The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,33
a sling chair. She was wearing jeans and a powder-blue sweater and she looked sensational. I was wearing last night’s outfit minus the tie and jacket. She said, “You said you found out some things about Crystal. Last night.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But you didn’t seem to remember what they were.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. Or else you were just too exhausted to think straight. Do you remember now?”
It took me a few minutes. I had to sit back and close my eyes and give my memory little nudges, but in the end it came through for me. “Three men,” I said. “I got most of my information from a woman named Frankie who was evidently a pretty good drinking buddy of Crystal’s. Frankie was drunk when I met her and she didn’t exactly sober up as the night wore on but I think she knew what she was talking about.
“According to her, Crystal was just a girl who liked to have a good time. All she wanted out of life was a couple of drinks and a couple of laughs and the ever popular goal of true love.”
“Plus a million dollars worth of jewelry.”
“Frankie didn’t mention jewelry. Maybe Crystal didn’t wear much when she went bar-hopping. Anyway the impression I got from her was that Crystal didn’t make a policy of picking up strangers. She went to the bars primarily for the booze and the small talk. Now and then she got half in the bag and went home with somebody new at the end of the evening, but as a general rule she limited herself to three guys.”
“And one of them killed her?”
I shrugged. “It’s a reasonable assumption. At any rate, they were the three men in her life.” I picked up that morning’s Daily News, tapped the story we’d read. The Medical Examiner had told them what I’d already known. “Somebody was intimate with her the evening she was killed. Either the killer or someone else. And that would have been early in the evening so it’s not likely that she’d already gotten smashed and dragged a stranger home with her.”
“I don’t know, Bernie. According to Craig, she was more of a tramp than this Frankie seemed to think she was.”
“Well, Craig was prejudiced. He was paying alimony.”
“That’s true. Do you know who the three men are?”
I nodded. “This is where it gets tricky. I had trouble questioning Frankie because I couldn’t let her think I was too interested or she’d wonder what it was all about. Then as the night wore on I was too smashed to do a good job as Mr. District Attorney. And I’m not sure how much Frankie really knew about Crystal’s boyfriends. I think two of them were married.”
“Almost everybody is.”
“Really? I thought everybody was divorced. But two of Crystal’s three were married.” Including, I thought, the one who’d been rolling around with her while I’d languored in her closet, the one who had to hurry on home to What’s-Her-Name. “One of them’s a lawyer. Frankie referred to him as the Legal Beagle when she wasn’t calling him Snoopy. I think his first name may be John.”
“You think it may?”
“Uh-huh. Frankie did an Ed McMahon imitation a couple of times in reference to him. ‘And now, heeeeeeeere’s Johnny!’ So I assume that’s his name.”
“A married lawyer named Johnny.”
“Right.”
“That sure narrows it down.”
“Doesn’t it? Married Boyfriend Number Two is a little easier to get a line on. He’s a painter and his name is Grabow.”
“His last name?”
“I suppose so. I suppose he has a first name to go with it. Unless he’s very artsy and he just uses the one name. Frankie was pretty vague on the subject of Grabow.”
“It sounds to me as though she was pretty vague about everything.”
“Well, she was, but I don’t think she ever met Grabow. At least that’s the impression I got. She saw a lot of the Legal Beagle because Crystal used to drink with him in the bars. I gather Frankie found him amusing, but I don’t know whether she laughed with him or at him. But I have the feeling all she knew about Grabow was what Crystal told her, and that may not have amounted to very much.”
“What about the third man?”
“He’s easy. Maybe because he’s not married, or at least I don’t think he’s married, which would mean he’d have nothing to hide. Anyway, Frankie knows him. His name is Knobby and he tends bar at Spyder’s Parlor. That’s one of the places I hit last night.”
“So