Don't Lie to Me by Donald E. Westlake

looking for somebody who turns out to be just a friend of yours that you wanted to keep quiet. See what I mean?”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œWe’re all men of the world,” Grinella suggested. “If the friend theory is the truth, why not tell us about it? We can keep it quiet, it won’t go any further than the three of us in this room. And it’ll save us a lot of trouble and waste of time.”
    Fortunately I’d known this offer was coming, so I didn’t have to hesitate and think it over. I’d made my decision to keep Linda out, and any reversal now would not be as simple and trouble-free as Grinella suggested. They’d insist on her name. They’d insist on questioning her. They’d turn up Dink, an ex-con, and roust him a little just to see if anything would fall out of the tree. They’d make a lot of waves in my personal life, and I didn’t want them to. And I’d had time during Grinella’s preamble to work all that out for myself, so that the instant he was finished talking, I could say, “I wish I could save you the time and trouble, but I told you the truth from the beginning. So far as I knew, I was alone here last night. I didn’t have any friends with me.”
    Hargerson said, “And here you are tonight, you aren’t even at your post. You’re off someplace. Maybe your friend is back again, maybe you’re some kind of poontang sex maniac.”
    I laughed. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for the compliment.”
    He gave a sour grunt, and extended his hand toward me, palm up. “Let’s see the basement key.”
    It was still in my pocket. I gave it to him, and he went off. I looked at Grinella and said, “Is your partner really and truly going to the basement to look for a girl?”
    â€œSeems that way,” Grinella said. He was still casual and relaxed.
    I shook my head, and went over to my usual chair to sit down. Grinella remained standing, leaning his back against the wall over by the door. After a minute he said, “I hear you used to be on the force.”
    I wondered where he’d heard, and how much he’d heard. I said, “That’s right.”
    â€œGet sick of the hours?” Which meant he didn’t know why I’d left, which meant he didn’t know anything at all. He had probably talked to the patrolman last night, the one who’d asked me if I’d ever been on the force. I’d given him a bald yes, without explanations.
    But now Grinella wanted explanations. I said, “Personal problems.”
    â€œAh.” He nodded, then said, “With me, it’s the hours. Me and my wife both. We just get used to one shift, boom I’m switched to the next one.”
    â€œI remember that,” I said. I remembered a lot from the eighteen years; it had been the only life I’d ever wanted. I’d been inside precinct houses a couple of times in the last few years, and every time it had gotten me all over again; the smell, the look, the feel of the place, reminding me of the times when everything had been good.
    â€œStill,” Grinella was saying, “I guess I must like it okay. I mean, here I am, right?”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said.
    We kept talking like that, slow-paced, unimportant, skipping along the surface, for the next ten minutes, until Hargerson at last came back. He walked into the room and said to Grinella, “You hear me?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOkay.” Hargerson might have handed the key back to me; instead, he dropped it on the nearest desk. “Let’s go,” he said.
    I said, “You went down to the workroom and shouted, to see if I really could have heard you two at the door or not.”
    He gave me a level stare. “So?”
    â€œI told you about it,” I said. “It would have been better if you’d told it to me.”
    â€œI’m not up on my Emily Post,” he