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"Didn't have any money, did he?"

"Actually," I remembered, "he had more money than he should have He cashed in his insurance and he died with so like forty thousand dollars in the bank"

"Ain't that a motive?"

"He left it all to sogressive in their fund-raising, but I've never heard of theotta do is wait, right? 'Cause the man already dyin'" He frowned "You knohat'd be nice? Piece of pie" I beckoned the waitress over and he asked her what kind of pie she had, giving her response some careful attention "Pecan," he decided, "with some of that whatcha-call a la mode on it Say chocolate?" She looked at hiht out of his speech "I'll have a piece of pecan pie," he said, "with a scoop of chocolate ice cream" She nodded and went away, and he rolled his eyes "Now she be thinkin' I a doctor She be after me to take out her appendix"

"Tell her your doctorate's in botany"

"That's just as bad, Tad She'll have me talkin' to her plants If killin' Byron didn't put no money in nobody's pocket, who'd hire soht? But he wasn't gay"

"He got it from a needle"

"He keep it all to hisself? Or did he pass it on?" I o and infect?"

"He could have spread it around," I said "Years ago, before he even knew he had it"

"So he gives it to some woman, and then her husband or her boyfriend or her brother wants to kno she got it 'Couldn't be nobody but that no-account junkie Byron Leopold,' she says"

"Whereupon the husband or brother or whatever he is goes out and hires somebody to kill Byron"

"Or does it his own self Either way Byron'd be a stranger to hiht axe hi person 'Mr Leopold? Byron Leopold?' "

"Pop pop"

"All she wrote," he agreed

"What about This is for Sheila, you dirty rat?' The way he did it, Byron wouldn't even knohy he was dying"

"If Sheila's brother was doin' it hisself, you'd 'spect him to say soht not bother with the oratory Even if the brother did it himself, he could have a speech planned and be too nervous to deliver it" I drank some coffee "I don't buy any of it," I said

"Who takes that kind of revenge on aof bones, his idea of a big day was sitting in the sun with his newspaper Nolook at hiht out of you"

"What's that leave? Suicide?"

"I thought of that"

"Huh?"

"Say he didn't want to live any himself to take action So he hires somebody to do it for him"

"He's afraid to stick his head in the oven, but he's cool with the idea of waitin' for soht of it I never put it high up on the list"

" 'Sides, how's he hire somebody who never onna have to ask you your naet it," I said "It never made any sense in the first place and it makes less sense now Byron Leopold was murdered by someone who had a reason to kill him, and he himself was the only person in the world with a reason to want hiht to be a financial motive That's what it feels like, but there's no money in it for anybody"

"There's whatever he had Forty kay? But you said soh anyway"

"Not enough?"

"Not enough to kill for"

"Dudes up on Washington Heights, they killed three people and only got half that much"

"They were lowlife dipshits," I said "They probably killed for the hell of it They already had the irl? To keep her quiet? She couldn't tell anybody, and her mother and brother were asleep in their beds, for Christ's sake They killed three people for no reason"

"Guess you ain't likely to be a character witness for them Anyasn't no lowlife shot Byron Said, 'Mr Leopold' Polite, you know? Showed sos that make all the difference"

His pie had arrived while ere talking, and noas one He held a bite balanced on his fork and said, "Funny about the forty kay First it was too h"

"He cashed in an insurance policy," I said, "and that would have brought him only a fraction of what he had in the bank So in that sense the forty thousand was too ?"

"No"

"Way you just broke off an' started starin'"

"Too much money," I said "Glenn Holtzmann had too much money It was in his closet when he died And I drea to tell me Too much money" I looked across at TJ, who still had the last bite of pie on his fork "I thought the dream was about Will But it wasn't It was about Byron Leopold"

13

It still didn't have toIt had been a dreae from Glenn Holtzmann in the spirit world (If his shade had indeed contacted me from beyond the beyond, he'd probably have had ot hie "Hey, Scudder," he ht have murmured, "what's this I hear about you and Lisa?") The drea to me, and I wasn't necessarily all that much sharper while I slept

Anyway, soar

"If," TJ said, and stopped hi up his hands as if to stop hi into a wall "No, I won't say it"