“And you got over it.”
“Not quickly, Gevan. I wrote you fifty letters and tore them all up. I dreamed of running away and coming to see you. How do crushes die, anyway? I don’t know. You have to dream so many useless dreams and get so many pillows damp, and walk just so far in the rain, and then one day you are over it, and it is all like something pressed in a book and you know how ridiculous you’ve been. Gevan, it was partly your fault, because you were so very nice with me when I was green. So gentle and understanding. So very patient. You know, I used to feel actually physically dizzy when you’d call me into the office.”
“Good Lord!” I said.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t look so alarmed. I’m not the same person I was.”
It wasn’t easy to adjust to this new Joan Perrit. I had seen her as a shy, awkward, nervous girl. I had never seen or suspected the spirit underneath. While she had told me about herself, she had become completely alive, her face mobile, gestures quick, voice vibrant.
“I wish I’d known it at the time.”
“No you don’t, Gevan. I was a very silly girl.”
“Then maybe I wish it was still going on.”
She tilted her head. “Isn’t that a rather odd thing to say?”
“I’m sorry. I spoke before I thought. I guess you have all that — affection focused on somebody else by now.”
“Actually, no.”
“But I’d think you’d want to have—” I stopped just short of working myself into an impossible corner and realized she was laughing at me, and I blushed.
“The place for the working girl is home,” she said, looking at her watch. I signaled the waiter. She told me her address and how to find it. It was a narrow, quiet street in an old residential section. We had a last cigarette in the car. She said, “Do think seriously about coming back to work, Gevan. I think of you down there in Florida, and I think of what a waste it is.”
“I’ve been out too long. I just want to stay around long enough to swing my vote in the right direction, and then I’ll go back. I... I’d like to see you again before I go back, Perry.”
“Why?”
The blunt question irritated me. “Because maybe I had a good time tonight.”
“Much to your surprise? Good night, Gevan. Don’t bother to walk me to the door.”
She shut the car door and was gone. The hall light in the house was on. I saw her silhouetted against it, saw the door open. She turned and waved and went into the house. I drove slowly away, thinking about her. It was both amusing and flattering to know how she had once felt. She had changed into a handsome, poised young woman. It was odd to learn you had lost something you never knew you had.
I found the street I wanted and turned south, toward the South Valley Road.
Chapter 7
It was midnight when I got to The Pig and It. It was a small white building, garishly lighted, set in the middle of a huge, floodlighted parking area. A juke, amplified beyond all reason, blared from speakers set on posts. There were a few dozen cars in the lot. A damp night wind was blowing and the car hops looked chilly, full of false bravado, in their crisp little mid-thigh skirts, white boots, Russian blouses, and perky hats.
A blonde one came up to my car window with order pad and I said, “Is Lita on tonight?”
“Yeah. You wanner?”
“Please.”
“Sure thing,” she said and walked toward the other girls, rolling heavy hips. A dark girl came toward the car. She was small-bodied, and her legs were thin. She came to the car window and looked in at me. Her dark eyes were large in her white face and her expression was one of surly indifference.
“You want something with me?”
“If you’re Lita Genelli, I do.”
“That’s me, mister. What’s on your mind?”
“My name is Dean, Lita. Gevan Dean.”
She looked blank for a moment and then her eyes went wider, and she bit her lip. “Dean! Jesus! It was your brother who — say, what do you want with me?”
“I talked to Walter Shennary. Sergeant Portugal told me you tried to give Shennary an alibi. I wondered if you were telling Portugal the truth or lying to him. I want to be certain they’ve got the man who murdered my brother.”
“Hold it a sec,” she said. She hurried toward the building to see the clock inside. She hurried back. “I want to talk to you, but I can’t talk here.” She dug into the pocket of her short red skirt, pulled out a handful of change, found a key in with the change, and handed it to me. Our hands touched. Her fingers were cold. “You go a hundred yards down the road, down that way. It’s the Birdland Motel. This is my key. It’s number nine. The next to the last one on the far end, the right end as you’re facing the place. Park right in front. Nobody will bother you. Go right on in and wait for me. I’m supposed to be on till one, but it’s a slow night and maybe I can get off quicker. Make yourself at home, Mr. Dean. There’s liquor and soda and ice in the kitchen. Turn on the radio if you want, and read the magazines. Please, will you wait for me?”
“Okay, Lita.”
“Remember, it’s number nine and nobody will bother you.”
She stepped back, hugging herself against a raw wind as I drove out. I parked where she told me to. Red neon told the world there was no vacancy. My headlights illuminated liverish-yellow stucco, small sagging wooden stoops, windows with discouraged curtains, a window box full of dead stalks.
I let myself into a dark room that smelled of dust and perfume, of laundry and stale liquor, of bedclothes and girl. I used a match to find the light switch beside the door. It turned on a ceiling light with a single bulb and the bodies of bugs in the reflector. Her bed was a studio couch and she had left before making it. On the table near it was a coffee cup with coffee dried in the bottom of it. There were the charred black lines of forgotten cigarettes on the edges of the furniture. The room had an unkempt, cluttered look, a look of stale loves and brutal hangovers.
On a chair was a stack of newspapers, and the top one was the paper containing the account of my brother’s murder. AILAND EXECUTIVE SLAIN. Prowler Shoots Kendall Dean, with a picture of Ken, taken long ago, with half-smile and quiet eyes.
I read the accounts, then looked at the room. In the glow of the overhead bulb it was a grubby place. A man like Portugal could understand this place. A man could go out from a place like this with a gun in his hand and his belly full of rye. The room made me feel quixotic. I could tell myself that I could understand these people, but I knew I didn’t. And I wanted to leave, and be content with Portugal’s shrewdness, but I had gone so far that, even assuming Shennary’s guilt, it would be a needless act of cruelty toward the girl. She wanted her man free. I still wondered what sort of person she was. I made certain the blinds were closed. I began a bungling, amateurish search of the room.
I found letters in the top drawer of a maple-finish dressing table. I hesitated for a moment, and then took them over to where the light was better. I read a few of them. They were nearly all penciled on cheap stationery, and addressed to her at the Birdland Motel or The Pig and It. They all had a pattern:
Lita, baby— The rig busted at Norfolk and I missed the Buffalo load, so I won’t see you as soon as I figured. I got a load to K. C. now and maybe there I can get one to Philly which will bring me by there and you know I will be stopping so be on the lookout for me honey. We had us a time and I’m looking forward to seeing you soon again.