don’t know how, but I walked into that house with nothing in my pocket but my hands. Jesus, Carolyn, I even dipped into my own funds for gasoline and bridge tolls. I’m beginning to feel really stupid.”
“Whelkin conned you. He set you up and she polished you off, and then he shot her and left you in the frame.”
I thought it over. “No,” I said.
“No?”
“I don’t think so. Why use her at all? He could slip me a mickey as easily as she could. And there’s something else. That last telephone conversation I had with him, when he set up the meeting at her apartment. He sounded out of synch. I thought at the time he’d been drinking.”
“So?”
“I bet they drugged him.”
“The way they drugged you?”
“Not quite. Not the same drug, or the poor bastard wouldn’t have been able to talk at all. I wonder what she gave me. It must have been powerful stuff. It had me hallucinating.”
“Like acid?”
“I never had any acid.”
“Neither did I.”
“And this wasn’t that kind of hallucination, with animals materializing on the walls and things like that. My perceptions just got distorted there before I blacked out. The music was getting loud and soft alternately, for example. And her face seemed to melt when I stared at it, but that was just before I went under.”
“And you said something about her hair.”
“Right, it kept turning orange. She had really short hair, dark brown, and I kept flashing that she had a head full of bright orange curls. Then I would blink and she’d have short dark hair again. Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“What is it, Bernie?”
“I know where I saw her before. And she did have curly orange hair. It must have been a wig.”
“The dark hair?”
The orange hair. She came to the shop and she must have been wearing an orange wig. I’m positive it was the same woman. Squared shoulders, blocky figure, a kind of a stern square-jawed face—I’m positive it was her. She must have come to the shop three or four times.”
“With Rudyard Whelkin?”
“No. He only came there once. Then we had lunch in the Martingale Club that same day, and I met him once more at the club for drinks and we talked several times over the phone. She came to the shop—well, I don’t know when I first noticed her, but it must have been within the past week. Then yesterday she bought a book from me. Virgil’s Eclogues, the Heritage Club edition. It was her. No question about it.”
“What was she doing?”
“Looking things over, I suppose. Same reason I went out to Forest Hills with a clipboard. Reconnaissance. Say, can I put the radio on?”
“What for?”
“Midnight news.”
“It’s that time already? Sure, put it on.”
I moved a cat and switched on the radio. I sat down and the cat returned to my lap and resumed purring. The news broadcast was a repeat of the eleven o’clock summary, except that the Albanian had surrendered without harming any of his hostages. He’d evidently gone bananas when he learned that his common-law wife had another common-law husband, which made them common-law husbands-in-law, or something. Madeleine Porlock was still dead and the police were still looking for one Bernard Rhodenbarr.
I moved the cat again, switched off the news, and sat down again. Carolyn asked me how it felt to be wanted by the police. I told her it felt terrible.
“How’d they know it was you, Bernie? Fingerprints?”
“Or the wallet.”
“What wallet?”
“My wallet. Whoever frisked me got it—Madeleine Porlock or her killer. The book, the five hundred bucks, and the wallet. Maybe somebody stashed it where the cops would be sure to find it.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be unconscious when they arrived?”
“Maybe the wallet was a form of insurance. Or maybe the killer took the wallet on the chance I had something incriminating in it, like the card Whelkin gave me or some notes to myself.” I shrugged. “I suppose the wallet could be anywhere right now. I suppose I should be all worked up about stopping my Master Charge card before someone charges a ton of airline tickets to my account. Somehow that’s way down on my list of priorities.”
“I can understand that.” She put her chin in her hand again and leaned forward to fasten her blue eyes on me. “What’s at the top of the list, Bernie?”
“Huh?”
“The priority list. What are you going to do?”
“Beats me.”
“How about another drink while you think about it?”
I shook my head. “I think I’ve had enough.”
“I had