"What was that?"
"He fucked around."
"Did he really or did she just think so?"
"He made a pass at me. Oh, it was no big deal, just a casual, offhand sort of proposition. I was not greatly interested. The man looked like a chipmunk. I wasn't much flattered, either, because one sensed he did this sort of thing a lot and that it didn't mean I was irresistible. Of course I didn't say anything to Barb, but she had evidence of her own.
She caught him once at a party, necking in the kitchen with the hostess.
And I gather he was dipping into his welfare clients."
"What about his wife?"
"I gather he was dipping into her, too. I don't-"
"Was she having an affair with anybody?"
She leaned forward, took hold of her coffee mug. Her hands were large for a woman, their nails clipped short. I suppose long nails would be an impossible hindrance for a sculptor.
She said, "I was paying her a very low salary. You could almost call it a token salary. I mean, high-school kids got a better hourly rate for baby-sitting, and Barb didn't even get to raid the refrigerator. So if she wanted time off, all she did was take it."
"Did she take a lot of time off?"
"Not all that much, but I had the impression that she was taking an occasional afternoon or part of an afternoon for something more exciting than a visit to the dentist. A woman has a different air about her when she's off to meet a lover."
"Did she have that air the day she was killed?"
"I wished you'd asked me nine years ago. I'd have had a better chance of remembering. I know she left early that day but I don't have any memory of the details. You think she met a lover and he killed her?"
"I don't think anything special at this stage. Her husband said she was nervous about the Icepick Prowler."
"I don't think … wait a minute. I remember thinking about that afterward, after she'd been killed. That she'd been talking about the danger of living in the city. I don't know if she said anything specific about the Icepick killings, but there was something about feeling as though she was being watched or followed. I interpreted it as a kind of premonition of her own death."
"Maybe it was."
"Or maybe she was being watched and followed. What is it they say? 'Paranoiacs have enemies, too.'
Maybe she really sensed something."
"Would she let a stranger into the apartment?"
"I wondered about that at the time. If she was on guard to begin with-"
She broke off suddenly. I asked her what was the matter.
"Nothing."
"I'm a stranger and you let me into your apartment."
"It's a loft. As if it makes a difference. I-"
I took out my wallet and tossed it onto the table between us. "Look through it," I said. "There's an ID in it. It'll match the name I gave you over the phone, and I think there's something with a photograph on it."
"That's not necessary."
"Look it over anyway. You're not going to be very useful as a subject of interrogation if you're anxious about getting killed. The ID
won't prove I'm not a rapist or a murderer, but rapists and murderers don't usually give you their right names ahead of time. Go ahead, pick it up."
She went through the wallet quickly, then handed it back to me. I returned it to my pocket. "That's a lousy picture of you," she said. "But I guess it's you, all right. I don't think she'd let a stranger into her apartment. She'd let a lover in, though. Or a husband."
"You think her husband killed her?"
"Married people always kill one another. Sometimes it takes them fifty years."
"Any idea who her lover may have been?"
"It may not have been just one person. I'm just guessing, but she could have had an itch to experiment.
And she was pregnant so it was safe."
She laughed. I asked her what was so funny.
"I was trying to think where she would have met someone. A neighbor, maybe, or the male half of some couple she and her husband saw socially. It's not as though she could have met men on the job.
We had plenty of males there, but unfortunately none of them were over eight years old."
"Not very promising."
"Except that's not altogether true. Sometimes fathers would bring the kids in, or pick them up after work. There are situations more conducive to flirtation, but I had daddies come on to me while they collected their children, and it probably happened to Barbara. She was very attractive, you know. And she didn't wrap herself up in an old Mother Hubbard when she came to work at the Happy Hours. She had a good figure and she dressed to show it off."
The conversation went on a little longer before I got a handle on the question. Then I said, "Did you and Barbara ever become lovers?"
I was watching her eyes when I asked the question, and they widened in response. "Jesus Christ," she said.
I waited her out.
"I'm just wondering where the question came from," she said. "Did somebody say we were lovers? Or am I an obvious dyke or something?"
"I was told you left your husband for another woman."
"Well, that's close. I left my husband for thirty or forty reasons, I suppose. And the first relationship I had after I left him was with a woman. Who told you? Not Doug Ettinger. He'd moved out of the neighborhood before that particular shit hit the fan. Unless he happened to talk to somebody. Maybe he and Eddie got together and cried on each other's shoulder about how women are no good, they either get stabbed or they run off with each other. Was it Doug?"
"No. It was a woman who lived in your building on Wyckoff Street."
"Someone in the building. Oh, it must have been Maisie! Except that's not her name. Give me a minute. Mitzi! It was Mitzi Pomerance, wasn't it?"
"I didn't get her first name. I just spoke with her on the telephone."
"Little Mitzi Pomerance. Are they still married? Of course, they'd have to be. Unless he left, but nothing would propel her away from hearth and home. She'd insist her marriage was heaven even if it meant systematically denying every negative emotion that ever threatened to come to the surface. The worst thing about going back to visit the kids was the look on that twit's face when we passed on the stairs." She sighed and shook her head at the memory. "I never had anything going with Barbara.
Strangely enough, I never had anything going with anybody, male or female, before I split with Eddie.
And the woman I got together with afterward was the first woman I ever slept with in my life."
"But you were attracted to Barbara Ettinger."
"Was I? I recognized that she was attractive. That's not the same thing. Was I specifically attracted to her?" She weighed the notion.
"Maybe," she conceded. "Not on any conscious level, I don't think. And when I did begin to consider the possibility that I might find it, oh, interesting to go to bed with a woman, I don't think I had any particular woman in mind. As a matter of fact, I don't even think I entertained the fantasy while Barbara was alive."
"I have to ask these personal questions."
"You don't have to apologize. Jesus, Mitzi Pomerance. I'll bet she's fat, I'll bet she's a plump little piglet by now. But you only spoke to her over the phone."
"That's right."
"Is she still living in the same place? She must be. You wouldn't get them out of there with a crowbar."
"Somebody did. A buyer converted the house to one-family."
"They must have been sick. Did they stay in the neighborhood?"
"More or less. They moved to Carroll Street."
"Well, I hope they're happy. Mitzi and Gordon." She leaned forward, searched my face with her gray eyes. "You drink," she said.
"Right?"
"Pardon?"
"You're a drunk, aren't you?"
"I suppose you could call me a drinking man."
The words sounded stiff, even to me. They hung in the air for a moment and then her laughter cut in, full-bodied and rich. " 'I suppose you could call me a drinking man.' Jesus, that's wonderful. Well, I suppose you could call me a drinking woman, Mr. Scudder. People have called me a good deal worse, and it's been a long day and a dry one.