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  “Barbara?”

  “Yes. And I have a problem. It’s a short walk to my house, and I have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?” he wanted to know. “You always have a problem.”

  “This is a different kind.”

  “You always have a different kind. Come to my office in an hour and bring your problem with you.”

  “No. I can’t talk to you in your office. You’re too rich and successful, and the walk will do you good. I have fresh-brewed coffee, and I’ll give you toast and eggs.”

  “Barbara!”

  “For two hundred dollars an hour, you can afford to come here.”

  “I don’t charge for house calls. I’ll be there in an hour, and just coffee. I’m trying to lose weight since Reda left me.”

  SO REDA HAD LEFT HIM! Abner was a corpulent, good-natured man of fifty or so, and they had been married for twenty years, and he announced this offhandedly at the end of a sentence, and then hung up before she could question him. No more until death do us part; it was all over the place.

  Until death do us part was her own curse, and every man she had loved was dead. Well, she had an hour before he’d be there, and she might as well put it to use. But when she sat down at her desk she could not escape the night, and instead of writing she found herself not only reliving the night but probing through her own past.

  At nine o’clock the doorbell sounded, and when she opened the door, it was not to Abner but to two men, one stocky and mustached, the other thin and tall. They showed her their open wallets and badges before they announced themselves:

  “Inspector Meyer,” the stocky man said. “This is Inspector Phelps. Can we come in?”

  She pulled herself together and nodded. “Of course. Come in and sit down. You’ll excuse me for a moment.” Then she ran upstairs and into her bedroom, and when she picked up the telephone, she realized that it was not working, that the connection had been ground under the thief’s heel. “Oh, Abner, Abner,” she whispered, “for once get yourself over here on time.” And then, as she closed the bedroom door behind her, she heard the doorbell ring. Abner. It has to be Abner. She called out, “I’ll get it!” And then down the stairs as if her life depended on it, and still with no clear idea of what she would do.

  As she went to the door she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the two detectives handling the broken telephone line in her living room. Fool, fool, fool, she thought. Why didn’t I get rid of that one?

  She opened the door, flipped the latch, and closed the door behind her, whispering to Abner, who stood on her small porch, “There are two detectives inside. No time for questions, Abner. Just go along with me, please.”

  “Who have you killed?”

  “Abner, shut up. Just go along with me.” Then she opened the door and followed Abner into the house, trying to recall the policemen’s names: “Inspector Meyer, isn’t it? And Inspector—”

  “Phelps. I’m Phelps.” He still held the telephone cord in his hand.

  “This is my friend Abner Berman, and my lawyer,” Barbara said, smiling as if it were the most normal thing in the world to have her lawyer at her house at just past nine in the morning.

  “Your lawyer?” the Inspector asked.

  “His wife just left him. He comes for coffee and breakfast. Would you like some coffee?” she asked, feeling utterly ridiculous. Abner was watching her, puzzled.

  “No thank you, Ms. Lavette.”

  So they knew who she was; of course they would, her name was on the door. She still used her maiden name.

  “There was a robbery last night, Ms. Lavette,” he went on. “We caught the thief this morning, down on Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “Really?” Barbara said.

  “He had his loot on him.” He paused. Abner was studying her, his brow knitted. “Were you robbed last night?” the inspector went on.

  Barbara hesitated a long moment, and then she replied. “No.”

  “Is she a complainant?” Abner put in. “Did she call the police and report a theft?”

  “No,” Meyer said.

  “Then why are you questioning her? Was the house broken into?”

  “Not as far as we know. But this?” Phelps exhibited the broken telephone plug.

  “It happens.” Abner shrugged. “She said she wasn’t robbed. That’s it.”

  “Not quite.” He reached into his pocket and took out the brooch and held it out for her to see. “Is this yours?” When Barbara did not answer, he said, “We spoke to Swinburn this morning, got him out of bed. Our jewelry expert said that only Swinburn carries this kind of stuff. When we described the brooch, Swinburn remembered it. It was purchased by Carson Devron three years ago, for sixty-five thousand dollars. You don’t forget that kind of a buy. Your relationship with Devron, if you will forgive me, was all over the scandal sheets, so I’m not prying. Whether Devron gave it to you or his wife, I don’t know, but we will find out when we check the insurance companies. The thief we caught is a smooth and smartass operator with a record. He did two years for manslaughter. His name is Robert Jones, and he’s not your usual kind of crook, so all this makes me wonder. I’m going to ask you once more, is this your brooch?”

  “She doesn’t have to answer that—or anything,” Abner said sharply. “She’s not a complainant, and I think she’s had enough for this morning. I suggest you leave.”

  Phelps was still staring at the telephone plug. The inspector nodded. “Come on,” he said to Phelps. Barbara went to the front door with them, managed a weak smile, and closed the door behind them. Then she returned to the living room, looked wearily at Abner, and flopped into an easy chair.

  “How wondrous are the doings of men—and women,” Abner said. “I need coffee and breakfast, so get your ass out of that chair, Ms. Lavette. I have to call my office, because we’re going to have a good long talk. Is there a phone here that works?”

  “In my study.” Barbara sighed.

