People had sat on that sofa all night long. Holmes, the cop. Mrs. Trinker, and their feet must have been just an inch or two away from it, but nobody had seen it. I thought it was just a crumpled piece of paper, or maybe even a ball of gray waste from a vacuum or carpet-sweeper, but I reached in and pulled it out.
It was a handkerchief; a woman’s handkerchief, pale-blue and so thin you could almost look through it. It had a little colored design of a kitten stitched on one corner. A faint hint of honeysuckle reached my nose, and when I raised it higher, it got stronger, and there was a whiff of something else; like it had been wrapped around a chocolate bar.
I had a tickling sensation in my memory of smelling, or looking at, or picking up, something just like this, somewhere before. But the rest of my mind was on the job and told me: “She dropped it, all right. It’s never Mrs. Trinker’s, I know that already.”
I started to stuff it into my pocket — until I could go out and show it to Holmes — and my knuckles brushed the heel that was already in there, and the lining of my throat suddenly contracted.
Did you ever get dizzy on your knees? I was on my knees there, upright in front of the sofa, and the four walls of the room suddenly shifted around me. The one opposite me went off to the side, then in back of me, then around to the other side, then they were all back where they started again. But meanwhile I had to reach out and steady myself against the edge of the sofa.
A clock was ticking somewhere in the house. Upstairs in the bedroom, I guess. I could hear it clearly in the stillness.
It had ticked hundreds and hundreds of times, when finally Holmes’ voice came in to me from the curb outside: “Coming, Cap? What’s holding you up?”
I was still there on my knees, supporting myself with one hand out against the edge of the sofa. I was afraid he’d come in and find me there. I took my hand out of my pocket where it had stayed all this time, and left the handkerchief in there with the heel.
It was a slow business, getting up. I am still only forty, but I knew what it felt like to be sixty. I planted one foot flat and hoisted myself on that, then I dragged the other one up after it, and I groaned with the effort. Or maybe it was a broken mainspring, inside me.
I said something. I heard a sound come out of me that said, “My little girl,” and I zig-zagged in the middle and almost went down again.
I dragged myself over to the light-switch and punched it out, and the kindly darkness came around me and hid me. I put the back of my hand against my eyes and held it there. Outside, from the quiet sidewalk, Holmes’ voice carried in to me clearly, though he was talking low now. “The guy’s as good as fried. Endicott never fumbled one of these things yet. He never misses,” he was saying to the new cop.
“What I like about him is, he’s so human with it, just like one of us,” the cop was saying.
Human was right, if human meant to hurt all over, to be scared all over, to be going under for the third time without a helping hand in sight.
It didn’t last very long. It couldn’t. I would have gone batty. But it had driven an awful dent in me, left me wide open. I said to myself: “Be a man. You’re nuts. It couldn’t be. It just looks that way now, but it’ll straighten itself out. You’ll see.” I fought it off that way.
Finally I moved out of the dark room into the pale wash of the street light filtering through the screen door. Holmes was coming toward me up the walk, to see what was taking me so long. He had the makings of a good dick. He could tell even by the pale street light. He said, “What’s the matter, Cap? You look funny.”
I said, “I had a dizzy spell in there just now. That ever happen to you? I bent down too far to pick up my cigar.”
He said, “You want to take it easy, Cap. We can always get you a new cigar, we can’t always get a new Cap.”
I gave the cop his instructions, and we got in the car and drove down to the house. The death-watch tried to gang up on me in the ante-room, but I brushed through them. “Not now, boys. May have something for you in the morning. Query me then.”
One of them called after me, “Our papers can’t wait till the morning, give us a hand-out at least—”
Holmes showed his teeth, said: “You heard the captain, didn’t you?”
I sat down behind my desk and called Ballistics. Kelcey came on, and I said: “Did you get the pill out of him yet? What sweat-band does it take?”
“We’re giving it the screen-test now. Thirty-eight around the waist,” he said.
The same caliber as our police positives.
There was a strained pause. But why should there be a hitch in a call like this, when we both ought to know what we wanted to say? He was waiting for me to give him further instructions, I guess. I didn’t. Then he said, “Oh, by the way, Ed, I’m still waiting for that gun of yours you asked me to have cleaned and oiled for you.”
I said, “I forgot to bring it down with me.”
He said, “Hello? Hello? Oh, I thought I heard us being cut off.”
The click that he heard had been me cracking my positive open. Did you ever get nauseated from smelling gunpowder? I hadn’t fired it in months, ages, that’s why it needed cleaning so bad. The smell came up like a breath of hell into my nostrils. One chamber was empty. I always kept it fully loaded.
“All right, Kelcey,” I said, “All right, Kelcey.” The receiver landed back in its forked support like a hundred-pound weight, dragging down my hand with it.
I got up and went over to the water-filter and drank a cupful of water. I needed it bad.
I opened the door and said, “Tell Jordan I’m ready for those truckmen now.” I went back and sat down behind my desk and picked up a report upside-down, as the men were brought in.
One of them was a big stocky guy, the other, his helper, was a little bit of a squirt. They were both half-scared, half-pleased at being the center of interest like this. Jordan came in with them, of course. The thought in my mind was: “I’ve got to get him out of here. If this is — what I’m afraid it’s going to be, I can’t take it in front of him.”
Jordan saw the reversed report, but he must have thought I was just using it as a screen to overawe them. He looked surprised, like he wondered why I should bother, with small potatoes like these guys.
The first couple of questions brought out that the shrimp had been down in the cellar of the house the whole time, it was the other guy who had been up by the control-lever of the truck. That gave me my out. I said, “Take this other guy out, I don’t need him,” and motioned Jordan to the door. Then, “Wait’ll I send for you.” He went out.
I said, “Did you hear anything like a shot?”
“No, boss.”
“What house was this you were unloading in front of?”
“Fifteen.”
Same side of the street, five houses down. “While you were there, did you see anyone come out of any of the houses to your left, toward Roanoke Boulevard? You know — in a hurry, running, excited, anything like that?”
“No sir, I was too busy tipping and adjusting my truck.”
I had no business being so glad. I loved that dirty mug standing there before me, for saying that. Fine captain of detectives. But they must have had some information for us, otherwise Jordan wouldn’t have brought them in. “Well, what did you see?”