“Did they fix the time?”

“Roughly.”

“And?”

“According to their figures, he died sometime between when you arrived at the Charlemagne and when you left.”

“When I left the second time,” I said.

“No.”

“No?”

“You went up to Onderdonk’s apartment Tuesday night, right? And left a little before one Wednesday morning, something like that.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, that’s when he died. Now that’s give or take a couple of hours, that’s for sure, because they’re just not that accurate when another twenty-four hours has gone by before the body’s discovered. But he definitely got it that night. Bernie? Where are you going?”

Where I was going was over the 102nd Street cutoff, which trims a full mile off the six-mile circuit and avoids the worst hill. Wally wanted the extra mile and the hill training that went with it, but I just kept trotting doggedly west on the cutoff road and all he could do was run alongside arguing.

“Listen,” he said, “in a couple of years you’ll be begging for some hill training. Those prison yards, you get plenty of time to run but it’s all around a flat tenth-of-a-mile track. Even so, I got a client up at Green Haven who’s doing upwards of a hundred miles a week. He just goes out there and runs for hours. It’s boring, but it has its advantages.”

“He probably doesn’t have too much trouble remembering the route.”

“There’s that, and he’s averaging something like fifteen miles a day. You can imagine the kind of shape he’ll be in when he gets out.”

“When’ll that be?”

“Oh, that’s hard to say. But he should be coming up for parole in a couple of years, and he’ll have a very good chance if he behaves himself between now and then.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, he had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend and he found out, and he sort of cut them a little.”

“Socially?”

“With a knife. They, uh, died.”

“Oh.”

“These things happen.”

“Like clockwork,” I said. “Wally, ease up. These uphills cut the legs out from under me.”

“You gotta charge the hills, Bernie. That’s how you develop your quads.”

“It’s how I develop angina. How could he have been dead before I left the building?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and we ran along in a companionable silence. Then he said, without looking my way, “Bernie, I could see how it could happen accidentally. He was a big, powerful guy and you had to knock him out and tie him up to rob him. You knocked him cold and tied him up and he was alive at that point, and then some leakage inside his head or something murky along those lines, it killed him and you didn’t even know it. Because obviously you wouldn’t go back to the building the next day if you knew he was dead. Except wait a minute. If you thought you left him tied up and alive, why would you go back to the building? You wouldn’t want to show your face within a mile of that building, would you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“Of course not.”

“Unless you killed him and you knew he was dead, and you went back-to what?”

“I didn’t hit him or steal from him, let alone kill him, Wally, so that makes the question a hard one to answer.”

“Forget Onderdonk for a minute. Why did you go back to the Charlemagne? You’d already committed a burglary there the night before. That’s what you did, right? Stole something from somebody after you left his apartment?”

“Right.”

“So why’d you go back? Don’t tell me the building was such a soft touch because I won’t believe it.”

“No, it’s worse than Fort Knox. Shit.”

“It’s easier if you level with me, Bernie. And anything you tell me is privileged. I can’t reveal it.”

“I know that.”

“So?”

“I went back to Onderdonk’s apartment.”

“To Onderdonk’s apartment.”

“Right.”

“You had another appointment with him? No, because you used the scam with the sandwiches to get in the door.”

“Flowers.”

“Did I say sandwiches again? I meant flowers. You went back there knowing he was dead?”

“I went back there knowing he was out because he didn’t answer his goddamn phone.”

“You called him? Why?”

“To establish that he was out so I could go back.”

“What for?”

“To steal something.”

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. “Something caught your eye when you were appraising his library.”

“That’s right.”

“So you thought you’d drop in and lift it.”

“It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the idea, yes.”

“It’s getting harder to think of you as a bookseller and easier to think of you as a burglar. What the papers call an unrepentant career criminal, but this bit makes you sound like a kleptomaniac with foresight. You went back to an apartment that you’d already left your fingerprints all over the night before? And where you’d already given your right name to get into the building?”

“I’m not saying it was the smartest move I ever made.”

“Good, because it wasn’t. I don’t know, Bernie. I’m not sure hiring me was the smartest move you ever made, either. I’m a pretty decent attorney but my criminal experience is limited, and I can’t say I did a hell of a lot for the client who cut those two people, but then I didn’t knock myself out because I figured we’d all sleep better with him running around the yard at Green Haven. But you need someone who can work a combination of bribery and plea bargaining, if you want my honest opinion, and I don’t have the moves for that.”

“I’m innocent, Wally.”

“I just can’t understand why you hit the building again yesterday.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, okay? Wally, I didn’t get any sleep last night and I never run more than four miles tops. I’ve got to stop.”

“We can slow down a little.”

“Good.” I kept moving my feet. “What difference did the second visit make?” I asked him. “I’d be in the same trouble anyway, with my prints all over the apartment and the staff remembering me, and if they really figure the time of death the way you said, the second visit is redundant.”

“Uh-huh. Except it makes it much harder in court to argue that you were never there in the first place.”

“Oh.”

“You were there for over eight hours yesterday, Bernie. That’s another thing I don’t understand. You spent eight hours in an apartment with a dead man and you say you didn’t even know he was dead. Didn’t he strike you as a little unresponsive?”

“I never saw him, Wally.” Puff, puff. “Ray Kirschmann said the body was discovered in the bedroom closet. I checked all the rooms but I didn’t go into the closets.”

“What did you take from his apartment?”

“Nothing.”

“Bernie, I’m your lawyer.”

“And here I thought you were my coach. It doesn’t matter. Even if you were my spiritual adviser the answer would be the same. I didn’t take anything from Onderdonk’s apartment.”

“You went there to steal something.”

“Right.”

“And you left there without it.”

“Right again.”

“Why?”

“It was gone when I got there. Somebody’d already hooked it.”

“So you turned around and went home.”

“That’s right.”

“But not for eight hours or so. Something on television you didn’t want to miss? Or were you reading your way through his library?”

“I didn’t want to leave the building until the shift changed. And I didn’t spend eight hours in Onderdonk’s apartment. I stayed in another apartment, an empty one, until after midnight.”

“There’s things you’re not telling me.”

“Maybe a couple.”

“Well, that’s okay, I guess. But you haven’t done much direct lying to me, have you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“And you didn’t kill him.”

“God, no.”

“And you don’t know who did. Bernie? Do you know who killed him?”

“No.”

“Got an idea?”

“Not a clue.”