“It’s nice to know I have a choice in the matter.”

“Damn right you got a choice,” he said. “You can do the right thing, or you can suffer the consequences. Up to you.”

“Naturally I want to cooperate with the police,” I said, with all the sincerity of a game show host. “But what do you need me for, Ray? The man had neighbors. They must have known him better than I did.”

He shook his head. “Way it’s shapin’ up,” he said, “they didn’t know him at all. I’ll take that back, the woman on the ground floor knew him, said he was a very nice man. Trouble is she’s blind, spends most of her time listening to books on tape. One flight up you got a couple named Lehrman on the second floor, except you don’t at the moment because they left ten days ago to spend the next four months in the south of France. They’re college professors and they swapped their apartment in some kind of triangular deal. The Frenchman’s in Singapore for the spring an’ summer, an’ there’s a businessman with a Chinese name in the Lehrmans’ apartment, so I guess he’s from Singapore. Wherever he’s from, he’s only been here a little over a week an’ he says he never met Candlemas. We showed him a photo the lab boys took an’ it didn’t refresh his memory none.

“Who else we got? A couple of gays in the basement apartment, also new in the building, an’ they got a separate entrance all their own. They never met Candlemas. The super lives next door, he takes care of three or four buildings, an’ he’s only had the job for a couple of months. Candlemas never asked him to do anything for him, so they never met. The guy says he went lookin’ to introduce hisself once or twice, just in the interest of makin’ contact, an’ if you ask me in the interest of settin’ Candlemas up for a decent tip come Christmas. But Candlemas wasn’t around the time or two he went lookin’ for him. No way in the world he could ID him.”