The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  I pushed the door shut and knelt down for a close look at him, and heard the bolt turn as one of them locked the door.

  The dead man was around their age, and had been similarly dressed until he took off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. His hair was a little longer than theirs, perhaps because he was losing hair on the crown and wanted to conceal the bald spot. Everyone tries that, and it never works.

  I didn't feel for a pulse. A touch of his forehead established that he was too cold to have one. And I hadn't really needed to touch him to know that he was dead. Hell, I knew that much before I parked the car.

  Still, I took some time looking him over. Without looking up, I asked what had happened. There was a pause while they decided who would reply, and then the same man who'd questioned me through the closed door said, "We don't really know."

  "You came home and found him here?"

  "Hardly that. We were playing a few hands of poker, the five of us. Then the doorbell rang and Phil went to see who it was."

  I nodded at the dead man. "That's Phil there?"

  Someone said it was. "He'd folded already," the man in the blazer added.

  "And the rest of you fellows were still in the middle of a hand."

  "That's right."

  "So he— Phil?"

  "Yes, Phil."

  "Phil went to the door while you finished the hand."

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "And we didn't really see what happened," one of the suits said.

  "We were in the middle of a hand," another explained, "and you can't really see much from where we were sitting."

  "At the card table," I said.

  "That's right."

  The table was set up at the far end of the living room. It was a poker table, with a green baize top and wells for chips and glasses. I walked over and looked at it.

  "Seats eight," I said.

  "Yes."

  "But there were only the five of you. Or were there other players as well?"

  "No, just the five of us."

  "The four of you and Phil."

  "Yes."

  "And Phil was clear across the room answering the door, and one or two of you would have had your backs to it, and all four of you would have been more interested in the way the hand was going than who was at the door." They nodded along, pleased at my ability to grasp all this. "But you must have heard something that made you look up."

  "Yes," the blazer said. "Phil cried out."

  "What did he say?"

  " 'No!' or 'Stop!' or something like that. That got our attention, and we got out of our chairs and looked over there, but I don't think any of us got a look at the guy."

  "The guy who…"

  "Stabbed Phil."

  "He must have been out the door before you had a chance to look at him."

  "Yes."

  "And pulled the door shut after him."

  "Or Phil pushed it shut while he was falling."

  I said, "Stuck out a hand to break his fall…"

  "Right."

  "And the door swung shut, and he went right on falling."

  "Right."

  I retraced my steps to the spot where the body lay. It was a nice apartment, I noted, spacious and comfortably furnished. It felt like a bachelor's full-time residence, not a married commuter's pied-à-terre. There were books on the bookshelves, framed prints on the walls, logs in the fireplace. Opposite the fireplace, a two-by-three throw rug looked out of place atop a large Oriental carpet. I had a hunch I knew what it was doing there.

  But I walked past it and knelt down next to the corpse. "Stabbed in the heart," I noted. "Death must have been instantaneous, or the next thing to it. I don't suppose he had any last words."

  "No."

  "He crumpled up and hit the floor and never moved."

  "That's right."

  I got to my feet. "Must have been a shock."

  "A terrible shock."

  "How come you didn't call it in?"

  "Call it in?"

  "Call the police," I said. "Or an ambulance, get him to a hospital."

  "A hospital couldn't do him any good," the blazer said. "I mean, you could tell he was dead."

  "No pulse, no breathing."

  "Right."

  "Still, you must have known you're supposed to call the cops when something like this happens."

  "Yes, of course."

  "But you didn't."

  They looked at each other. It might have been interesting to see what they came up with, but I made it easy for them.

  "You must have been scared," I said.

  "Well, of course."

  "Guy goes to answer the door and the next thing you know he's dead on the floor. That's got to be an upsetting experience, especially taking into account that you don't know who killed him or why. Or do you have an idea?"

  They didn't.

  "I don't suppose this is Phil's apartment."

  "No."

  Of course not. If it was, they'd have long since gone their separate ways.

  "Must be yours," I told the blazer, and enjoyed it when his eyes widened. He allowed that it was, and asked how I knew. I didn't tell him he was the one man in the room without a wedding ring, or that I figured he'd changed from a business suit to slightly more casual clothes on his return home, while the others were still wearing what they'd worn to the office that morning. I just muttered something about policemen developing certain instincts, and let him think I was a genius.

  I asked if any of them had known Phil very well, and wasn't surprised to learn that they hadn't. He was a friend of a friend of a friend, someone said, and did something on Wall Street.

