calls it first-degree murder.”
“I know. It doesn’t seem entirely fair, does it? But the big question, Bernie, is, have you got the box?”
“The box.”
“Right.
I closed my eyes for a minute. “You never actually saw the box yourself,” I said. “Because you described it very precisely but you didn’t know what color blue it was. And you didn’t make up an answer when I asked.”
“Why would I make up an answer?”
“You’d make one up if there was no box in the first place. But there really is a box, isn’t there?”
He peered intently at me and his forehead developed a single vertical line just above the nose like the one David Janssen has in the Excedrin commercial, the one that makes you certain he really does have one rat bastard of a headache.
“The box exists,” I said.
“You mean you thought—”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Which means you don’t—”
“Right. I don’t.”
“Shit,” he said, pronouncing the word as emphatically as if he’d just stepped in it. Then he remembered that the little lady was present. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
She told him not to worry about it.
There really was a box. In fact he’d been waiting for me in Pandora’s that first night, sitting in a back booth with four thousand dollars on his hip, stretching out his drinks until they closed the place. It wasn’t until the following day that he found out what had gone wrong.
“And you didn’t kill Flaxford,” he said, after I’d done some recapping on my own.
“And neither did you.”
“Me? Kill the man? I never even met him. Oh, I see what you mean. You thought I set you up. But if you didn’t kill Flaxford—”
“Somebody else did. Because beating your own head in with a blunt instrument is no way to commit suicide.”
“I wish I knew more about this,” he said. “I’m not really in the center of things. There’s a lot happening I don’t know about.”
“I know how you feel.”
“All I am is an actor, really. And that career’s not going too well. One thing leads to another, and I had this drinking situation that’s over with now, thank God, but I reached a point where I couldn’t remember lines. I still have trouble. I can improvise, which is what I was doing the two times I saw you, building a role around a framework, but you can’t do that in the movies unless you’re directed by Robert Altman or something. The jobs stopped coming, and this agent I’m with now, I’d have to say he’s more pimp than agent.”
“I know. I was in his office.”
“You met Pete?”
“I was in his office,” I repeated, “but he wasn’t. Last night. To get your address.”
“Oh,” he said. He looked for a moment at his own door, no doubt reflecting on its failure to keep us out of his room. “The point is, I’m in this because I’m an actor. I used to play a lot of heavies and that’s what she hired me for, to hire you to get the box and then to pay you off and take the box to her.”
“How did you know to hire me?”
“She told me to.”
“Right, sure,” I said. “She told you to hire a burglar. But how did you happen to know that I happened to be one?”
He frowned. “She told me to hire you,” he said. “You specifically, Bernard Rhodenbarr. I’m an actor, Bernie. How would I go about finding a burglar on my own? I don’t know any burglars. I can play crooks but that doesn’t mean I hang around with them.”
“Oh.”
“I used to know a bookie but since off-track betting came in I couldn’t tell you if he’s alive or dead. As far as burglars are concerned, well, I now know one burglar, or—” with a nod to Ellie “—or possibly two, but that’s all.”
“The woman who hired you,” Ellie said. “She knew Bernie was a burglar.”
“That’s right.”
“And she knew where he lived and what he looked like, is that right?”
“Well, she took me over there and pointed him out to me.”
“How did she know him?”
“Search me.”
Loren the cop would have frisked him. I just said, “What’s her name, Wes?”
“I’m supposed to keep her name out of this.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“That’s why she hired me in the first place.”
Ellie’s eyes flashed. “Now you just wait a damned minute,” she said. “Don’t you think Bernie has a right to know who got him into this mess? He’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit and he’s taking a chance every