'Are you sure?'
'Sure, I'm sure. Until Friday, when you told me Mr. Burke had found out about it, Barry was the only person I ever told.'
Jaywalker jumped up and immediately began pacing the room, totally oblivious to his nakedness. The headache was back with a vengeance, pounding between his eyes and at his temples. Samara was staring at him as though he and his mind had suddenly parted company. But when she opened her mouth to say something, he held up a hand and shushed her.
Barry had known about the earlier stabbing, and about the name Samantha Musgrove. No one else had. Could Barry have ordered the Seconal, using the name Samuel Musgrove, to make it look as though Samara had done it? And if Barry had kept aspirin or ibuprofen at Samara's town house, as she said he had, that meant he'd spent time there. If he'd wanted to, he could have brought the Seconal there on one of his visits. He could have taken one of her knives, too.
'Tell me,' Jaywalker said. 'Did Barry have a key to this place?'
'He did once. So I guess so. Why?'
'What time is it?'
Samara got up, disappeared into another room and called out, 'Two-fifteen.'
'A phone,' said Jaywalker. 'I need a phone.'
When she returned, she was wearing a robe. Apparently she preferred to have something on if he was going to flip out and she was going to have to take him to an emergency room. But she did have a cordless phone in one hand.
Jaywalker grabbed it and punched in a number. Funny, the old ones he could always remember. It was short-term memory he had a problem with, frequently forgetting his own number. Then again, he didn't call himself all that often.
'Unlisted subscriber information,' a woman said.
'This is Detective Anthony Bonfiglio,' said Jaywalker, 'Twenty-first Squad Homicide, shield two-two-oh-five. I need an unlisted number for a Thomas Francis Burke. Stat.'
He motioned Samara to bring him something to write with. She found a pen and a sheet of paper.
'I'm showing one Thomas F. Burke,' said the woman, 'five unlisted Thomas Burkes without middle names or initials, and three T. Burkes.'
'I'll take them all.'
She read him the listings. 'I'll need a written confirma tion by seventeen hundred today,' she told him. She gave him a fax number.
'You got it,' said Jaywalker, not bothering to write down the number.
He spoke briefly with two Tom Burkes and three name less women, none of whom seemed too thrilled to have been woken at, as one of them so artfully put it, 'three fucking o'clock in the fucking morning.' But on the sixth try, he heard a familiar, if sleepy, voice.
'Tom, wake up, it's Jaywalker.'
'Jesus. What time is it?'
'I don't know,' Jaywalker lied. 'A little after midnight.'
'How did you get my number?'
'Ve haff our vays.'
'What do you want?' Burke asked.
'I need you to get up and get dressed.'
'Are you nuts?'
'Probably,' Jaywalker conceded. 'But I think I've just about got this case figured out.'
'As I understand it,' said Burke, 'so does the jury.'
'The jury doesn't have a clue. And neither have you or I, all this time. But when you meet me, I'm going to explain it to you.'
'I'm sure you are,' said Burke. 'In court, at nine-thirty.'
'Tom?'
There was silence on the other end, and for a moment Jay walker was afraid he'd blown it. Then he heard a 'What?' that sounded somewhere between exasperated and resigned.
'Tom, you know I'd never fuck with you, right?'
'What time is it really?'
'Two-thirty, quarter of three. Something like that.'
'You who'd never fuck with me.'
'I need you to trust me on this, Tom. I need you to meet me at Barry's building as soon as you can. And, Tom?'
'Yes?'
'Bring your shield.'
'My shield?'
'You know,' said Jaywalker, 'that phony tin the old man gives you guys, in case you get stopped for speeding or hitting on a hooker.'
Burke showed up wearing a leather bomber jacket, jeans and a Yankee cap. But at least he was dry. Jaywalker had been forced to retrieve his soaking clothes from the pile he and Samara had created earlier in the evening. His coat had been so wet, however, that she had forced him to put on one of Barry's, even though the sleeves came to just below Jaywalker's elbows and the shoulders were so narrow that they threatened to cut off his blood supply. The guy must've been an absolute shrimp, he decided.
Burke wasn't alone. He'd managed to track down De tective Bonfiglio and bring him along, perhaps as a body guard, perhaps as a witness to Jaywalker's need for civil commitment.
'Evening, counselor,' said the detective.
'Evening, Tony. By the way, you owe the Unlisted Sub scriber Operator a fax by seventeen hundred hours.'
'Say what?'
'Never mind.'
'Cut it out, girls,' said Burke. Then, to Jaywalker, 'This better be good.'
'This is better than good,' Jaywalker assured him. 'This is absolutely unbelievable.'
'That's exactly what I'm afraid of.'
It turned out that Jose Lugo was working the midnightto-eight shift on the door, so they didn't need their shields after all. Which was just as well, because Jaywalker had bought his at a Times Square novelty shop. Lugo got hold of Anthony Mazzini, who, though groggy-eyed and grumbling, produced a passkey and, once the POLICE DEPART MENT DO NOT CROSS tape had been lifted away and the crime scene seal broken, let the three of them into Pent house A.
Once inside, it took them a few minutes to locate the circuit breakers and turn on the lights. It was immediately apparent that the tape and the seal had done their job. Nothing appeared to have been touched since Jaywalker's earlier visit.
'Okay,' said Burke to Jaywalker. 'Make like Charlie Chan. Explain to us what you think you've figured out.'
'Sure,' said Jaywalker, 'I can do that. But remember, I said just about. I now know who killed Barry, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he managed to pull it off.'
'He?' said Bonfiglio. 'You mean to tell us your girl friend's a trannie?'
'Be nice, Tony,' warned Jaywalker. 'You can come off looking like a hero in this thing, or the genius who locked up an innocent woman and wouldn't let go. Your choice.'
'I got a choice for you, dickhead.'
'Hey,' said Burke, 'I said cut it out.'
Jaywalker led them into the kitchen. The outline of Barry's body was still on the floor. A year and a half had passed, but he might just as well have died yesterday.
