"They might suspect you, though," Mrs. Beresford said.
"Me? That's ridiculous. All I did was find him on my way to the johnâ"
"Lavatory," Mrs. Lenhart said.
"All I did was find him. I didn't make him all over blood."
"But they might think you did," Mrs. Beresford said.
"Not a chance. Ferris was ten years younger than me and
I've got arthritis so bad I can't even knock loud on a door. So how could I stick a big knife in his chest?"
Mrs. Lenhart adjusted the drape of her shawl. "You know, I really can't imagine anybody here doing such a thing. Can you, Irma?"
"As a matter of fact," Mrs. Beresford said, "I can. We all have hidden strengths and capacities, but we don't realize it until we're driven to the point of having to use them."
"That's very profound."
"Sure it is," Mr. Pascotti said. "It's also true."
"Oh, I'm sure it is. But I still prefer to think it was an intruder who sent Mr. Ferris on to his reward, whatever that may be."
Mr. Pascotti gestured toward the parlor windows and the sunshine streaming in through them. "It's broad daylight," he said. "Do intruders intrude in broad daylight?"
"Sometimes they do," Mrs. Lenhart said. "Remember last year, when the police questioned everybody about strangers in the neighborhood? There was a series of daylight bur
glaries right over on Hawthorn Boulevard."
"So it could have been an intruder, I'll admit it. We'll tell the police that's what we think. Why should any of us have to suffer for making that lunatic dead?"
"Isn't it time we did?" Mrs. Beresford asked.
"Did? Did what?"
"Tell the police what we think. After we tell them Mr. Ferris is lying up in his room with a knife in his chest."
"You're right," Mr. Pascotti said, "it is time. Past time. A warm day like this, things happen to dead bodies after a while."
He turned and started over to the telephone. But before he got to it there was a sudden eruption of noise from out in the front hallway. At first it sounded to Mrs. Beresford like a series of odd snorts, wheezes, coughs, and gasps. When all these sounds coalesced into a recognizable bellow, however, she realized that what she was hearing was wild laughter.
Then George Ferris walked into the room.
He was wearing an old sweatshirt and a pair of old dungarees, both of which were, as Mr. Pascotti had said, all over blood. In his left hand he carried a wicked-looking and also very bloody knife. His chubby face was contorted into an expression of mirth bordering on ecstasy and he was laughing so hard that tears flowed down both cheeks.
Mrs. Beresford stared at him with her mouth open. So did Mrs. Lenhart and Mr. Pascotti. Ferris looked back at each of them and what he saw sent him into even greater convulsions.
The noise lasted for fifteen seconds or so, subsided into more snorts, wheezes, and gasps, and finally ceased altogether. Ferris wiped his damp face and got his breathing under control. Then he pointed to the crimson stains on his clothing. "Chicken blood," he said. He pointed to the weapon clutched in his left hand. "Trick knife," he said.
"A joke," Mr. Pascotti said. "It was all a joke."
"Another joke," Mrs. Lenhart said.
"Another indignity," Mrs. Beresford said.
"And you fell for it," Ferris reminded them. "Oh, boy, did you fall for it! You should have seen your faces when I walked in." He began to cackle again. "My best one yet," he said, "no question about it. My best one
ever.
Why, by golly, I don't think I'll live to pull off a better one."
Mrs. Beresford looked at Mrs. Lenhart. Then she looked at Mr. Pascotti. Then she picked up one of her knitting needles and looked at the pudgy joker across its sharp glittering point.
"Neither do we, Mr. Ferris," she said. "Neither do we."
I
laid a red queen on a black king, glanced up at Jay Cohalan through the open door of his office. He was pacing again, back and forth in front of his desk, his hands in constant restless motion at his sides. The office was carpeted; his footfalls made no sound. There was no discernible sound anywhere except for the faint snap and slap when I turned over a card and put it down. An office building at night is one of the quietest places there is. Eerily so, if you spend enough time listening to the silence.
Trey. Nine of diamonds. Deuce. Jack of spades. I was marrying the jack to the red queen when Cohalan quit pacing and came over to stand in the doorway. He watched me for a time, his hands still doing scoop-shovel maneuversâa big man in his late thirties, handsome except for a weak chin, a little sweaty and disheveled now.
"How can you just sit there playing cards?" he said.
There were several answers to that. Years of stakeouts and dull routine. We'd only been waiting about two hours. The money, fifty thousand in fifties and hundreds, didn't belong to me. I wasn't worried, upset, or afraid that something might go wrong. I passed on all of those and settled instead for a neutral response: "Solitaire's good for waiting. Keeps your mind off the clock."
"It's after seven. Why the hell doesn't he call?"
"You know the answer to that. He wants you to sweat."
"Sadistic bastard."
"Blackmail's that kind of game," I said. "Torture the victim, bend his will to yours."
"Game. My God." Cohalan came out into the anteroom and began to pace around there, in front of his secretary's desk where I was sitting. "It's driving me crazy, trying to figure out who he is, how he found out about my past. Not a hint, any of the times I talked to him. But he knows everything, every damn detail."
"You'll have the answers before long."
"Yeah." He stopped abruptly, leaned toward me. "Listen, this has to be the end of it. You've
got
to stay with him, see to it he's arrested. I can't take any more."
"I'll do my job, Mr. Cohalan, don't worry."
"Fifty thousand dollars. I almost had a heart attack when he told me that was how much he wanted this time. The last payment, he said. What a crock. He'd come back for more someday. I know it, Carolyn knows it, you know it." Pacing again. "Poor Carolyn. Highstrung, emotional . . . it's been even harder on her. She wanted me to go to the police this time, did I tell you that?"
