Free Strange Embrace by Lawrence Block

“Why—too simple?”
    “It just doesn’t make sense.”
    “It makes perfect sense,” Haig said. “He already told you one motive. He may have had a better one. We’ll find out sooner or later. Murder isn’t usually too complicated, Johnny. Nine times out of ten the first suspect is the right one.”
    “That still leaves one shot in ten.”
    “Uh-huh. And this isn’t that one. There’s more, Johnny. I talked to a girl who was fairly friendly with the James babe. Girl by the name of Sondra Barr. One of the pale-lipstick crew from that neighborhood. In fact, Sondra lives in the building just across the street. Seems she looked out the window last night and saw Elaine James walking into her building with a guy. The guy Sondra describes sounds like Carter Tracy.”
    “So what? He said he was there. Did she see him leave?”
    Haig shook his head. “Nope. But that proves he was on hand. And I don’t care whether he already said he was there or not. He’ll change his story half a dozen times before the jury tells him he’s guilty. I’m talking about evidence. Now we can prove he was there.”
    “But you can’t prove he killed her, can you?”
    “We will, Johnny.”
    Johnny lit another cigarette. “I won’t buy it,” he said.
    “But—”
    “Listen to me a minute, Sam. You know crime and you know criminals but you don’t know Tracy. I do. I don’t like him, but I know him. I don’t like him at all. Just the same, I can’t see him as a killer.”
    Haig shrugged.
    “You going to pick him up?”
    “In the morning,” Haig said. “I don’t figure he’ll run very far. He thinks he’s in the clear now, according to what you said before.”
    “That’s what I was getting at. He’ll be around in the morning. He’ll also be around in the afternoon. Why don’t you let it sit on the fire for a few extra hours? Tracy won’t run away. And the longer you wait, the tighter case you’ll have when you do pick him up—if you ever decide to. Good enough?”
    “I don’t know.” Haig shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
    “Because I’d rather you didn’t pick him up at all.”
    “We should let him go free so you can put on a show?”
    “I don’t think he did it,” Johnny said. “I think if you wait a while you’ll find that out. But if you nab him in a hurry and release him later a lot of things are shot to hell. His career, for one thing. A Touch of Squalor, for another.”
    “He did it, Johnny. You might as well get used to that. He killed the girl.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    They stared at each other. Johnny watched the play of expression on the cop’s face and saw the wheels turning in his mind. “What the hell,” Haig said finally. “I suppose it won’t hurt to stall till afternoon.”
    “It won’t.”
    “You going to be busy in the meantime?”
    “Probably,” Johnny admitted. “I want to see this friend of Elaine’s. This Sandra.”
    “Sondra,” Haig said elaborately. “With an o. Sondra Barr. It was probably Sandra Barpenschlobber the first time around. What do you want with her?”
    “I want to talk to her. About Elaine.” He shrugged. “I can’t help it, Sam. Maybe I’m too used to plays, where everything dovetails beautifully and the dramatic effect has to be right. Something rings wrong here. Maybe Sondra can tell me something. Hell, I don’t know much of anything about Elaine—who she was, what she was like, any of that. She was a good actress and a pretty girl and a virgin and she’s dead. That’s all I know.”
    “That’s enough to electrocute Tracy.”
    “Maybe there’s more. And I’d like to know about it. Will you hold off on picking up Tracy until three in the afternoon? That’ll give me time to snoop around a little.”
    Haig nodded unhappily. “But you’re wasting your time,” he said. “You’re not a cop, Johnny. You don’t think like a cop.”
    “I’m not trying to be a cop, Sam.”
    “Hell,”