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"I'm not interested in the apartment? But he had to follow her to the door to say it, and she prodded him inside before he got it across.

"This call you put in-it was you?-"

"And what about it?" said Mrs. Bragg. "Got a right to call the police, I hope, I pay taxes, and not the first time either since them Johnstones've been in Number Three. I don't mind folk taking a drink now and then, and it's none of my business are they really married or not, which I don't think they are, but when it comes to getting roaring drunk three nights a week average, and taking 'em both as it does, him trying to beat her up and her yelling blue murder, well, l've got my other tenants to think of, I hope you can understand that-"

"Yes, of course, why don't you get rid of them?"

"0h, well, she's a nice woman when she isn't drunk, quite the lady, and the rent on the dot first of every month. Funny thing is, it never lasts long, you see-half an hour and they quiet down. Beats me what fun they get out of it, but there it is, it takes all sorts. Thing is, it went on a bit longer Friday night, and I thought it might kind of bring them to their senses if I called the police, which it did as it has before-they quieted down soon as they come and the older one, he gave 'em a good talking-to, and never a peep out of them afterwards? She eyed him speculatively. "Might be real handy, have one of you here all the time.

You're sure you don't want to move? It's a real nice apartment-now you're here you might's well see over it, just on the chance. Three and a half rooms, all utilities, and furnished real nice if I do say so-just take a look around-and only ninety a month. The gentleman I've just lost out of it, he was a real gentleman, if he did have a funny name-Twelvetrees it was, Mr. Brooke Twelvetrees, kind of elegant-sounding at that when you say it, isn't it?-and he took real good care of everything, I was sorry to see him go. You can see he left everything in apple-pie order, to tell the truth I haven't got round to cleaning it up myself since, except for emptying the wastebasket and so on. Which, however, would be done before you moved in, even to windows washed. Handy to everything, market two blocks away, and thirty minutes to downtown. Now you can see-"

Submerged in the flood, Mendoza was swept ruthlessly across the tiny living room (pink Bowers in the rug, Prussian blue mohair davenport, blond step-table beside a maroon-upholstered chair) into an even tinier bedroom, in which there was just room for a double bed of blond finished pine, a bureau enameled cream, and a straight chair. The bed bore a pink chenille spread with fringe, and there was a small bedside table with a lamp about nine inches high which wore a madly ruffled shade very much askew. The rug here had maroon flowers.

Mrs. Bragg pounded the bed vigorously. "Good mattress, good as new, you can see. Oh, I tell you, I was sorry to see Mr. Twelvetrees go-a real gentleman he was, and finicky as a lady, you can see by the way he left everything so neat. Here's the bathroom, shower and tub if they are all together so to speak, and real tile, not that plastic stuff." It was mauve, and the shower curtain was embellished with improbably blue fish.

"I'm really not interested-"

"Plenty of closet space, even for a man like Mr. Twelvetrees and he had as many clothes as a woman, you shoulda seen-a real snappy dresser he was. And the kitchen, if I do say, is all nice and modern as anybody'd want-” Mendoza was prodded back across the living room to the kitchen, to admire a very small table with chromium-tube legs and a rose-colored plastic top, chairs to match, real blue tile on the drainboard, a practically new refrigerator and stove. Mrs. Bragg pounded the table to illustrate its sturdiness, and it rocked violently.

"There now, he's got it over the trap-you don't need to worry about that, it's just what they call access for the plumber, case they have to get at the line underneath, and it don't hardly show a bit, you can see, it covered with the same linoleum. You see, it's steady as a rock, you get it in the right place. Everything handy. I don't deny it's small, but arranged very convenient, as you can see-" She made a sudden dart at the narrow kitchen door and snatched up an object from the threshold: I a shiny new trowel. "So that's where my trowel got to-he musta been at that Tree of Heaven again. Real helpful he was, and quite the gardener, I often said to him, ‘You ought have a place of your own.' He even got me some special plant food for the blamed thing, but it didn't seem to do no good. Well, now, you can see what a bargain the place is at ninety-"

"But really I'm not interested in another apartment-”

"-And I'm not one of those fussy landladies, either. Men will be men, single ones, that is, and some of the others, and women I don't mind, none of my business and live and let live I always say, as long as everything's quiet and no rowdy parties. The only thing I do draw the line at-just in the interests of my investment here, as you can understand-is pets and children, that I can't have-"

Mendoza, between fascination and the feeling that he might willy-nilly find himself signing a lease on the spot, perceived that Providence was rescuing him. He said in that case the apartment would never do, as he had some cats. "Cats!" exclaimed Mrs. Bragg, recoiling a step.

"Three cats," said Mendoza. "That is, a cat and two kittens."

"Cats I will not have. I'm afraid if you want the apartment you'll have to get rid of them." She looked at him disapprovingly, he had disappointed her. Something peculiar about a man who kept cats, and three at that.

"I'm only curious," said Mendoza, recovering his equilibrium, "but do you say that to prospective tenants with children?"

"Tenants with children or pets I don't take. I'm sorry, but you should have explained that to start with and I needn't have wasted time showing you over the place. I'm very sorry, but I can't make any exception." She all but pushed him out the door. "I'm sure you can understand that it's ruination on a furnished place."

Mendoza got back into his car as she banged her own front door.

" Quid! " he said to himself. "And my grandmother asks me why I don't marry a wife! A ningun precio -not at any price, take such a chance!"

THREE

He looked, in the places indicated to look, and found nothing. If there was anything funny anywhere, it didn't show in any way. He saw the kids again, the insolent, sullen kids who didn't clearly understand that they'd done anything wrong, just resented the cops for putting them in jail. Who said sullenly, insolently, that the cops were making scapegoats of them (though they didn't use that word) on the Bartlett thing-probably had some reason to put Bartlett away themselves and were covering for the real killer.

He even thought about that, but not for very long, because while all cops in uniform and out, who carried guns at all, carried. 38's, they weren't smooth bores and Ballistics would have spotted it right away. He looked back in the records over Joe Bartlett's career, and at the family, and it was all one big blank.

Hackett went to see everybody again, and it all sounded just the way it had before. Hackett said, "I told you so. Walsh, he hadn't had the experience, that's all, and it shook him-only natural."

Mendoza began to agree. You just didn't run into the kind of thing it would be if it wasn't those juveniles-the fiction-plot thing, the obscure complexity.

Walsh had come to see him on Tuesday, and by Thursday, having taken his closer look at it, Mendoza stopped looking. He saw Walsh again on Friday, and told him it looked like a mare's nest. And after Walsh had thanked him for listening anyway, and gone, he sat there with a couple of days' work in front of him and felt uneasy about it. He didn't know why. It wasn't a hunch; it wasn't the kids' stubborn denial, although there was a little something there, all right: it had made them feel like big-time pros to have shot that cashier; that one they hadn't tried to deny-of course they couldn't, there were witnesses. And the cashier hadn't died after alclass="underline" the homicide charge depended entirely on Bartlett.