“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.”
“It’s nice to know I have a choice in the matter.”
“Damn right you got a choice,” he said. “You can do the right thing, or you can suffer the consequences. Up to you.”
“Naturally I want to cooperate with the police,” I said, with all the sincerity of a game show host. “But what do you need me for, Ray? The man had neighbors. They must have known him better than I did.”
He shook his head. “Way it’s shapin’ up,” he said, “they didn’t know him at all. I’ll take that back, the woman on the ground floor knew him, said he was a very nice man. Trouble is she’s blind, spends most of her time listening to books on tape. One flight up you got a couple named Lehrman on the second floor, except you don’t at the moment because they left ten days ago to spend the next four months in the south of France. They’re college professors and they swapped their apartment in some kind of triangular deal. The Frenchman’s in Singapore for the spring an’ summer, an’ there’s a businessman with a Chinese name in the Lehrmans’ apartment, so I guess he’s from Singapore. Wherever he’s from, he’s only been here a little over a week an’ he says he never met Candlemas. We showed him a photo the lab boys took an’ it didn’t refresh his memory none.
“Who else we got? A couple of gays in the basement apartment, also new in the building, an’ they got a separate entrance all their own. They never met Candlemas. The super lives next door, he takes care of three or four buildings, an’ he’s only had the job for a couple of months. Candlemas never asked him to do anything for him, so they never met. The guy says he went lookin’ to introduce hisself once or twice, just in the interest of makin’ contact, an’ if you ask me in the interest of settin’ Candlemas up for a decent tip come Christmas. But Candlemas wasn’t around the time or two he went lookin’ for him. No way in the world he could ID him.”
“What about the third floor?”
“The third floor?”
“The gay couple’s in the basement,” I said, “and the blind woman’s on the ground floor, with the Lehrmans directly above her.”