Death Notes

as a matter of course, but I didn’t think a grieving widow’d fall for him two hours after her husband had died.
    Whatever was on her mind, she made it a few feet from Blackie before her face crumpled and she started to sway. Everybody in the room - especially the cops - started for her, but Blackie didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there and watched her go down. If the cops hadn’t lunged for her from halfway across the room, she would have landed on the floor.
    ‘What a gentleman!’ Framed in the back room’s door, Philly Post scowled at Blackie. His shirt was stained with sweat now, big double crescents under each arm and, now more than before, he seemed to be seething.
    Before Blackie could curse at him, Post pointed a thick finger at me.
    ‘You.Ventana.’
    He gestured me to follow, then spun on his heel and disappeared inside.
    ‘Tell him to fuck himself,’ Blackie said, loud enough for everybody to hear.
    Sharon Margolis’s eyelids were just starting to flutter open as I tiptoed around her and entered the storeroom.
    ‘Sit down,’ Post said, and pointed to a pair of crates, one stacked on top of the other by a table in the corner. The other half of the makeshift office was packed three deep almost to the ceiling with cases and cases of liquor and beer. For some reason, the whole place smelled of seaweed and damp. I stood by the crates.
    ‘Just because you’re the law doesn’t mean you can’t be civil, Post.’
    ‘Like your pal out there?’
    Post hitched his hip on the table, hunched over to rest an elbow on his knee, then nodded at the little guy behind me.
    ‘Shut the door, Kendall.’
    Kendall shut the door, then pulled out a blue notebook and a pencil and waited.
    ‘So,’ Post began. He showed me his big, white teeth in what I guess was supposed to be a conciliatory smile. ‘What’s the story?’
    ‘Am I a suspect?’
    ‘Sit down, will you? Relax. Would I talk to the victim’s wife first if you were?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ I glanced over at Kendall. His pencil hadn’t moved. ‘When do we go on record?’
    ‘We’re on record.’
    ‘Then how come he’s not writing?’ I took a step backwards in the direction of the door. ‘I think I’d better call a lawyer.’
    ‘Sit down, Ventana. You don’t need a lawyer. If you level with me, I’ll level with you. Isn’t that how we work?’
    Flash of the big, white teeth again. I wasn’t quite sure how we worked, so I didn’t respond. Instead, I watched a roach crawl up behind an auto parts calendar on the wall and thought about how much it was going to cost to hire a lawyer.
    Post let out a loud sigh.
    ‘Talk, Ventana. You’re no more a suspect than anybody else out there.’
    ‘They’re all suspects.’
    ‘Okay, okay. You’re not a suspect at present. Can I just do my job here?’
    ‘Write that down,’ I said to Kendall.
    Kendall glanced at Post, who scowled furiously, then nodded. I sat down and waited. Post leaned in toward me. He smelled of onions.
    ‘Start at the beginning.’
    ‘Match finished the set and I was at the bar. I didn’t see anything.’
    A flicker of annoyance crossed his face.
    ‘Describe the people in the vicinity.’
    I thought a minute. ‘I can’t.’
    ‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
    ‘I was facing the bar. My back was to the room. I can tell you there was a heavyset bald guy with his date on my right. She was sort of sitting on his lap. And there were three Middle Eastern-looking types to my left. But none of them murdered Match because it all happened behind me. I didn’t turn around right away. I don’t know who was back there.’
    I peeked over my shoulder to make sure Kendall was still writing. He was.
    ‘You know the victim personally?’
    ‘No - we just met tonight.’
    ‘Tell me about that.’
    Post’s face had as much expression as a block of concrete, but something, maybe the timbre of his voice, conveyed suspicion. Kendall was still writing.
    ‘I introduced myself to Match—’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Right after his third set. He said he remembered...’ I stopped.
    Post waited. Finally, he prompted me.
    ‘Remembered what?’
    ‘Okay. He knew my father.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘So then he played another set to wrap up the show. The next thing I know I’m ordering a beer and he drops dead on top of me. To tell you the truth I thought it was a heart attack.’
    It was the first time I’d seen a corpse without throwing up and I was still trying to figure out why. I’d had