Small Town

The white one, Dennis Hurley, big red-haired guy, map of Ireland on his face, said, “Mr. Winters, let me just tell you where we’re coming from. We got a case with a possible link to Mr. Creighton here, and we’d like to rule him out.”

“Go right ahead. Rule him out. While you’re at it, tell your buddies to rule him out for Fairchild.”

“If he can account for his time last night—”

“Why the hell should he? He’s charged with one crime, he’s under no obligation to help you with another one.”

“That’s understood.”

“So?”

“If he was at the ball game,” Arthur Pender said, “not in Houston, but did the Yankees play at home last night?”

“Against the Brewers, and Soriano homered twice. You fellows should follow the game. It’s America’s pastime, in case nobody told you.”

“Nobody tells us anything,” Pender said. “If he was there, with Senator Clinton on one side and Cardinal Egan on the other—”

“Isn’t there a joke starts like this?”

“—then we could cross him off our list and be on our way.”

“This was last night? What hours are we looking at?”

“Ten to midnight.”

“Ten p.m. to midnight? The medical examiner working with a stopwatch these days?”

“There’s more than medical evidence,” Pender said. “That’s our window, those two hours, and if your client can establish where he was during that time period we’ll thank you for your time and leave you alone.”

“Which I think you’ll do regardless,” Winters said, “because I don’t know where he was last night. To find out I’d have to ask him, and do you know why I’m not going to do that?”

“I bet you’ll tell us,” Hurley said.

“Because if I ask him,” Winters said, “and he can’t prove where he was, and I tell you to go screw yourselves, I’d be telling you in the process that he can’t establish an alibi, and why should you have any such information? Whereas if I tell you right off the bat to go screw yourselves, that’s all I’ll be telling you, and you can do it or not as you see fit.”

“Do what or not?”

“Screw ourselves,” Pender said. He shrugged, got to his feet. “It was worth a try. If you do talk to him, and if he does have an alibi you want to tell me about—”

“I never liked sentences with ifs in them,” Winters said. “Tell me something. Why are you looking at him in the first place?”

“Can’t tell you that.”

“You don’t give nothing, my friend, you’re not gonna get nothing. You’re telling me this man’s a suspect but you can’t tell me why he’s a suspect?”

“He’s not a suspect.”

“He’s not a suspect but you want to know has he got an alibi. Lovely. Why are you looking at him?”

The cops exchanged glances. At length Pender shrugged, and Hurley said, “The body was discovered by the same kid who discovered Fairchild.”

“What, the faygeleh? That’s your connection?”

“Same guy is first on the scene twice in a couple of weeks? What are the odds on that?”

“At the moment, my friend, they’re a hundred to one in favor of it, because it already happened. I’m not saying it’s a coincidence. There’s a connection, but what it connects is Fairchild to the dead women, and can we stop pretending we don’t know who they are? I listen to the news the same as everybody else. This was in the East Twenties, if I’m not mistaken, in what the girl announcer didn’t quite call a whorehouse, but I got the distinct impression.”

“East Twenty-eighth,” Hurley said. “And yeah, it was a whorehouse.”

“Three hookers?”

“Two and the madam.”

“Ah, Christ, what a world. They said bloodbath, but they generally do with a multiple homicide. They exaggerate.”

“Not this time.”

“Without asking what the murder weapon was, may I conclude the women weren’t strangled? Which I’d have concluded anyway, because for one man to strangle three women one after the other is a neat trick.”

“They weren’t strangled.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Winters said, “which sounds like a Dickensian law firm, doesn’t it? Never mind. I’ve enjoyed this, believe it or not, but I think we’re finished, so—”

He said, “Maury?”

All three of them turned to look at him, as if surprised that he could talk, or that he was there at all.

“If I could talk to you privately,” he said.

“They were just leaving, which would have given us all the privacy anyone could want. But why don’t you fellows wait in the hall for a moment?”

When they were out of the room with the door closed he said, “I was here last night.”

“I’m not surprised. You’re home all the time, from what you’ve told me. Home Alone is a movie, not an alibi. I don’t suppose you had company?”

“No,” he said, “but I think I can prove I was here. The window is ten to midnight, isn’t that what they said?”

“Ten to midnight.”

“I had a couple of deliveries somewhere around that time. Must have been close to ten when I called and had Two Boots send up a pizza. And I called the deli a little after that and ordered up a sandwich and a six-pack of Beck’s.”

“You had a pizza and a sandwich at the same time?”

“I was out of beer and I wanted one with the pizza. I don’t like to call the deli just for beer.”

“What, they’ll think you’re a drunk?”