Deadfall(13)

When all of that was done I went with him to the door, and shook his hand, and watched him walk away to the stairs. And I thought: It’s not just for him. It’s for Leonard, no matter what kind of man he was—and for me, too. Because I saw Leonard crawling in his own blood in that dining room; because I was there with my hand on him when he died.





Chapter Four





My second visitor of the morning showed up fifteen minutes after Tom Washburn left. And if I had been surprised to see Washburn, I was literally struck dumb by the appearance of this one.

I might have been gone when he came in—I had plenty of things to do, now, outside the office—but Eberhardt insisted on telling me a couple of jokes he’d heard at some party in Noe Valley the night before. Eb is a social animal, a party-goer, whereas I prefer Kerry’s company whenever possible, or a pulp magazine’s if I can’t have hers. He was forever trying to drag me to this or that shindig, large and small, stag and co-ed. The first time I’d weakened and given in, I had been bored and uncomfortable. The second and last time, I had gotten sick on somebody’s lousy fish canapes that turned out to be loaded with salmonella. Eberhardt’s circle of friends does not include any gourmet cooks.

Anyhow, he’d heard these two jokes and thought they were hilarious. The first one had to do with a beautiful blonde, a well-endowed Texan, a copy of the Kama Sutra, and a billy goat; it was long and involved and had a punchline that was not worth waiting for and that I promptly forgot, along with the rest of the joke. The second story was much shorter and somewhat funnier, not that it was exactly a tickler of ribs or a splitter of sides.

“So this guy goes into a drugstore one night. He’s just been married, it’s his wedding night, and he’s kind of nervous. He tells this to the druggist and then he says his new wife doesn’t want to get pregnant on their honeymoon so she sent him in to buy some protection. He doesn’t know much about stuff like that, he says —he’s still a virgin, see—so could the druggist show him what to buy.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“So the druggist shows him a rack of condoms, right? The guy looks ‘em over, picks a brand, and asks how much. The druggist say,̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒̒‘Two dollars plus tax.’ The guy turns pale. ‘Tacks?’ he says. ‘Jeez, I thought those things were supposed to stay on by themselves.’ ”

Eberhardt was laughing uproariously, and I was chuckling a little, when the door opened and the second visitor walked in. I had never seen him before and as it turned out, neither had Eberhardt; but one look at him and both of us quit laughing. He was that kind of guy. Mid-forties, six-two or so, lank brown hair, handsome in a saturnine sort of way; stiff-backed and solemn-eyed and pinch-mouthed. Wearing a three-piece charcoal-gray suit, a slender blue-checked tie, and black shoes polished to a high gloss. He reminded me of an undertaker. You just knew, looking at him, that there wasn’t a funny bone in his body. If he’d come in in time to hear either of Eberhardt’s jokes he wouldn’t have cracked a smile. He might not even know how to crack a smile.

He stood just inside the door, looking around in a disapproving way, like an investigator for the Board of Health. He studied Eberhardt; he studied me. Then he nodded once, strictly to himself, and came my way and stopped in front of my desk.

I said, “May I help you?”

He said, “Fornication is a sin, sayeth the Lord.”

I said, “Huh?”

“You’re a fornicator—you lust after men’s wives. You stand on the brink of eternal damnation.”

I couldn’t have said anything then if my life depended on it. I just gawped at him.

“ ‘Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity,’ ”he said, “‘and sin as it were with a cart rope.’ The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, five: eighteen.”

“Listen,” I said, and then stopped because the word came out like a frog croaking. I tried again. “Listen, uh …”

“ ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Galatians, six: seven.”

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. Eberhardt’s was hanging open like a Venus’s-flytrap.

The guy reached inside his suit coat. I thought for a second that he was going after a weapon of some kind and got ready to launch myself at him; but all he came out with was a business card. He put the card down in front of me. Then he folded his arms and waited stoically.

I looked at the card. And then stared at it. In blue letters on a virginal white background it said: