Death Notes

a few beers. Maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe it was because he was the freshest stiff I’d run into, or maybe it was because the only dead-looking thing about him had been his eyes. I just didn’t know.
    Post was scowling. Before he could start quizzing me again, there was a rap at the door. Kendall jumped. His eyes shot over to Post for permission. When he got the nod, he tucked his notebook under one arm and reached for the handle.
    ‘We found it, Lieutenant.’
    It was one of the official-looking guys Post had been murmuring with earlier. ‘Under the bandstand. Perp must have kicked it there.’
    ‘Let’s see.’
    The official-looking guy came in and offered Post a plastic bag with something in it. Post held it gingerly by a corner and lifted it to the light from the bare bulb over our heads. There was a knife inside the bag, a long ugly knife with a black corrugated handle - the kind that’s impossible to get any prints from - and a narrow, smooth-edged five-inch blade. The metal glistened under the glare of the light.
    I said, ‘The bandstand? Do you mean he could have been stabbed over there and walked to the bar before dropping dead? Is that possible?’
    The guy nodded and a gloom settled in the little office. That meant pretty much anybody out there could have killed Match. Three hundred suspects.
    Post turned a dismal eye back to the knife in the bag in his hand. ‘Prints?’
    The guy shook his head. ‘Doubtful. We’ll work it some more at the lab.’
    I stared at the clean knife blade and thought about the damage it had done. Then I thought of the tiny wet dot on Match’s back.
    ‘Seems like there should have been more blood,’ I said. ‘You know, like a trail.’
    The official-looking guy said, ‘He bled into the chest cavity. It was all internal.’
    Post gave the guy a belated dirty look for talking to me, then handed the knife to Kendall. Kendall passed it to the guy at the door.
    ‘Let me know what the lab says,’ Post told him, then turned to me as Kendall shut the door and pulled out his notebook again.
    ‘Give me some more, Ventana.’
    ‘It’s sort of like you had to be there, Post. I mean it was dark - nothing like it is out there right now - and crowded. Picture the whole room packed. And I wasn’t paying attention, you know. I don’t think anybody even noticed Match until he fell down.’
    Post sighed dramatically in a big show of patience. I almost felt sorry for him.
    ‘This guy was hot shit, Ventana. Star of the show. The stinking guest of honor. You can’t tell me people weren’t watching him, asking him for autographs and crap. How’s a perp going to stab the victim in a situation like that without somebody seeing something ?’
    ‘Maybe somebody did see something.’
    ‘Yeah?’ He looked hopeful.
    ‘But it wasn’t me.’
    Post dragged a hand across his face, then fixed his intense black eyes on me. The silence made the seconds seem twice as long.
    To avoid squirming, I said, ‘You don’t like jazz?’
    He scowled.
    ‘Jazz fans are cool, Post. They don’t hound the musicians. They offer them respect and applause, you know, like a reserved nod or a quiet compliment, and that’s it.’
    ‘What can you tell me about Margolis?’
    ‘Not much. He is - or I should say, was - the best tenor sax alive.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘He was a composer, too. But he dropped out of circulation a few years ago.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Ask his wife. All I can tell you is tonight was supposed to be his big comeback and everybody out there was celebrating that.’
    Post reached down and flicked a small roach off the desk and onto the floor where it scuttled behind a cardboard box. ‘He say anything before he died?’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Christ, Ventana, I don’t know. Dying words, what do you think?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Nothing?’
    ‘It’s not exactly something I’d forget.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah, all right.’
    He paused for a moment, as if choosing his words. ‘The medics say his veins were shot. Tracks all over his arms.’
    I’d heard rumors about a habit being what sidelined Match, but why sully his name now? I shrugged.
    ‘I wouldn’t know.’
    Post gave me an appraising glance, asked me some other stuff, then asked if I’d ever worked for Match.
    ‘I told you, I just met him.’
    Post nodded, glanced down to where the roach had disappeared, then turned back to me. ‘You got anything else you want to say? Anything else I should know?’
    Kendall