“He was here when I left work last night, at six-thirty.”

“He was working late?”

“He was about to leave when he got a call. I left him to it.”

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t think so, but he’s lying in front of the safe. You want me to open it?”

Schwartz handed him a latex glove. “Please.”

Jerry put on the glove and opened the safe. “There was some cash,” he said. “It’s gone.”

“You keep a lot of cash around?”

“Some of our customers pay in cash. After it builds up, we take it to the bank.”

“Any idea how much it built up by yesterday?”

“Maybe twenty-five, thirty thousand. Our bookkeeper can give you an accurate number, when she comes in.”

Mills called for a medical examiner, and they all sat down.

“How did you and Parisi get along?”

“I got along fine. Gino didn’t get along with anybody.”

“So he had enemies?”

“Almost everybody he knew, I imagine, to one extent or another.”

Mills pulled out a pad. “Give us the ones who hated him enough to want him dead.”

“I don’t have those names,” Jerry replied. “Gino dealt with certain clients, I did everything else. For what it’s worth, I don’t think a client did this. We’re in the beverage distribution business: wine, liquor, soft drinks. It’s not a contentious business anymore.”

“But Gino was contentious?”

“Gino was old-school—he liked to tell clients what they were ordering, not ask them. Call it a personality quirk.”

“There used to be a Carlo Parisi around.”

“Gino’s old man.”

“So your business is mobbed up?”

“No. We’re clean as a hound’s back teeth. Gino, I don’t know. He lived in his own world. We had just agreed that I would buy him out.”

“So what happens to his share of the business now?”

“I guess it will go to his son, Alfredo. I haven’t seen his will, if he’s got one. Had one.”

“How did Gino and Alfredo get along?”

“Gino gave orders, Al carried them out—as best he could. Al’s more like his mother.”

“Did he work in the business?”

“He was on the books as a salesman. I agreed with Gino to keep him on after I bought his share of the business. I guess I’ll buy it from Al now.”

“Cheaper?”

“Gino and I had a contract with a very explicit formula for determining the value of the company. All we have to do is the arithmetic, and we come up with a number. One of us buys out the other. Al will take the money and run, I expect.”

A medical examiner arrived, and the three men moved to a seating area to get out of his way, while the detectives continued to question Jerry in a desultory fashion.

Half an hour later, the ME ordered the body removed.

“What’s the verdict, Doc?” Schwartz asked.