“You attended the funeral of James Conradin in Sebastopol on Tuesday, yesterday,” Commac said. That right, Mr. Kilduff?”
The urge to take flight came back on him, and he had to make a concentrated effort of will to throw it off. They know, he thought, somehow, in some way, they’ve found out and they know. All right, what do I do now? Do I tell them, admit it, get it done with? They have ways of dragging information out of you, they’re professionals, cops, they know how to trap you into making admissions. I can’t get away with lying to them, not for very long, not when they already know. All right, then, all right. All I have to do is confirm it, tell it straight, make it easy on myself, sure, no agonizing decisions to reach, no more sweat and no more fear, it’s over and the choice has been made for me and all I have to do is confirm it ...
“Mr. Kilduff?”
He came out of it. “What?”
“I asked you if you attended the funeral of James Conradin yesterday.”
“I... yes, yes I did.”
“Conradin was a friend of yours?”
“I knew him in the service.”
“When was this?”
“From 1956 to 1959.”
“You were stationed together?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
The Bellevue Air Force Station.”
“That’s in Illinois, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Commac studied him for a long moment. Kilduff just sat there with his lips pressed tightly together and the cigarette curling smoke upward into the still air of the room. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t say the words, he couldn’t even meet Commac’s eyes. He couldn’t do it, not now and not later, and now was the time because Commac had already begun to probe, still playing along the surface, yes, but it wouldn’t be long before he would penetrate deeper and deeper; now was the time and he simply couldn’t do it.
“When was the last time you saw Conradin, Mr. Kilduff?” Commac asked. “Alive, I mean.”
“It must have been ... oh, eleven years ago,” he answered, and that was the first lie. It came flowing out of his mouth like warm butter, without effort, without conscious consideration. And he knew the ones which would follow would be just as smooth and just as accomplished. “It was right after we were discharged.”
“When was that?”
“February of 1959.”
“And you hadn’t seen him since that time?”
“No”
“Did you know he lived in Bodega Bay?”
“Before I heard of his death, you mean?”
“Before then.”
“No,” Kilduff said. “No, I didn’t.”
“I see,” Commac said. “Were you close friends in the service?”
“I... guess we were, yes.”
“How is it you never kept in touch after you got out?”
“I don’t know. People drift apart. You know how that is, Inspector.”
“Uh-huh,” Commac said.
Flagg took a stick of spearmint gum from the pocket of his brown suit, unwrapped it carefully and wadded the foil into a little ball and put the ball in the ashtray on the coffee table. He chewed with his mouth closed, quietly.
Kilduff thought with self-loathing and with self-pity: You goddamned coward, you goddamned frigging coward, you yellow gutless wonder—it’s never going to be this easy again, if you can’t do it now you’ll never do it.
And he still couldn’t do it.
Commac said, “Who was the other man, Mr. Kilduff?”
“What other man?”
“At the funeral with you on Tuesday.”
“I don’t know who you mean.”
“You were sitting with a dark-complected man, Latin features, expensively dressed. Together, in the last row of chairs during the service.”
“Oh, yes, that man,” Kilduff said. “Well, I don’t know his name.”
“You just happened to sit by one another, is that it?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And you neglected to introduce yourselves.”
“You don’t usually observe the amenities at a funeral.”
“Come on now, Mr. Kilduff,” Commac said mildly. “You came in together and you sat down together.”
“I told you, I don’t know the man. I never saw him before yesterday. Listen, what’s this all about? Why are you asking all these questions?”
Flagg continued to chew his gum quietly. He had begun to rotate his hat between his thumb and forefinger. Commac’s expressionless eyes never left Kilduff’s face. He took a small clothbound notebook from the inside pocket of his gray suit and opened it and studied a page. He frowned. “Bellevue, Illinois,” he said. “That’s near Granite City, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s near Granite City.”
“That was where they had that big Smithfield armored car robbery,” Flagg said, speaking for the first time. His voice was as soft as Commac’s. “April of fifty-nine, wasn’t it, Neal?”
“March,” Commac said. “March 15th.”
“Sure,” Flagg said. “Six men got away with over seven hundred and fifty thousand in cash. They were never caught.”
“No,” Commac said, “they never were.”
“Consensus seemed to be that it was an amateur job, the way it was pulled off,” Flagg said. “Lacked the professional touch.”
They were talking through him now, watching him, testing him for a reaction. Oh, they knew, all right. He hadn’t had any doubt in his mind from the beginning. He sat there and tried to make himself tell them about Granite City, and about Drexel and Helgerman, but it was just no use.
Commac said, “Do you remember the Smithfield robbery, Mr. Kilduff? It made quite a splash in the Illinois papers.”
“I remember it,” he answered softly. “But I don’t see what that has to do with Jim Conradin. Or with me.”
“Maybe it has a lot to do with
“Are you saying Jim was mixed up in that?” Kilduff tried to make his voice incredulous, but the words came out flat and toneless.
“There’s a good chance of it,” Commac said. “A very good chance of it.”
“How do you mean that?”
“Conradin’s wife opened their safe deposit box this afternoon,” Flagg said. “Up in Santa Rosa. What do you suppose she found in there?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Money.”
“Money?” The incredulity was there this time, and genuine.
“Forty-one thousand and some-odd dollars.”
“But that—”
“And a newspaper clipping,” Commac said. “Dealing with the robbery.”
“That doesn’t prove Jim was involved.”
