She went to the clothes closet and put on a slip and a knitted dress. Sitting at the dressing table, again, she slipped on her shoes and applied some lipstick. “Tell me about your wife,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror. Weren’t you in love with her?”
”Sure,” I said. “But we wore it out fighting. She wanted me to quit the ship and get some kind of job ashore. But hell, there’s nothing I could do ashore that would pay anything like the same money. I couldn’t stand it, anyway.”
“What was she like?”
“Nice, but hot-tempered. A redhead with one of those complexions you can almost see through. She’s a couple of years older than I am. A nightclub singer. Not a very good one, I guess, and when I met her she wasn’t singing in very good clubs, but she hated to give it up. She was married once before.”
She frowned thoughtfully, checking the lipstick. “If it was all over and you were about to break up anyway, why did you want to fight Stedman? That was childish.”
“I know, I know. It was stupid. But I just didn’t like the smug bastard.”
She clucked chidingly. “De mortuis—”
“What’s that?”
“The smug bastard’s dead. Call him something else.”
“All right.”
She removed a grayish fur coat from the closet and draped it across her shoulders. “Don’t get absent-minded and answer the phone if it rings. Or the buzzer downstairs.” She went out.
I made it to the bathroom on legs like overcooked spaghetti and had a shower. I found the safety razor, put in a new blade, and shaved. My face was gaunt, as if I’d lost ten pounds in the past four days. The puffy place on my jaw was better now and was hardly noticeable, but the eye was still discolored even though some of the swelling was gone. I put on the pajamas and robe she’d told me about and went out in the living room.
It was a large room, carpeted in gray, with a long picture window on the left. The rose-colored curtains were closed, but they let in a little light, and when I parted them slightly and looked out I saw the building faced a park. The weather had turned clear now, but it was sunset, and the bare trees looked cold. I turned away and switched on a light.
There was a screened fireplace of Roman brick beside the window, and the whole wall next to the bedroom was lined with books. Opposite the window, near the front door, was a long blond console that appeared to be a hi-fi system, and three watercolors in heavy, bleached wood frames. The sofa and chairs were lightweight and modern-
There were two doors at the far end of the room. I went over and looked in the one on the left. It was a small study, lined solidly with books except for one window that was covered with dark green drapes. There was a desk that held a covered typewriter. A shaded lamp was suspended above it.
The other door led into a small dining room, and just beyond it was a long, rather narrow kitchen. I went in and switched on the light, feeling faint with hunger. The only thing edible in the refrigerator was a piece of cheese and half a bottle of milk. I ate a slice of the cheese and drank a glass of milk. Then I ransacked the cupboards. I found some vermouth and gin and an unopened can of salted peanuts. Locating a pitcher, I broke out some ice cubes, mixed a batch of Martinis, poured one, and put the rest in the refrigerator. Opening the can of peanuts, I carried them out into the living room.
Something dropped on the rug outside the door. It sounded like a newspaper. I put down the Martini and peanuts and listened for a moment. Then I peered out. The corridor was empty, and the evening paper was lying just under my feet. I snatched it up and closed the door. Switching on a reading light at the end of the sofa, I took a sip of the Martini and spread it open. I was across two columns of the front page.
SEAMAN CONTINUES
TO ELUDE DRAGNET
“Feb. 21 . . . Russell Foley, local seaman sought in connection with the slaying last Tuesday of police detective Charles L. Stedman, was still at large this afternoon in spite of an intensive search now going into its third day. Police are convinced he is still in the city, and all bus and railway terminals and the airport are being closely watched . . .”
The story went on with an account of the two times I’d been seen last night. The description was chillingly accurate, right down to the black eye. My apartment was being watched. If I stepped outside the next few days they’d have me within an hour. They were making a block by block search of all cheap hotels and flophouses. They knew I’d holed up somewhere or I’d have frozen to death last night. The police commissioner and Chief of Police were promising action. If they got their hands on me it was. going to be rough; I was a cop killer, and I’d been making a city’s whole police force look silly for four days.
On the second page was a rehash of the fight and of the arrival of the police to find Stedman dead with the hunting knife in his throat. It was substantially the same as I’d pieced it together from Red’s account and that on the radio, except that the patrolmen hadn’t forced the door. The manager had let them in. There was no mention of anyone else at all. I was it. All they had to do was get their hands on me and the whole thing was solved. And all that was standing between me and them at the moment was a girl who was interested in me because she was bored.
Seven
The Martini made me dizzy and gave everything a gauzy effect. I didn’t dare pour another; as weak and empty as I was, two would drop me on the floor. She came back in a little over an hour, carrying a large bag of groceries and looking excited. I tried to help her but she shook her head. We went out in the kitchen and unpacked the bag. It held the biggest double sirloin I had ever seen and some frozen french-fried potatoes and a half-gallon carton of milk among other things.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said, “but first we start this food. Put my coat away, will you, Irish?”
I took it into the bedroom and hung it in the closet. When I returned she was putting the frozen potatoes in the oven and turning on the broiler. She broke out a box of frozen broccoli and put that on, then started some coffee. I leaned against the refrigerator and watched her. In the high heels she was nearly as tall as I was, and the way she dominated and sculptured a knit dress was something to see.
“I’m no cook,” she said, “but I do think we have to let that steak sit awhile at room temperature.”
“Here,” I said. I opened the refrigerator and poured her a Martini. “Tell me this news you’ve got.”
“Aren’t you having one?” she asked.
“I already have. One more and you’ll have to shoot that steak into my arm.”
We went into the living room. She kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on a hassock. The hardboiled gray eyes were alight with interest. “It’s about Purcell,” she said. “He committed suicide. But he couldn’t have.”
“That’s what you went to the library for?”
She nodded. “I’ve been going through the back files of the papers. Then I called a friend of mine on the Express. He’s on the police beat and knew Purcell. Hand me my purse, will you, Irish?”
I got it for her. She took out a small notebook.
“Here we are,” she said. “The official verdict was suicide, but the police have never been quite satisfied with it. Lanigan summed it up pretty well when he said he was a real cool cat. He was tough, in a civilized sort of way, one of the few college-educated men on the force, strictly on the make, but highly competent. He was a detective First Grade and was a cinch to make Sergeant the next time around. He’d been married for three years to a very nice girl. Good health and no difficult financial troubles that anybody knew anything about. Nothing crooked on his record. In his ten years on the force he’d had to kill two men, but I suppose that’s the risk you take in being a police officer. Doesn’t seem likely they would have bothered him. They were both men with long records, and dangerous, and in both cases he was exonerated.”