Scam

the hook for three murders, now what’s the bad news?
    I drove downtown, got a meter in the municipal lot. My lucky day. I went up to MacAullif’s office to see just how lucky.
    MacAullif was seated at his desk looking gloomy. Actually, he was looking the way he always looked—it was just that today it translated as gloom.
    “What’s up?” I said.
    MacAullif looked at me, cocked his head. “You have a bad memory for faces, don’t you?”
    I gawked at him. “Hey, what is it, shit on Stanley Hastings day? I don’t have enough troubles, you gotta point out my shortcomings?”
    “That is your trouble,” MacAullif said. “Your eye’s none too good.”
    “Yeah? So what?”
    MacAullif picked up an eight by ten from his desk, passed it over to me. “You recognize this?”
    I turned the picture around, took a look.
    It was a head shot of a young woman. Black and white. High contrast. Dramatic. An attractive woman, with straight dark hair, high cheekbones, bright eyes. An excellent resume photo.
    “Well?” MacAullif said.
    I shook my head. “Can’t place it.”
    MacAullif exhaled disgustedly. “I’m not surprised. Well, the cops can. They can place it just fine. And just wait till you hear where they place it.”
    I grimaced, put up both hands. “MacAullif. Please. What the hell’s going on?”
    “What’s going on is you’re taking it on the chin again, and this time it’s partly your fault.”
    “My fault?”
    “Yeah. For bein’ such an unobservant, dumb schmuck.” MacAullif pointed. “You know who this is? You might if the picture was full figure and you could see the boobs.”
    My eyes widened. “Are you telling me …”
    MacAullif grimaced. “Schmuck. What a schmuck. Yeah, it’s her. Who the hell would you think it would be? But, yes, that happens to be a resume photo of the late Laura Martin.”
    “Laura Martin?”
    “What, they didn’t get her right name at the arraignment? Gee, maybe you can get it thrown out for that. But, what, you think her real name was Marla Melons? Well, it ain’t. It ain’t the other name she gave you either—what was it?—Lucy Blaine? No, her name’s Laura Martin and, believe it or not, that is her.”
    “What’s the punch line, MacAullif? You said the shit hit the fan.”
    “It did. And this is it. This photo you didn’t recognize. But the fact is, you’ve seen it before.”
    “Where?”
    MacAullif held up one finger. “Ah. There’s the whole ball game. According to the cops, you saw it in her apartment about the same time you popped her.”
    “What!”
    “See the problem?” MacAullif said. “Let me show you how it is.” He picked up another picture from his desk. “Take a look at this.”
    That one I recognized. It was a picture of the young woman—Marla Melons, Lucy Blaine, Laura Martin, or whatever her name was—lying in her living room in a pool of blood, just as Sergeant Belcher and I had found her.
    “See that?” MacAullif said. “Crime-scene unit photo, right? Now, never mind the body, look at the bookcase in the back.”
    I looked at the picture again. The body was lying in front of a couch. To the left of the couch was a bookcase.
    “So what?” I said.
    “Second shelf from the bottom. Left side. What do you see there?”
    I looked. My eyes widened.
    “Resume photos?”
    “Bingo, right on the button,” MacAullif said. He handed me another picture. “Here’s a closeup on the bookcase. If you look there, you can see they’re not only resume photos, they’re this resume photo.”
    “Yeah, well, so what?” I said. “I told you I didn’t see it.”
    “Yeah, but you told me wrong,” MacAullif said.
    I looked at him. “What?”
    “Guess whose fingerprint is on the resume photo on the top of that pile?”
    My mouth dropped open. I blinked. My head felt very light.
    “No way,” I said.
    “Oh, yeah,” MacAullif said. “You want me to tell you the way? It’s pretty fuckin’ easy when you stop to think about it.”
    “MacAullif.”
    “You want me to tell you how it is? It starts with, you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. You look at this picture, you don’t know it’s the girl. And that’s the key—if you don’t know it now, you didn’t know it then. I know that for sure. Sergeant Belcher must have figured it was a good bet.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m telling you how it happened. I’m telling you the only way it works. Your fingerprint is on that photo, which means