"You told me."
"I should have, I guess. Now I've got to pay a middleman for what I could've had for nothing. . . no offense."
"None taken."
"I just couldn't bring myself to do it, walk into the Hall of Justice and confess everything to a cop. It was hard enough letting Carolyn talk me into hiring a private detective. That trouble when I was a kid . . . it's a criminal offense, I could still be prosecuted for it. And it's liable to cost me my job if it comes out. I went through hell telling Carolyn in the beginning, and I didn't go into all the sordid details. With you, either. The police. . . no. I know that bastard will probably spill the whole story when he's arrested, try to drag me down with him, but still. . . I keep hoping he won't. You understand?"
"I understand," I said.
"I shouldn't've paid him when he crawled out of the woodwork eight months ago. I know that now. But back then it seemed like the only way to keep from ruining my life. Carolyn thought so, too. If I hadn't started paying him, half of her inheritance wouldn't already be gone . . ." He let the rest of it trail off, paced in bitter silence for a time, and started up again. "I hated taking money from
herâhated
it, no matter how much she insisted it belongs to both of us. And I hate myself for doing it, almost as much as I hate him. Blackmail's the worst goddamn crime there is short of murder."
"Not the worst," I said, "but bad enough."
"This
has
to be the end of it. The fifty thousand in there. . . it's the last of her inheritance, our savings. If that son of a bitch gets away with it, we'll be wiped out. You can't let that happen."
I didn't say anything. We'd been through all this before, more than once.
Cohalan let the silence resettle. Then, as I shuffled the cards for a new hand, "This job of mine, you'd think it pays pretty well, wouldn't you? My own office, secretary, executive title, expense account. . . looks good and sounds good, but it's a frigging dead end. Junior account executive stuck in corporate middle managementâthat's all I am or ever will be. Sixty thousand a year gross. And Carolyn makes twenty-five teaching. Eighty-five thousand for two people, no kids, that seems like plenty but it's not, not these days. Taxes, high cost of living, you have to scrimp to put anything away. And then some stupid mistake you made when you were a kid comes back to haunt you, drains your future along with your bank account, preys on your mind so you can't sleep, can barely do your work. . . you see what I mean? But I didn't think I had a choice at first, I was afraid of losing this crappy job, going to prison. Caught between a rock and a hard place. I still feel that way but now I don't care, I just want that scum to get what's coming to him. . ."
Repetitious babbling caused by his anxiety. His mouth had a wet look and his eyes kept jumping from me to other points in the room.
I said, "Why don't you sit down?"
"I can't sit. My nerves are shot."
"Take a few deep breaths before you start to hyperventilate."
"Listen, don't tell me whatâ"
The telephone on his desk went off.
The sudden clamor jerked him half around, as if with an electric shock. In the quiet that followed the first ring I could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing. He looked back at me as the bell sounded again. I was on my feet too by then.
I said, "Go ahead, answer it. Keep your head."
He went into his office, picked up just after the third ring. I timed the lifting of the extension to coincide, so there wouldn't be a second click on the open line.
"Yes," he said, "Cohalan."
"You know who this is." The voice was harsh, muffled, indistinctively male. "You got the fifty thousand?"
"I told you I would. The last payment, you promised me..."
"Yeah, the last one."
"Where this time?"
"Golden Gate Park. Kennedy Drive, in front of the buffalo pen. Put it in the trash barrel beside the bench there." Cohalan was watching me through the open doorway. I
shook my head at him. He said into the phone, "Can't we make it someplace else? There might be people around. . ."
"Not at nine p.m."
"Nine? But it's only a little after seven nowâ"
"Nine sharp. Be there with the cash."
The line went dead.
I cradled the extension. Cohalan was still standing alongside his desk, hanging onto the receiver the way a drowning man might hang onto a lifeline, when I went into his office. I said, "Put it down, Mr. Cohalan."
"What? Oh, yes. . ." He lowered the receiver. "Christ," he said then.
"You all right?"
His head bobbed up and down a couple of times. He ran a hand over his face and then swung away to where his briefcase lay. The fifty thousand was in there; he'd shown it to me when I first arrived. He picked the case up, set it down again. Rubbed his face another time.
"Maybe
I shouldn't
risk the money," he said.
He wasn't talking to me so I didn't answer.
"I could leave it right here where it'll be safe. Put a phone book or something in for weight." He sank into his desk chair;
popped up again like a jack-in-the-box. He was wired so tight
I could almost hear him humming. "No, what's the matter with me, that won't work. I'm not thinking straight. He might open the case in the park. There's no telling what he'd do if the money's not there. And he's got to have it in his possession when the police come."
"That's why I insisted we mark some of the bills."
"Yes, right, I remember. Proof of extortion. All right, but for God's sake don't let him get away with it."
"He won't get away with it."
Another jerky nod. "When're you leaving?"
"Right now. You stay put until at least eight-thirty. It won't take you more than twenty minutes to get out to the park."
"I'm not sure I can get through another hour of waiting around here."
"Keep telling yourself it'll be over soon. Calm down. The state you're in now, you shouldn't even be behind the wheel."
"I'll be okay."
"Come straight back here after you make the drop. You'll hear from me as soon as I have anything to report."
"Just don't make me wait too long," Cohalan said. And then, again and to himself, "I'll be okay."
Cohalan's office building was on Kearney, not far from where Kerry works at the Bates and Carpenter ad agency on lower Geary. She was on my mind as I drove down to Geary and turned west toward the park; my thoughts prompted me to lift the car phone and call the condo. No answer. Like me, she puts in a lot of overtime night work. A wonder we manage to spend as much time together as we do.