"Well?" said Arlene.
Kurtz hesitated. Usually he told Arlene almost nothing of his activities outside the officemuch of it was illegal, just as this afternoon's breaking and entering of the dead Arab's house had been, and as far as he knew Arlene had never had so much as a traffic ticketbut she'd already broken the law last night for him, passing herself off as a County D.A.'s assistant, not to mention breaking and entering O'Toole's office and stealing her riles. So what the hell , thought Kurtz.
He told her about finding Yasein Goba and the Yemeni's little revenge altar, about taking his diary, and about the pistol.
"Jesus, Joe," whispered Arlene.
"So do you mink it was one of your shots in the parking garage that got him?"
Kurtz nodded. "We won't know for sure until the coroner digs the slug out and they run a ballistics test, but I know that I hit the first shooter."
"So that's the motive," said Arlene. "He was mad at O'Toole for some reason."
"I read just enough of his diarythe parts in bad Englishto see that he blamed her for ruining his life, something about not being able to marry his childhood sweetheart because he was treated as a felon by the 'Zionist bitch. "
"'Zionist bitch? " said Arlene. "Didn't this idiot know that O'Toole was Irish?"
Kurtz shrugged.
"Well, that ties it all up in a knot, doesn't it, Joe?"
Kurtz rubbed his cheeks and then his temples. The headache felt like someone tapping, not very gently, on the back of his head with a two-pound hammer wrapped in a thin sock.
"They weren't after you," continued Arlene. "You were just unlucky to get in the way when one of Peg O'Toole's crazy clients came after her."
"Yeah."
"There was nothing in O'Toole's file on Goba that suggests that he was hostile or angry at herthe last several meetings she had with him sound easy, even upbeat. But if he was crazy, I guess it makes sense. Maybe it even ties in to that old Lackawanna Six terrorist thing. There are some crazy people down there in Lackawanna."
"Yeah."
"Now you're free to investigate this other thing." Arlene waved her cigarette toward the map on the north wall with its twenty-two pins, seventeen red, five blue.
"Yeah."
"But you don't buy the Goba thing for a minute, do you, Joe?"
Kurtz closed his eyes. He tried to remember if he'd eaten anything since the half donut with Rigby King at Broadway Market that morning. Evidently not. "No," he said at last. "I don't buy it."
"Because you remember two shooters," said Arlene.
"Yeah. I told Rigby King about the second guy when I saw her this morning."
"If someone other than Goba was driving the car when it busted out of the parking garage, they'll probably find the bloodstains in the backseat," said Arlene.
"The car wasn't there at Goba's," said Kurtz.
"You said it was a rough neighborhood. And Goba had been dead two days. Car thieves were probably just waiting to pounce on a vehicle left unattended for two days."
"Yeah."
"You don't buy that either?"
"I don't know," said Kurtz. "But I know there was a second man in the parking garage Wednesday. And odds are that the second man was driving the car when it crashed out Goba didn't get home by himself. I don't think he could even have got into the house and up the stairs by himself."
"You said you saw bloodstains and trails everywhere. His handprint on the kitchen door."
"Yeah."
"And you said it looked like he'd rummaged through his medicine chest hunting for bandages or painkillers?" Arlene exhaled smoke and tapped at one fingernail with another.
"Yeah," said Kurtz.
"Any strange footprints in the blood or extra handprints anywhere?"
"No," said Kurtz. "Not that I could see. Whoever dragged him in the house made it look like Goba crawled in under his own power."
"A friend maybe?"
"Maybe," said Kurtz. "But why wouldn't a friend haul Goba to the hospital? He was hurt bad."
"GSW report?" said Arlene.
Kurtz knew that she was right Doctors and hospitals had to report gunshot wounds to the authorities.
"I bet there are Yemeni doctors in Lackawanna who might've kept it quiet," said Kurtz. "I know for a fact there are medics down there that'll patch you up without reporting it. For a price."
"Goba was poor."
"Yeah," said Kurtz.
"Joe," said Arlene, looking at the map with all the pins, "there's something you're not telling me about this heroin-addict killer situation. About why you agreed to work for Gonzaga and that woman, but why you don't want to do it."
"What do you mean?"
"There's something."
Kurtz shook his head. The action made him dizzy. "Arlene, you want to order from that Chinese place down the street? Get takeout?"
She stubbed out her cigarette. "Have you eaten anything today?"
"Sort of."
She made her snorting noise again. "You stay here, Joe. Catch a couple of minutes rest. I'll go down and order in person, bring something back."
Arlene patted him on the shoulder as she left. The contact made Kurtz jump.
He was half-dozing when the phone rang.
"Joe Kurtz? This is Detective Kemper. I just wanted to let you know that it looks like we've found the man who shot you and Officer O'Toole on Wednesday."