“Well I-”
She turned away. “Go, if you want to. You don’t have to stay on my account.”
I put out my cigarette and set the empty cup on the coffee table, but I stayed on the couch. I hadn’t seen the script yet and I didn’t know my lines. She was a hooker and I was a John, she was an angel of mercy and I was a man in trouble, she was Jane and I was Tarzan, all those things. I didn’t know my lines.
Without looking at me she said, “You don’t remember what I said last night? About the watch and the wallet and the purse?”
I had forgotten.
“Because that part of it doesn’t add up right,” she said. “I thought if we sort of picked at it we might get somewheres. See what I mean?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, Alex, what I mean is, what happened to your watch and wallet?”
“They must have been stolen.”
“And Robin’s purse?”
“I didn’t know she had one.”
“She always carried a purse. Same as I always do. I make sure I get the money as soon as I’m in the room with the fellow, and I put my coat or something over the purse. You know, on a chair or on the dresser. I know Robin always did the same.”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember. It was getting increasingly harder to bring that particular night back into focus. It seemed to me now that I remembered a purse, that she had taken my money and tucked it into a purse, but I couldn’t be entirely sure.
“Maybe she had a purse. I don’t know.”
“She must of had one, Alex. A lot of the colored girls don’t, they like to leave their bras on and they’ll tuck the bills in there, but most men don’t like that. Leaving the bra on, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, she had to have a purse. And you had your watch and wallet, didn’t you?”
“I hardly thought about it. I just supposed that they had been stolen somewhere along the line.”
“But you had them when you went with Robin.”
“Did I?”
She spread her small hands. “Well, what else? You paid Robin, didn’t you? You gave her some money?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“You must of given her money if you made love to her. So that means you had the watch and wallet when you went with her.”
“I guess so.” I looked at her, the small intense eyes, the head tilted forward in concentration. “But what difference does it make? If I had them then, I certainly didn’t have them when I woke up the next morning. So-”
“Well, what happened to them?”
“Oh.”
“You see what I mean, Alex?”
“I never even thought of it.”
“Well, see, you were too busy concentrating on who could of done it and then you didn’t stop to think about just what it was that happened. But that was one of the first things I thought of, that the watch and the wallet were gone. And Robin’s purse, too. It wasn’t there when you woke up?”
“If it was, I never saw it”
“Would you of noticed it?”
“I’m not sure. But the watch and the wallet were gone. Unless they were in the purse.”
“You mean if Robin took them?” I nodded. “No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “Robin didn’t take diem. Robin never stole.”
“Never?”
“No. Neither do I, I never steal I did once, a long time ago. A man who passed out. We didn’t even make love, he just got on the bed and passed out. And I went through his wallet and took his money. Not his wallet but just the money from it. Almost a hundred dollars. I felt bad about it. I don’t mean I sat around crying, but I felt bad about it.”
She fell silent, her gaze turned inward, fastening upon the memory and the way she had felt. “I never did it again,” she said. “A lot of the girls do, maybe most of them, but I never do, and neither did Robin. I’m pretty sure of that.”
“Then the watch and wallet-”
“Maybe the killer.”
“But why?”
A shrug. “Everybody likes money.”
“Not the man who framed me. I didn’t have much in the wallet, and the watch wasn’t worth a fortune. And whoever set me up for this wouldn’t take chances for a few dollars. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Suppose he hired someone.”
I had briefly considered this possibility, but I had not wanted to dwell on it Because once I allowed it, my elimination process went utterly out the window. The proof that Russell Stone, for example, was not in New York Saturday night-it counted for nothing once I admitted that he could have hired someone to do his killing for him. Still, like it or not, it was quite possible. And it was similarly possible that a hired killer would take the trouble to add a watch and wallet and a whore’s purse to his haul.
“We can forget the purse and the wallet,” she was saying. “Whoever he was, he’d just take the money and ditch the rest. Stick them in a trashcan, probably. That’s no help.”
“What about the watch?”
“That’s our chance.” Her teeth worried her lower lip. “I hope it wasn’t a really cheap watch. Like they sell in drugstores for $10.95.”
“It was worth about a hundred new. Maybe a little more.”
“Well, that’s one for our side. You know the make?”
“Elgin. It said
“You would know it if you saw it?”
“I suppose so.” I concentrated. “There was a link missing in the band, and-”
“Forget the band. It probably has a new band by now.”
“Oh. Just a minute. I think I could recognize it by the face. There’s a nick in the paint around the dial. If I saw it, I’m sure I would know it. But why? How could we find it?”
“If he stole it to keep ft, then we can’t Unless you walk around the city until you happen to see it on somebody’s wrist But if he stole it to sell it, it’s less than a week, and whoever took it probably still has it A watch that’s worth around a hundred dollars, you could fence it almost anywhere. I mean you wouldn’t have to go to an important fence. Just any pawnshop, and you would get ten or fifteen dollars for it. Maybe twenty, but probably ten or fifteen. So if we go looking to buy a watch, and we happen to see it-”
“It sounds impossible, Jackie.”
“You think so?”
“You said it yourself. How many pawnshops are there in the city? And how many watches? It could be anywhere.”
“It’s most likely around midtown. There’s some places a person would be most likely to go.”
“Still-”
“Can you think of a better place to start?”
“No, but-”
“I know a few people in hockshops.” Her hand moved, unconsciously, I think, to her upper arm. A sweater covered the hit marks, but I had seen them last night “The scene I have, things of mine go in and out of hockshops. So there’s some people I know.”
She was right. It was a place to start “Well try it,” I said.
“Let me get a coat on.”
