The apartment was dark except for a ten-watt night-light in one hallway. He let his eyes accustom themselves to the dimness. Then he took off his shoes and crept around in his stocking feet until he found Emil Karnofsky’s bedroom.
He used a pencil-beam flashlight. Karnofsky was sleeping on his side, clutching his pillow. Sparse gray hair, a prominent nose, a forceful jaw.
He tiptoed to the bedside and stood for a moment, deep in thought. Then he stooped and placed one hand over Karnofsky’s mouth while his other sought purchase on the back of the old man’s neck. He was gentle, very gentle, taking away the chance of consciousness but being careful not to take away life as well.
He moved around the apartment, making sure the blinds were drawn. Then he turned on the living room lights and carried Karnofsky to the living room. The man did not stir. He went back to the bedroom for the silk dressing gown he had noticed there before. He took it to the living room and got Karnofsky’s arms into it.
He stripped himself to the waist, placing his clothing neatly on Karnofsky’s couch. From his jacket pocket he took out an eight-inch length of steel pipe wrapped not too thickly with electrical tape. He lifted Karnofsky and propped him against a wall. The man still had not stirred but was breathing regularly.
Dorn smashed his skull with four blows.
It occurred to him as he was doing so that he should have removed his gloves, but no blood got on them, or on his person. He dressed quickly but carefully. Then he went through the apartment room by room, turning lights on as he entered each room and off as he left it. He pulled open drawers, slashed mattresses, knocked books off shelves. He made the greatest mess possible in the shortest amount of time. He found several hundred dollars in a drawer of the bedside table and almost a thousand in the butter compartment of the refrigerator. He added this to the money in his wallet. He removed every picture he came to until he found the one behind which the wall safe was located. He made no attempt to open the wall safe.
When he was through, he turned off the living room light and listened with his ear against the door for several moments. He put the tape-wrapped pipe on the floor near Karnofsky’s corpse. He opened the door quietly and let himself out. He climbed four flights of stairs to Rebecca Warriner’s floor and rang for the elevator. On the way down he smiled a lot and did not look at the camera.
The doorman treated him to a smirk and hailed him a taxi. He took the cab to the Hotel Somerset. He waited while it drove off, then walked a block in the opposite direction and took a taxi to Penn Station. There he picked up a third taxi and rode out to Kennedy Airport. The driver talked endlessly of baseball.
He waited over an hour before his flight was called. Takeoff was on schedule, and arrival at New Orleans was 12 minutes early. Dorn dozed on the plane and smiled at memories of Rebecca Warriner. Not of her long black hair, not of her bouncing breasts, but of her dialogue, and of her immutable poise. Why were his best stories ones he could tell no living ear?
A taxi from the airport let him off within a block of his hotel. He bought a paper and read it as he ate breakfast in his hotel’s coffee shop. He went through the lobby to the elevator and rode up to his room. As far as he could tell, no one had been in it since he had left. He showered and put on clean clothes. He turned the Do Not Disturb sign around so that it read Maid Please Make Up This Room As Soon As Possible. On his way out he left his room key at the desk.
He slept for four hours in a movie theater, waking when some fool put a hand on his leg. He left the theater and bought an evening paper. There were several items he found noteworthy, but nothing about Karnofsky. He stopped at a bar and nursed a glass of wine through the six o’clock newscast. There was a brief item to the effect that Emil Karnofsky had been beaten to death during a burglary of his New York apartment.
He had dinner at an excellent restaurant near his hotel and walked over to Preservation Hall to listen to the music, but the place was crowded and he did not stay long. He went back to his hotel and read for a few hours before going to sleep.
He read the story in the New Orleans morning newspaper. The content was about as he had expected. He went looking for a drugstore with a pay telephone.
A long-distance telephone calclass="underline"
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“I hoped you’d call. We liked your timing but the touch was heavy, don’t you think?”
“What?”
“You’re good on the calendar but—”
“Let me talk, I’m too upset to listen.”
“Upset?”
“I thought this was a solo, damn it.”
“Repeat.”
“I said, damn it, that I thought I had a six-time exclusive.”
“You do.”
“Then what happened to Case Two?” Pause.
“Are you there, damn it?”
“Yes. You did not do Case Two?”
“I have been in — oh, shit on it. I have been in the largest account in Case Three’s district — do you read?”
“In Case Three’s district?”
“Yes.”
“I read.”
“I have been here since yesterday morning. I have been looking around Case Three while waiting to conclude Case Two. Then I picked up a newspaper. Then I picked up a telephone.”
“Christ.”
“You didn’t know about this?”
“Of course not. Christ. Can I get back to you?”
“No.”
“Then get back to me. An hour.”
Another long-distance telephone call. “Hello. We didn’t do Case Two.”
“Certain?”
“Certain. I checked all possibilities. We did not do Case Two.”
“Then who in the hell did?”
“Our supposition is the printed version is real.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither did I. How clean is your line?”
“Could be anonymously dirty. Drugstore.”
“Shit.” In rapid Serbo-Croat: “It smells. A commercial touch on the black’s night out? And a call to send him snipe hunting? But I think it was commercial. They would know the schedule. And it was not a snipe hunt.”
“Repeat last.”
“I checked this six ways. They were good to begin with and had fantastic luck. The snipe hunt was honest. The black hen was plucked. The snipe call was straight merchandise.”
“Incredible.”
“Absolutely.”
“Their good luck. And—”
“And shit luck for us, damn it to hell.”
“Yes.”
“Because after all that they scored small. They tossed and didn’t clean. Nickels and dimes. Christ damn it to fucking hell.”
“I would never have done it heavy.”
“Of course not. In and out. Stop the clock and go away. No bad smell.”
“Exactly.”
“So instead of a light touch it winds up being heavy and smelling to high heaven.”
“And this after a stinking week casing it.”
“Too long on this line. Anything more?”
“No. Shit.”
He spent the rest of the day in New Orleans, doing various things. One of the places he visited was a wildlife museum, where he examined row after row of glass cases filled with dead birds. Several of them were specimens of extinct species. He got halfway through the display when he was overcome by a feeling of utter revulsion. He left the building as quickly as he could, certain that the sight of one more dead bird would make him vomit.
The next day he took a bus to Baton Rouge. He paid two dollars and twenty-five cents to take a one-hour tour of the city on a sight-seeing bus. Like everyone else, he had a camera. He visited, among other places, the State Capitol, the Governor’s Mansion, and the campus of Louisiana State University. When the tour ended he took another bus back to New Orleans and checked out of his hotel, settling his bill in cash. Then he flew again to Charleston and took the bus to Willow Falls. All that day, on the plane and on all the buses, he kept thinking of those display cases with their dead birds. He hardly thought at all of Karnofsky, or of William Tompkins’s mother.