I went over and turned off the radio, and the ensuing silence stretched out like the sands of the Sahara. It was broken at length by the flick of a Bic as Denise kindled yet another cigarette. Through a cloud of smoke she said, “The name Turnquist rings a muted bell.”

“I thought it might.”

“What was his first name-Edwin? I still never heard of him. Except in that conversation we never had.”

“Uh.”

“You didn’t kill him, did you, Bernie?”

“No.”

“Or that other man? Onderdonk?”

“No.”

“But you’re in this up to your eyeballs, aren’t you?”

“Up to my hairline.”

“And the police are looking for you.”

“So it would seem. It would be, uh, best if they didn’t find me. I used up all my cash posting a bond the other day. Not that any judge would let me out on bail this time around.”

“And if you’re in a cell on Rikers Island, how can you right wrongs and catch killers and liberate pussycats?”

“Right.”

“What do they call what I am? Accessory after the fact?”

I shook my head. “Unwitting accomplice. You never turned the radio on. If I get out of this, there won’t be any charges, Denise.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Er.”

“Forget I asked. How’s Carolyn holding up?”

“Carolyn? She’ll be okay.”

“Funny the turns human lives take.”

“Uh-huh.”

She tapped the canvas. “The one in the Hewlett’s not framed? Just a canvas on a stretcher?”

“Right. The design continues around the edge.”

“Well, he painted that way sometimes. Not always but sometimes. This whole business is crazy, Bernie. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“All the same,” she said, “it just might work.”

CHAPTER Eighteen

It was somewhere around eleven when I left the Narrowback Gallery. Denise had offered me the hospitality of the couch but I was afraid to accept it. The police were looking for me and I didn’t want to be anyplace they might think of looking. Carolyn was the only person who knew I’d gone to Denise’s, and she wouldn’t talk unless they lit matches underneath her fingernails, but suppose they did? And she might let it slip to a friend-Alison, for instance-and the friend might prove less closemouthed.

For that matter, the police might not need a tip. Ray knew Denise and I had kept company in the past, and if they went through the routine of checking all known associates of the suspect, the fat would be in the fire.

Meanwhile it was in the frying pan and I was on the street. In an hour or so the bulldog edition of the Daily News would also be on the street, and it would very likely have my picture in it. For the time being I was my usual anonymous self, but I didn’t feel anonymous; walking through SoHo, I found myself seeking shadows and shrinking from the imagined stares of passersby. Or perhaps the stares weren’t imagined. Spend enough time shrinking in shadows and people are apt to stare at you.

On Wooster Street I found a telephone booth. A real one, for a change, with a door that drew shut, not one of those new improved numbers that leaves you exposed to the elements. Such booths have become rare to the point that some citizen had failed to recognize this particular one for what it was, mistaking it instead for a public lavatory. I chose privacy over comfort and closed myself within.

When I did this, a little light went on-literally, not figuratively. I loosened a couple of screws in the overhead fixture, took down a sheet of translucent plastic, and unscrewed the bulb a few turns, then put the plastic back and tightened the screws. Now I was not in the spotlight, which was fine for me. I called Information, then dialed the number the operator gave me.

I got the precinct where Ray Kirschmann hangs his hat, except that he doesn’t, given as he is to wearing it indoors. He wasn’t there. I called Information again and reached him at his house in Sunnyside. His wife answered and put him on without asking my name. He said “Hello?” and I said, “Ray?” and he said, “Jesus. The man of the hour. You gotta stop killin’ people, Bernie. It’s a bad habit and who knows what it could lead to, you know what I mean?”

“I didn’t kill Turnquist.”

“Right, you never heard of him.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Good, because he had a slip of paper with your name and the address of your store in his pocket.”

Could it be? Had I overlooked something that incriminating in my search of the dead man’s pockets? I wondered about it, and then I remembered something and closed my eyes.

“Bernie? You there?”

I hadn’t searched his pockets. I’d been so busy getting rid of him I hadn’t taken five minutes to go through his clothes.

“Anyway,” he went on, “we found one of your business cards in his room. And on top of that we got a phone tip shortly after the body was discovered. What we got, we got two phone tips, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same person. First one told us where the body was, second said that if we wanted to know who killed Turnquist we should ask a fellow named Rhodenbarr. So what the hell, I’m askin’. Who killed him, Bern?”

“Not me.”

“Uh-huh. We let guys like you out on bail and what do you do but commit more crimes? I can see gettin’ carried away with a big hulk like Onderdonk, havin’ to hit him and hittin’ too hard. But shovin’ an icepick in a shrimp like Turnquist, that’s a pretty low thing to do.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I suppose you didn’t search his room, either.”

“I don’t even know where it is, Ray. One of the reasons I called you was to get his address.”

“He had ID in his pocket. You coulda got it off that.”

Shit, I thought. Everything had been in Turnquist’s pockets but my two hands.

“Anyway,” he said, “why’d you want his address?”

“I thought I might-”

“Go search his room.”

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “To find the real killer.”

“Somebody already turned his room inside out, Bernie. If it wasn’t you, then it was somebody else.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t me. You found my card there, didn’t you? When I search dead men’s rooms I don’t make a point of leaving a calling card.”

“You don’t make a point of killin’ people, either. Maybe the shock left you careless.”

“You don’t believe that yourself, Ray.”

“No, I don’t guess I do. But they got an APB out on you, Bernie, and your bail’s revoked, and you better turn yourself in or you’re in deep shit. Where are you now? I’ll come get you, make sure you can surrender yourself with no hassles.”

“You’re forgetting the reward. How can I come up with the painting if I’m in a cell?”

“You think you got a shot at it?”

“I think so, yes.”

There was a lengthy pause, as pride warred with greed while he weighed an impressive arrest against a highly hypothetical $17,500. “I don’t like telephones,” he said. “Maybe we should talk it over face to face.”

I started to say something but a recording cut in to tell me my three minutes were up. It was still babbling when I broke the connection.

There wasn’t a single acceptable movie on Forty-second Street. There are eight or ten theaters on the stretch between Sixth and Eighth Avenues and the ones that weren’t showing porn featured epics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive by Lemmings. Well, it figured. Get rid of sex and violence and how would you know Times Square was the Crossroads of the World?

I settled on a house near Eighth Avenue where a pair of kung fu movies were playing. I’d never seen one before, and all along I’d had the right idea. But it was dark inside, and half empty, and I couldn’t think of a safer place to pass a few hours. If the cops were really working at it, they’d have circulated my picture to the hotels. The papers would be on the street any minute. A person could sleep on the subway, but transit cops tend to look at you, and even if they didn’t I’d have felt safer curling up on the third rail.