`And I don't get the bonus unless I stop?'
`I didn't say that.'
`You didn't have to.'
He spread his hands on the table and leaned above me, heavy-faced and powerful. `Just how do you get to talk to your betters the way you've been talking to me?'
`By my betters you mean people with more money?'
`Roughly, yes.'
`I'll tell you, Mr. Hillman. I rather like you. I'm trying to talk straight to you because somebody has to. You're headed on a collision course with the law. If you stay on it, you're going to get hurt.'
His face stiffened and his eyes narrowed. He didn't like to be told anything. He liked to do the telling.
`I could buy and sell Bastian.'
`You can't if he's not for sale. You know damn well he isn't.'
He straightened, raising his head out of the light into the greenish shadow. His face resembled old bronze, except that it was working. After a time he said: `What do you think I ought to do?'
`Start telling the truth.'
'Dammit, you imply I haven't been.'
`I'm doing more than imply it, Mr. Hillman.'
He turned on me with his fists clenched, ready to hit me. I remained sitting. He walked away and came back. Without whisky, he was getting very jumpy.
`I suppose you think I killed them.'
`I'm not doing any speculating. I am morally certain you bought that knife from Botkin.'
`How can you be certain?'
`I've talked to the man.'
`Who authorized you to? I'm not paying you to gather evidence against me.'
I said, rather wearily: `Couldn't we forget about your wonderful money for a while, and just sit here and talk like a couple of human beings? A couple of human beings in a bind?'
He considered this. Eventually he said: `You're not in a bind. I am.'
`Tell me about it. Unless you actually did commit those murders. In which case you should tell your lawyer and nobody else.'
`I didn't. I almost wish I had.'
He sat down across from me, slumping forward a little, with his arms resting on the tabletop. `I admit I bought the knife. I don't intend to admit it to anyone else. Botkin will have to be persuaded to change his story.'
`How?'
`He can't make anything out of that store of his. I ought to know, my father owned one like it in South Boston. I can give Botkin enough money to retire to Mexico.'
I was a bit appalled, not so much by the suggestion of crude subornation - I'd often heard it before - as by the fact that Hillman was making it. In the decades since he commanded a squadron at Midway, he must have bumped down quite a few moral steps.
I said: `You better forget about that approach, Mr. Hillman. It's part of the collision course with the law I was talking about. And you'll end up sunk.'
`I'm sunk now,' he said in an even voice.
He laid his head down on his arms. His hair spilled forward like a broken white sheaf. I could see the naked pink circle on the crown which was ordinarily hidden. It was like a tonsure of mortality.
`What did you do with the knife?'
I said to him. `Did you give it to Dick Leandro?'
`No.'
Spreading his hands on the tablecloth, he pushed himself upright. His moist palms slipped and squeaked on the polished surface. `I wish I had.'
`Was Tom the one you gave it to?'
He groaned. `I not only gave it to him. I told Botkin I was buying the bloody thing as a gift for him. Bastian must be aware of that, but he's holding it back.'
'Bastian would,' I said. `It still doesn't follow that Tom used it on his father and mother. He certainly had no reason to kill his mother.'
`He doesn't need a rational motive. You don't know Tom.'
`You keep telling me that. At the same time you keep refusing to fill in the picture.'
`It's a fairly ugly picture.'
`Something was said tonight about a homicidal attack.'
