Read The Sins of the Fathers for Free Online Page B

the murder. Did Richie behave differently than usual?"
    "Not really."
    "He wasn't agitated or anything like that?"
    "No."
    "He went home early."
    "That's right. He didn't feel well when he came back from lunch. He had some curry at the Indian place around the corner, and it didn't agree with him. I was always telling him to stay with bland food, ordinary American food. He had a sensitive digestive system, and he was always trying exotic foods that didn't agree with him."
    "What time did he leave here?"
    "I don't keep track. He came back from lunch feeling lousy. I told him right away to take the rest of the day off. You can't work with your guts on fire. He wanted to tough it out, though. He was an ambitious kid, a hard worker.
    Sometimes he'd have indigestion like that, and then an hour later he'd be all right again, but this time it got worse instead of better, and I finally told him to get the hell out and go home.
    He must have left here, oh, I don't know. Three? Three thirty? Something like that."
    "How long had he been working for you?"
    "Just about a year and a half. He went to work for me a year ago last July."
    "He moved in with Wendy Hanniford the following December. Did you have a previous address for him?"
    "The YMCA on Twenty-third Street. That's where he was living when he came to work for me. Then he moved a few times. I don't have the addresses, and then I guess it was in December when he moved to Bethune Street."
    "Did you know anything about Wendy Hanniford?"
    He shook his head. "Never met her. Never knew her name."
    "You knew he was rooming with a girl?"
    "I knew he said he was."
    "Oh?"
    Burghash shrugged. "I figured he was rooming with somebody, and if he wanted me to think it was a girl, I was willing to go along with it."
    "You thought he was homosexual."
    "Uh-huh. It's not exactly unheard of in this business. I don't care if my employees go to bed with orangutans. What they do on their own time is their own business."
    "Did he have any friends that you knew of?"
    "Not that I knew of, no. He kept to himself most of the time."
    "And he was a good worker."
    "Very good. Very conscientious, and he had a feeling for the business." He fixed his eyes on the ceiling. "I sensed that he had personal problems. He never talked about them, but he was, oh, how shall I put it? High-strung."
    "Nervous? Touchy?"
    "No, not that, exactly. High-strung is the best adjective I can think of to describe him. You sensed that he had things weighing him down, keying him up.
    But you know, that was more noticeable when he first started here. For the past year he seemed more settled, as if he had managed to come to terms with himself."
    "The past year. Since he moved in with the Hanniford girl, in other words."
    "I hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess that's right."
    "You were surprised when he killed her."
    "I was astonished. I simply could not believe it. And I'm still astonished.
    You see someone five days a week for a year and a half, and you think you know them. Then you find out you don't know them at all."
    On my way out the young man in the turtleneck stopped me. He asked me if I had learned anything useful. I told him I didn't know.
    "But it's all over," he said. "Isn't it? They're both dead."
    "Yes."
    "So what's the point in poking around in corners?"
    "I have no idea," I said. "Why do you suppose he was living with her?"
    "Why does anybody live with anybody else?"
    "Let's assume he was gay. Why would he live with a woman?"
    "Maybe he got tired of dusting and cleaning. Sick of doing his own laundry."
    "I don't know that she was that domestic. It seems likely that she was a prostitute."
    "So I understand."
    "Why would a homosexual live with a prostitute?"
    "Gawd, I don't know. Maybe she let him take care of her overflow. Maybe he was a closet heterosexual. For my own part, I'd never live with anyone, male or female. I have trouble enough living with myself."
    I couldn't argue with that. I started toward the door, then