  "So he wasn't a regular at the table."

  "No."

  "This wasn't his first time, was it?"

  "His second," somebody said.

  "First time was last week?"

  "No, two weeks ago. He didn't play last week."

  "Two weeks ago. How'd he do?"

  Elaborate shrugs. The consensus seemed to be that he might have won a few dollars, but nobody had paid much attention.

  "And this evening?"

  "I think he was about even. If he was ahead it couldn't have been more than a few dollars."

  "What kind of stakes do you play for?"

  "It's a friendly game. One-two-five in stud games. In draw, it's two dollars before the draw, five after."

  "So you can win or lose what, a couple of hundred?"

  "That would be a big loss."

  "Or a big win," I said.

  "Well, yes. Either way."

  I knelt down next to the corpse and patted him down. Cards in his wallet identified him as Philip I. Ryman, with an address in Teaneck.

  "Lived in Jersey," I said. "And you say he worked on Wall Street?"

  "Somewhere downtown."

  I picked up his left hand. His watch was Rolex, and I suppose it must have been a real one; this was before the profusion of fakes. He had what looked like a wedding band on the appropriate finger, but I saw that it was in fact a large silver or white-gold ring that had gotten turned around, so that the large part was on the palm side of his hand. It looked like an unfinished signet ring, waiting for an initial to be carved into its gleaming surface.

  I straightened up. "Well," I said, "I'd say it's a good thing you called me."

  * * *

  "There are a couple of problems," I told them. "A couple of things that could pop up like a red flag for a responding officer or a medical examiner."

  "Like…"

  "Like the knife," I said. "Phil opened the door and the killer stabbed him once and left, was out the door and down the stairs before the body hit the carpet."

  "Maybe not that fast," one of them said, "but it was pretty quick. Before we knew what had happened, certainly."

  "I appreciate that," I said, "but the thing is, it's an unusual MO. The killer didn't take time to make sure his victim was dead, and you can't take that for granted when you stick a knife i
n someone. And he left the knife in the wound."

  "He wouldn't do that?"

  "Well, it might be traced to him. All he has to do to avoid that chance is take it away with him. Besides, it's a weapon. Suppose someone comes chasing after him? He might need that knife again."

  "Maybe he panicked."

  "Maybe he did," I agreed. "There's another thing, and a medical examiner would notice this if a reporting officer didn't. The body's been moved."

  Interesting the way their eyes jumped all over the place. They looked at each other, they looked at me, they looked at Phil on the floor.

  "Blood pools in a corpse," I said. "Lividity's the word they use for it. It looks to me as though Phil fell forward and wound up face downward. He probably fell against the door as it was closing, and slid down and wound up on his face. So you couldn't get the door open, and you needed to, so eventually you moved him."

  Eyes darted. The host, the one in the blazer, said, "We knew you'd have to come in."

  "Right."

  "And we couldn't have him lying against the door."

  "Of course not," I agreed. "But all of that's going to be hard to explain. You didn't call the cops right away, and you did move the body. They'll have some questions for you."

  "Maybe you could give us an idea what questions to expect."

  "I might be able to do better than that," I said. "It's irregular, and I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to suggest an action we can take."

  "Oh?"

  "I'm going to suggest we stage something," I said. "As it stands, Phil was stabbed to death by an unknown person who escaped without anybody getting a look at him. He may never turn up, and if he doesn't, the cops are going to look hard at the four of you."

  "Jesus," somebody said.

  "It would be a lot easier on everybody," I said, "if Phil's death was an accident."

  "An accident?"

  "I don't know if Phil has a sheet or not," I said. "He looks vaguely familiar to me, but lots of people do. He's got a gambler's face, even in death, the kind of face you expect to see in an OTB parlor. He may have worked on Wall Street, it's possible, because cheating at cards isn't necessarily a full-time job."

  "Cheating at cards?"

  "That would be my guess. His ring's a mirror; turned around, it gives him a peek at what's coming off the bottom of the deck. It's just one way to cheat, and he probably had thirty or forty others. You think of this as a social event, a once-a-week friendly game, a five-dollar limit and, what, three raises maximum? The wins and losses pretty much average out over the course of a year, and nobody ever gets hurt too bad. Is that about right?"

  "Yes."

