Act of God

that you and your boss were having an affair, only I wasn’t sharp enough to notice it the first time I talked with him in the restaurant. I thought he was just steering me away from Rivkind and Darbra Proft. Grgo tried to be a little more direct today, but it still didn’t hit home until Larry Rivkind told me a story about two blue couches and a young couple who Wanted to buy one.”
    Swindell looked at me, not so evenly now. “That was almost Abe’s favorite story, Mr. Cuddy.”
    “His son told me that Rivkind never mentioned it to his Wife or his partner.”
    There was a surge in her voice as she said, “He told it to me. How he managed to avoid telling a lie and still kept somebody from being hurt. He said he’d been able to do that in the camp—Buchenwald—a few times, and whenever he thought of it, it always made him... cry.”
    I said, “You can say something to me if you want to, or you can just listen.”
    Swindell shook her head.
    I took another breath. “You were all working that Thursday night here, Finian Quill down on the first floor, Bernstein and Rivkind in their office, you in yours, running the daily numbers. As Quill was closing up the front entrance, Bernstein went to the men’s room. My guess is Rivkind picked that time, when he knew his partner would be gone awhile, to call Darbra, maybe to set something up, maybe just to say hello. But Darbra was out that night, so he got her answering machine. The call showed up on the telephone company’s local line records, which made the police aware of it, but Darbra told them the message was just dead space. That’s not quite true, is it?”
    Swindell gave me just the even gaze, hands still folded in front of her.
    I said, “Abraham Rivkind was on the telephone leaving Darbra a message, a message you overheard when you came into his office with the printouts. You couldn’t believe your ears, that he’d betray you like that. Without thinking clearly, you pulled the poker from its holder. Hanging up the phone, Rivkind heard that noise behind him and started to rise and turn. And then you hit him, in anger and with strength, and he fell to the floor.”
    Swindell could have been a statue.
    “When I finally saw it, I thought you must have just panicked after that, run to the end of the corridor and pushed the panic bar itself on the staircase door, started yelling. But that wouldn’t have given the ‘burglar’ enough time to get down the stairs before Finian Quill heard you screaming from the rear door on the first floor. So I’m guessing you walked from Rivkind’s office to the end door, opened it to set off the alarm, then hurried back to Rivkind’s office before screaming and running again to the door, screaming down the staircase where Quill heard you on his way back in from the alley and Bernstein found you on his way back from the men’s room.”
    Swindell opened her mouth, but it wasn’t as though she was addressing me. “At first, it was because I needed the job. Fifteen years ago, I didn’t know much, but I wanted to learn, needed to learn, so I joked around with Abe, didn’t try to encourage him along, but didn’t discourage him, either. He wasn’t... forceful. I’d had some bad experiences with that kind of man. I wasn’t real good-looking, just good-looking enough to get bothered by men. But Abe was gentle, kind. He was just right, in a lot of ways. So we had... I don’t know, it’s awful hard to call it an ‘affair,’ but I guess that’s what it was. We’d see each other here, and we’d have dinner at Grgo’s or drinks at some other places. Once in a while, we’d slip off to some motel or other, and Abe would pay cash and wink at the clerk, and—I don’t know, that makes it sound kind of dirty, but it wasn’t. It was... he was sweet, the nicest man to me I ever had.”
    Hearing Swindell talk about it, I suppose I should have felt more. After all, crime of passion or not, she’d still brutally killed Abraham Rivkind. But I’d already made up my mind on what to do about that. For Pearl’s sake.
    Swindell jerked her head up suddenly, as though she thought I wasn’t paying attention. “Then Darbra came to work here. I noticed it right away, her... twitching herself past Abe, hanging on his words, his arm, just here or there, but no question. I kind of denied it, denied it to myself, and I never asked him about it straight out, but it was like telling my head that my hand wasn’t in a fire. I suppose