It was a photograph of three men, taken at a restaurant table. The men were looking straight at the camera. Their faces were flat and bright, like a flashbulb had been used. The picture was old, and the men were wearing clothes from another time.
I recognized one man. “It’s Mr. John,” I said. “He was my friend, up on the Hill. He’s dead now. But this is him, a long time ago. I know it’s him.”
“You have the clarinet, and you know this man.”
“But I don’t know why I have it,” I said. I explained how the widow Clark mistook me for someone else.
“But you might have been the right man. She was expecting somebody. She blamed them.” I told Finchley about Leo and the shotgun. “We’ll get to that presently,” he said.
“But what if they’re looking for me now?” I said. “Leo was scared. I’m scared.”
“That’s good. Danger sharpens up the mind.” The woman came in through the curtain. “The midget was ashking for you. I shaid you’d been here and gone,” she said.
“That’s fine, Lydia. Have a drink.”
“Well, I don’ mind if I do.” She held out her glass. Finchley poured her a tall one, and she tossed it down in one gulp.
“Shammysh rotgut is the worsht shince canned heat,” she said.
“Have one more,” said Finchley. She took her drink in both hands and went out through the curtain.
“What’s that about a midget?” I asked.
“Just a fellow I know. Trouble follows him, he’s like a human lightning rod. A sure sign that something’s up. ” Finchley rubbed his hands with enthusiasm.
I was beginning to form an opinion of Finchley. Had I fallen in with a madman? I kept hearing Leo, “They’ll wash you into the street.” It wasn’t hard to imagine: The gutter on Spring Street. Sewer pipes. Garbage in the riverbed down by Aliso Flats. “What about the dead man on Utah Street?” I said.
“Omit nothing,” said Finchley. I tried to remember details. The blood caught his attention. “Blood on the walls, delightful! Sprayed, smeared, how was it done? Think, man, think!”
“Smeared, I would say. I didn’t stick around there, I had to find a telephone.”
“Smeared how? Up high? Down low?”
“Low, definitely. It looked a little like letters. Maybe it meant something.”
“Close your eyes. What do you see? You knock. You open the screen door. You look about for someone in the house. Something makes you look down. Is something moving?”
“No, it’s just feet.”
“Do you smell anything?”
“Frying lard.”
“Music?”
“A radio. A soap opera. Ma Perkins?”
“Excellent. Eleven o’clock to eleven fifteen, followed by Our Gal Sunday. You get the idea?”
“No, I don’t.”
“My friend, consider. A man is listening to the radio while making lunch, sometime between eleven and eleven fifteen. But by the time you arrive, he’s been murdered, his blood smeared on the wall down by the floor. I suggest he named the killer with his own blood, then crawled into the kitchen and died. What did the blood spell?”
Then I saw it. “It spelled ‘Book.’ ” Finchley picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Homicide,” he said into the receiver. He waited. Then he said, “They’re putting me through.”
After what seemed like days and days, a big man in a suit came into the room and sat down at the desk. I was handcuffed to a chair. He shuffled some papers around and looked over at me.
“So, Mr. St. Claire. Frank St. Claire. I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t waste my time, but there’s too many connections.”
My mouth was dry and my tongue felt like an ironing board, but I had to say something. “What do you mean, connections?”
“A suicide on Bunker Hill, a dead musician in hock to the bookies, and a spic dismemberment down in the Flats. And Frank St. Claire knew them all.”
“I meet people in my job, I don’t know them. Except for Mr. John.”
“John Casaroli jumps off the roof and you inherit. Why? Tell me that. Make it sound good.”
“I really don’t know.”
“A couple of bright boys were seen hanging around there. Friends of yours?”
“I don’t have any friends since Mr. John died.”
“You create a disturbance at the Clark home while a service is going on. No respect for the dead, it seems. Why’s that?”
“I was doing my job, how could I know?”
“The widow says you told her to hand over the clarinet. Says you threatened her.”
“She’s lying. She gave it to me.”
“Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, Utah Street. Some character slices this guy’s arm off and beats him with it. There’s blood on the walls. Maybe it spells ‘book,’ maybe he was overdue at the library, I wouldn’t know. But, here’s Frank St. Claire at the scene, within minutes, and that’s just one too many times in my book.”
“The supervisor makes all the decisions. I think he was punishing me for the trouble with Howdy Clark. Nobody wants to work the Flats.”
The detective got up. “Nobody’s as dumb as you act,” he said. He left the room. After a while, an officer in uniform came and took me down the hall to another room. A man in a white coat was seated behind a desk. He told me to sit down and relax. Relax! How could I?
“I’m Dr. Sonderborg,” the man said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“I’ve done nothing,” I said.
“Begin, if you will, by telling me about yourself. Anything that comes to mind.”
“Nothing comes to mind.”
“I see you’re a single man, living alone. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I know a girl. I know three girls altogether, but I recently met one in particular.”
“Tell me about her. What’s her name?”
“Rene. She runs a beauty parlor on Olive and Fifth.”
“Is she kind to you,
