Life Expectancy

hell."
        "When we explain why we're here," I said, "you'll see why we can't give you money. But I'm sure we can arrange for a third party to send you an allowance, if we're all discreet about it."
        He brightened. "Gee, that would be wonderful. When you're reading Constance Hammersmith, you've got to have Hershey's bars."
        The deformed, cloaked detective in her books has a passion for chocolate. And for the harpsichord.
        "We can't get you a harpsichord," I warned.
        "That's all right. I'm not musically talented, anyway. Just what we've already agreed-that would make a world of difference. Life in here is so… limited. It's not right, being made to live with so many restrictions, so few pleasures. The way they treat me, you'd think I'd killed a thousand people."
        "You did kill several," Lorrie reminded him.
        "But not a thousand," he said. "And the courthouse tower fell on that old lady. I didn't intend to waste her. Fair punishment ought to be proportionate to the crime."
        "If only it were," I said.
        Leaning forward with keen interest, clinking his chains as he folded his hands on the table, Punchinello said, "So I'm just dying to know.
        What brings you here?"
        I said,"Syndactyly."
        Syndactyly.
        He flinched at the word as if I'd slapped him. His prison pallor faded from cream to milk to chalk.
        "How do you know about that?" he asked.
        "You were born with five fused toes on your left foot," I said.
        "The bastard told you, didn't he?"
        "No," Lorrie said. "We didn't learn about your syndactyly until a week ago."
        "Three fingers were fused on your left hand," I said.
        He raised both hands, spreading the fingers wide. They were nice hands, well formed, though at the moment they trembled violently.
        "Only the skin was fused, not the bone," he said. "But he told me there was nothing to be done about it, that I would have to live with it."
        His eyes filled with tears, which he shed copiously, silently. He made a bowl of his hands and poured his face into it.
        I looked at Lorrie. She shook her head.
        We gave him time. He needed several minutes.
        Beyond the windows, the sky had darkened, as if some celestial editor had cut the day from three acts to two, eliminating afternoon, splicing morning to twilight.
        I had not known what to expect from Punchinello when we made these revelations, but of all the reactions that I had anticipated, this misery was not among them. The sight of him in this condition shook me.
        When he could speak, he revealed his sodden face. "The great Beezo… he told me the way I walked, hobbled by five fused toes on one foot, gave me a natural advantage as a clown. When I did a funny walk, it was authentic, he said."
        The guard at the observation window watched, expression curious, no doubt astonished to see the ruthless killer weeping.
        "People couldn't see my foot, just the funny way I walked. But they could see my hand. I couldn't always keep it in a pocket."
        "It wouldn't have been ugly," I found myself assuring him. "Just different… and damn inconvenient."
        "Oh, it was ugly to me," he said. "I hated it. My mother had been perfection. The great Beezo showed me photographs of her. Many photographs of her. My mother had been perfection… but I was not."
        I thought of my mother, Maddy. Although lovely to the eye, she falls short of physical perfection. Her kind and generous heart is perfect, however, and worth more than all the glamor in Hollywood.
        "From time to time, as I grew older, the great Beezo took photographs of my deformed foot and hand. Without a return address, he mailed them to the swine of swines, the old syphilitic weasel, Virgilio Vivacemente."
        "Why?" Lorrie asked.
        "To show Virgilio that his most beautiful and talented daughter had not produced an aerialist, that the next generation of circus stars in the Vivacemente dynasty would have to come from his other and less promising children. How could I, with my foot, walk a high wire? With my hand, how could I switch from trapeze to trapeze in midair?"
        "When did you have the surgery?" I asked.
        "When I was eight, I came down with a bad case of strep throat. The great Beezo had to take me to a clinic. A doctor there said that with the bone not involved,