The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [10]
“I guess this is about Paula,” he said. I nodded. “I been over this with you guys,” he said. “I was nowhere near there when it happened. The last I saw her was five, six hours before she killed herself. I was working at the Web and she came down and sat at the bar. I gave her a couple of drinks and she split.”
“And you went on working.”
“Until I closed up. I kicked everybody out a little after three and it was close to four by the time I had the place swept up and the garbage on the street and the window gates locked. Then I came over here and picked up Sunny and we went up to the place on Fifty-third.”
“And you got there when?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I wear a watch but I don’t look at it every damn minute. I suppose it took five minutes to walk here and then Sunny and I hopped right in a cab and we were at Patsy’s in ten minutes at the outside, that’s the after-hours place, I told you people all of this, 1 really wish you would talk to each other and leave me the hell alone.”
“Why doesn’t Sunny come out and tell me about it?” I nodded at the bathroom door. “Maybe she can remember the time a little more clearly.”
“Sunny? She stepped out a little while ago.”
“She’s not in the bathroom?”
“Nope. Nobody’s in the bathroom.”
“Mind if I see for myself?”
“Not if you can show me a warrant.”
We looked at each other. I told him I figured I could take his word for it. He said he could always be trusted to tell the truth. I said I sensed as much about him.
He said, “What’s the hassle, huh? I know you guys got forms to fill out, but why not give me a break? She killed herself and I wasn’t anywhere near her when it happened.”
He could have been. The times were vague, and whoever Sunny turned out to be, the odds were good that she’d have no more time sense than a koala bear. There were any number of ways he could have found a few minutes to go up to Fifty-seventh Street and heave Paula out a window, but it didn’t add up that way and he just didn’t feel like a killer to me. I knew what Ruth meant and I agreed with her that he was capable of murder but I don’t think he’d been capable of this particular murder.
I said, “When did you go back to the apartment?”
“Who said I did?”
“You picked up your clothes, Cary.”
“That was yesterday afternoon. The hell, I needed my clothes and stuff.”
“How long were you living there?”
He hedged. “I wasn’t exactly living there.”
“Where were you exactly living?”
“I wasn’t exactly living anywhere. I kept most of my stuff at Paula’s place and I stayed with her most of the time but it wasn’t as serious as actual living together. We were both too loose for anything like that. Anyway, the thing with Paula, it was pretty much winding itself down. She was a little too crazy for me.” He smiled with his mouth. “They have to be a little crazy,” he said, “but when they’re too crazy it gets to be too much of a hassle.”
Oh, he could have killed her. He could kill anyone if he had to, if someone was making too much of a hassle. But if he were to kill cleverly, faking the suicide in such an artful fashion, fastening the chain bolt on his way out, he’d pick a time when he had a solid alibi. He was not the sort to be so precise and so slipshod all at the same time.
“So you went and picked up your stuff.”
“Right.”
“Including the stereo and records.”
“The stereo was mine. The records, I left the folk music and the classical shit because that belonged to Paula. I just took my records.”
“And the stereo.”
“Right.”
“You got a bill of sale for it, I suppose.”
“Who keeps that crap?”
“What if I said Paula kept the bill of sale? What if I said it was in with her papers and canceled checks?”
“You’re fishing.”
“You sure of that?”
“Nope. But if you did say that, I suppose I’d say the stereo was a gift from her to me. You’re not really gonna charge me with stealing a stereo,