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Thurman didn't knohat to say

"You don't know if you should believe me Maybe I just went back to take a piss, or to cut her loose Do you want to go back and see for yourself?"

"No"

"Good Because you know I always tell the truth You're confused, you don't kno to feel about this Relax You didn't do anything I did it And she would have died anyway No one lives forever" He reached over and took Thurman's hand in his "We are closer than close, you and I We are brothers in blood and se tier to drink it He would pick up the glass and have it halfway to his lips and set it down and resu He didn't really care about the beer He wanted to talk

He said, "I don't know if he killed that woman She could have been some whore hired for the occasion and he went back to pay her and let her free Or he could have cut her throat the way he said There's no way to know"

Fro two lives On the surface he was a young executive on the way up He had a great apartment and a rich wife and a rosy future At the saa Stettner

"I learned to turn it on and off," he said "Like you leave your job at the office, I left that whole side of myself for when I ith the Sometimes ould just sit around and talk But there was always that edge, that current flowing ao home and be a husband"

After he'd known the two of them for severalblackmailed There was a tape they had made I don't knoas on it but it must have been bad because the cameraman kept a copy and he wanted fifty thousand dollars for it"

"Arnold Leveque," I said

His eyes widened "How did you know that? How much do you know?"

"I knohat happened to Leveque Did you help kill hilass to his lips He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "I swear I didn't know that was hoas going to go He said he would pay the fifty thousand but he couldn't meet with Leveque, the uess why He said it would be one payment and that would be the end of it, because the h to try the same stunt twice

"There's a Thai restaurant on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street I met Leveque there He was this cothis but he really needed the money The ave him the briefcase full of htened when he saw the money I was supposed to be a lawyer, that was the story, and I earing a Brooks pinstripe and trying to slip legal terms into e, and I told hio off with it until I was assured that the cassette was the one my client wanted 'My car's parked nearby,' I said, 'and we're just minutes from my office, and as soon as I've seen five minutes of the tape you can be on your ith the money"

He shook his head "He could have just stood up and walked out of there," he said "What was I going to do? But I guess he trusted en aiting at theto hit Leveque over the head and then ere going to get out of there with the money and the tape"

"But that's not what happened"

"No," he said "Before Leveque could even react Bergen was punching him At least that's what it looked like, but then I saw that he had a knife in his hand He stabbed hied hiot it and went into the alley and he had Leveque against the brick wall and he was stabbing hi Maybe he was already dead, I don't know He never made a sound"

AFTERWARD they took Leveque's keys and searched his aparts full of hoht Leveque would have kept a backup tape of the one he was using for blackmail, but it turned out he hadn't

"Most of them were movies he taped off the TV," Thurman said "Old black-and-white classics, mostly A feere porn, and some were old TV shows" Stettner screened the out Thurman had never seen the tape he helped recover, the one that had cost Arnold Leveque his life

"I saw it," I said "It shows the two of theured that's what it was, or ould they pay that kind of money for it? But how could you have seen it?"

"Leveque had a copy that you missed It was dubbed onto a commercial cassette"

"He had a whole lot of those," he remembered "We didn't bother with them, we left thelass, put it down untouched "Not that it did hiood"

Boys were a part of Stettner's life, and one Thur "I don't like homosexuals," he said flatly "Don't care for them, never did Amanda's brother is a hoht out there froots eaklings and that AIDS was the planet's way of grinding them under its heel 'It's not a homosexual act to use these boys,' he would say 'You take theet, they're all over the place begging to be taken And no one cares You can do as you please with theet them?"

"I don't know I told you, that was an area of his life I made it my business to stay out of Sometimes I would see him with a boy He would take up with one sohts last week He would treat him like a son, and then one day you wouldn't see the boy anymore And I would never ask what happened to the boy"

"But you would know"