"You never mentioned that before."
"I must've, Matt. Or I left it out. What difference does it make, anyway?"
"Cruz wasn't much for manual labor," I said. "He wouldn't come along to haul trash. When did you ever get a look at his eyes?"
"Jesus Christ. Maybe it was seeing a picture in thepaper, maybe I just have a sense of him as if I saw his eyes. Leave it alone, will you? Whatever kind of eyes he had, they're not seeing anything anymore."
"Who killed her, Tommy?"
"Hey, didn't I say let it alone?"
"Answer the question."
"I already answered it."
"You killed her, didn't you?"
"What are you, crazy? And keep your voice down, for Christ's sake. There's people can hear you."
"You killed your wife."
"Cruz killed her and Herrera swore to it. Isn't that enough for you? And your fucking cop friend's been all over my alibi,pickin ' at it like a monkey hunting lice. There's no way Icoulda killed her."
"Sure there is."
"Huh?"
A chair covered in needlepoint, a view of Owl'sHeadPark. The smell of dust, and layered over it the smell of a spray of little white flowers.
"Lily-of-the-valley," I said.
"Huh?"
"That's how you did it."
"What are you talking about?"
"The third floor, the room her aunt used to live in. I smelled her perfume up there. I thought I was just carrying the scent in my nostrils from being in her bedroom earlier, but that wasn't it. She was up there, and it was traces of her perfume Iwas smelling. That's why the room held me, I sensed her presence there, the room was trying to tell me something but I couldn't get it."
"I don't know what you're talking about. You know what you are, Matt? You're a little drunk isall. You'll wake up tomorrow and-"
"You left the office at the end of the day, rushed home to Bay Ridge, and stowed her on the third floor. What did you do, drug her? You probably slipped her amickey, maybe left her tied up in the room on the third floor. Tied her up, gagged her,left her unconscious. Then you got your ass back toManhattan and went out to dinner with Carolyn."
"I'm not listening to this shit."
"Herrera and Cruz showed up around midnight, just the way you arranged it. They thought they were knocking off an empty house. Your wife was gagged and tucked away on the third floor and they had no reason to go up there. You probably locked the door there anyway just to make sure. They pulled their burglary and went home, figuring it was the safest and easiest illegal buck they ever turned."
I picked up my glass. Then I remembered he had bought the drink, and I started to put it down. I decided that was ridiculous. Just as money knows no owner, whiskey never remembers who paid for it.
I took a drink.
I said, "Then a couple hours after that you jumped in your car and raced back to Bay Ridge again. Maybe you slipped something into your girlfriend's drink to keep her out of it. All you had to do was find an hour, hour and a half, and there's room enough in your alibi to find ninety spare minutes. The drive wouldn't take you long, not at that hour. Nobody would see you drive in. You just had to go up to the third floor, carry your wife down a flight, stab her to death, get rid of the knife, and drive back into the city. That's how you did it, Tommy. Isn't it?"
"You're full of shit, you know that?"
"Tell me you didn't kill her."
"I already told you."
"Tell me again."
"I didn't kill her, Matt. I didn't kill anybody."
"Again."
"What's the matter with you? I didn't kill her. Jesus, you're the one helped prove it, and now you're trying to twist and turn it back on me. I swear to Christ I didn't kill her."
"I don't believe you."
A man at the bar was talking about Rocky Marciano. There was the best fighter ever lived, he said. He wasn't pretty, he wasn't fancy, but it was a funny thing, he was always on his feet at the end of the fight and the other guy wasn't.
"Oh, Jesus," Tommy said.
He closed hiseyes, put his head in his hands. He sighed and looked up and said, "You know, it's a funny thing with me. Over the phone I'm as good a salesman as Marciano was a fighter. I'm the best you could ever imagine. I swear I could sell sand to the Arabs, I could sell ice in the winter, but face-to-face I'm just no good at all. Wasn't for phones, I'd have trouble making a living selling. Why do you figure that is?"
"You tell me."
"I swear I don't know. I used to think it was my face, around the eyes and mouth, I don't know. Over the phone's a cinch. I'mtalkin ' to a stranger, I don't know who he is or what he looks like, and he's notlookin ' at me, and there's nothing to it. Face-to-face, somebody I know, whole different story." He looked at me, his eyes not quite meeting mine. "If we weredoin ' this over the phone, you'd buy what I'm telling you."
"It's possible."
"It's fucking certain. Word for word, you'd buy the package. Matt, suppose for the sake of argument I said I killed her. It was an accident, it was an impulse, we were both upset over the burglary, I was half in the bag, and-"
"You planned the whole thing, Tommy. It was all set up and worked out."
"The whole story you told, the way you worked it all out, there's not a thing you can prove."
I didn't say anything.
"And you helpedme, don't forget that part of it."
"I won't."
"And Iwouldn'ta gone away for it anyway, with or without you, Matt.Itwouldn'ta got to court, and if it didI'da beat it in court. All you saved is a hassle. And you know something?"
"What?"
"All we got tonight is the booze talking, your booze and my booze, two bottles of whiskeytalkin ' to each other. That's all. Morningcomes, we can forget everything was said here tonight. I didn't kill anybody, you didn't say I did, everything's cool, we're still buddies.Right?Right?"
I just looked at him.
Chapter 25
That was Monday night. I don't remember exactly when I talked to Jack Diebold, but it must have been Tuesday or Wednesday. I tried him at the squad room and wound up reaching him at home. We sparred a bit, and then I said, "You know, I thought of a way he could have done it."
"Where have you been? We got one dead and one confessed to it, it's history now."
"I know," I said, "but listen to this." And I explained, just as an exercise in applied logic, how TommyTillary could have murdered his wife. I had to go over it a couple of times before he got a handle on it, and even then he wasn't crazy about it.
"I don't know," he said. "It sounds pretty complicated. You've got her stuck there in the attic for what, eight, ten hours? That's a long time with no one keeping an eye on her. Suppose she comes to, worksherself free? Then he's got his ass in the crack, doesn't he?"
"Not for murder. She can press charges for tying her up, but when's the last time a husband went to jail for that?"
"Yeah, he's not really at risk until he kills her, and by then she's dead. I see what you mean. Even so, Matt, it's pretty farfetched, don't you think?"
"Well, I was just thinking of a way it could have happened."
"They never happen that way in real life."
"I guess not."
"And if they did you couldn't goanywheres with it. Look what you went through explaining it to me, and I'm in the business. You want to try it on a jury, with some prick lawyer interrupting every thirty seconds with an objection? What a jury likes, a jury likes somebody with greasy hair and olive skin and a knife in one hand and blood on his shirt, that's what a jury likes."
"Yeah."
"And anyhow, the whole thing's history.You know what I got now? I got that family inBoroughPark. You read about it?"
"The Orthodox Jews?"
"Three Orthodox Jews, mother father son, the father's got the beard, the kid's got theearlocks, all sitting at the dinner table, all shot in the back of the head. That's what I got. Far as TommyTillary, I don't care right now if he killed Cock Robin and bothKennedys."
"Well, it was just an idea," I said.