“Naw, I was awake,” said Bart.
He didn’t like Gloria, and didn’t mind showing it. Jordan thought, He hates everybody but his sister and himself.
Bart limped back into his bedroom slowly.
Elsa said hurriedly, “Ron just moved in today. He’s from St. Louis.”
“Today? Then he — does he—” Gloria stopped.
Elsa said, again quickly, “Let me get you a drink.”
“No, honey. I can only stay a minute. I just ran in to say hello and to hear about—” She stopped again, making heavy going of it, shooting quick little glances at Jordan. She tried a new direction, “Have you seen Joe since—”
“No,” said Elsa.
“But you’re going to, aren’t you? I mean, honey, you’ve got your job and all. You can’t let something like this get you down. Why, hundreds of innocent people have been locked up and pushed around by policemen! You’re not the—” She stopped and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Elsa,” she wailed. “Me and my big mouth.”
She was as deliberate about it, thought Jordan, as a cabbie jumping a signal light. And pretty good at acting, too. The eyes she showed Jordan swam with contrition and self-accusation, all but hiding the sharp curiosity behind them.
Elsa was watching him, too. She said to him defiantly, “A policeman was killed near the cigar store where my brother and I worked. Bart and I were arrested and — and put in jail for two days. They let us go this afternoon.”
Jordan tried for the casual touch. “It happens every day in St. Louis.”
“Let’s not talk about it,” said Elsa.
“That’s what she came for — to talk about it!”
It was Bart. He stood again at his bedroom door, a robe over his pajamas.
“Bart!” said Elsa.
“I don’t care, Sis. Why did she have to come? She knows she’s got no business coming here.” His voice rose, riding out of control. “I didn’t tell them anything! I didn’t know anything! That’s what she came for. To find out for him! To find out what I told them.”
Elsa reached him just as his face twisted and the tears came. He backed away from her into his bedroom, pointing at Jordan. “Why is he here, too? Why does he have to be here?”
Elsa followed and closed the bedroom door behind them.
“Poor kid,” said Gloria. “Whatever did the police do to him?”
“Worked him over, I guess. Tough on his sister. We’d better go.”
“Uh-hm,” said Gloria absently, staring at the bedroom door. She took Jordan’s drink from his hand, downed a gulp and handed it back to him. “Say, you walked into something, didn’t you?”
“It beats killing rats.”
That startled' her. She said, “Huh?”
Elsa came out. She looked suddenly spent. Yet an expression close to tenderness was on her face fleetingly before she closed Bart’s door behind her. Damn the woman! She wasn’t simple enough.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s—”
“Forget it, kid,” said Gloria. “Your friend Jordan and I will run along.”
Jordan asked, “Is there a night drug store close? I need tooth paste.” It was true. He needed a brush and a razor, too. Always he forgot to pack things.
“The next block down on your right,” said Elsa. She threw a quick glance at Gloria. It was accusing. Hostile, even. She thought Gloria made a fast steal while she was in the bedroom with Bart.
Gloria got it, too. Jordan caught another under-the-eyelids appraisal from her. If it wasn’t in her mind before, it was now. But she said definitely, speaking of herself in the third person and to both of them, “Gloria needs her sleep. Gloria’s headed straight for bed.”
Jordan let Gloria make her goodbye small talk and go out ahead of him. From the hall she said to Elsa, “See you at work tomorrow.”
Elsa Berkey shook her head vaguely. It wasn’t quite no, and it wasn’t yes.
As Jordan passed Elsa he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“No.” She hesitated, fixing her gaze on the knot of his tie. “Ron... I’m not...” She stopped, started again, “Come to dinner tomorrow night, will you?”
“Sure. I’ll bring steaks. Three filets,” he said, and smiled.
Walking down the hall he thought, You poor fish, what got into you? She would spend her last dime for the finest steaks in town just to get you back. All she was thinking of was little boy Bart’s future protection.
Gloria was waiting in front of the automatic elevator. It clanked up as Jordan arrived. They entered and he pushed the down button.
She said, “What did you mean by that rat-killing crack?”
“That’s the business I’m in, baby. Not human rats — the things that crawl. You got any you want killed?” He put a finger under her chin, lifting her face. “Pretty baby,” he said, and kissed her. All in line of duty, he thought, while his lips stayed on hers. Eglin wouldn’t mind. He’d okay his conning Gloria.
The elevator came to a stop. She said, “I’m not that easy.”
That was it. That was what Elsa had started to say just as he was leaving, then didn’t. She didn’t because she knew he wouldn’t swallow it. She had kissed him back. And Gloria had kissed him back. And Bart thought Joe Crider had sent Gloria. Things were whirling merrily.
Gloria left him at the drug store. And as Jordan made his purchases, he drought of the razor ads in which sexy gals ran their hands ecstatically over the freshly shaven faces of men. This assignment did require that he look his best, he told himself, and then felt annoyance that he should feel the need for this justification. The thought came and he couldn’t dismiss it, that dead men were shaved and lotioned before being deposited in their coffins.
3.
Ben Eglin had a long, narrow cubbyhole off the homicide detail room.
“They’re both in the apartment,” said Jordan, “or were when I left this morning. And some salesman or other came.”
Eglin nodded. “Who was the other girl you mentioned?”
“Name’s Gloria Hume. Bart thought Crider sent her. I do, too. Last night everybody was conning everybody. It was great.”
Eglin wrote down the name. He pushed across an open folder file. It was almost two inches thick. “Read it,” he said. “Take it out in the detail room.”
Jordan picked up the file. He felt Eglin’s eyes on him steadily. It was a somehow different stare, not pushing or demanding. Jordan stared back resentfully. To his surprise Eglin dropped his gaze.
Looking down at the desk, Eglin said, “How did you manage it so fast with the Berkey girl?”
Jordan grinned at Eglin’s male curiosity. “Trade secret,” he said.
In the detail room he took the first empty desk he found. There were a half-dozen men around, some on the telephone, some writing. Eglin’s detail. They knew who he was and what he was doing. And they seemed contemptuous of him.
He opened the folder and riffled through the file. This was his first look at a murder file. Report of the coronor’s deputies. The autopsy surgeon’s report. Photographs. Measurements on the position of Bob Garfield’s body. A question and answer statement of the citizen who looked down the alley by chance and first saw the body. Maps. Measurements on the interior of Crider’s cigar store. Ballistics on a .32 calibre bullet. A pathologist’s finding on submitted samples. Reports by Inspectors Tague, Barry, Furlong, Maloof; there were others. And statements. A great sheaf of question and answer statements, free and voluntary, by Crider, Elsa Berkey, Bart Berkey and somebody named James Lombard. All taken by Bernard Eglin, chief homicide inspector.