Free Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran Page A

too.”
    â€œWhat day was that?” I asked.
    Andray shrugged. “I lost count,” he said. “One day just bleed right into the next.”
    I changed tracks again.
    â€œHow did you know Vic Willing?” I asked.
    â€œI did the pool in his building a few times,” Andray said. “Pool place. They sent me to him.”
    I’d seen on his sheet that last year Andray had hooked up with a nonprofit called Southern Defense. They sent him to an employer called Supirior Pools, Inc.—
sic
—the pool place in question. He did about ten jobs for them before he stopped showing up.
    â€œYet your prints were all over the apartment,” I said.
    â€œI went in sometimes,” Andray said. He seemed insulted that I would think otherwise. “You know, use the bathroom, have a drink. He all right. He give me a drink, something to eat, stuff like that.”
    â€œWhat’d you drink?” I asked.
    â€œWater,” he said, without skipping a beat.
    â€œWhat’d you eat?”
    â€œSandwich.”
    â€œWhat kind?”
    He shrugged.
    â€œHuh,” I said. “So what’d you guys talk about?”
    Andray shrugged again. “Shit.”
    â€œSorry,” I said, leaning forward. “I should have been more specific. What did you talk about? When he was giving you water and mystery sandwiches, what did you talk about?”
    Andray shrugged again. “Just talked.”
    â€œSorry,” I said, leaning back. “My fault. I don’t think I’m making myself clear. See, I think you probably
weren’t
close personal friends with Vic Willing. I think you probably
killed
Vic Willing, and I think at the very least you looted his house. So I’m giving you the chance to defend the extremely unlikely possibility that you and Vic Willing actually had a
relationship
by explaining to me what the basis of that relationship was by telling me
what you talked about when you talked to Vic Willing
.”
    Andray looked at me.
    â€œBirds,” he said defensively. The lines on his face deepened, and he scowled. “We talked about birds.”
    â€œBirds?” I said.
    â€œYeah,” Andray said. “He fed these birds. Made a big fucking mess on the terrace. Seeds everywhere and bird shit and shit like that. He pay me extra to clean it up for him when I did the pool. I thought birds were, I don’t know, like rats. Dirty. No good. But, you know. Once you watch them they’re like—I don’t know. They’re cool. They’re just, you know—” He shrugged.
    â€œBirds?” I suggested.
    â€œYeah,” Andray said. “Just birds. He showed ’em to me, you know, all the different kinds and stuff.”
    â€œVic did?” I said skeptically. “Vic told you about the different kinds of birds?”
    â€œLook,” Andray said angrily, reaching into his back pocket. “He gave me this. A book. To show me the different kinds.”
    He handed me a small paperback book. With a chill I saw the familiar blackbird on the cover of the slim paperback.
    Détection
, by Jacques Silette. On the cover of this edition, the U.K. paperback, was a blackbird in flight.
    Â 
    â€œThe mystery is not solved by the use of fingerprints or suspects or the identification of weapons,” Silette wrote. “These things serve only to trigger the detective’s memory. The detective and the client, the victim and the criminal—all already know the solution to the mystery.
    â€œThey need only to remember it, and recognize it when it appears.”

14
    I WENT OUT to breakfast at the Clover Grill the next morning. Over eggs and grits I looked over Andray’s file again. He’d shut down after showing me his copy of
Détection
and I’d left soon after.
    I didn’t know where he’d gotten that book. I doubted Vic Willing gave it to him to show him the different kinds of birds, since it was not, in