“Yes. A man I’d never seen before. And yesterday I received a blackmail letter.”
Jesus. If this was a prank, it was too good not to bite.
“Miss Benton, I’d better see you right away. Where are you now?”
“In my apartment. Do you want me to come to your office?”
Steve instinctively glanced at the cluttered room. He smiled slightly. “No. Don’t come to my office. I want to see the scene of the crime anyway. I’ll come there.”
“All right It’s 193 West 89th Street, 2B.”
He almost said, “Or not to be,” but controlled himself. Instead he said, “Be right there.”
He hung up the phone and shook his head. Holy shit. Was it possible? A client.
He stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the light and splashed water on his face. He gazed at his reflection in the mirror.
Though he was thirty-five, he looked younger. Part of the reason was his shoulder-length dark hair, which made him look like a hippie from the sixties. The hair framed a lean, expressive, sensitive face. Damn. An artist’s face, not a lawyer’s.
Steve pulled off the t-shirt and undershorts he had been sleeping in, and jumped into the shower. He washed quickly, got out and toweled himself dry.
Now what to do? His hair. Jesus, his hair. He had kept it long since his acting days out of force of habit-you could always cut it for a part, but you couldn’t grow it overnight. Well, no time for a haircut now. He left it wet, combed it back, plastered it to the back of his neck. There. He could tuck it into his shirt collar.
If he had a clean shirt. Shit. He groped through the closet. Yes. A white shirt. Could use an ironing, but not bad. He grabbed it off the hanger, put it on, tucking the hair under the collar. He buttoned it to the neck, to hold the hair in place.
He went and looked in the mirror. Not bad.
Of course, pants would help.
He went back, jerked open a drawer of the bureau, found a pair of jockey shorts, pulled them on.
Great. Now the suit.
Steve rummaged through the whole closet before he remembered. Shit. He’d lent the suit to Arthur for that wedding last year, and he’d never gotten it back. And Arthur’d moved to California.
Jesus, what to do? Improvise. Pants, jacket, tie-throw it together, get it done. If you’re going to do it at all. If not, call her back and tell her to forget it. What are you, nuts? The first client in a year. Come on Winslow, you big schmuck, this can’t be that hard.
He continued to rummage through the closet and dresser drawers.
10
Sheila Benton opened the front door and stared.
Standing in the doorway was a young man with his hair slicked back from his head, wearing blue jeans, a tan corduroy jacket and a green tie.
Sheila blinked. “Yes?”
“Sheila Benton?”
“Yes.”
“Steve Winslow.”
Sheila blinked again.
Steve wasn’t going to take the chance of having the door slammed in his face, not by a potential client, and not in a murder case. He pushed right by her and into the apartment.
Sheila, as if in a daze, closed the door and locked it. She turned to find the young man standing looking down at the chalk outline on the floor.
“This is where you found him, eh?” Steve said.
“Yes.”
“How was he killed?”
“With a knife.”
“In the front or the back?”
“The back.”
He frowned. “Hmm. That probably rules out self-defense. So he was lying on his stomach?”
“Yes.”
“Where’d the knife come from?”
“It was mine. From that set on the wall.”
Sheila pointed to the kitchen alcove.
“Uh huh.” He crossed to the alcove. He pantomimed taking a knife out of the rack, turning and stabbing the man. He followed the man’s fall down to the chalk line.
As he bent down, some of the hair tucked under his collar came loose and swung down.
Steve stood up. The hair hung down the left side of his face, giving him a lopsided look.
“Well, that’s a break,” he said.
“What?” Sheila said. She had only half heard him. She was staring, hypnotized, at the dangling hair.
“The position of the knife rack to the body,” he said. “The circumstantial evidence would indicate that the murderer grabbed the knife from the rack, turned and stabbed the victim.”
“So?”
“If worse comes to worst, that would probably rule out premeditation.” He glanced around the room, then back at her. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get the facts. Tell me exactly what happened.”
Sheila blinked again, seemed unable to speak. “Well,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
Sheila shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… I don’t know. You’re just not my idea of a lawyer.”
He looked at her, smiled. “Well,” he said. “You’re not my idea of a murder suspect, either.”
It was a weak comeback, and it wasn’t working. The girl just kept staring at him.
He noticed the dangling hair. He pushed it back. He gave up, sighed. All right, so much for bluffing it through.
“All right, look,” he said. “I’m not what you expected. You think of a lawyer as someone in a three-piece suit with a haircut and a manicure and probably about sixty years old. Well, I’m not. But I didn’t call you, you called me. That doesn’t mean you have to hire me, and if you want to tell me to get lost, you certainly have that right. But the thing is, you can tell me to get lost at any time. So since you got me over here, why don’t you tell me what this is all about, and we’ll see if there is anything we can do about it. And then you can tell me to get lost, and you can go out and find some guy who dresses right and looks constipated, which I’m sure is your idea of what a lawyer ought to be.”
She smiled, and he knew the battle was half over.
11
District Attorney Harry Dirkson was worried. He was worried because of what had happened and because of what hadn’t happened. What had happened was Sheila Benton, niece of Maxwell Baxter, had gotten involved in a murder. What hadn’t happened was Maxwell Baxter’s attorneys hadn’t called him and/or the commissioner, raising merry hell and demanding that the situation be cleared up as quickly and quietly as possible, keeping Sheila Benton’s name out of it.
If that happened-and Dirkson was sure that it would-then he would be in a no-win situation. If he kept Sheila Benton out of it, which would be a pretty impossible job, and it got out, as it surely would, the press would crucify him. By the time the media got finished with him, his chances for re-election would be virtually nil.
On the other hand, if, god forbid, he should end up having to prosecute the girl, it was even worse. He would
