I picked him up again and jammed him against the wall and put the edge of the blade under his chin. He sweated wine from every pore. He chewed me out in thick jumbled Spanish.
“What was this supposed to be?” I said. “Your afternoon workout?”
“Ain’t no goddam cop gonna come around here actin’ wise,” he said.
“What do you care how she earns her money? What are you to her, anyway?”
“Anything I want to be, buster,” he said.
I glanced back over my shoulder. The woman was wearily putting on her dress again. This whole bit didn’t interest her.
“Suppose you tell me where I can find Rose?”
“Suppose you — ” he said.
“You gonna cut his throat or not?” the woman said in a hard voice.
“I’m working up to it,” I said.
“You won’t get nothin’ from him,” she said with a little rattling laugh. “He ain’t afraid of nothin’. Cut his throat and he’ll kick your ass off while he’s bleeding to death.”
“Isn’t that lovely?” I said. She was probably right.
“I don’t want you to have to maul him,” she said. “Rose lives with a guy now.”
“Where?”
“Two months ago it was a walkup over on Chambliss. Twenty-five-ten Chambliss. Today it might be somewhere else.”
I pounded the guy’s head against the wall and let him go. He staggered to the table and leaned hard on it. There was blood on his lips.
I gave the woman the five dollars. She took it and held it while she zipped the dress. The guy straightened up, looked at me, looked at the five dollars. He walked over to her, stumbling slightly. He took the five dollars and belted her across the face. They glared at each other.
“Nex’ time you don’t go shooting your mouth off,” he said, breathing hard. She didn’t say anything. Her cheeks had flushed red.
“I’ll leave your knife downstairs with the bartender,” I said. “Maybe you better go down to the juvenile hall and get some kid to show you how to use it before you wave it around again.”
I went downstairs and handed the knife to the bartender. He looked it over and looked at me. I walked on out. I was happy to be leaving.
The address on Chambliss turned out to be an old brick apartment building in a mixed neighborhood just a couple of blocks from a Negro slum. The only whites in the neighborhood were those who couldn’t afford to move somewhere else, and the liquor-store owners.
On the front porch an aging woman with skin that looked as if it were stuck to her face with rubber cement told me that a woman named Rose lived on the third floor. She told me to use the back stairs.
I walked through the narrow concrete-paved areaway between two buildings. Small children were playing on the entire length of it, and in the barren back yard. They climbed on the shed roof and crawled behind the row of garbage cans and waded in the small pools of muddy water. Older children sat on the steps and looked at me with dull, arrogant eyes as I brushed by them.
It was a long climb to the third floor. I stopped a couple of times on the landings, then brushed by lines hung with sodden wash and climbed on until I came to the right door.
I could see the woman through an open kitchen window. She was washing dishes in a pan on the sink and having a hard time of it. Her lips were pursed in concentration. She turned at the sound of my fist against the door, dried her hand on an apron and came to the door.
She had waxy yellow hair and tight good skin that wouldn’t wrinkle no matter what her age. She might have been forty, but I couldn’t be sure. Her hair was combed straight back and tied with a piece of faded purple ribbon.
“Rose?” I said.
“Yes?” She bent quickly to push a puppy back into the kitchen, with her one hand. When I knew her she had both arms. Now the left one was cut off below the shoulder, and the short sleeve of the dress she wore was tied down over the stump.
“My name’s Pete Mallory. I used to know you about six years ago, when you were at The Rendezvous.”
Mention of The Rendezvous caused her to frown. She tugged a little at the apron with her hand. “I don’t believe I remember you. At The Rendezvous — ” She shrugged. Her mouth had a slightly bitter twist to it.
“I know,” I said. The puppy was trying to squirm outside again and this time she held him back with a small foot. “You see, I’m looking for a man. I thought if I could find the Preacher or someone like that, he could help me.” The Preacher was sort of a code name for a man who had sold information about anything and everything.
She shook her head. “The Preacher’s dead. He died about five years ago.”
“Oh. I guess that had to happen,” I said.
“He wasn’t killed. He had a heart attack. I’m afraid I can’t help you. I left The Rendezvous months ago.” She looked without meaning to at the tied-off sleeve.
“I thought maybe you knew someone like The Preacher who could tell me what I need to know.”
“No. No.” She shook her head emphatically. But she kept looking at me as if her memory were beginning to thaw a little. “I don’t know any man like that any more. I haven’t known any since I left The Rendezvous.”
She tried to close the door. But I was leaning against the jamb and she couldn’t push it past me. “Are you sure you don’t remember me?” I said.
Little paths of perspiration covered her face. “No,” she breathed. “No, I don’t. Please go away.”
“I saved your life once,” I said quietly. “I kept a drunk from tearing your throat out with a broken bottle. You probably don’t remember, because you were drunk, too. But I had to kick in a door to get at him. I’ve got a little scar from that on my hand, where a splinter of wood gouged me.” I looked at the hand. “You can’t see it so good any more,” I added.
Her eyes were large and she looked a little frightened. “I don’t believe you. Get out of the door and go away and leave me be.”
“You’ve got a scar, too, where the bottle raked you as he fell. There should be a scar, anyway, right near your hip. It was a deep cut.”
She tottered back a couple of steps, her eyes on my face. “I... I have that scar,” she said.
I pushed the door open and came inside. I stopped and scooped up the puppy. He squirmed in my hands and chewed at the cuff of my coat.
“Now I need help, Rose,” I said.
“Don’t expect me to be able to help you,” she said. She leaned against a table covered with a red-and-white checkered cloth. “I don’t know anything now. Once I gave information.” She put the hand to her face. There was a slight look of shock in her eyes. “And once I had none to give.” Her eyes ranged from me to the floor and then to the sink, like wild things. “That time I had none to give, they thought I was lying. They were big men. Foreign. They didn’t care that I was a woman. They had my arm.” Her eyes went to the sleeve and were full of horror that hadn’t diminished with the passing of time. “They twisted it. And... twisted it—”
“That’s enough,” I said.
Her lips were apart. They were dry lips, with no touch of red. “Now you want information and I don’t have any to give. I don’t know anything.”
I put the puppy down before he could ruin my sleeve. “I’ll go,” I said. “I’m sorry for — bothering you.”
“Wait.” She straightened up from the table, swallowed hard. “It was a worthless life,” she said. “But you saved it. You must have, or you wouldn’t know about the scar. Now I’ve got a good man. A good man to make something of the worthless life.”
She walked to the sink with quick steps, filled a glass with water. “This man you want — what is he?”
“A hired killer, I think.”
She nodded, once. “Then you speak to Dave. Dave might be able to help you.”