Scam

them, not so they could prove me guilty.
    Whatever the reason, the fingerprinting was unnecessary, because if the cops had checked they would have found they had my fingerprints on file from my previous encounters with the law. That didn’t seem like a great thing to mention, somehow, so I kept quiet and let them print me again.
    After that, I was held for interrogation. I pointed out that I had already given a signed statement, but no one was listening to me. The end result was I was held downtown for no reason whatsoever, and didn’t get home till close to midnight.
    I had managed a phone call to Alice, so she wasn’t hysterical, merely concerned.
    “Uh-huh,” Alice said. She zapped some milk in the microwave, added coffee, set it in front of me. “Here.”
    “At midnight? It’ll keep me up.”
    “It’s decaf.”
    “If it’s decaf, what’s the point?”
    “It’s hot. Drink it. So what happened?”
    “Someone shot my client.”
    “So you said. That leaves a few gaps in the story. You wanna fill me in?”
    I brought Alice up to speed. Which took a bit of doing. It had been a long day. Including my conversation with Cranston Pritchert. Him telling me not to call on the talent agent. Me doing it anyway. My talk with MacAullif. My discovery of the body. My ensuing adventures with the NYPD.
    “Good lord,” Alice said.
    “Yeah. And that’s not the worst of it.”
    “Oh?”
    “Apparently there’s no love lost between the investigating officer and MacAullif.”
    “Why?”
    “I have no idea. It was really weird. MacAullif s there bawling me out, Belcher comes down in the elevator. They see each other, they just stand there, glaring. Neither one says a word. Then they walk out to the street. Belcher’s back about ten minutes later. MacAullif never came back.”
    “He ask you about him?”
    “Who?”
    “The cop. What’s-his-name. Belcher. When he came back, did he ask you about MacAullif?”
    “No.”
    “Had you already told him?”
    “Sure. In my signed statement. I told him after I called on the talent agent I went to MacAullif and told him the whole thing.”
    “Before you found the body.”
    “Right.”
    “He didn’t suggest you might have found the body first, then called on MacAullif?”
    “He didn’t, no.”
    “What do you mean, he didn’t?”
    “MacAullif did. When he came charging down there. That’s why he came. He thought I’d done exactly that.”
    “And you hadn’t?”
    “Alice. Don’t make me prove an alibi to you.”
    “Well, it seems like a logical move.”
    “Good god, if it looks that good to you, think how it looks to the cops.”
    “Yeah,” Alice said. “Anyway, you told this cop about MacAullif in your statement?”
    “Right.”
    “How’d he react?”
    “Huh?”
    “The cop—you say he and MacAullif have a problem—so how’d he react when you mentioned his name?”
    “I didn’t notice.”
    “You didn’t notice?”
    “No. Why would I? I just found a dead body. I’m making a statement.”
    “Yeah, but if there was a big reaction. Like the cop said him! Or you’re kidding! Or started bearing down and cross-examining you the minute you mentioned MacAullif s name.”
    “Yeah, but he didn’t. He was perfectly cool about it.”
    “But you weren’t looking for a reaction.”
    “No.”
    “So how do you know he was perfectly cool?”
    “I don’t. All I mean is there was no reaction that I noticed.”
    “But you’re not that observant.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “Well, you’re not. You see the things you want to see. Other things go right by you.”
    I took a sip of coffee. “I don’t want to debate it, Alice. The fact is, I didn’t notice.”
    “Uh-huh. So where does this leave you?”
    “It leaves me without a client.”
    “And without a fee. We’re lucky you broke even.”
    I grimaced.
    “What is it?”
    “I had to pay off the agent.”
    “What?”
    “She wanted a hundred bucks just like the other two.”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Alice said. “You said your client told you not to bother with the woman. But you did it anyway.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Are you telling me you gave her a hundred dollars of our money?”
    “That’s unfair.”
    “What?”
    “Calling it our money.”
    “Well, it is our money, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is. But saying it like that—it’s like I had no right.”
    “Are you saying you had a right?”
    “I’m saying I made a bad guess. How was I to know the guy was