I stood up and put the white Bavarian cup on the glass-topped table. She stood up beside me, very close, and for an instant I had a dizzy notion that she was going to lean against me, and that I was going to put my arms around her and hold her, and that everything was somehow going to be suddenly different from what it was. But nothing like that happened, and nothing was different. I thanked her for the coffee and said good-bye, and she let me hold her hand again briefly.
“Are you still going to Amity?” she said. “Yes,” I said.
“Call me when you get back,” she said. “I will,” I said.
I met Graham Markley in the middle of the black-and-white acre. He turned around and walked with me to the door and held the door politely as I went out.
“No bad feelings, I hope,” he said.
“None at all,” I said.
He didn’t look as if he really cared, one way or the other.
11
As it turned out, I didn’t go to Amity that day. I intended to go, and I kept thinking that I’d surely get started pretty soon, but I was diverted by a couple of things that kept nagging me in the head. The first of these things was a hit-and-run accident that probably didn’t have anything to do with anything that concerned me; but it was, nevertheless, another loose end and bothersome. Once, over two years ago, it had played a part in the plans or the fantasy of Regis Lawler, if the story of Robin Robbins could be taken as true. And the story had been told so casually and briefly, as something no more than incidental to something else, that it had the smack of truth.
Robin had discounted it, however. To her, she’d said, it was only Scotch talking, and I was inclined to accept this as being what Robin thought was true, whether it was, in fact, the truth or not. To be sure, Robin was a sly character when it suited her; but I couldn’t credit her with the accomplished duplicity it would have taken to make such a beautifully casual reference with some kind of deliberate intent.
I went back to see Lud Anderson again. He wasn’t at his desk when I arrived, and it wasn’t known when, if ever, he’d be back. I sat down and began waiting and smoking, and it was six cigarettes and thirty minutes later when I saw him flapping toward me in a kind of modified version of the lope once affected by Groucho Marx. He flopped in his chair and opened the drawer of his desk and poured himself a paper cup full of milk. It seemed to me to be the same cup he’d used the last time, and I wondered if it were possible to be fatally poisoned over a period of time by an accretion of old butterfat. After a large swallow and an ulcerous face, he pulled up to his typewriter and rolled paper under the platen.
“How are you, Lud?” I said.
“I see you,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure. I don’t remember hearing you say hello.”
“I didn’t say it. I was ignoring you in the hope that you’d get the hell away.”
My inclination was to spit in his eye and go, but a man looking for a favor can’t afford sensitivity, so I pulled on my elephant hide and stayed. Along with his ulcer and his evil disposition, Lud had one of the most cluttered minds in existence among upper bipeds. And I wanted, with his permission and assistance, to poke around for a few minutes in the fabulous accumulation of odds and ends in his long skull.
“I won’t stay long,” I said. “I thought you might be willing to give me a little information.”
“About what?”
“A hit-and-run accident.”
“Come off it, Percy. How many hit-and-runs do you think happen in this city?”
“This one was out in a county. About two years ago. Probably longer. A woman was killed, and I don’t think it was ever solved.”
“Which county?”
“I don’t know. Not too far out. I’m hoping you can tell me. Just try to remember where a woman was killed about the time I said.”
He finished his milk and leaned back and closed his eyes, and in the enormous transformation that is sometimes worked by such small changes, he looked completely at peace and almost dead. He was really only sifting and sorting the clutter, however, and after a while he raised his lids and fixed me with a baleful eye.
“I remember the one you probably mean,” he said. “Woman’s name was Spatter. Perfectly mnemonic. Impossible to forget. Can you imagine any name more appropriate for anyone who gets knocked seven ways from Sunday by a speeding automobile?”
“It would certainly be difficult. You remember when it happened?”
“About when you said. Over two years ago, less than three. It wasn’t my job, and it’s vague.”
“Were there any suspects?”
“Not to my knowledge. Someone hit her and killed her and got away, that’s all.”
“You think the morgue would tell me anything?”
“Why should the morgue tell you anything? There were no witnesses. No clues. Nothing to tell.”
“Maybe I’ll go down and check it just the same.”
“It’s your time. If you want to waste it, go ahead.”
“Didn’t I tell you the other time I was here? Wasting time is what I’m getting paid to do. I suppose the state troopers investigated the thing.”
“Sure. And the sheriff. Good old Fat Albert.”
“Fat Albert Gerard?”
“Who else? Fat Albert’s been sheriff off and on since then. All he has to do is put his name on the ballot, and that’s just about all he does do. Rakes off a little here and there. Gets a little fatter on the gravy. Don’t expect Fat Albert to know anything.”
“I used to know Fat Albert when I was a kid. I was born in his county seat, as a matter of fact. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk with him.”
“What could it hurt?” Lud looked at me through slits, as if he could not bear the sight of me full view, but I saw in the slits a bright gleam of interest. “Yesterday you were in here asking about the Markley dame. Today you’re back asking about an old hit-and-run. You working two jobs or trying to make a connection?”
“No connection. Not with Markley. Thanks, Lud. I’ll send you a quart of milk.”
“Go to hell,” he said.
Instead, I went down to the morgue, but it didn’t pay. About all I learned that I didn’t know was the exact date of the accident, which was no more significant than the approximate date, which I’d known already. If it was a loose end of anything that I was trying to put together and make tidy, it was still loose, and I was still wasting time for pay. I left the morgue and walked down the street toward my car.
In a phone booth, I used the directory but not the phone. All I wanted was an address, and the address I wanted was Colly Alder’s. Specifically, Colly’s office. I was curious about something I frequently get curious about.
Why, I mean, does a person who wants a private detective hire one particular private detective instead of another particular private detective? I suppose the same question could be raised relative to doctors and dentists and lawyers. But there are more people who hire doctors and dentists and lawyers, and there are, therefore, more and easier ways to find out about the ones they hire. Very few people hire detectives, relative speaking. And how do the relative few who do, decide which one? Do they just shop around until they find one with good references? Do they just pick a name they like from the yellow pages? It’s an interesting speculation in which I’ve indulged, and right now I was speculating as to why Graham Markley, who could have afforded anybody, had hired Colly, who was practically nobody. The answer was something I wanted to get, and I thought that I might even be willing to pull Colly’s nose to get it.
The office was in a better building in a better block of a better street than I had expected. The office itself, congruously, was also better. It was, as a matter of fact, a suite of offices, if you can call two rooms a suite. There was an outer office and an inner office, and the inner office had a door with a nice pane of frosted glass and Colly’s name on the glass above the word PRIVATE. The outer office was small, as was the inner; but both were nicely appointed, and one of the nicest appointments in the outer was a small-sized secretary-receptionist. If I had to describe this small-sized secretary-receptionist in a word, I would say that she was cute. She had curly titian hair and sassy eyes and a pert nose and alert breasts and agreeable legs. She had, besides, an indefinable air of being more than merely employed.