'I'm not,' I said. 'But Denny Harris and Ron Gettig are.'
He shook his head. There was something believable about his moment of melancholy. Seeing the kind of human beings he did, and seeing the messes they got themselves in, his melancholy was probably a very civilized reaction.
I went around and sat down and nodded for him to take a chair.
He held up a halting hand. 'I've got to join my people in the-screening room is it called? — give them a hand.' His gaze held on me a long moment. He was assessing me.
'I've got an alibi for sure this time,' I said.
'I know. I've checked. Otherwise things wouldn't look too good for you. From the little checking I've been able to do, I understand you and Gettig almost got into a fist fight the other day.'
'Almost is a long way from actually happening.'
His gaze hadn't lowered yet. 'Sometimes it is, Mr. Ketchum.' He waited just the right number of beats-he had good actorly instincts-and then he said, 'What's going on up here, Mr. Ketchum?'
'Going on?'
'There's a good probability the murders are related. It would be damned weird if they weren't. So-what's going on?'
'I don't know.'
'You're sure of that?'
He almost seemed to be smiling.
'Yeah, I'm sure.' I glanced at my wristwatch. Remembered the manila envelope. The delivery. 'I have an appointment. Across town. If you don't need me-'
He shrugged. 'I'm sure we can handle it, Mr. Ketchum.' The pause again. 'Do you have any idea who might have killed Gettig?'
'Not really, no.' I did, of course. Sarah Anders. Or Sarah's husband-if he'd somehow managed to find out.
He started watching me again. I suppose I don't have the self-confidence needed to take that kind of thing. I could feel tiny beads of sweat start in my armpits.
Then he laid the bomb on me, the one he'd been waiting to deliver, like a terrorist to the heart of an unsuspecting building.
'You know Clay Traynor's wife, Cindy?' he asked. 'A bit. I mean, I see her at agency parties.'
'Did she know Denny?'
'Sure.'
'The same way she knows you? Seeing you at parties?' The mocking edge had returned to his voice. 'Yeah, basically, I guess.'
'Then she wouldn't have known him any better than she knows you?'
I sighed. 'What is it you're trying to say?'
'Cindy Traynor drives a green Mercedes coupe. I know that because Denny Harris's closest neighbor-maybe half a mile away-remembers seeing a green Mercedes coupe heading for Harris's at dusk. The neighbor was strolling.'
'There must be lots of green Mercedes coupes.'
'Yeah, but probably not many with the license prefix C–I-N.'
This was how it always happens in the movies. Apparently it happens that way in real life, too.
Cindy Traynor was going to get nabbed for the murder of Denny Harris. Clay Traynor was going to find out that his wife had had an affair with Denny.
I was going to lose Clay's account-Cindy might go to prison-and all the while Stokes, the private detective, knew who the real killer was.
'You look nervous, Mr. Ketchum,' Bonnell said.
'I'm late,' I said, grabbing my briefcase.
And I was-late to do anybody any damned good, including myself.
FOURTEEN
On my way over to the park Ron Gettig's face stayed in my vision. I wasn't much good at this death business. Apparently I wasn't much good at hating, either. Now that Gettig was dead, our dislike of each other seemed petty and silly. For the first time in the five or so years I'd known him, I found myself wondering about his family. All I knew was that he had a wife and daughter downstate someplace. The poor bastard.
I grew up on pop songs about lost summers and early autumns. The city park I looked at now could inspire a whole generation of songwriters-the last red-and-gold leaves tearing away from the otherwise naked trees, the river running through the park peaked with icy-looking waves, the zoo section of the park now just empty cages, the pavilions stacked high with tables and chairs. There was something lonely about all this, you could almost hear the lost laughter of lovers on the bitter wind-but, there, I was writing my own early autumn song.
The duck pond, which I'd expected to be deserted on a snow-promising day like this one, was ringed with maybe half-a-dozen people, all of them looking to be over fifty, tossing bread bits to the ducks that swam by on the other side of the fence. They fed the animals despite a large sign instructing them not to under threat of fine or even imprisonment. The people seemed as imperturbable as the ducks, which, given my mood, buoyed me for a moment. I'm always happy to see people do the right thing despite idiotic laws.
The metal feeder marked A, the one Stokes had instructed me to place the manila envelope in, was wired to the fencing surrounding the pond. It looked like a country mailbox. From inside my overcoat I took the envelope, then placed it inside.
J knew I was being watched.
I glanced around in classic paranoid style but the only people I saw were the well-bundled-up feeders standing around me. A few of them returned my glance, offering smiles and curious looks, but that wasn't what I sensed…
I spent the next few minutes looking around. Up the hills that lay westward, the river bank that lay eastward, the forest on the other side of the pond. Somewhere somebody was watching me put the envelope in.
The killer, of course.
I hadn't been able to resist temptation. After Stokes had left last night, I'd carefully opened the envelope and looked inside. All it contained was a photostat of a receipt for a safety-deposit box in the suburb of Millburn. The receipt was signed by a man named Kenneth Martin and had been issued three-and-a-half months earlier.
Stokes had been right. Whatever import the contents held for the person who'd pick them up, I had no idea what they meant or what relationship they had to Denny's murder.
All I knew for sure was that the envelope was going to make Stokes wealthy.
Quarter of a mile away, I found a stand of fir trees and pulled my car over to them. A slope of firs behind it led to the edge of the duck pond. I could stand behind the trees and watch the feeder where I'd put the envelope.
Not an easy jaunt. Several times I slid on the floor of slick fir needles. Another time I caught my overcoat in brambles and had to surgically remove myself from their thorns. But overall there was something thrilling about it, the way I'd felt as a very young boy playing cops and robbers. By now my face was frozen to the point that it was becoming numb-the air was actually starting to become invigorating. If this weren't such a serious business, it would be fun.
I reached the edge of the pond maybe five minutes later, then eased myself out from around the tree to take a look.
I had the terrible feeling that in the seven or eight minutes it had taken me to reach this point, the killer had come and gone.
I decided to wait here as long as I could stand the cold and see what happened.
I didn't have to wait long.
He appeared from behind a copse of trees to the west of the pond. Obviously, he had been watching
