The staked Goat

windows kept her crying from drifting down to street level.
     

Seven
     
     
     
    I DROVE BACK TOWARD M APARTMENT. I CIRCLED around my block twice, then parked two blocks away and walked to a coffee shop roughly diagonal to my building. I sat and nursed a hot cocoa for half an hour in a bay window, watching. I didn’t see anything unusual, like someone parked in a car for an unreasonable period of time.
    I paid for my cocoa and crossed the street. I walked quietly down the alley that turned behind my building, and peeked around the corner. Nobody in sight.
    I walked behind my building and hopped over the wooden fence separating our minimal patio area from the alley tar. I used my key on the back door and pulled a long-handled, wide-brushed push broom from the utility closet with the broken lock. I went back outside and lifted the wood brush angle to hook and pull down the last ladder flight of the fire escape. I climbed it, carrying the broom.
    I reached my floor and thought about using the handle end of the broom to poke around my window sill from a safe distance. Instead I crawled to my window and looked inside. I couldn’t see much, but I watched long enough to be fairly certain no one was waiting for me. I took out my penlight and shined it through the glass toward the front entrance. I couldn’t see any wires or trips attached to the door.
    I didn’t think Al’s killer would really try anything for two reasons. First, any attempt on my life, once the police knew I was connected with Al, would put the he to the cover-up he had arranged. Second, he couldn’t be sure that Al hadn’t somehow identified him to me, resulting in his being put under surveillance by the police. While I believed that either or both of those reasons relieved me of Al’s killer, I didn’t feel as comfortable about friend Marco. Hence, my caution.
    I flicked off the light and was halfway back down the escape when the cruiser came into the alley and stopped. Both uniforms, a man and a woman, came out of their respective doors and drew and pointed their revolvers at me, bracing their gun hands with their free hands.
    ”All right, leave the broom there and come down real slow,” said the woman, who had been driving.
    ”Is it all right if I just drop the broom over the side?” I said. ”It’ll save us having to stand on each other’s shoulders to pull the flight down to climb back up after it.”
    The male uniform muttered something to her. Neither took their eyes off me.
    She spoke. ”Drop the broom. Then cut the shit. Then come down.”
    I dropped, cut, and came.
    They studied my investigator’s identification and compared it to the address information in my wallet several times before grudgingly buying my explanation of Marco’s dishonorable intentions. It seemed that a woman sitting in her apartment across the alley had spotted me climbing up the fire escape. As they got back into their cruiser, I felt encouraged by neighborhood security and embarrassed by personal ineptitude, with the edge to embarrassment.
    I walked around to the front of the building. I keyed open the door and approached my apartment more conventionally.
    Once inside I checked my telephone tape. There were two hang-ups and two messages. The first message was:
    ”John, it’s Nancy Meagher returning your call at three-forty p.m. I’ll be in my office tomorrow between eight-thirty and nine-thirty.”
    The second message was a little redundant:
    ”Hi, John. How are you. Oh, you’re fine. That’s nice.”
    I rewound and then levered out the message cassette. I replaced it with a spare and put the tape into a heavy manila envelope. I checked my watch. Four-thirty. I called Nancy’s office. She was gone for the day and so was her secretary. I looked for her home phone number in the book, but if I remembered her address correctly, she was unlisted. I penned a quick explanatory note and slipped it in next to the tape. I addressed the envelope to Nancy at the DA’s office, stamped it, and left it on a table near the door for mailing.
    Then I called Lieutenant Murphy’s office. I got Daley, my companion at the morgue. He said Murphy was out of the office, but that Murphy had told him to tell me that Traffic had found Al’s rental car on Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill and about five blocks from where Al’s body had been dumped. Elapsed mileage exceeded by about fifty miles the business visits they could confirm Al making. None of the business contacts