I hurried to the rear of the rickety structure and crouched down. The walls were thin and I could hear everything. I figured that worked in reverse, so I kept still and quiet.
There was the sound of footsteps double-timing it across hard dirt, then of the door creaking open.
“Hey. Who are you? Where’s the little carny?”
“I’ve sent Will away, Mr. McCloskey. I thought it best if we had this conversation in private.”
“What conversation? What’s the deal? Who are you?”
“I am Lillian Pentecost.” There was a little inhale there. Apparently he recognized the name and wasn’t too happy about it. “And the deal is that you are wearing a murdered man’s watch.”
“What are you talking about? That’s a lie. I bought this watch. From a guy at a bar. Twenty bucks, it cost.”
I shook my head. Apparently nobody’d taught him that adding too many details was the quickest way to foul a grift.
“The police will, of course, ask you which bar and the name of the man who supposedly sold you the watch and so forth and so on,” Ms. Pentecost said. “But I think we can dispense with that. If for no other reason than no one would sell a Patek Philippe for twenty dollars.”
“I don’t know a Patty Phillip from nothing. This guy said he was hard up. Needed the cash.” The whine that had crept into his voice advertised his guilt better than any Broadway marquee.
“Jonathan Markel was indeed in need of money, Mr. McCloskey. But not so badly as to barter with you.”
“Who’s Jonathan Markel?”
“The man you bludgeoned to death and from whose wrist you slipped that watch.”
“Lady, you’re crazy.”
“Debatable. I’ve been accused of rampant narcissism, hysteria, deviancy, and a variety of delusional psychoses. But the dirt covering the back of Mr. Markel’s suit coat was no delusion. Dirt that certainly did not come from the alley where his body was found. Nor were the grooves in his skull a delusion. Grooves that I feel confident will match the kind of lead pipe you instructed Will to employ on trespassers.”
Even through the wall of the shack, I could hear McCloskey breathing. Heavy and panicked.
As Ms. Pentecost continued, she developed a hitch in her voice. Like her words were catching on something in her throat. I started to wonder just how calm this woman really was.
“I would have come upon you sooner, but…it was not until yesterday that I was able to examine the clothes Mr. Markel…was wearing that night. This construction site is one of only a…handful between his club and the alley where he was found. Perhaps there was no initial malevolence. Perhaps…after an evening of drinking, Mr. Markel sought a private spot to relieve himself and slipped through the gap in your fence. Mistaking him for a thief, you…hit him. A little…too hard, perhaps? An accident?”
“Yeah….Yeah, an accident.” It came out in a croaked whisper, like McCloskey was being squeezed. And the squeezer wasn’t finished.
“But the second and…third strikes were certainly not accidents. Nor was it an accident that you stole his wallet and…watch. Or the subsequent covering up of the crime. These…were not accidents.”
One of my legs took that moment to cramp. I shifted my crouch, careful to avoid crunching on loose gravel. When I got situated again, there was only silence inside the building. Then the hard click of a gun being cocked.
“Don’t move, lady.” The thread of panic in McCloskey’s voice had swollen. I could practically hear the pistol shaking in his hand.
“Mr. McCloskey, this pit you…find yourself in cannot be escaped by…digging deeper. The police have been notified. They are on their way…even as we speak.”
This was delivered in a slightly chiding tenor, like she was informing a waitress that she’d ordered the tomato soup, not the minestrone.
Except she was wrong. The cavalry had definitely not been called.
I don’t know what was said next, because I was busy slipping around to the front of the shack, every muscle tense as I waited for the impending crack of a gunshot. The door to the shack was open. I peered inside.
McCloskey had his back to me. He had a gun—an ugly, snub-nosed thing—pointed right at her head. I caught him midsentence.
“—supposed to be here. I come in, find this strange woman snooping around. Maybe you leap at me holding that pipe there. The one you say killed that guy.”
Ms. Pentecost was sitting just as I’d left her, gloved hands still primly folded across the cane in her lap. I’d have been sweating buckets, but she didn’t betray an ounce of fear. In fact, her eyes were bright with something not too far from joy.
She gave a brisk shake of the head. “I don’t believe the police will accept that theory, Mr. McCloskey. They are frequently…obstinate, but rarely…stupid.”
The cane looked sturdy enough—smooth black wood topped with a heavy brass handle. I thought maybe she was thinking of lashing out and surprising him with it. Except I’d had a cousin who got that kind of hitch in her voice. Had a limp, too, though hers was a lot worse. I suspected that leaping up and clubbing a man wasn’t in Lillian Pentecost’s repertoire.
“Yeah, well—it’ll be your word against mine,” McCloskey sneered. “And you won’t be doing any talking.”
When I was questioned later—and boy did I get questioned—I said that I didn’t think. I just reacted.
Except I did think. The circus kept me on because I had quick hands and an even quicker head. So I had a split-second, lightning-flash inner debate.
The voice in my head arguing the side of running away and letting what happened happen sounded a lot like Darla Delight. Dee-Dee was a former showgirl who did the books for the circus. Very practical woman. When Big Bob Halloway, the owner, would have his semiweekly brilliant idea for a new act, Darla was the one who would calculate the cost and put the kibosh on nine out of every ten brainstorms.
“Have to think about the costs,” she’d say. “Especially the invisible ones. All those things that might not be on the bill but you end up paying in the long run. They’ll come back and bite your ass.”
The voice on the other side of my inner debate sounded a lot like my father. He never counted any cost. He just did what he wanted and damned who got hurt. That I listen to his voice more often than not is something I still wrestle with.
McCloskey muttered something I couldn’t catch. Whatever it was caused Ms. Pentecost to lean forward on the cot, like a dog testing its leash.
“Who?” she said. “Who told you that?”