She sat down and I gave her a cigarette and lit it. She inhaled with a small sob mixed in it somewhere. We looked into each other’s eyes, knowing how thoroughly we would forever be bound to each other by our memories of Bob.
“It’s stupid to tell you I’m sorry, Sharon.”
“I know. It’s all so... so...”
“Unnecessary is the word. But I can’t take time out for emotional analysis. I’m working on it.”
She looked surprised. “They let you?”
“Not a case of letting me, baby. I’m in it, no matter what. They’re just making it official.”
“Don’t be careless, Rich. Don’t get into trouble.”
“Then you think there’s more to it than the papers, the cops, and Warren say?”
“I know it. Bob would never have left me there.” She went through the same story George had given me. She had roused him out of bed to tell him, as soon as she found out the police would only give her polite smiles and pat her shoulder.
When she was through I started looking for the little things. “Why did you go there in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Bob wanted to go. We both thought it was an awful place. But he wouldn’t tell me why he wanted to go. He just acted mysterious.”
“What did you do when you got there?”
“We had had dinner. We sat in the restaurant bar and talked. We had a drink together and then he ordered me one. He got up and said, ‘Nurse your drink, honey. I got to go try my luck.’ He didn’t give me a chance to ask questions.”
“How long was he gone?”
“Maybe forty minutes. He came back with a man holding his arm. Bob could hardly walk. The man was a short, fat fellow wearing about three diamond rings. He said, ‘I’m afraid your boy friend’s had one over the limit. Want me to get him out to the car for you?’ Bob didn’t speak. He just swayed. I nodded and paid the check and helped him with Bob. People laughed at us.” She lowered her head and bit her lower lip.
“How did he act in the car?”
“He mumbled and tried to get his billfold out of his inside coat-pocket I helped him. He pawed at it and said, ‘Empty! All gone. Company money. Two five ought ought...’ Then his head fell over against my shoulder. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat and waited for hours. I kept trying to wake him up.”
“What did he say before he went back in?”
“Nothing. He looked at his billfold again and he took some kind of a gun out of the glove compartment. I tried to stop him. All he said was, ‘I’ll get that back in a hurry.’ ”
“What did the man look like who told you that Bob needed you?”
“I couldn’t see him. He stood in the shadows about six feet from the car.”
“Big or little?”
“I don’t know.”
“Voice?”
“Just a voice. A man’s voice.”
I waited a moment before I asked her the next one. It was a tough one to ask, “You saw the car... afterwards?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Describe it.”
“The front end all mashed in. Motor pushed back. Standing upright.”
“And Bob?”
“Laying over in the seat His face... and all those people around... and the sirens coming... It was cold...” And she dropped her face into her hands.
I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. I could feel the rhythmic shudder of her quiet sobbing. I could feel the warmth of her through the robe. I bent and took her elbows in my hands and lifted her to her feet. I held her against me and stood for a long time while her crying grew more violent and then began to die away. When the great convulsive sobs were long seconds apart, I lifted her chin and looked down into her eyes. She was so small and so defeated. I kissed her gently, tasting the salt tears on her soft lips. As the kiss was prolonged, I felt her arms go around my neck.
Then suddenly I came out of it I walked over to the window. Bob’s girl. I wondered what had happened to us. I fumbled for a cigarette and sucked smoke deep into my lungs.
I turned and she had flung herself on the sofa. I sat on the edge. She wasn’t sobbing, wasn’t moving. Then she said, flatly in a dull tone, “How cheap! What a horrible thing to do. I don’t know what we...”
“Look, Sharon.” I interrupted. “It’s a common psychological symptom. We’ve both had a shock. Our defenses were gone. It’s a way we could escape from ourselves for a while. Don’t analyze it emotionally. Thousands of people react that way after shock.”
It was silent in the room. Then she stirred and sat up. She said, “I’m ashamed. Rich. No matter what you say, it was cheap.” But she accompanied it with a small, wan smile. Probably the first smile since it had happened.
I held her hand tightly at the door and indulged in some pure corn. I said, “Sharon, believe me. Somebody killed Bob, and I’m going to get him.” I hurried out, knowing somehow that back in the room of soft colors there were fresh tears on the small, white face.
I ran the gamut of secretaries and got into Tilburg’s office. He held my card delicately and looked at me as though I were some new species of cholera germ. I react favorably to disfavor. I’m used to it. He was a swarthy thin-faced man who looked as though he were trying to raise a pair of John L. Lewis eyebrows. He wasn’t doing so well. Most of the black hair was growing in tufts out of his ears.
“I’m working on the death of Robert Kirk, employed by you.”
“A great shock. A very great shock. I might say that it shocked us all.”
“How much company money did he have with him?”
“Didn’t you read that in the papers?”
“I never read newspapers.”
“The papers said he had twenty-five hundred.”
“I asked you.”
“So you did. So you did.”
“Well?”
“I’m afraid that any statement I may have will he retained for the police.”
“Suppose they’re not interested?”
“Then your interest is relatively unimportant, isn’t it?”
I took my .38 automatic out of my shoulder holster. His hand whipped toward a row of buttons, but I looked at him a little intently, and it fluttered back into his lap. I pushed the clip ejector and the full clip clattered onto his desk. I picked it tip and thumbed the shells out. I reached over and took a bright metal letter-opener off a pile of correspondence. I carefully made a deep X notch in the nose of each slug, whistling gently through my teeth. I didn’t look up at him.
I shoved the shells back into the clip and snapped the clip into the gun. I grabbed the slide and jacked a shell into the chamber.
Then I asked him, “Know what a notched slug does, Tilburg?”
He stared at the gun, a mist of sweat on his upper lip.
“It makes a hole in your gut the size of a dime, but when it comes out the back, you got a hole the size of your fist. It kind of spreads. Now, you probably thought that my name being Kirk was sort of a coincidence. It isn’t. Bob was my brother.”
“I’m... I’m so sorry,” he stammered, and I slid the thirty-eight back into my shoulder holster.
I purposely made my eyes too wide, and I made my mouth twitch as I said, “Nobody in God’s world is going to hold out on me, Tilburg. Everybody is going to talk to me like crazy. And they’re going to talk straight. Is that clear?”
He nodded jerkily, so I said, “Now suppose you tell me how much money Bob had on him.”
Tilburg leaned forward and spoke almost in a whisper. “I couldn’t tell you before. We are incorporating. We want to expand. We have to sell stock in the open market. We found out from a Mr. Red Warren two days ago that one of our clerks who has access to funds has gone into debt to Warren for twenty thousand. Somehow Warren found out that we couldn’t stand the publicity. Suppose the papers carried an account of a large sum of cash being embezzled from us?”