Free When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block Page B

killing. He says the cops won't concentrate on that end if they're too busy trying to nail the lid shut on me."
    I explained that I didn't have any official standing, that I had no license and filed no reports.
    "That's okay," he insisted. "I told Kaplan what I want is somebody I can trust,somebody'll do a job for me. I don't think they'regonna have any kind of a case at all, Matt, because I can account for my time and Icouldn'ta been where Iwouldahadda be to do what they said I did. But the longer this shit drags on the worse it is for me. I want it cleared up, I want it in the papers that these Spanish assholes did it all and I had nothing to do with anything. I want that for me and for the people I do business with and for my relatives and Peg's relatives and all the wonderful people who voted for me. You remember the old 'Amateur Hour'? 'I want to thank mom and dad and Aunt Edith and my piano teacher Mrs.Pelton and all the wonderful people who voted for me.' Listen, you'll meet me and Kaplan in his office, hear what the man has to say, do me a hell of a big favor, and pick up a couple of bucks for yourself. What do you say, Matt?"
    He wanted somebody he could trust. Had Carolyn from the Caroline told him how trustworthy I was?
    What did I say? I said yes.

Chapter 7
    I took a train one stop into Brooklyn and met TommyTillary in Drew Kaplan's office on Court Street a few blocks fromBrooklyn 's Borough Hall. There was a Lebanese restaurant next door. At the corner a grocery store specializing in Middle Eastern imports stood next to an antique shop overflowing with stripped oak furniture and brass lamps and bedsteads. In front of Kaplan's building, a legless black man reposed on a platform with wheels. An open cigar box on one side of him held a couple of singles and a lot of coins. He was wearing horn-rimmed sunglasses, and a hand-lettered sign on the pavement in front of him said, "Don't Be Fooled by the Sunglasses. Not Blind JustNo Legs."
    Kaplan's office ran to wood paneling and leather chairs and oak file cabinets that might have come from the place on the corner. His name and the names of two partners were painted on the frosted glass of the hall door in old-fashioned gold and black lettering. Framed diplomas on the wall of his personal office showed he'd earned his B.A. at Adelphi, his LL.B. at Brooklyn Law. Alucite cube on top of a Victorian oak desk held photographs of his wife and young children. A bronzed railway spike served as a desktop paperweight. On the wall alongside the desk, a pendulum clock ticked away the afternoon.
    Kaplan himself looked conservatively up-to-date in a tropical-weight gray pinstripe suit and a yellow pin-dot tie. He looked to be in his early thirties, which would fit the dates on the diplomas. He was shorter than I and of course much shorter than Tommy, trimly built, clean-shaven, with dark hair and eyes and a slightly lopsided smile. His handshake was medium-firm, his gaze direct but measuring, calculating.
    Tommy wore his burgundy blazer over gray flannel trousers and white loafers. Strain showed at the corners of his blue eyes and around his mouth. His complexion was off, too, as if anxiety had caused the blood to draw inward, leaving the skin sallow.
    "All we want you to do," Drew Kaplan said, "is find a key in one of their pants pockets, Herrera's or Cruz's, and trace it to a locker in Penn Station, and in the locker there's a foot-long knife with both their prints and her blood on it."
    "Is that what it's going to take?"
    He smiled. "Let's just say it wouldn't hurt. No, actually we're not in such bad shape. What they've got is some shaky testimony from a pair ofLatins who've been in and out of trouble since they got weaned onto Tropicana. And they've got what looks to them like a good motive on Tommy's part."
    "Which is?"
    I was looking at Tommy when I asked. His eyes slipped away from mine. Kaplan said, "A marital triangle, a case of the shorts, and a strong money motive.