“Yes,” I said.
“You got a hard head, meester.”
“Yeah. I must.”
“We went easy this time. Next time — no.”
“Mind telling me what you’ve got against me?”
By now Malley had caught the drift of the conversation. He made a theatrical gesture to a guy behind the bar who himself made a theatrical gesture out of picking up a double-barreled shotgun and handing it to Malley.
“You tell that cocksucker to come over here,” Malley said. Malley’s face looked like somebody who’d gone crazy in a panel of a Sergeant Rock comic book. All he needed was a stubby cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
“You lay off the investigation you got going, man,” the voice on the phone was saying. “Otherwise we’re going to lay on the hands again. A lot harder. You dig me?”
He was doing a bad imitation of a juvenile delinquent in an old Glenn Ford movie. At least he hadn’t called me “chickie baby.”
I handed the phone to Malley.
Before the poor bastard on the other end hung up Malley had insulted the guy’s father, mother, sister, brother, and dog.
“Here,” Malley said after slamming the phone.
He presented me with the shotgun as if he were a king sending his most trusted knight into battle.
I thanked him but declined the offer. The police department probably wouldn’t be too happy to see me riding around with a shotgun in my car. They just don’t have the sense of humor most normal people do.
This time when I got outside all that was waiting for me was the realization that I was totally alone. A veritable hunchback of self-pity.
23
In the morning I stood inside the shower long enough to get Simonized. My head, surprisingly, didn’t feel too bad unless I touched the goose egg itself.
The first thing I did after dressing was check in with my answering service. A Dr. George Chamales had called. So had Donna Harris. At the mention of her name my heart did several silly things. Then I thought of Chad-the-charmer and felt out-leagued.
I decided to call Dr. Chamales and worry about Donna later.
He had a voice that could easily put me out of a job. Med students all seem to take drama courses these days. They’re much smoother than the previous generation.
“I’m the psychiatrist working with Jane Branigan,” he explained. “I feel we’re making very rapid progress. I wondered if you could come in and see me in the next day or so. Perhaps our having a conversation would help.”
“Is she talking yet?”
“Not speaking on the subject of the murder, if that’s what you mean. But she is coming out of shock. We’re very optimistic. She’s a lovely woman.”
His remark about her loveliness caught me in an odd way. I realized then that I no longer loved her, at least not as I once had. There was an emptiness in me now and I almost missed the pain of grieving over her.
“Yes,” I agreed. “She’s also an innocent woman.”
“I’m afraid the police have a fairly convincing case.”
“That’s because they’re not looking at any other facts,” I said. Such as a dead hooker named Jackie and a clerk named Larry. “I’ll try to get in tomorrow. I’m afraid I’m busy today.”
“That’s fine,” he said. He sounded as if he were absolving me for not rushing right over.
From the funeral section in yesterday’s newspaper, I’d gotten the home address of the dead prostitute, Jackie.
She’d lived in a section of tract homes that looked small enough to be fishing cabins. In the overcast morning their faded colors ran the spectrum of dead dreams. Even the toys in the front yards were rusted. The sidewalk was swollen and cracked. I knocked on a tinny-sounding aluminum door.
The woman wore black hair dye, a yellow sweater that bound up her sagging breasts, and enough malice in her brown eyes to start a small war someplace. She was maybe fifty and damn unhappy about the fact.
Of course, what interested me most was the black eye that ran in a semicircle under her left eyelid.
“Yeah?”
I showed her my license.
“So?”
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“I ain’t got it.”
I had been there long enough to feel the effects of the smell. She’d made herself something greasy for breakfast. It lay on the air like the odors of a slaughterhouse.
“Got what?”
“You think I don’t know shit, don’t you?” she said.
“Maybe we’d better start over.”
“The cops wanted it, then this prick who called in the middle of the night, he wanted it too.”
“Wanted what?”
“Shit,” she said.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jackie’s book.”
“What book?”
“The phone book with the names of her customers in it.”
“Oh.” This was beginning to make some sense now. “You mind if I step in?”
“Yeah. I do mind.”
I took a twenty from my wallet. “Will this help?”
She looked at it skeptically. “My frigging daughter gets stabbed to death and all you’re offering me is a frigging twenty?”
I had underestimated this lady’s sense of status. Two twenties was the price of admission.
The house looked as if it were a nuclear testing site. In front of a TV set watching cartoons was a miniature representation of this woman. Jackie’s daughter. The kid didn’t even look up.
“So, like I told you, I ain’t got it,” she said.
“Mind if I ask how you got the black eye?”
“I thought you were interested in Jackie.”
“I am. But I’m also interested in your black eye.”
“I tripped against a cupboard.”
“Right.”
“I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not.”
The little girl turned around. Looked at me. “Are you one of Mommy’s friends?” she asked.
“No, hon, I’m not.”
“Good. Mommy’s friends weren’t nice.”
“Shut up, Sandy,” the grandmother said.
Sandy shrugged, turned around, went back to Scooby-Doo.
“I got to go to the funeral parlor and make plans,” the woman said. “So hurry up.”
“Did your daughter ever mention a man named Stephen Elliot?”
“No.”
The way she said it, so fast, so bold, I knew it was a lie.
“How about Phil Davies?”
“No.”
Same impression.
“Did she ever discuss her — business with you?”
“Gee, you can say it, mister, unless you’re some kind of frigging altar boy. My daughter was a hooker. You try to live on AFDC sometime and see where you get. Nowhere is where you get.”
I took out another twenty. This was like playing a very expensive slot machine. “I’d like to know where her phone book is myself.”
Just then the phone rang. Grandma swore and stalked over to it like a stevedore going to pick up a three-hundred-pound crate.
The call seemed to be one of sympathy. “Yeah, you just ain’t safe nowhere these days,” Grandma said.
I drifted over to the TV.
Sandy sat amid the mess. The couch was tattered and sprung in several places. One armchair had only two legs. The TV was an Admiral.
I sat down on an ottoman stained past color recognition.
“That used to be my boy’s favorite show,” I said, “until his tenth birthday.”
“Yeah. Scooby’s my favorite.”
I smiled. “What other shows do you like?”
“Oh. Scary ones, you know.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, ‘Nancy Drew’ and ‘Batman.’ They’re good ones.”
“You like being scared, huh?” I smiled.
“On TV I like bein’ scared. Not in real life, though. Like those two guys who came here last night.”