The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,63

your client would wind up framed for murder. Then he found it would be more effective to shift the frame onto my shoulders. He’s done a pretty good job, but I think you’ll be able to see a way out for me if I explain what I think actually happened.”

“Miss Paar says you suspected this artist of murder. Then he was in turn murdered in your apartment.”

I nodded. “I should have known he didn’t kill Crystal. He might have strangled her or beaten her to death but stabbing wasn’t Grabow’s style. No, there was a third man, and he’s the one who did both killings.”

“A third man?”

“There were three men in Crystal’s life. Grabow, the artist. Knobby Corcoran, a bartender at a saloon in the neighborhood. And the Legal Beagle.”

“Who?”

“A colleague of yours. A lawyer named John who occasionally made the rounds of the neighborhood bars with Crystal. That’s all anybody seems to know about him.”

“Then perhaps we ought to forget about him.”

“I don’t think so. I think he killed her.”

“Oh?” Verrill’s eyebrows climbed up his high forehead. “Then perhaps it would help if we knew who he was.”

“It would,” I agreed, “but it’s going to be hard to find out. A woman named Frankie told me that he existed. She’d say ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!’ just the way Ed McMahon does it. But sometime last night she drank a lot of gin and swallowed a whole bottle of Valium and died.”

Craig said, “Then how are you going to find out who this Johnny is, Bernie?”

“It’s a problem.”

“Maybe he doesn’t even fit in. Maybe he was just another friend of Crystal’s. She had a lot of friends.”

“And at least one enemy,” I said. “But what you have to remember is that she was at the hub of something and somebody had to have a good reason to kill her. You had a reason, Craig, but you didn’t kill her. You were framed.”

“Right.”

“And I had a reason—to avoid getting arrested for burglary. I didn’t kill her either. But this Johnny had a real reason.”

“And what was that, Bern?”

“Grabow was a counterfeiter,” I explained. “He started out as an artist, turned himself into a printmaker, and then decided to forget the artsy-fartsy stuff and go for the money. With his talents, he evidently figured that the easiest way to make money was to make money, and that’s what he did.

“He was good at it. I saw samples of his work and they were just about as good as the stuff the government turns out. I also saw the place where he lived and worked, and for an unsuccessful artist he lived damn well. I can’t prove it, but I’ve got a hunch he made those counterfeit plates a couple of years ago and passed bills himself, moving them one at a time across bars and cigarette counters. Remember, the man was an artist, not a professional criminal. He didn’t have mob connections and didn’t know anything about wholesaling big batches of schlock bills. He just ran off a few at a time on his hand-cranked printing press, then passed them one by one. When he had enough turned into real money he went and got himself some good furniture. It was a one-man cottage industry, and he could have gone on with it forever if he didn’t get too greedy.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“With all of us? You’ll see. I’d bet that Grabow covered a lot of ground, stopping in a bar long enough to cash a twenty, then moving on to another one. Somewhere along the way he ran into Crystal and they started keeping company. And maybe he wanted to show off or maybe she asked the right questions, but one way or another she learned he was a counterfeiter.

“She was already having a now-and-then affair with Knobby Corcoran. He was a bartender, but he was also a pretty savvy guy who probably knew how things could be bought and sold. Maybe it was her idea, maybe it was Knobby’s, but I’d guess that the lawyer was the one who came up with it.”

“Came up with what?” Jillian wondered.

“The package. Grabow was printing the stuff up and unloading it a bill at a time. But why should he do that when he could wholesale a big batch of the stuff and coast on the proceeds for a year or two? The stuff he was turning out would change hands at a minimum of twenty cents on the dollar in large