There was a gun in her hand and it was pointed at the spot in my chest where my heart is supposed to be.
I will give you three guesses who she was. Not Rosie Ryan. Not Grace. Not Mrs. Murdock either.
The girl with her finger on the trigger was, inevitably, Cinderella Sims.
“Mr. Lindsay,” she said. “Mr. Ted Lindsay. You’d better talk fast, Mr. Lindsay. You’d better tell me everything there is to tell me and you’d better do it in a hurry or so help me God I’ll kill you.”
“But—”
“I’m not kidding,” she went on, her eyes burning and her hands trembling a little. If her hands trembled too much that howitzer she was pointing at me could go off, and if it went off it could make a perfect mess of the room. Hell, there would be blood all over the ratty carpet. My blood. And I had grown kind of attached to my blood over the years.
“You’d better explain, Mr. Lindsay. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“I do?”
Her face hardened, if that was possible. For a second I was scared she wasn’t going to give me a chance to explain. But what in the name of God was I supposed to explain?
“What should I explain?”
“How you found me, Mr. Lindsay. Why you’re after me. Who you are. Whom you’re working for. What the rest of them know about me.”
She had to be insane. There was no other explanation for it — she simply had to be out of her mind. Either she was nuts or I was, and in a minute it wasn’t going to make much difference which one of us had marbles missing. In another minute that gun was going to go off and I was going to turn into a not-too-vital statistic.
“Hey,” I said. “Look. I mean, give me a chance to explain.”
“Go ahead.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I’m just a broken-down old reporter taking a rest cure in the big city. I’m not working for anybody. I mean, I sling hash at a diner on Columbus Avenue. Grace’s Lunch. You can call them and ask them. They’ll tell you.”
She sighed.
“And I saw you yesterday for the first time, and I don’t know anything about you, and I’m damned if I can understand why you’re holding a gun on me, and—”
She sighed again.
“Look, I—”
“Mr. Lindsay.” she said. “Mr. Lindsay, the sight of me yesterday afternoon was enough to stagger you. You recognized me, and I must say you were obvious enough about it. Then you followed me.”
That much was true. I followed her, all right. Like a rat following the Pied Piper. But what in hell—
“Then you started investigating,” she went on. “Checking the nameplate in the hall. Sneaking subtle glances through my window. Keeping my apartment under constant surveillance from the building across the street. How can you deny it when I caught you in the act?”
I didn’t even try to deny it. I was too busy wondering where they were going to ship the body. I’d made a big mistake, not giving Mrs. Murdock my Louisville address. They’d probably plant me in Potter’s Field instead of sticking me in my native earth.
“I’ve waited long enough, Mr. Lindsay. Start talking. And you’d better make it good.”
4
I made it good.
There was this book I read once called The Screaming Mimi written by a guy named Fredric Brown. It was about this newspaperman, you see, and I have always been partial to novels about newspapermen, much as I have always been partial to novels by Fredric Brown.
Anyway, at one point in this book this newspaperman is alone in a room with this girl, and this girl is out of her skull, as well as being out of her clothing, and in her hand there is this knife. In order to avoid getting this knife between his ribs, this newspaperman begins talking. Talk, it seems, keeps this girl from doing much of anything, such as stabbing this newspaperman. He talks about everything under or over the sun, quotes Shakespearean soliloquies, rattles off farm prices, anything so long as he doesn’t stop talking. And finally someone comes and takes the girl away, and all is well, and that is that.
Which, more or less, is what I did. Since I didn’t know just where to start I started at the beginning, and if I left anything out I can’t remember what it might have been. I told her everything there was to tell about me and Mona and Louisville and Grace’s Lunch and oriental philosophy and God knows what else. Somewhere along the way I managed to talk her out of pulling the trigger, though just what it was that I mentioned that did the trick is something I’m afraid I will never know. Whatever it was, it worked, and I will be forever thankful to it.
Oh, yes. There was one part I didn’t bother recounting to her. I left out Rosie. For some reason I didn’t think she would understand, and even if she did, I wasn’t altogether proud of my participation in that particular bedroom farce. By all rules I acquitted myself nobly in that little battle of the sexes, but it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to dwell on.
I finished, finally, and I looked at her, timidly, and the gun was no longer centered upon my chest. It was pointing at the floor.
I felt a good deal better about the whole thing.
First she lowered the gun; then she lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lindsay,” she said, her voice one hell of a lot softer now, her tone downright apologetic. “It seems I’ve made a mistake. But it was a logical mistake. I have to be very careful.”
I started to tell her what the hell, mistakes happen, it’s all in the game. Then it occurred to me that maybe it was my turn to seize the advantage and push a little. After all, it was my room she was standing in with a cannon in her fist. If anyone had the right to demand an explanation, I did.
I said: “Your turn.”
She just looked at me.
“You came in here with a gun,” I told her. “You pointed that gun at me and scared me out of several years’ growth. And I’m a growing boy. Or at least I was.”
“But—”
“So it’s your turn to talk. It’s your turn to tell me just what in hell is making you so suspicious about everything. I think I have a right to know.”
She pursed her lips and I waited. Her hair was lovely now, the water making it all sleek and shiny, and her eyes had a feathery softness to replace the fire that had been in them when the gun was aimed at me.
“No,” she said finally. “It wouldn’t interest you.”
“Try me.”
“It’s not important,” she said. “I made a mistake and I’m sorry. Can’t we let it go at that?”
“No.”
“Pardon?”
“No, we can’t let it go at that. I want to get to the bottom of this, dammit. You’d better explain.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll take the gun away from you and spank your behind for you.”
She looked at me. “You know,” she said after a minute, “I believe that’s just what you’d do. That’s just the sort of thing a man like you might do.”
“So do I get the brass ring?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you going to tell me what all this nonsense is about?”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I have to, don’t I?”
I took the gun from her, looked at it cautiously, sniffed at the barrel the way the police always do in the movies and dropped it into the bureau drawer. Once the gun was in the drawer and the drawer shut I felt one hell of a lot better. Guns make me nervous.
Then I made her sit down on the bed, found a cigarette for her and a cigarette for me and lit both of them. I sat down on the chair — which no longer faced her window, but faced her instead — and took a deep drag on my cigarette. It was her show now and I waited for her to say something.