The girl was still huddled motionless, staring at him.
He put his back to the mantel and puffed at cigarette. «Agatha with you all the time at the studio?»
She nodded. «I suppose so. So he had a key. That was what you were doing, wasn’t it?»
«Yes. Had Agatha long?»
«About a year.»
«She steal from you? Small stuff, I mean?»
Dolores Chiozza shrugged wearily. «What does it matter? Most of them do. A little face cream or powder, a handkerchief, a pair of stockings once in a while. Yes, I think she stole from me. They look on that sort of thing as more or less legitimate.»
«Not the nice ones, angel.»
«Well — the hours were a little trying, I work at night, often get home very late. She’s a dresser as well as a maid.»
«Anything else about her? She use cocaine or weed. Hit the bottle? Ever have laughing fits?»
«I don’t think so. What has she got to do with it, Steve?»
«Lady, she sold somebody a key to your apartment. That’s obvious. You didn’t give him one, the landlord wouldn’t give him one, but Agatha had one. Check?»
Her eyes had a stricken look. Her mouth trembled a little, not much. A drink was untasted at her elbow. Steve bent over and drank some of it.
She said slowly: «We’re wasting time, Steve. We have to call the police. There’s nothing anybody can do. I’m done for as a nice person, even if not as a lady at large. They’ll think it was a lovers’ quarrel and I shot him and that’s that. If I could convince them I didn’t, then he shot himself in my bed, and I’m still ruined. So I might as well make up my mind to face the music.»
Steve said softly: «Watch this. My mother used to do it.»
He put a finger to his mouth, bent down and touched her lips at the same spot with the same finger. He smiled, said: «We’ll go to Walters — or you will. He’ll pick his cops and the ones he picks won’t go screaming through the night with reporters sitting in their laps. They’ll sneak in quiet, like process servers. Walters can handle this. That was what was counted on. Me, I’m going to collect Agatha. Because I want a description of the guy she sold that key to — and I want it fast. And by the way, you owe me twenty bucks for coming over here. Don’t let that slip your memory.»
The tall girl stood up, smiling. «You’re a kick, you are,» she said. «What makes you so sure he was murdered?»
«He’s not wearing his own pajamas. His have his initials on them. I packed his stuff last night — before I threw him out of the Carlton. Get dressed, angel — and get me Agatha’s address.»
He went into the bedroom and pulled a sheet over Leopardi’s body, held it a moment above the still, waxen face before letting it fall.
«So long, guy,» he said gently. «You were a louse — but you sure had music in you.»
It was a small frame house on Brighton Avenue near Jefferson, in a block of small frame houses, all old-fashioned, with front porches. This one had a narrow concrete walk which the moon made whiter than it was.
Steve mounted the steps and looked at the light-edged shade of the wide front window. He knocked. There were shuffling steps and a woman opened the door and looked at him through the hooked screen — a dumpy elderly woman with frizzled gray hair. Her body was shapeless in a wrapper and her feet slithered in loose slippers. A man with a polished bald head and milky eyes sat in a wicker chair beside a table. He held his hands in his lap and twisted the knuckles aimlessly. He didn’t look towards the door.
Steve said: «I’m from Miss Chiozza. Are you Agatha’s mother?»
The woman said dully: «I reckon. But she ain’t home, mister.» The man in the chair got a handkerchief from somewhere and blew his nose. He snickered darkly.
Steve said: «Miss Chiozza’s not feeling so well tonight. She was hoping Agatha would come back and stay the night with her.»
The milky-eyed man snickered again, sharply. The woman said: «We dunno where she is. She don’t come home. Pa’n me waits up for her to come home. She stays out till we’re sick.»
The old man snapped in a reedy voice: «She’ll stay out till the cops get her one of these times.»
«Pa’s half blind,» the woman said. «Makes him kinda mean. Won’t you step in?»
Steve shook his head and turned his hat around in his hands like a bashful cowpuncher in a horse opera. «I’ve got to find her,» he said. «Where would she go?»
«Out drinkin’ liquor with cheap spenders,» Pa cackled. «Pantywaists with silk handkerchiefs ’stead of neckties. If I had eyes, I’d strap her till she dropped.» He grabbed the arms of his chair and the muscles knotted on the backs of his hands. Then he began to cry. Tears welled from his milky eyes and started through the white stubble on his cheeks, The woman went across and took the handkerchief out of his fist and wiped his face with it. Then she blew her nose on it and came back to the door.
«Might be anywhere,» she said to Steve, «This is a big town, mister, I dunno where at to say.»
Steve said dully: «I’ll call back. If she comes in, will you hang onto her. What’s your phone number?»
«What’s the phone number, Pa?» the woman called back over her shoulder.
«I ain’t sayin’,» Pa snorted.
The woman said: «I remember now. South Two-four-five-four. Call any time. Pa’n me ain’t got nothing to do.»
Steve thanked her and went back down the white walk to the street and along the walk half a block to where he had left his car. He glanced idly across the way and started to get into his car, then stopped moving suddenly with his hand gripping the car door. He let go of that, took three steps sideways and stood looking across the street tight-mouthed.
All the houses in the block were much the same, but the one opposite had a FOR RENT placard stuck in the front window and a real-estate sign spiked into the small patch of front lawn. The house itself looked neglected, utterly empty, but in its little driveway stood a small neat black coupe.
Steve said under his breath: «Hunch. Play it up, Stevie.»
He walked almost delicately across the wide dusty street, his hand touching the hard metal of the gun in his pocket, and came up behind the little car, stood and listened. He moved silently along its left side, glanced back across the street, then looked in the car’s open left-front window.
The girl sat almost as if driving, except that her head was tipped a little too much into the corner. The little red hat was still on her head, the gray coat, trimmed with fur, still around her body. In the reflected moonlight her mouth was strained open. Her tongue stuck out. And her chestnut eyes stared at the roof of the car.
Steve didn’t touch her. He didn’t have to touch her to look any closer to know there would be heavy bruises on her neck.
«Tough on women, these guys,» he muttered.
The girl’s big black brocade bag lay on the seat beside her, gaping open like her mouth — like Miss Marilyn Delorme’s mouth, and Miss Marilyn Delorme’s purple bag.
«Yeah — tough on women.»
He backed away till he stood under a small palm tree by the entrance to the driveway. The street was as empty and deserted as a closed theater. He crossed silently to his car, got into it and drove away.
Nothing to it. A girl coming home alone late at night, stuck up and strangled a few doors from her own home by some tough guy. Very simple. The first prowl car that cruised that block — if the boys were half awake — would take a look the minute they spotted the FOR RENT sign. Steve tramped hard on the throttle and went away from there.
At Washington and Figueroa he went into an all-night drugstore and pulled shut the door of the phone booth at the back. He dropped his nickel and dialed the number of police headquarters.