I sighed. “No.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The bag still hung by its strap over my left shoulder, but he couldn’t take it off because of the way he had handcuffed me. He fiddled with it a moment and then told me to turn around. He unlocked the left cuff, removed the bag, and snapped the cuff back on. I turned back around and watched him carry the bag over to the top of a washer. He slid the zipper back and looked inside. His face told me that he had never seen ninety thousand dollars before. Not in cash. Few people have.
First he blushed and then he said, “Goddamn.” He said it reverently. He was going to say something else, but the dingaling bell jangled as the door burst open and two men streaked in, a little crouched over, their topcoats open and napping, and their snub-nosed revolvers aimed right at me.
One of them was blond and the other one was bald and neither was much past thirty. The blond one said, “What’s going on here?” Although he looked at me he was talking to the young uniformed policeman who had spun around at the sound of the dingaling bell, clawing at his still holstered revolver. He had quit clawing when he saw the two men.
“I was just gonna call it in,” the young uniformed policeman said, apparently recognizing the two men.
“You were gonna call what in?” the blond man said, still pointing his revolver at me.
The young officer waved in my direction. “This one was messing around in here when I came by so I stopped and came in and caught him bending over a dead one and then I looked in his bag here and he’s got a whole pisspot full of money.”
The blond man held open his coat and put the revolver back in the holster that he wore on the left side of his belt. The bald man put his gun away too.
“You say there’s a dead one?” the blond man said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You know how to call a dead one in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then do it.”
The young policeman nodded and hurried for the door. The blond man waited until the dingaling bell quit ringing and then said to me, “We’ll get around to you in a minute. My name’s Deal. Detective Deal. That’s Detective Oller. We’re Homicide South. That hold you?”
I nodded. “That’ll hold me.”
Deal said, “Take a look in the bag, Ollie,” and then moved past me toward the corner that concealed the body of Bobby Boykins. I moved back and watched as he stared at the body for several seconds. He squatted down for a better look and then used his right hand to touch Boykins’s forehead, as if trying to determine whether the dead man was running a fever. Still gazing at the body, Deal called, “What’s in the bag, Ollie?”
“Just like the kid said. Money. A whole pisspot full.”
Deal rose and turned. “How much?”
“I haven’t counted it, but it looks like it’s over fifty thousand,” Oller said. “Way over.”
“Count it,” Deal said, turning his stare on me again.
“There’s ninety thousand in the bag,” I said.
Deal’s stare came from a pair of gray eyes that had the color and warmth of old slush. He was a little taller than I, slightly over six feet, lean, and vain enough to use something on his shock of straw-colored hair to keep it brushed just so. Probably hair spray. His face was beginning to grow some lines and none of them turned up. He had no visible scars on his face, but with that slash of a mouth, he wouldn’t need any.
He kept on staring at me until Oller finished counting and announced, “It’s like he said, ninety thousand.”
“Take a look in the corner,” Deal said. “See if you know him.”
Oller left the airline bag on the washer, went behind me, and said, “They tied him up good, didn’t they? Like a Christmas turkey.”
“You know him?” Deal said.
“Never saw him before,” Oller said and came over to help inspect me. Oller was heavier than Deal by about twenty pounds and a good bit of it was fat. The fat somehow went with his bald head. He also had a nice start on a double chin and what little hair he had left was flecked with gray. His bright black eyes danced around a lot underneath heavy brows. His nose turned up, but he kept the ends of a wide, moist mouth turned down. It was still a young face, but the kind that can turn old in a week.
“Who’s he?” Oller said, nodding at me.
“I don’t know,” Deal said. “Maybe he’s just a guy who turns on by hanging around dead bodies in laundromats at three in the morning. Maybe the ninety thousand bucks helps.”
“Okay, mister,” Oller said, “what’s your name?”
“Philip St. Ives.”
“Where do you live?”
“The Adelphi on East Forty-sixth.”
“You know the dead guy?”
“I knew him. Not well.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bobby Boykins.”
“What’d he do?”
“I think he was retired.”
“What’d he do before he retired?”
“I think he was a con man.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m sort of retired, too.”
“You mean you were sort of planning to retire on that ninety thousand bucks?” Deal said.
“No.”
“Does it belong to you?”
“No.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“A friend.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d better say anything else until I talk to a lawyer.”
Deal nodded, almost indifferently, I thought. “Read him about his rights, Ollie.” Oller fished out a small card and in a bored voice read what the Supreme Court had ruled that they were supposed to read to me. It had a somehow comforting sound.
“You’re under arrest, Mr. St. Ives,” Deal said.
“For what?”
“Suspicion of murder and grand larceny.”
“All right.”
“It doesn’t seem to worry you much,” Oller said.
“It worries me.”
“It would worry the shit out of me,” Oller said.
“This the first time you ever been arrested?” Deal said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“I don’t think so either,” I said.
2
The three of them finally took me in, Deal, Oller, and the young patrolman whose name turned out to be Francis X. Frann. They let him be the arresting officer, perhaps because a murder one might look good on his record.
We didn’t have far to drive, just over to the Tenth Precinct on West Twentieth. We went past the desk officer, a middle-aged sergeant who looked at me without any curiosity at all, and then Deal and Oller took me up one flight to the detective squad room where somebody else took my fingerprints.
“You can make three phone calls,” Deal said, handing me a jar of jellied cleanser and some paper towels to get the ink off my fingers.
“I thought it was just one,” I said.
“Three,” he said. “If they’re local.”
“I want to call Connecticut,” I said. “Darien.”
“That’s long distance,” Deal said.
“I’ll pay for it.”
“Who do you want to call?” Deal said.
“Myron Greene. There’s an e on the end of Greene.”
Deal asked me whether I had the number, wrote it down when I told him what it was, and then said, “What’s Greene, your lawyer?”
“He’s a little more than that,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s the guy who got me into this mess.”
It had begun late Friday morning when the pumpkin arrived a quarter of an hour before Myron Greene did. I had already carved the top off the pumpkin and was sending the seeds and the fiber down the disposal when I heard his knock. I turned off the disposal and carried the pumpkin over to the hexagonal poker table that I’d covered with the October twenty-ninth edition of the Times. After letting Myron Greene in I asked, “What do you know about jack-o’-lanterns?”