“And how did you respond to that?”
“I picked up one of his small sculptures-he’s a sculptor-and coldcocked him with it. Then, while he was still unconscious, I packed up and got the hell out of there. A friend lent me the apartment on Park, but Devlin, the sculptor, is looking for me, and he’s furious, so mutual friends tell me.”
“What do you think will happen if he finds you?”
“I think he’ll kill me.” She paused. “If he can.”
“Then I think you ought to start taking this seriously,” Stone said.
“Oh, I am taking it seriously.”
“Have you applied for a protective court order?”
“If I did that, the court would bar him from coming within a hundred yards of me, or something, right?”
“More or less.”
“The problem is, he’d have to be told where I’m living, so he could stay a hundred yards away.”
“You have a point. So what do you intend to do?”
“I’m thinking of killing him,” she said.
19
Stone lay on the bed while Celia kneaded his body.
“So, what do you think of my idea of killing Devlin?” she asked.
“Morally repugnant.”
“Forget morality for a minute. How should I go about it?”
“You shouldn’t go about it, even forgetting morality.”
“If I have no morals, then why shouldn’t I?”
“How are your nerves?”
“Pretty cool.”
“Could you stand an investigation by a team of police detectives into every aspect of your private life, maybe lasting for years? Could you stand being portrayed in the newspapers as the likely suspect, even if it couldn’t be proven? Could you stand the loss of your business when your clients learned that you were a suspected murderer?”
“Who knows, it might even improve my business.”
“I don’t think you’d like your new customers.”
“Don’t you think I could plan the perfect crime?”
“Did you ever watch the old TV series Columbo, with Peter Falk?”
“Sure. I bet I saw all of them.”
“Well, every week, Columbo solved a murder that was supposed to be the perfect crime. The series was a weekly lesson in how many ways there are to screw up when you’re trying to commit the perfect crime. And that was before DNA and fiber analysis, and all that stuff.”
“What would be my chances of getting away with it?”
“Have you ever met any homicide detectives?”