Scam

problem. Cranston Pritchert showed up, caught you doing it, and you had to kill him.”
    I broke off, shook my head. “See, I feel sorry for you, except for one thing. Well, a couple of things, actually, but one thing here. Up until that point in time, you got a white-collar crime. Corporate theft. No one’s gonna despise you. No one’s gonna point at you and yell thief. You’re a corporate crook, no better, no worse than all the rest.”
    I pointed my finger. “Except you had a gun. Had it with you all the time. As a contingency, you could say, just in case something went wrong. But the fact is, that contingency was planned. If something went wrong, you had a gun.
    “You see what I mean? That’s where I stop feeling sorry. Because, any way you slice it, you were ready, willing, and able to kill.”
    I shrugged. “But you probably haven’t admitted that, even to yourself. You probably still think it just happened.”
    She said nothing, just looked at me.
    “But no matter how you want to justify it, the fact is you did it. You’re up there in the accountant’s office, making the switch. You hear Cranston Pritchert come in. You can’t afford to be caught there. You try to get out. But there’s no time. You’re trapped, and you hide in Marty Rothstein’s office. Only he sees you and he finds you. Bad news. You got no excuse for being there. Even if he doesn’t see the proxies, once you win the election, he’ll know. The way you see it, you’ve got no choice. You pull your gun and you shoot him.”
    She looked at me sideways. “What are you doing? You’re trying to get a rise out of me, aren’t you? Trying to get me to say something. What’s the idea?” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”
    “What?”
    “There. In your shirt pocket.”
    “Nothing.”
    She stepped forward, wrenched my jacket aside. “Oh, yeah?” She reached in, jerked the microcassette out of my shirt pocket. “And what do we have here? A pocket dictaphone. Switched on and recording. Well, what a surprise.”
    She clicked it off, flipped it open, popped out the cassette. “How stupid do you think I am? You come in here, talking nonsense. You’re all, I know all about you. Trying to goad me into saying something. Probably thought you were being subtle too. Now, let’s us just have a little talk with the recorder off, okay?”
    Amy Greenberg set the dictaphone and cassette down on the coffee table. She straightened up, said, “You come in telling me this story. You know what? I think you made it up. I don’t think you have shit.”
    “Oh, yeah? Then how’d I know about drugging the drink? No one knew that. Just you, the agent, and the girl. The agent and the girl are dead, so how did I know?”
    “How the hell should I know? Maybe your client told you way back when—I was out with some girl who drugged my drink. Is that what the guy said to you?”
    I shook my head. “No. He had no idea. I didn’t find out till yesterday.”
    “Who told you?”
    “Sorry. I’m not going to tip you off to someone else you need to kill. Even if you don’t have the gun anymore.”
    I held up my finger. “And that’s the second reason I can’t feel sorry for you. Because you’re the one got me into this whole mess.”
    “And how did I do that?”
    “By giving me the gun. The first time I was out here. You slipped it under the seat of my car.”
    “The hell I did.”
    “The hell you didn’t,” I said. “I gotta admit, it was a pretty nifty move. I come out, talk to you, you realize I’m the private detective Cranston Pritchert hired. You know I met the talent agent and the girl, because you had to pay ’em the bonuses for lying to me. So there I am, perfect patsy. Even without the murder weapon, the police can tie me in to all three victims. Give me the gun and I’m dead.
    “So, that’s exactly what you did. The office beeped me, I had to make a phone call. When I get off the phone, I go out and find you in your car. You’ve backed out of your driveway to let me get out. Perfectly natural. Only, you know, it’s just like you opening your door just now—sucked in by the suburbs, I left my car unlocked. You figured I had, and you figured right. So when you moved your car, you gave me the gun.”
    “Oh, sure,” she said. “You remember what I was wearing? Like I really had a gun on me.”
    “Don’t be silly,” I said. “The gun was in your car. You took it out of your car, you put it in mine. You figured