  “Thank you.” He went into her study and she went into the kitchen and made toast and cracked eggs. Her hands were shaking. When Abner joined her in the kitchen, she asked him whether he wanted bacon.

  “I’m off bacon. I’m going to lose weight. No, the hell with it, give me bacon. Today I need it. I’m also off cigarettes, but not this morning. Do you have any cigarettes?”

  “I don’t use them. I keep some in a box on the coffee table—in the living room.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  She put the bacon in a frying pan, trying not to think, concentrating on the sizzling bacon. Abner returned.

  “Match?”

  She handed him a match. He lit the cigarette and sucked deeply. “Ah, small blessings,” he said appreciatively.

  “Why did Reda leave?” she asked Abner.

  “You know why she left. It’s been coming on for ten years. I smoke, I eat too much, I’m fat, I’m a pain in the ass. She’s still beautiful. She had to leave before it was too late to start all over again. So the other day she picked up and left… The hell with that. Let’s talk about you.”

  “Yes, about me. Abner, what’s going to happen to me?” She put the bacon and eggs on his plate. “Shall I butter the toast?”

  “Barbara, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But I am so troubled, I’m so troubled, Abner. What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I won’t have the foggiest notion until you tell me what you’ve done.” He pulled out a chair for her. “Here. Sit down, and then tell me exactly what this crazy thing is about.”

  As completely as she could, she told him what had happened during the night.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  She thought about that for a while before she replied. “I guess I couldn’t send a man to prison—not that man. I didn’t know he was a murderer.”

  “We don’t know that he’s a murderer. Manslaughter is not murder.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It could be any
number of things. Two men have a fight. One of them dies. It could be self-defense, but not today with a black man. Not here. It could be accidental. Did he intend to kill? Two boxers are in a ring. One of them dies. That’s manslaughter, but there won’t be any indictment. If they gave him only two years, then there was no intent to kill. I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Today you lied to the police. Why? You recognized the brooch. Carson gave it to you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. But I told you I made a deal with the man—if he gave me Dad’s ring, he could keep the rest.”

  “That was no deal. He had a gun on you.”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t the gun.” The gun was not a part of it.

  “Was it his college degree, his waiting tables, his cleaning toilets? Is that it? You can’t be that naive—not even you, Barbara.” Through a mouthful of eggs and bacon, he demanded, “Then why did you call me? The cops hadn’t come yet?”

  “I was frightened. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I didn’t report the robbery. I still don’t know.”

  “Do you want my best advice as your lawyer and friend?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then when I finish breakfast, we’ll both go downtown, and we’ll explain that you were too traumatized by the robbery to respond properly, and then you’ll identify the jewels and they’ll show you a lineup and you’ll pick him out, and that makes their case and it’s over. We want to finish it before the media gets hold of it.”

  Barbara shook her head. “No, Abner, I can’t do that. I will not be witness to sending a man to prison. I’ve been in prison”—remembering the six months she had served in a federal prison in Long Beach. That was long ago, in the forties, but the memory of what had happened was vivid and ugly. She had been one of the organizing members of a committee that had purchased an old convent in Toulouse and fitted it out as a hospital to help the surviving soldiers of Republican Spain and their families. She had given a great deal of money to that cause, and when she was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and told to give the names of people who had supported their work, she refused. The result was a citation for contempt of Congress, and then a trial and a sentence to six months in prison. Those six months were burned in her memory.

  “I can’t,” she said to Abner. “I have to live with myself—for whatever time I have left. I’m an old woman. I can’t wipe out the life that I lived. I can’t bear witness against this man, Jones. I made an agreement with him. I gave him the jewels and he gave me my father’s ring. I told him I would not bear witness against him.”

  “He gave you the ring!” Abner snorted. “Barbara, the ring was yours. He stole your jewelry. How much? A hundred thousand dollars’ worth? God almighty—‘he gave you the ring’!”

  “Don’t argue with me, Abner. Just tell me what I must do and what will happen to me. I’m not brave. I’m more frightened than you can imagine.”

  “Well, to begin, you’ll be aiding and abetting a felon—which makes you equally guilty.”

  “If I gave him the jewelry? Why is that a crime? Can’t I give away anything that is mine? How can they prove otherwise?”

  “How did he get in the house?”

  “He picked the lock,” Barbara said. “It’s an old lock, the same lock that Sam Goldberg had on the door. When I rebuilt the house after the fire, I kept as much of the old house as I could. The lock isn’t hard to pick.”

  “It’s still breaking and entering. Even if the door was open, it’s breaking and entering with intent to steal.”

  “But if I insist that I gave him the jewels?”

  “That’s perjury. For heaven’s sake, Barbara, can you toss away a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry like that? Are you that rich?”

  “The jewels meant nothing to me. I kept them in a drawer. There was a linked gold chain I wore, but nothing else. Yes, I wore the pearls once or twice, but nothing else. I wore the brooch only once. If I have to trade it for a man’s freedom, fine. Don’t try to understand me, Abner. Just be my good friend and my lawyer, and help me get through this.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Abner said softly, a touch of awe in his voice.

