A COFFIN FROM HONG KONG

Trying to put him at ease, I offered him the half-smoked cigar Retnick had given me. “This is a museum piece. Would you like to have it for your collection? It’s Retnick’s. You have a museum?”

His young, eager face turned to stone. He looked almost like a cop.

“Listen, let me tell you something. We don’t like ...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, waving my hand to cut him short. “I’ve heard that one before. Retnick tells it better. I stir up the dust. I get in your way. I bother you boys. Okay, so what? I make a living the same as you. Can’t I kid you a little or are you that sensitive?”

I grinned at him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he relaxed and grinned back. From then on we got along fine.

Around lunch-time a cop brought us a meat pie and some beans which we ate. Patterson seemed to think the pie was pretty good, but then he was young and hungry. I toyed with mine and sent most of it back. After this so-called lunch, he got out a deck of cards and we played gin rummy for matches. After I had taken a whole box off him, I showed him how I was cheating him. This seemed to shock him until I offered to teach him how it was done. He made a very enthusiastic pupil.

Around eight o’clock the same cop brought more meat pie and more beans. We ate the stuff because by now we were so goddam bored we would have eaten anything just for the hell of it. We played more gin rummy and he cheated so well he took a whole box of matches off me. Around midnight, the telephone bell rang. He picked up the receiver, listened, then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “Lieutenant Retnick is ready for you now,” he said getting to his feet.

We both felt the way people feel when the train at last steams out of the station and they can stop talking the way people talk when seeing people off at a station.

We went down the corridor to Retnick’s office. Retnick was sitting at his desk. He looked tired and worried. He waved me to a chair and waved Patterson away. When Patterson had gone, I sat down.

There was a long pause as we stared at each other. “You’re a lucky guy, Ryan,” he said eventually. “Okay, I didn’t think you killed her, but I was goddam sure the D.A. would have thought so if I’d turned you over to him. Now I can persuade him you didn’t do it. Consider yourself a lucky son-of-a-bitch.”

I had been in this building for fifteen hours. There had been times when I had wondered if I had played my cards right. I had had moments of near-panic, but now hearing what he said, I relaxed, drawing in a deep breath.

“So I’m lucky,” I said.

“Yeah.” He slid down in his chair and groped for a cigar. Then realising he had a dead one between his teeth, he took it out, sneered at it and dropped it into the trash-basket. “I’ve had practically the whole of The force working on this thing for the past fourteen hours. We’ve turned up a witness who saw you in your car at two-thirty this morning on Connaught Boulevard. The witness happens to be an attorney who hates the D.A.’s guts and he had his wife with him. His evidence would blow a great big hole in any case the D.A. might have cooked up against you. So, okay, you didn’t kill her.”

“Would it be nosey to ask if you have any idea who did kill her?”

He offered me his cigar case: this time I could afford to refuse. As he put the case back in his pocket, he said, “It’s too early yet. Whoever he is, he’s played it neat. No clues: no nothing so far.”

“Didn’t you get a line on the Chinese woman?”

“Oh, sure, that wasn’t hard. There was nothing but the usual junk a woman carries in the handbag, but we got her spotted at the airport. She came from Hong Kong. Her name is Jo­An Jefferson. Believe it or not, she’s the daughter-in-law of J. Wilbur Jefferson, the oil millionaire. She married the son, Herman Jefferson, in Hong Kong about a year ago. He was recently killed in a car smash and she brought his body back for burial.”

“Why?” I asked, staring at him.

“Old man Jefferson wanted his son buried in the family vault He paid this girl to come over with the body.”

“What’s happened to the body?”

“It was picked up at the airport by a mortician at seven o’clock this morning, acting on orders. It’s at his parlour waiting interment.”

“You checked that?”

He yawned, showing me half his false teeth.

“Listen, shamus, you don’t have to tell me my fob. I’ve seen the coffin and inspected the papers: everything’s in order. She flew in from Hong Kong, arriving here at one-thirty. She took a taxi from the airport to your office block. What beats me is why she came to see you immediately she arrived and how her killer knew she was coming to see you. What did she want with you?”

“Yeah. If she was from Hong Kong, how would she know I existed?” I said.

‘Your idea she telephoned for an appointment around seven after you had left your office is out. She was in the air at that time. If she had written, you would have known about it.”

I thought for a moment.