Eight Million Ways To Die

She'd been with a gentleman, he recalled, and it was the gentleman who had paid for the coat. Paid cash for it, he remembered. And no, that wasn't so unusual, not in the fur business. They only did a small volume of retail sales and a lot of it was people in the garment trade or people who knew somebody in the trade, although of course anyone could walk in off the street and buy any garment in the place. But mostly it was cash because the customer didn't usually want to wait for his check to clear, and besides a fur was often a luxury gift for a luxury friend, so to speak, and the customer was happier if no record of the transaction existed.

Thus payment in cash, thus the sales slip not in the buyer's name but in Miss Dakkinen's.

The sale had come to just under twenty-five hundred dollars with the tax. A lot of cash to carry, but not unheard of. I'd been carrying almost that myself not too long ago.

Could he describe the gentleman? The salesman sighed. It was much easier, he explained, to describe the lady. He could picture her now, those gold braids wrapped around her head, the piercing blue of her eyes. She'd tried on several jackets, she looked quite elegant in fur, but the man—

Thirty-eight, forty years old, he supposed. Tall rather than short, as he remembered, but not tall as the girl had been tall.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I have a sense of him but I can't picture him.

If he'd been wearing a fur I could tell you more than you'd want to know about it, but as it was—"

"What was he wearing?"

"A suit, I think, but I don't remember it. He was the type of man who'd wear a suit. I can't recall what he was wearing, though."

"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?"

"I might pass him on the street and not think twice."

"Suppose he was pointed out to you."

"Then I would probably recognize him, yes. You mean like a lineup? Yes, I suppose so."

I told him he probably remembered more than he thought he did. I asked him the man's profession.

"I don't even know his name. How would I know what he did for a living?"

"Your impression," I said. "Was he an auto mechanic? A stockbroker? A rodeo performer?"

"Oh," he said, and thought it over. "Maybe an accountant," he said.

"An accountant?"

"Something like that. A tax lawyer, an accountant. This is a game, I'm just guessing, you understand that—"

"I understand. What nationality?"

"American. What do you mean?"

"English, Irish, Italian—"

"Oh," he said. "I see, more of the game. I would say Jewish, I would say Italian, I would say dark, Mediterranean. Because she was so blonde, you know? A contrast. I don't know that he was dark, but there was a contrast. Could be Greek, could be Spanish."

"Did he go to college?"

"He didn't show me a diploma."

"No, but he must have talked, to you or to her. Did he sound like college or did he sound like the streets?"

"He didn't sound like the streets. He was a gentleman, an educated man."

"Married?"

"Not to her."

"To anybody?"

"Aren't they always? You're not married, you don't have to buy mink for your girlfriend. He probably bought another one for his wife, to keep her happy."

"Was he wearing a wedding ring?"

"I don't remember a ring." He touched his own gold band. "Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't recall a ring."

He didn't recall much, and the impressions I'd pried out of him were suspect. They might have been valid, might as easily have grown out of an unconscious desire to supply me with the answers he thought I wanted. I could have kept going— "All right, you don't remember his shoes, but what kind of shoes would a guy like him wear? Chukka boots? Penny loafers? Cordovans? Adidas? What?" But I'd reached and passed a point of diminishing returns. I thanked him and got out of there.

There was a coffee shop on the building's first floor, just a long counter with stools and a takeout window. I sat over coffee and tried to assess what I had.

She had a boyfriend. No question. Somebody bought her that jacket, counted out hundred dollar bills, kept his own name out of the transaction.

Did the boyfriend have a machete? There was a question I hadn't asked the fur salesman. "All right, use your imagination. Picture this guy in a hotel room with the blonde. Let's say he wants to chop her. What does he use? An axe? A cavalry saber? A machete? Just give me your impression."

Sure. He was an accountant, right? He'd probably use a pen. A Pilot Razor Point, deadly as a sword in the hands of a samurai. Zip zip, take that, you bitch.

The coffee wasn't very good. I ordered a second cup anyway. I interlaced my fingers and looked down at my hands. That was the trouble, my fingers meshed well enough but nothing else did. What kind of accountant type went batshit with a machete? Granted, anyone could explode that way, but this had been a curiously planned explosion, the hotel room rented under a false name, the murder performed with no traces left of the murderer's identity.

Did that sound like the same man who bought the fur?