  "So you wouldn't expect to attract a mechanic, a card cheat, but he's not looking for the high rollers, he's looking for a game just like yours, where it's all good friends and nobody's got reason to get suspicious, and he can pick up two or three hundred dollars in a couple of hours without running any risks. I'm sure you're all decent poker players, but would you think to look for bottom dealing or a cold deck? Would you know if somebody was dealing seconds, even if you saw it in slow motion?"

  "Probably not."

  "Phil was probably doing a little cheating," I went on, "and that's probably what he did two weeks ago, and nobody spotted him. But he evidently crossed someone else somewhere along the line. Maybe he pulled the same tricks in a bigger game, or maybe he was just sleeping in the wrong bed, but someone knew he was coming here, turned up after the game was going, and rang the bell. He would have come in and called Phil out, but he didn't have to, because Phil answered the door."

  "And the guy had a knife."

  "Right," I said. "That's how it was, but it's another way an investigating officer might get confused. How did the guy know Phil was going to come to the door? Most times the host opens the door, and the rest of the time it's only one chance in five it'll be Phil. Would the guy be ready, knife in hand? And would Phil just open up without making sure who it was?"

  I held up a hand. "I know, that's how it happened. But I think it might be worth your while to stage a more plausible scenario, something a lot easier for the cops to come to terms with. Suppose we forget the intruder. Suppose the story we tell is that Phil was cheating at cards and someone called him on it. Maybe some strong words were said and threats were exchanged. Phil went into his pocket and came out with a knife."

  "That's…"

  "You're going to say it's farfetched," I said, "but he'd probably have some sort of weapon on him, something to intimidate anyone who did catch him cheating. He pulls the knife and you react. Say you turn the table over on him. The whole thing goes crashing to the floor and he winds up sticking his own knife in his chest."

  I walked across the room. "We'll have to move the table," I went on. "There's not really room for that sort of struggle where you've got it set up, but suppose it was right in the middle of the room, under the light fixture? Actually that would be a logical place for it." I bent down, picked up the throw rug, tossed it aside. "You'd move the rug if you had the table here." I bent down, poked at a stain. "Looks like somebody had a nosebleed, and fairly recently, or you'd have had the carpet cleaned by now. That can fit right in, come to think of it. Phil wouldn't have bled much from a stab wound to the heart, but there'd have been a little blood loss, and I didn't spot any blood at all where the body's lying now. If we put him in the right spot, they'll most likely assume it's his blood, and it might even turn out to be the same blood type. I mean, there are only so many blood types, right?"

  I looked at them one by one. "I think it'll work," I said. "To sweeten it, we'll tell them you're friends of mine. I play in this game now and then, although I wasn't here when Phil was. And when the accident happened the first thing you thought of was to call me, and that's why there was a delay reporting the incident. You'd reported it to me, and I was on my way here, and you figured that was enough." I stopped for breath, took a moment to look each of them in the eye. "We'll want things arranged just right," I went on, "and it'll be a good idea to spread a little cash around. But I think this one'll go into the books as accidental death."

  * * *

  "They must have thought you were a genius," Elaine said.

  "Or an idiot savant," I said. "Here I was, telling them to fake exactly what had in fact happened. At the beginning I think they may have thought I was blundering into an unwitting reconstruction of the incident, but by the end they probably figured out that I knew where I was going."

  "But you never spelled it out."

  "No, we maintained the fiction that some intruder stuck the knife in Ryman, and we were tampering with the evidence."

  "When actually you were restoring it. What tipped you off?"

  "The body blocking the door. The lividity pattern was wrong, but I was suspicious even before I confirmed that. It's just too cute, a body positioned where it'll keep a door from opening. And the table was in the wrong place, and the little rug had to be covering something, or why else would it be where it was? So I pictured the room the right way, and then everything sort of filled in. But it didn't take a genius. Any cop would have seen some wrong things, and he'd have asked a few hard questions, and the four of them would have caved in."

  "And then what? Murder indictments?"

  "Most likely, but they're respectable businessmen and the deceased was a scumbag, so they'd have been up on manslaughter charges and probably would have pleaded to a lesser charge. Still, a verdict of accidental death saves them a lot of aggravation."

  "And that's what really happened?"

  "I can't see any of those men packing a switch knife, or pulling it at a card table. Nor does it seem likely they could have taken it away from Ryman and killed him with it. I think he went ass over teakettle with the table coming down on top of him and maybe one or two of the guys falling on top of the table. And he was still holding the knife, and he stuck it in his own chest."

  "And the cops who responded—"

  "Well, I called it i
n for them, so I more or less selected the responding officers. I picked guys you can work with."