“Sounds lovely. What’ll we do? Wanna fly to New York?”
“I’m going out to get the guy who killed those three people.”
“And for this you need me?”
“I need to know you’re safe,” I had said. “I think there’s a possibility he may try to kill you next.”
A few minutes later I pulled up at Val Ballard’s house. I could see the house in the misty morning. If I walked along the road, as I now did, I could soon see the garage. It was closed: the doctor was in. The road told me nothing: it was so full of puddles and melting snow that there was just no reading it. But the furrow he had plowed across the back yard was gone, washed away completely in the night, and there were no fresh tracks to take its place.
He had been home, then, for some time.
I didn’t know what to expect: I just hoped I was ready for it. I had my gun in my hand with my jacket folded over it. Now I had to walk across thirty yards of open space to reach the house. The windows were dark: any of them were perfect hiding places for a sniper. I took a breath and went: walked up to the front door just like the Fuller brush man. There, I flattened against the wall and listened. The house sounded exactly like it had the last time I had been here, nine hours ago: in other words, there was no sound at all. I started around it, stopping at every window. I peered down the hall and saw nothing. Moved on to the next window. Kitchen. No help. A ray of sunshine was starting to peek through the clouds. It cast a beam almost like a rainbow through the kitchen window. I eased my way to the back of the house. Turned the corner. The next window looked into his den, and there he was, sitting at the desk, his back to the window. He wasn’t doing anything. I thought maybe he was asleep: that’s how still he was. But suddenly he moved: dropped his feet, fumbled, lit a cigarette. He sat there smoking and I stood outside, not two feet from the back of his head, wondering what to do next.
There were really only two choices. I decided to play it straight. I walked around the house, went to the front door, and rang the bell.
I heard him coming immediately.
He jerked open the door and started to say, “It’s about fuckin‘ time.” He got most of it out before he realized that it wasn’t about time at all.
“Who the hell’re you?”
“Detective Janeway. I talked to you at your uncle’s house, remember?”
“Yeah, sure. What’re you doing here? Hell, it’s only eight o’clock.”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
“Look, I’m expecting somebody. I don’t have much time.”
“That’s okay, I won’t take much.”
Reluctantly he moved away from the door. I went in, keeping the gun handy under the jacket. You never knew what might happen with people.
We went into the living room. It looked vaguely like a place I’d seen before. He asked if I wanted some coffee. I wanted some badly, but I said no. One of my rules is to never eat or drink with people who might want to kill me.
He didn’t look the part somehow: he was dressed well, in dry clothes: his hair was combed, and in fact he looked bushy-brained and sharp, like a lawyer about to go into court for a big case. He must’ve been sizing me up too. “You look like you’ve been through a war,” he said.
“I have.”
“I’ll bet it’s interesting as hell, but like I said, I’m expecting company. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me what you know about your uncle’s books.”
He was a lousy liar. He looked away and tried to shrug it off. “What’s there to tell? We went all through this.”
“We went through something but it wasn’t this. Look, you’ve got things to do and so do I. D’you want to tell me about it, or shall we wait till Mr. Rubicoff gets here and we can all go through it together?”
It was a sucker punch and he almost fell off his chair from the force of it.
“Why don’t you get the hell outta here right now?”
“Fine. It’s your house. But I’ll be back, and I’ll tell you something, Ballard. You’re gonna have to be a lot better lawyer than I think you are to get yourself out of this mess.”
I got up to leave.
“What mess? What’re you talking about?”
“Oh, I think you know. Let’s not waste time with this.”
“Wait a minute. There’s no sense being mean about it. We can get along. I mean, can’t we get along?”
“I can.”
