Scam

To cover up, he has to kill Pritchert. Then he has to knock off the agent. She’s the last to die, and he leaves the gun there. For Belcher to find and frame me. Hey, that works just fine.
    Small problem with motivation. Well, you can’t have everything.
    But then, MacAullif always tells me you kill the one you love. Husband-wife thing, girlfriend-boyfriend, it’s always the other one that did it. There you are. Maybe the guy just goes bonkers that she’s dancing in a topless bar. Surely men have snapped for less.
    Damn.
    Maybe I should turn around, take the subway back down to MacAullif. Maybe I got this figured out.
    It suddenly hit me, good god, I must be desperate if I’m grasping at straws like that.
    My beeper went off, filled the car. I switched it off as all heads turned toward me.
    Good. Just what I need. A nice assignment from Richard to get my mind off the case. A bit of busy work, routine, easy, something I could handle on automatic pilot. A gentleman with a broken leg who would be thrilled to see me. I’d pick up my car from the municipal lot, drive out to wherever it was, sign the guy up, and that would be that. Probably just what I needed to clear my head. Sometimes things work out.
    I came out of the subway, headed for the nearest pay phone. It occurred to me things couldn’t be better. Ordinarily I would be faced with Wendy/Janet, and would have to suffer the anxiety over whether I could actually find my client, due to the uncertainty of whether the information she gave me would be true. But with Mary Mason on the job, that wasn’t a consideration. The information would be one hundred percent accurate and nothing could go wrong.
    Better still, unlike the Wendy/Janet situation, I’d know who I was talking to. A small satisfaction, but one’s own. I actually felt a sense of well-being as I punched in the number.
    “Rosenberg and Stone,” Mary Mason said.
    “Hi, Mary,” I said. “It’s Stanley.”
    “Maggie,” she said.
    I blinked. “What?”
    “I changed my name to Maggie.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I’m using the name Maggie Mason now.”
    I don’t know how to describe it. It was as if the top of my head had been ripped off, and my brains were drifting away. I mean, there I was, teetering on the verge of insanity. Facing three murder counts. Not to mention an obstruction of justice. Not to mention a vindictive cop with a personal grudge who was out to get me.
    All of that somehow paled into insignificance compared to what I was facing now.
    Maggie Mason?
    I suddenly have to deal with Maggie Mason?
    The concept crowded everything out of my mind. All I could think of was why? Why? What earthly reason could cause an otherwise sensible, capable, intelligent woman to change her name from Mary to Maggie? Clearly, the only reason she had done it was to deprive me of what was left of my rapidly depleting wits.
    And, oh god, how it worked. The one constant, the one thing I had been able to cling to, as realities changed all around me, as Sandy’s lies were replaced by Sandy’s truths (if they were indeed true), as hitherto unknown boyfriends suddenly emerged from the woodwork, as fingerprints jumped from one crime scene to another, that one tiny corner of reality had just been ripped away. And in one fell swoop, the super-competent Mary Mason had transformed herself into Mary/Maggie, the moral equivalent of Wendy/Janet—good god, could I even trust her information anymore? Or was it, too, subject to change?
    I stood there on the corner of Broadway and 50th Street, holding the phone to my ear. It was midday, and the sidewalk was jammed with people on their way to lunch. I was surrounded by a mass of humanity.
    And I’d never felt more alone.

50.
    “M AYBE HE’S RIGHT,” A LICE SAID.
    I didn’t want to hear it. I’d have rather been in the living room playing Nintendo with my son, Tommie. But it’s hard to brush off your wife when you’re facing a murder rap or two. With three, it’s practically impossible.
    “Right about what?” I said.
    There was a pause before Alice answered because she had switched on the Cuisinart. Alice was making pesto, and reggiano cheese, garlic, basil, and pignoli nuts were being ground to bits. She switched off the machine and, as if there had been no interruption, said, “About the bartender.”
    “Huh?”
    “Maybe he’s right about the bartender.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Just what I said. You said MacAullif thinks the