'Actually,' I remembered, 'he had more money than he should have. He cashed in his insurance and he died with something like forty thousand dollars in the bank.'
'Ain't that a motive?'
'He left it all to some AIDS charities. Some of those organizations are a little aggressive in their fund-raising, but I've never heard of them going out and killing for the money.'
'Besides, all they gotta do is wait, right? 'Cause the man already dyin'.' He frowned. 'You know what'd be nice? Piece of pie.' I beckoned the waitress over and he asked her what kind of pie she had, giving her response some careful attention. 'Pecan,' he decided, 'with some of that whatcha-call a la mode on it. Say chocolate?' She looked at him, confused, and the street went right out of his speech. 'I'll have a piece of pecan pie,' he said, 'with a scoop of chocolate ice cream.' She nodded and went away, and he rolled his eyes. 'Now she be thinkin' I a doctor. She be after me to take out her appendix.'
'Tell her your doctorate's in botany.'
'That's just as bad, Tad. She'll have me talkin' to her plants. If killin' Byron didn't put no money in nobody's pocket, who'd hire somebody to do it?'
'I don't know.'
'He had AIDS, right? But he wasn't gay.'
'He got it from a needle.'
'He keep it all to hisself? Or did he pass it on?' I must have looked puzzled. 'The virus, Cyrus. Who'd he go and infect?'
'He could have spread it around,' I said. 'Years ago, before he even knew he had it.'
'So he gives it to some woman, and then her husband or her boyfriend or her brother wants to know how she got it. 'Couldn't be nobody but that no-account junkie Byron Leopold,' she says.'
'Whereupon the husband or brother or whatever he is goes out and hires somebody to kill Byron.'
'Or does it his own self. Either way Byron'd be a stranger to him an' he might axe him his name to make sure he didn't kill the wrong person. 'Mr. Leopold? Byron Leopold?' '
'Pop pop.'
'All she wrote,' he agreed.
'What about This is for Sheila, you dirty rat?' The way he did it, Byron wouldn't even know why he was dying.'
'If Sheila's brother was doin' it hisself, you'd 'spect him to say somethin'. If he only hired the shooter—'
'The shooter might not bother with the oratory. Even if the brother did it himself, he could have a speech planned and be too nervous to deliver it.' I drank some coffee. 'I don't buy any of it,' I said.
'Who takes that kind of revenge on a man with one foot in the grave? Byron Leopold was a bag of bones, his idea of a big day was sitting in the sun with his newspaper. No matter what he did to you, one long look at him and the resentment'd go right out of you.'
'What's that leave? Suicide?'
'I thought of that.'
'Huh?'
'Say he didn't want to live anymore but he couldn't bring himself to take action. So he hires somebody to do it for him.'
'He's afraid to stick his head in the oven, but he's cool with the idea of waitin' for somebody to sneak up and shoot him.'
'I said I thought of it. I never put it high up on the list.'
' 'Sides, how's he hire somebody who never met him face to face?
You hire me to shoot you, I ain't gonna have to ask you your name.'
'Forget it,' I said. 'It never made any sense in the first place and it makes less sense now. Byron Leopold was murdered by someone who had a reason to kill him, and he himself was the only person in the world with a reason to want him dead. There ought to be a financial motive.
That's what it feels like, but there's no money in it for anybody.'
'There's whatever he had. Forty kay? But you said some charity gets that.'
'And it's not enough anyway.'
'Not enough?'
'Not enough to kill for.'
'Dudes up on Washington Heights, they killed three people and only got half that much.'
'They were lowlife dipshits,' I said. 'They probably killed for the hell of it. They already had the money.
Why kill the girl? To keep her quiet? She couldn't tell anybody, and her mother and brother were asleep in their beds, for Christ's sake.
They killed three people for no reason.'
'Guess you ain't likely to be a character witness for them. Anyway, wasn't no lowlife shot Byron. Said,
