“Art? You wouldn’t be trying to pull one on me, would you?”
Of course I would, but that isn’t what I said. I said, “Joe, I’m too scared to pull anything on anybody. You’ve got to listen to me.”
“Maybe. Start talking.”
“I met twin sisters. So I became twin brothers, so I could screw them both. A simple innocent game, right?”
“It bears your signature like Andy Warhol’s on a junkyard fence,” he said.
“So then,” I said, “it turns out these two are rich. But rich. And they’re suing each other for millions and millions of dollars. And last night, Joe, while I was with one sister here in New York, the other sister was getting murdered out on Fire Island.”
“On the level?”
“Absolutely. I swear on my mother’s IUD. But here comes the cute part. Joe, there was a guy out there with her. Killed with her.”
“Yeah?”
“My twin brother, Joe.”
“What? What shit is this?”
“Exactly the question I ask myself, Joe.”
“Somebody’s up to something,” he said.
“I had the same feeling myself. Am I being set up for something? I’m scared, Joe, and no fooling. If I get out of this, I may well be cured for life.”
“Amen,” he said.
“Joe,” I said, “the only safe thing I can see for me is that my scam did not exist. If the cops want me to have a twin brother, fine. I neither confirm nor deny. But if the twin con comes to light, what happens to me?”
“Art,” he said, “are you asking me to lie under oath in a murder case?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I am asking you to stay out of it entirely. If some cop calls you long distance and asks you did Bart Dodge stay with you for a few days you can say yes, because later on you could say you thought he said Art Dodge, and maybe you got the dates wrong, and what’s the problem anyway? You’re out there, you’re safe, you’re out of it.”
“You’re damn right I’m out of it.”
“All I’m asking, Joe,” I said, “is that you don’t volunteer. I’ve got to cover the twin con, I’ve just got to.”
“I begin to think,” he said, “that this may turn out to be a wonderful lesson for you.”
“You bet. Joe, can I count on you?”
“Art,” he said, “you and I have been pals for years. You’ve always been able to count on me, and you’ll be able to go on counting on me right up to the point where it becomes inconvenient.”
“But you won’t blow the twin con.”
“I won’t volunteer.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Joe,” I said, and went back to the Kerner apartment, where Liz met me with fire in her eyes, saying, “Give me that agreement I won’t go along with it, I want to tear it up.”
“You what? Listen, I gave you that alibi, I helped—”
“You can just forget that alibi, buster,” she said, “and the agreement, too.”
“Forget it? Why?”
“Because,” she said, “that asshole Ernie Volpinex did it, what do you think of that?” She stood in front of me, arms akimbo, fists against sides, jaw jutting out. “They found a gun where he tried to hide it, his fingerprints are all over it, it was a goddam crime of passion! Ernie’s run away, nobody can find him, he’s guilty as sin, I don’t need any alibi, and I won’t stand for that goddam-goddam-goddam-agreement!” She shook both fists in my face. “Stop that laughing, you goddam hyena! Stop it right now!”
51
I didn’t think you’d come to work today,” Gloria said when I walked in.
“Ah, well,” I said. “Life must go on.”
“People have called from the Daily News, from ABC, and from Channel 11. They want an interview about your brother.”
“No interviews,” I said. What a thought: me on television, discussing the murder of my twin brother. That would finish me, wouldn’t it?
“I told them you wouldn’t be in today. I suppose they’ll try you at home.”
Meaning the nest fouled by Feeney, to which I was unlikely to be returning for quite some time. “Good luck to them,” I said. “And if anybody else calls, friend or foe, I’m still not in. Period of mourning, unlikely to return to the office before next week.”
“Right.” She gave me a conspiratorial look. “Anything else from the Kerner woman?”
“I still don’t know what she’s up to,” I said. “The only thing to do is just wait and see.”
“Maybe you ought to talk to a lawyer,” she suggested.
“I intend to. Get me Ralph Minck, you have his office number there.”
“Right. Oh, your sister called.”
“Doris? Call her back, I’ll talk to her before Ralph.”
I went to the inner office and sat down at a desk that somehow seemed less mine. I had altered into someone different in the last two days, and the cons and concerns of yesteryear no longer vibrated as they once had. The murder cover-up was all that counted now; it exhausted all my energies just to tread water in this mighty ocean.
But once I’d pulled it off, if I did, would I then be able to come back to my innocent former self, full of silliness and smut? In some absurdist way it seemed that in killing Volpinex I was becoming Volpinex. Where was my comedy? Where was my caustic center?
“A Birthday,” I muttered aloud, “a Birthday, a Birthday.” If I could still do them, if I could still come up with a greeting on demand, then there was nothing to worry about.
Buzz. “Your sister.”
“Right.” Click. “Doris?”
“Art, what on earth is going on?”
“About what?”
“The newspaper said your twin brother Robert was murdered.”
“My what?”
“Art, you don’t have a twin brother.”
“I know that. What— Oh! That thing out on Long Island.”
“Fire Island. It said— Wait, I’ll get the paper.”
“I know what it said, I noticed that coincidence myself.”
“Coincidence?”
“Doris,” I said, “how many brothers do you have?”
“Barely one,” she said. “You promise and promise and promise to call Duane, and you never do it.”
“I’ve been busy, Doris, getting ready for Thanksgiving.”
“But that isn’t the point. The point is, what is this— Here, I’ve got the paper. Twin brother Arthur Dodge, Manhattan greeting card publisher.’ What are they talking about?”
“A different Arthur Dodge, obviously,” I said. “We don’t exactly have an obscure name, you know.”
“But a greeting card publisher?”
“Doris, do you know how many little outfits like mine there are, just in New York? And maybe he doesn’t have his own outfit at all, maybe he’s an executive with Hallmark or Gibson or one of that crowd. I mean, I can see reporters getting mixed up and calling me instead of this other guy, and believe me they’ve been calling all day, but Doris you know I don’t have any twin brother.”
“It’s just a coincidence?” She sounded no more than half-convinced.
“Listen, Doris,” I said. “I’m looking in the Manhattan phone book right now, right here. Do you know how many A. Dodges there are, just the initial? And this is just Manhattan, this doesn’t count people living in Queens and Brooklyn and—”
“It was just such a surprise,” she said. “The same name and everything.”
“There are eight million people in this city,” I said. “Some of them have the same names.”