“You work at Friend House?”
“I’m the director there.”
“And you were an eyewitness to John Wade being murdered?”
She stopped. Stared at me. “Charlene said you were going to ask me that. What is it you want, Mr. Parnell?”
“I’m just looking into some things for a client.”
“I see.”
Her beautiful eyes held mine for a long time. Then we were walking again.
Behind us, the man in the blue vinyl coat was limping along.
She said, “These are getting heavy, Mr. Parnell. Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer to carry them, after all.”
I felt almost idiotically blessed by her decision to let me help her in some small way.
The first thing you noticed about Friend House was the new paint job. A two-story frame house with a long front porch and a steep, sloping roof, Friend House looked as if it had been lifted out of a very nice middle-class neighborhood and set down here, in the middle of this bombed-out neighborhood, to serve as a reminder of the lifestyle that awaited those plucky and lucky enough to seize it.
The new casement windows sported smart black trim, the roof vivid new red tiles, and the new aluminum front door a dignified gray that complemented perfectly the new white paint.
Inside, the marvels continued, each room I saw was a model of middle-class decorum. Nothing fancy, you understand; nothing ostentatious, just plain good furniture, just plain good taste, including a red-brick fireplace with an oak mantel in the living room and country-style decor throughout.
Here and there along the trim, or in a slightly crooked line of wallpaper, you could see that the refurbishment had not been perfect but it was easy to see that what had probably been a run-down house had been transformed, despite a few flaws, into a real beauty.
In the kitchen, I set the groceries on a butcher block table and turned to see two young women watching me.
“Dora, Janie, this is Mr. Parnell, the man Charlene told us would be coming.” She looked at me and smiled. “And Mr. Parnell, we’re the three eyewitnesses you wanted to interview. Along with Phil Warren, we’re the ones who went to the police.” She nodded to a silver coffee urn on the white stove and said, “Would you care for a cup?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
After the coffee came in a hefty brown mug, the four of us sat at the kitchen table. Steam had collected on one of the kitchen windows and was now dripping down; beyond the pane you could see the hard gray November sky. In the oven a coffee cake was baking, filling the air with sweet smells. I felt warm for the first time in an hour, and pleasantly dulled.
Dora was a white girl of perhaps twenty. She wore a blue jumper and a white turtleneck sweater and her blonde hair was caught back in a leather catch. She said, “Charlene says you wouldn’t tell her why you were asking questions, Mr. Parnell.”
I smiled. “Nothing all that mysterious. I’m trying to find out a few things about the woman who shot John Wade.”
“About the woman?” Janie said. She was Dora’s black counterpart — almost prim in her starched aqua blouse and V-neck sweater and fitted gray skirt. “About the woman?” she repeated, glancing at Karen.
Karen said, “I’m afraid we don’t know much about the woman, Mr. Parnell.”
From my pocket, I took out the newspaper clipping and read to them the gospel according to the Tribune, from the account of the shooting itself, to the description of the murderess.
“Is that about the way it happened?” I asked when I’d finished reading.
“Exactly,” Karen Dooley said.
“She didn’t say anything?”
“Say anything?” Karen asked, obviously the official spokesperson for the three of them.
“The woman. The killer. She didn’t shout anything at Wade?”
“Not that I heard,” Karen said. “Do either of you two girls remember hearing anything?”
They shook their heads.
“And then she just got in her car and sped away, right?”
“Right.”
“The same kind of car as described in the newspaper account, right?”
“Right.”
“And that’s about it?”
“That’s about it.”
“You never saw her previously; you’ve never seen her since?”
“Right.”
Dora put her pert nose into the air. “I’d say that coffee cake’s about done.” She smiled her lopsided smile. “Mrs. Weiderman upstairs will sure be glad to hear about that.”
She got up and went over to the stove, grabbing a wide red oven mitt on the way. “You’ll want some of this, Mr. Parnell.”
I looked back at Karen. “So all you saw—”
“—was exactly what it said we saw. In the paper, I mean.” She laughed. “We’re kind of frustrating, aren’t we? We had the same effect on the police. They went over and over our story but this is about all they could get from us.”
Janie put down her coffee cup and said, “We were scared, Mr. Parnell. I know that people who live outside the neighborhood think that we get used to all the violence, but we don’t. We get scared just like everybody else.”
Dora opened the oven door. Billows of warm air tumbled toward us bearing the wonderful scent of coffee cake. “The truth is, we don’t know what happened, Mr. Parnell, because we were so frightened we tried to duck behind a lightpole. I know that sounds pathetic, but that’s what we did.” She grinned. “Three of us behind the same lightpole.”
“And anyway,” Karen said, “it happened very quickly. It was over in no more than half a minute or so. She just stepped from her car and shot him.”
“And then got back in and drove away,” Janie said.
“And we never saw her again,” Dora said.
“Honest,” Karen said.
The cake cut and cooled slightly, Janie served me a formidable wedge. She also gave me more coffee.
While I was eating, two very old people came into the kitchen, one with a chrome walker, the other with a cane. Both were men. Karen introduced us. We all nodded. She told them about the cake they’d have in their rooms. They smiled like children. Dora led them away.
When I was nearly finished, a young man came into the kitchen and stood watching me eat. I tried not to be self-conscious. He was probably Janie’s age, of mixed blood, and wore a BEARS sweatshirt and jeans. He twitched very badly and in the course of a minute or so, teared up twice, as if overcome by terrible emotion.
Karen, who had excused herself to go to the bathroom, came back, saw him and said, “Kenny, this is Mr. Parnell.”
Kenny bobbed his head in my direction. He looked both suspicious and exhausted.
Just then Dora appeared. Karen gave her Kenny’s elbow as if she were passing off a baton. “Why don’t you go back to your room, Kenny, and Dora will give you some coffee cake.”
“Jackie Gleason’s on,” Kenny said. “Pretty soon.”
“I forgot,” Karen said tenderly, “how much you like Jackie Gleason.”
“I like Ed Norton more,” Kenny said.
“Good,” Karen said and glanced at Dora, who led Kenny away.
Karen came back to the table and sat across from me. “Would you like some more coffee cake, Mr. Parnell?”
“It’s tempting but I think I’ve had enough.” I looked around the kitchen. “You’ve got a nice place here. What is it — a shelter of some kind?”
“I guess that’s a fair way to put it. Friend House is a place where anybody in the neighborhood can come and stay for a while when things get too bad on the street. Those two older gentlemen, for instance, they’re staying here because the landlord of their apartment house didn’t pay the gas bill — and they’re too old to freeze. Soon as the gas goes back on, we’ll take them back. And Kenny — well, he’s trying to kick heroin. Right now, he’s very afraid of going to a clinic. His brother died there of some complications with methadone. We had a doctor check Kenny and the doctor said Kenny was fine to stay here for a few days.”