the bedroom by mistake. There he discovered Flaxford’s corpse. So he turned and rushed all the way back to the living room where we were waiting for him, finally sounded the alarm far and wide, turned a little green around the gills and flopped over in a faint.”
“Well, we both saw him do that, Bernie. And then you sandbagged me and took off like a bat outta hell.”
I shrugged off that last charge. “Loren saw Flaxford right off the bat,” I said, “speaking of bats. He had to. That’s a short hallway. If you walk toward the bathroom from the living room you can see those chalkmarks on the bedroom carpet before you reach the bathroom door. Of course there were no chalkmarks at the time. But there was a body there, sprawled out on the bed, and that was interesting enough so that Loren passed right by the john and checked out the bedroom.”
“And?”
“He was in there for a few minutes. Then the body—Flaxford, that is—came to life. I don’t know whether Loren originally thought he was dead or unconscious, but either way the man was suddenly alive and awake and staring at him, and Loren reacted automatically. He swung his trusty nightstick and cracked Flaxford over the head.”
“Crazy,” Loren said. His voice was trembling but that might have been rage and indignation as easily as guilt. “He’s out of his mind. Why would I do anything like that?”
“For money.”
“What money?”
“The money you were filling your pockets with when Flaxford blinked his baby blues at you. There was money all over his lap and all over the floor when you found him.” To Ray I said, “Look, Flaxford was a fixer, a bagman, a guy with a lot of angles going for himself. He may have bank accounts and safe deposit boxes and secret stashes but he also would have had cash on hand. Every operator like that does, whether his operations are legal or not. Look, I’m just a small-time burglar myself but I was able to put my hands on ten grand tonight.” I saw no point in adding that only half of it had been mine.
“Now the one thing that never turned up in Flaxford’s apartment was money. Not in his drawer or closets, not in any wall safe, not in that fantastic desk. With all the searches that place got, including the search I gave it tonight, the one thing that never turned up was cash.”
“So you’re saying that because there was no cash Loren here must have taken it?”
“It’s crazy,” Loren said.
“It’s not crazy,” I said. “Whatever knocked Flaxford unconscious, it got him suddenly. A fall, a stroke, whatever—all of a sudden he was unconscious. It’s my guess he had a recent visitor bringing him a payoff that he was supposed to transfer from one person to another. The payoff was big enough to make him delay his trip to the theater. He got the cash, his visitor left, and he took it to his bedroom to count it before he passed out. Loren walked in and found this unconscious man in a room full of hundred-dollar bills.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Am I? My apartment got ransacked, Ray. Every drawer turned upside down, every book shaken open, the most complete search you can imagine. There’s nothing in the blue box that could inspire that kind of a search. But somebody knew Flaxford had a lot of money on him when he was killed, and the person who would have made that assumption was the person who gave him the money. I think it was probably Michael Debus or someone associated with him. Either the money was being channeled to Debus or Debus was spreading it through Flaxford to head off an investigation into his office. But that explains why Flaxford’s visitor couldn’t have killed him, in addition to the business with the locks. That person—say Debus for convenience—left Flaxford alive and left the money with him. And the sum was large enough so that Debus wasn’t willing to write it off after Flaxford was killed. It was even large enough so that Loren thought it was worth killing for.”
“Ray, he’s crazy. This man is crazy.”
“I don’t know, Loren,” Ray said.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t know. You always liked money.”
“You sound like you’re starting to believe this fairy story.”
“You always took what was handed to you, Loren. As green as you were I was a little surprised. Usually it’ll take a while before a guy learns to