The Night and the Music - Lawrence Block [68]
“I appreciate that,” I said, “but the thing is it’s an unusual MO. The killer didn’t take time to make sure his victim was dead, and you can’t take that for granted when you stick a knife in someone. And he left the knife in the wound.”
“He wouldn’t do that?”
“Well, it might be traced to him. All he has to do to avoid that chance is take it away with him. Besides, it’s a weapon. Suppose someone comes chasing after him? He might need that knife again.”
“Maybe he panicked.”
“Maybe he did,” I agreed. “There’s another thing, and a medical examiner would notice this if a reporting officer didn’t. The body’s been moved.”
Interesting the way their eyes jumped all over the place. They looked at each other, they looked at me, they looked at Phil on the floor.
“Blood pools in a corpse,” I said. “Lividity’s the word they use for it. It looks to me as though Phil fell forward and wound up face downward. He probably fell against the door as it was closing, and slid down and wound up on his face. So you couldn’t get the door open, and you needed to, so eventually you moved him.”
Eyes darted. The host, the one in the blazer, said, “We knew you’d have to come in.”
“Right.”
“And we couldn’t have him lying against the door.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “But all of that’s going to be hard to explain. You didn’t call the cops right away, and you did move the body. They’ll have some questions for you.”
“Maybe you could give us an idea what questions to expect.”
“I might be able to do better than that,” I said. “It’s irregular, and I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to suggest an action we can take.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to suggest we stage something,” I said. “As it stands, Phil was stabbed to death by an unknown person who escaped without anybody getting a look at him. He may never turn up, and if he doesn’t, the cops are going to look hard at the four of you.”
“Jesus,” somebody said.
“It would be a lot easier on everybody,” I said, “if Phil’s death was an accident.”
“An accident?”
“I don’t know if Phil has a sheet or not,” I said. “He looks vaguely familiar to me, but lots of people do. He’s got a gambler’s face, even in death, the kind of face you expect to see in an OTB parlor. He may have worked on Wall Street, it’s possible, because cheating at cards isn’t necessarily a full-time job.”
“Cheating at cards?”
“That would be my guess. His ring’s a mirror; turned around, it gives him a peek at what’s coming off the bottom of the deck. It’s just one way to cheat, and he probably had thirty or forty others. You think of this as a social event, a once-a-week friendly game, a five-dollar limit and, what, three raises maximum? The wins and losses pretty much average out over the course of a year, and nobody ever gets hurt too bad. Is that about right?”
“Yes.”
“So you wouldn’t expect to attract a mechanic, a card cheat, but he’s not looking for the high rollers, he’s looking for a game just like yours, where it’s all good friends and nobody’s got reason to get suspicious, and he can pick up two or three hundred dollars in a couple of hours without running any risks. I’m sure you’re all decent poker players, but would you think to look for bottom dealing or a cold deck? Would you know if somebody was dealing seconds, even if you saw it in slow motion?”
“Probably not.”
“Phil was probably doing a little cheating,” I went on, “and that’s probably what he did two weeks ago, and nobody spotted him. But he evidently crossed someone else somewhere along the line. Maybe he pulled the same tricks in a bigger game, or maybe he was just sleeping in the wrong bed, but someone knew he was coming here, turned up after the game was going, and rang the bell. He would have come in and called Phil out, but he didn’t have to, because Phil answered the door.”
“And the guy had a knife.”
“Right,” I said. “That’s how it was, but it’s another way an investigating officer might get confused. How did the guy know Phil was going to come to the door?