In the dim wattage of the lighting, Wilson could make out the peering eyes of a man with a Victorian moustache.
“I’m looking for back files,” Wilson explained. “Marvin Merkon and Nancy Stillwater.”
The man came further into the light. He was a polite-looking man, with a touch of gray about his hair. He looked like the type of man who’d wear a smoking jacket of an evening.
He looked like the type of man who, at this time of night, should be at home in his parlor poring over a copy of Dickens rather than hauling around a bunch of dusty documents in the basement of the Herald.
“I have all those files here,” the man reported, tapping the papers he was holding. “And you shouldn’t smoke down here. It’s rather dangerous with all this paperwork around.”
“Who are you?” Wilson asked.
“James Filbert, copyeditor. Who are you?”
“Wilson Hills, reporter.”
Filbert led Wilson back to the morgue’s entrance — at the foot of the stairs by the bottom of the elevator shaft.
Filbert explained to Wilson that the police had asked to see all the files pertaining to the Merkon murder and Nancy Stillwater. Filbert had spent two hours rounding up all the files, and no, Wilson could not look at them. They were to be handed to the police forthwith.
Wilson stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. Something dawned on him. “Are you Filbert? I mean, are you the Filbert?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the copyeditor who came up with the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder headline?”
Filbert looked a bit miffed. “That was my headline, what of it?”
“We’re still laughing about it on the fourth floor, that’s what of it.” Wilson’s grin suggested the laughter on the fourth floor wasn’t because they thought it was funny.
“Writing headlines is hardly writing Shakespeare,” Filbert sniffed. He spied blood on Wilson’s cheek. “Why are you bleeding?”
“Something wicked my way came. Nice to meet you, Filbert.”
Wilson made his way up the stairs back to the street. When he got to the top, he turned around and stepped back down to the basement. Since when was the newspaper handing over its archives to the police for their perusal?
When Wilson got back to the foot of the stairs he could hear Filbert before he could see him. Filbert was talking on the basement telephone. He was talking to the police. He was telling them that the fugitive they had been looking for was leaving the building, and if they wanted to catch him, they’d better hurry.
Wilson was about to get the hell out of there when Filbert did a curious thing. After he hung up the telephone, he put a cheroot to his lips, struck a match, and lit it up. After seeing this, Wilson got the hell out of there.
It was approaching midnight. Wilson headed to the bus terminal. He had a key to locker 221. He had a feeling he might need the contents of locker 221.
Wilson hadn’t got but three steps inside the terminal when a tall, beefy man in a brown suit grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around, and walked him back out again.
The beefy man walked Wilson across to a car — a black sedan. Its engine was running.
The beefy man tossed Wilson into the passenger’s seat as if he were an overcoat. He then walked around the car and got in himself.
Once behind the wheel, the big guy flicked on the headlamps, put the car into gear, and drove away.
“And you would be Bruno,” Wilson said, winding down the window.
“How you know my name?” Bruno asked, negotiating the traffic.
“I’m a reporter.”
“Is that what you do?”
Wilson noticed that Bruno had lips the size and shape of a prizefighter’s fingers, and chin stubble like a porcupine.
“Yeah, that’s what I do,” Wilson said. “You’re Nancy Stillwater’s boyfriend.”
They drove across town, until there were no more oncoming car headlamps and the street lighting had faded to nonexistent.
Bruno parked the black sedan out in the back of a run-down and dilapidated building. There was a sign by the back entrance: STAGE DOOR. It was held up by one remaining hinge.
Bruno flicked a switch on the fuse box. The lights came on. He walked Wilson out onto the stage of what had once been a rather splendid old theater, but had long fallen into decline.
There were some dusty decorations strewn about which suggested the last show the room had seen was a USO party eight years back — New Year’s, 1944.
“I got this place cheap,” Bruno explained. “I’m going to get in some people and fix it up.”
“I take it you didn’t bring me here to discuss the decorating,” Wilson replied.
Bruno dug his hand into his suit pocket. He pulled his hand out again and tossed a fistful of nuts into the air above his head. When the nuts came back down again, some went into his mouth, the rest landed on the wooden floor of the stage and scattered across it.
“Why’d you shoot Nancy?” Bruno asked, chomping on a mouthful of nuts.
“I didn’t shoot Nancy,” Wilson answered. “Are you sure you didn’t?”
Bruno shook his head. “Why would I shoot Nancy? Nancy was my wife.”
Wilson smiled politely. “That might not stand up in court.”
“I went out for beer,” Bruno explained. “When I come back, I see you being led out of my house by the police. I see Nancy being carried out on a stretcher — with her head covered.”
“I didn’t shoot Nancy,” Wilson said. “I’m a reporter. I only come into the picture after something’s happened.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Yeah, that’s what I do. Anyway, what’s with you and Nancy? Two years ago you were blowing a saxophone in a strip joint and she was a waitress. Nancy now owns a house up on Delshaw and you’ve gone into property investment.”
Bruno put his hand into his other pocket — only it wasn’t roasted nuts that he kept in that one.
Wilson stared down the unforgiving barrel of an M-1911.
“Do you sing?” Bruno asked.
“Do you have a request?”
“I like to sing. People tell me I have a beautiful voice.”
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“I wanted lessons when I was a kid, but my mother made me learn an instrument.”
“You have a beautiful voice. Want to point that .45 at someone else?”
“Nancy was my brain,” Bruno explained. “She thought of everything. I just played the part.”
“What was the picture?”
Bruno blankly stared at Wilson. Analogy and metaphor may as well have been types of pasta.
“What part did you play when you were playing your part?” Wilson asked.
“Nancy was an attractive woman,” Bruno explained. “All kind of guys was attracted to her.”
“Rich guys?”
“Yeah, rich guys. Rich guys with money.”
“How did it get to be your money?”
“They’d take Nancy out. They’d show her a good time.”
Wilson nodded knowingly. “And she’d show them an even better time.”
Bruno had that blank look again.
“We’ll put her down as a gracious hostess.”
“They had a good time,” Bruno said again, stiffly, on the verge of getting the point.
“So, how did you fit into it?” Wilson asked.
“I’d play the jealous husband.”
Wilson nodded. “Got it.”
“I’d show up, mess the guy up a bit. Pull a few buttons off his shirt.”
“And then you’d blackmail them?”
“Nancy would have them pay her money.”
“How much money?”
“A lot of money. She’d tell them I’d killed a man. She’d tell them I’d caught her fooling around once before.”