I treated myself to a good deep breath. Purley was squinting at me, not gloating, just concentrating. Cramer turned his head to see that the door was closed after the dick and the artist and then turned back to me.
“Your turn,” he growled.
I shook my head. “Lost my voice,” I whispered, hissing.
“You’re not funny, Goodwin. You’re never as funny as you think you are. This time you’re not funny at all. You can have five minutes to go over it and realize how complicated it is. When you phoned Wolfe before you phoned us, you couldn’t possibly have arranged all the details. I’ve got you. I’ll be leaving here before long to join you downtown, and on my way I’ll stop in at Wolfe’s place for a talk. He won’t clam up on this one. At the very least I’ve got you good on the Sullivan Act. Want five minutes?”
“No, sir.” I was calm but emphatic. “I want five days and I would advise you to take a full week. Complicated doesn’t begin to describe it. Before I leave for downtown, if you’re actually going to crawl out on that one, I wish to remind you of something, and don’t forget it. When I voluntarily took Koven’s gun from my holster and turned it over — it wasn’t ‘found on me,’ as you put it — I also turned over six nice clean cartridges which I had in my vest pocket, having previously removed them from my gun. I hope none of your heroes gets careless and mixes them up with the cartridges found in my gun, if any, when you retrieved it from the monkey. That would be a mistake. The point is, if I removed the cartridges from my gun in order to insert one or more from Koven’s gun, when and why did I do it? There’s a day’s work for you right there. And if I did do it, then Koven’s friendly effort to fix me up for justifiable manslaughter is wasted, much as I appreciate it, because I must have been premeditating something, and you know what. Why fiddle around with the Sullivan Act? Make it the big one, and I can’t get bail. Now I button up.”
I set my jaw.
Cramer eyed me. “Even a suspended sentence,” he said, “you lose your license.”
I grinned at him.
“You goddam mule,” Purley rumbled.
I included him in the grin.