m rereading one of her early books. I’m about halfway through it. It’s the one with the horticultural background.”
“I don’t think I read it.”
“Really? I thought you read them all. This one’s about the Chinese landscape architect who gets strangled with his own pigtail.”
“I’d remember that. I must have missed it. What’s the title?”
“‘Q’ Is for Gardens. I’ll lend it to you when I’m done with it. I gotta run, I got a springer spaniel coming any minute for a wash and set. Did she cook you breakfast or did you take her out?”
“I didn’t stay over.”
“Probably a good move. You know me, one flop in the feathers and I want us to go pick out drapes together. You called her, though, right?”
“No answer. I don’t think she spends much time around the apartment. If you were ever there you’d know why.”
“What’s on the program for tonight? More Bogart?”
“What else?”
“So afterward you’ll take her to your place.”
“Maybe.”
“Bernie? Look at me, Bern. Are you in love?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Does that mean yes?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think it does.”
The rest of the morning passed without incident. With Carolyn off getting a tooth filled, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of lunch. I ducked around the corner and ate a slice of pizza standing up (I was standing up, the pizza was essentially horizontal). I wasn’t away from the store for more than ten minutes, but that was long enough for Ray Kirschmann to make his appearance. I found him leaning against my bargain table, thumbing a Fodor guide to West Africa.
“Some security system you got here,” he said. “I wasn’t as honest as the day is warm, I coulda walked off with all of these here.”
“You’d get yourself a hernia before you hurt me much financially,” I pointed out. “The books on that table are three for a dollar.”
“Even this here?”
“It’s four years old.”
“You got books a lot older than that an’ charge ten, twenty bucks for ’em. Sometimes more’n that.”
“What you’ve got is a guidebook for travelers,” I explained, “and they don’t improve with age. They actually depreciate pretty rapidly, because people planning trips generally want up-to-date information. How would you like to fly all the way to Gabon and find out your hotel went out of business a year ago?”
“You’d never get me there in the first place,” he said. “You gotta be crazy to go someplace like that. You’re layin’ on the beach there, drinkin’ somethin’ with fruit in it, and the next thing you know they’re havin’ theirselves a cootie tah.”
“A what?”
“You know, where they overthrow the government. Before you know it you’re the main course at a cannibal banquet.” He tossed Fodor back on my table, where it glanced off Vol. II of The Life and Letters of Hippolyte Taine-God alone could tell you what had become of Vols. I and III-and skidded the length of the table before dropping to the pavement.
“Don’t know my own strength,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
I had the door unlocked and stood there holding it open, gazing pointedly at the book on the sidewalk. After a moment he went over, bent down, grunted, straightened up, and placed the book on the table.
Inside, I asked him how the Candlemas investigation was coming.
“Movin’ right along,” he said. “There’s a team of investigators workin’ right now, tryin’ to find out what Cap Hob means.” That’s how he pronounced it. “They got a computer that’s like havin’ every phone book in America lined up, only it can go through ’em in seconds. If Caphob’s somebody’s name, they’ll know it in nothin’ flat.”
“If Mr. Caphob’s got a phone.”
“Just so he’s got a pulse. There’s city directories in the computer, too, an’ everything else you can think of. You wouldn’t believe all the things they can do with their computers.”
“Science is wonderful,” I said.
“Ain’t it the truth.” He made a show of consulting his watch, then leaned forward confidentially and planted an elbow on my counter. “Might need a little help from you, though, Bernie.”
“Don’t tell me you locked yourself out of your car again.”
“Might ask you to come down to the morgue and make a formal ID of the guy.”
I’d been waiting for him to ask me a favor. I knew it was coming the minute he took the trouble to pick up the book.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I barely knew the man.”
“I thought he was such a good customer.”
“I wouldn’t call him a regular. I saw him once in a while.”
“You knew him well enough to loan him your sashay case.”
“Attaché case.”
“You know what I meant. You gave it to him to carry home a book he paid five bucks for, or at least that’s your story.” He straightened up. “Speakin’ of which, we could go over that story a few more times if you don’t want to cooperate and ID the poor dead son of a bitch. Put in a couple of hours down at the station house, takin’ a statement from you, lettin’ you tell your story to a few different cops so’s we can all get the whole picture.”