I sat him up and fixed the noose around his neck. He never woke up. I just pulled up on the clothesline and let his own body weight shut off his oxygen. That's all.'
'And Mrs. Grod?'
'It was the way you figured it. I got her to take the chloral and I unlocked her window gates. I didn't kill her. Eddie did that. He made it look like a struggle, too, and he locked the doors from inside and went back downstairs on the fire escape. Matt, they were all tired of life, the ones I killed. I just gave them a hand in the direction they were already heading.'
'The merciful angel of death.'
'Matt?'
I took her hands from my shoulders, stepped back. Her eyes widened, and I could see her trying to gauge which way I was leaning. I took a full breath and let it out and took off my suit jacket and hung it over the back of the chair.
'Ah, my darling,' she said.
I took off my tie and strung it over the jacket. I unbuttoned my shirt, tugged it out of the waistband of my slacks. She smiled and moved to embrace me. I lifted a hand to hold her off.
'Matt—'
I drew my undershirt up over my head and off. She couldn't miss the wire. She saw it right away, wrapped around my middle, taped to my skin, but it took a minute or two for the implications to sink in.
Then she got it, and her shoulders sagged with the knowledge and her face collapsed. One hand reached out, gripping the table to keep her from falling.
While she was pouring herself more scotch, I got back into my clothes.
I brought her in. It was a nice collar for Joe Durkin, with an assist for Bellamy and Andreotti. Willa didn't stay inside long. The equity in her buildings allowed her to make bond, and she's out on bail now pending disposition of her case.
I don't think it'll come to trial. The newspaper coverage was heavy, and neither her good looks nor her radical past got in the way of the story. The recording I made of our conversation should prove to be admissible evidence, although her lawyer will do what he can to hold it back, but aside from that there's not a wealth of physical evidence, so the betting right now is that her lawyer will want to plea-bargain the case and the Manhattan DA's office will be agreeable. She'll probably have to go away for a year or two.
Most people would very likely say she'll be getting off too easy, but then most people haven't spent very much time in prison.
I had taken a few things from Eddie's apartment— books, mostly, and his wallet. I brought all his AA literature along to St. Paul's one night, and added the pamphlets to the stack on the free table. I gave his copies of the Big Book and the Twelve & Twelve to a newcomer named Ray, whom I haven't laid eyes on since. I don't know if he's going to other meetings, or if he's staying sober, but I don't suppose the books drove him to drink.
I kept his mother's Bible. I have one of my own, the King James version, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a Catholic Bible to keep it company. I still like the King James better, but I don't open either of them all that often.
I spent more than seventy-two dollars' worth of mental energy trying to decide what to do with the forty bucks in the Bible and the thirty-two dollars in his wallet. Ultimately I appointed myself his executor and hired myself retroactively to solve his murder, and paid myself seventy-two dollars for my services on his behalf. I dropped the empty wallet in a trash basket, where it no doubt proved a major disappointment for some sharp-eyed scavenger.
Eddie was buried out of Twomey & Sons funeral parlor, on Fourteenth Street next to St. Bernard's.
Mickey Ballou arranged for the service and footed the bill for it.
'At least he'll have a priest reading over him and a decent burial in a proper cemetery,' he said, 'though you and I'll probably be the only ones
there for him.' But I mentioned the event at a meeting, and as it turned out there were about two dozen of us who came to see him off.
Ballou was astonished, and drew me aside. 'I thought it'd just be you and me,' he said. 'If I'd known there'd be all this turnout I'd have laid on something after, a couple of bottles and some food. Do you suppose we could ask them all to come back to Grogan's for a few jars?'
'These people won't want to do that,' I said.
'Ah,' he said, and looked thoughtfully around the room. 'They don't drink.'
'Not today.'
'And that's where they knew him from. And they're here for him now.' He considered this for a moment, then nodded shortly. 'I guess he came out of it all right,' he said.
'I guess he did.'
Not long after Eddie's funeral I got a call from Warren Hoeldtke.
They'd just had a small service for Paula, and I guess his call to me was a part of the mourning process.
'We announced that she'd died in a boating accident,' he said. 'We talked it over, and that seemed like the best way to handle it. And I suppose it's the truth, if not the whole truth.'
He said he and his wife had agreed that I hadn't been paid enough for my services. 'I've put a check in the mail to you,' he said. I didn't argue with him. I'd been a New York cop long enough not to argue with people who wanted to give me money.
'And if you ever want a car,' he said, 'you're more than welcome to anything on the lot at actual cost. It would be a genuine plea-sure for me.'