  “Deadly serious.”

  “And I’m compounding a felony. Reda walks out on me, and her last words are, ‘You ain’t worth shit.’ That’s a hell of a thing to tell a man who can’t get it up and who stops trying, and who’s too fat for anyone else to look at twice.”

  “Abner, Abner,” she said gently, “you’re one of the best men I know. Reda was probably in a rage, and she didn’t care what she was saying. We’ll talk about that another time. Right now you’re my lawyer, and I’m your client.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you want another cup of coffee?”

  “Yes.”

  She poured coffee, sat across the corner of the table, so that she could reach out and put her hand on his; and he was thinking what a fine figure of a woman she still was, seventy and all, tall and slender, her gray eyes clear and bright; and he wondered why he had never found someone like Barbara, and what his life might have been if he had. He sipped the coffee, and asked her whether another cigarette would trouble her.

  “I’ll get them.” She brought the box with her. “They’re old and dry.”

  He lit up and drew deeply. “OK, let’s see what we can do. Sometime today, a policeman will be here and ask you to come downtown for a lineup. Go with him. A little irritation on your part, but don’t push it. They’ll come backed up with a subpoena, but don’t make them use it. You’re quixotic to begin with, and they probably think you’re a nut of some kind. Of course you know what a lineup is?”

  “I go to the movies, Abner. I even watch television.”

  “You say he wore a mask? Did he ever take it off?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have the best excuse in the world for not picking him out. Although that may not wash. You don’t give a hundred thousand to a masked man. Could you recognize him, in spite of the mask?”

  “I think so.”

  “How old, would you guess?”

  “Thirty perhaps. No older.”

  “Then recognize him if you can, if you’re sure.”

  “Wouldn’t they have found the mask on him?” Barbara asked.

  “Not if he’s as smart as you say he is. He’d ditch the mask and the lock pick the moment he got out of here, so I wouldn’t even mention the mask. By the way, make the recognition easy. I’ll be with you, so you don’t have to answer any questions. Of course, there’s the possibility that he confessed—”

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “You know a lot about a man you never met before. Well, we’ll hope. I’ll find out who is defending him, and I’ll tell the story the way you want. That doesn’t implicate his lawyer. He only knows what I tell him.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sure. I can do it without leaving the house. Can you find another telephone cord? I have calls to make.”

  “I think so. What happens then?”

  “The San Francisco cops are not stupid, and this will piss them off no end. They don’t like to be diddled. They press for a grand jury, and then you’re under oath. If you stick to your story and they can disprove it—then it’s perjury. This is very dangerous, Barbara. God help me, I don’t know why you’re insisting on this. You have no obligation to this crook. You didn’t ask to be robbed. You know, the newspapers will be full of this. You’re not nobody; you’re Barbara Lavette. It means television and all that goes with it, and everyone in town, everyone who knows you, will be talking about it. If this were simply grand theft, the cops would write it off and let the insurance company take the heat, but this is kinky.”

  “I’m not kinky, Abner. I’ve lived my life this way, and I’m going to continue to live it this way.”

  “What else did he take?”

  “Some gold bands and a string of pearls—also from Carson. I told Carson that I didn’t want jewelry fro
m him, I was not selling my love. What exists of Carson is inside of me, not in some fancy jewelry.”

  “What were the pearls worth?”

  “I don’t know. He bought them in Japan.”

  “Do you know what they were insured for?”

  She tried to recall it. “I have the policy somewhere—I think it was ten thousand dollars.”

  “It gets worse.” He sighed. “All right. We’ll take this step by step. You talk about this to no one, no one, do you understand—not your family, not your son, no one. Will you agree?”

  “I’ll be careful,” she said.

  The telephone rang, and Abner moved quickly to answer it, waving her back. “I’ll take it,” he said sharply.

  She followed him into her study. “This is her attorney,” she heard him say. “Abner Berman.” He listened and then he said, “You don’t have to send a car. I’ll bring her down—yes, this morning. Yes, she understands the nature of a lineup.” He replaced the phone. “They’re being nice. We’ll drive down in your car. I don’t want to make them wait too long.”

  IT HAD NEVER OCCURRED TO ABNER BERMAN that he was fat because he desired to be fat, that since childhood he had worn fat as armor, a sort of clown suit that hid a hard-nosed attorney. Barbara knew this, and when he accepted her position and determined to back it up, she felt relieved. On the other hand, Abner had known her for years, had adored her silently, and was less surprised than he pretended to be by her story.

  On the drive down to police headquarters Barbara said little, and Abner occupied his mind with how he would handle something he had never handled before and avoid being disbarred in the process. He was not a criminal lawyer. Here was a common robbery that very shortly would be the talk of San Francisco. In spite of his unwillingness to go along with her idealistic and unreasonable nonsense, he had assented to her decision and he would stay with it.

  Barbara, reviewing what had happened, had a feeling of sickness. She was digging a hole in the ground from which there might be no escape. Of course Abner found it unreasonable; who would find it reasonable? Blacks were sent to prison every day; it was something she could not influence or change, so why did she persist? If she could not answer that question herself, how could she spell it out to anyone else?