“I ran down to the alley. He came along after a few minutes. He grabbed my arm, and we ran almost to the end of the alley. There was a high board fence there. He picked me up and put me up to where I could reach the top. After I got up, I gave him a hand and he made it.”
“And then?”
“We waited for a while until the cops had gone by. We could hear them talking, see their lights flashing, and hear them asking questions. A lot of people came along behind the cops. We made a clean getaway.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” she said, “I told him that he was a double-crosser, and that I was finished. He knew I meant it, too.”
“And beat up on you?”
“Nothing like that. He begged and pleaded, promised he’d never interfere again, told me that he couldn’t help but be jealous because he loved me so much, but that he’d learned his lesson now and that he realized he couldn’t interfere in my life.”
“Change your mind?”
“I walked away.”
“What happened to him?”
“He started to follow, and I turned back on him and told him I’d give him the works if he kept on following me.”
“Threaten to call the police?”
“No, of course not. The police and I don’t ‘go to the same school.”
“Threaten to scream?”
“No. I told you what I said. I told him I’d give him the works.”
“What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know what I meant, but I was fed up.”
“Murder?” I asked.
“Of course not. I just said that to make him leave me alone.”
“But you did threaten to give him the works?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that the same as saying you’d kill him?”
“I tell you I don’t know what I meant. I just wanted him out of the way. I’d have threatened to pull the moon out of the sky and beat his head in with it if the idea had occurred to me. I was crazy mad.”
“Think anyone heard you?”
“No.”
“You had climbed over this fence?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get back to the street?”
“I followed along the fence, saw the lights of a pool room, walked through the back way, and out to the street.”
“Men in the back of the pool room?”
“Yes.”
“Playing pool?”
“Two or three of them were.”
“Did they look you over pretty carefully?”
“I’ll say.”
“Think they’d remember you?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” she said, her voice showing her weariness. “The way they looked me over, if I’d had a mole the size of a pinhead just below the knee on my left leg, they’d have remembered it for twenty years. Does that answer your question, Mr. Detective?”
“It does. How about the second stories on those buildings? Was there a rooming-house or a hotel there in the block?”
“I don’t know.”
“Notice any lights in the windows above you?”
“No.”
“Would you have noticed them if they’d been there?”
“I don’t know. I was mad. When I’m mad, I don’t notice things.”
“Let’s get back to Harry Beegan.”
“Let’s not. Listen, Donald, I want to get out of here. Can you get me out?”
“Yes.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Exactly as I tell you to.”
“For how long?”
“Perhaps two or three weeks.”
“In order to get out?”
“Partly that. The rest of it is the price I’m charging for getting you out.”
She looked puzzled. “Are you just making a cold-blooded proposition to me?”
“It isn’t a proposition.”
“What is it?”
“A business arrangement.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I think you can help me.”
“Do what?”
“Clean up a case I’m working on.”
“Oh, that!” she said.
I tapped the ashes off my cigarette.
“All right,” she said abruptly, “when do we start?”
“When can you get packed?”
“I’m packed. I didn’t bring anything with me. There wasn’t time for that.”
“Not even a suitcase?”
“Just a little bag.”
“When did you get it? I mean, when did you go to the apartment to get it?”
“Don’t you wish you knew?”
“It’ll come out sooner or later anyway.”
“You can find out then.”
“How about Eloise Dearborne?”
“What about Eloise Dearborne?”
“How long have you known her?”
“Where does she live?”
“Here.”
“Here! Why, what does she do?”
“Her brother’s an engineer out at Boulder Dam.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know her.”
“Who,” I asked, “was the redheaded girl with the bunny nose that you were chumming around with at the Cactus Patch?”
“I don’t know whom you mean.”
“Don’t know anyone like that?”
“No. I may have stopped and passed the time of day with someone, but I haven’t any friend who answers that description. How old?”
“Oh, twenty-three or twenty-four.”
She shook her head.
I said, “Well, get ready to go. We may leave in a hurry.”
“Okay.”
“Now, one other thing. In traveling, we don’t want to excite attention. There may be times when — when you’ll have to—”
She laughed at me. “It took you long while to get around to that, didn’t it, Donald?”
I said, “Yes,” got up, and walked out.
Chapter Twelve
Bertha Cool called, “Who is it?” in response to my knock.
“Donald.”
“Come in, lover. The door’s unlocked.”
I opened the door. Bertha Cool was standing in front of the full-length mirror, looking back over her left shoulder at her reflection.
“What’s the idea?” I asked.
She lashed out at me irritably, “I’m just looking at myself. Can’t a woman look at the way her skirt hangs without you thinking there’s something unusual about it?”
I walked over to a chair and sat down. Bertha Cool continued to study her reflection from various angles. “How old do you think I am?” she asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, make a guess.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Good heavens, you’ve formed some opinion. A person always get an idea of how old anyone is. How old did you think I was when you first saw me? No, not then. How old do you think I look now?”
I said, “I don’t have any idea how old you are. I don’t even know how old you look. I came to tell you I was quitting.”
She jerked her head around. Her hard, glittering eyes stabbed into mine. “Quitting!”
“That’s what I said.”
“But you can’t quit.”
“Why not?”
“Why — why, you’re working on a case. You’re — why, what would I do without you?”
“You’d get along. You said just the other day that before you knew me, you were able to run a legitimate agency. That since you’d employed me, you were always in hot water.”
“Why do you want to quit?” she asked, coming over to sit down where she could look at me.
“I’m going away.”
“Going away?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Why?”
“I don’t know where. I’m in love.”
“Well, why quit your job just because you’re in love?”
“Because I think it would be better.”
Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “You know, people have been in love and still managed to keep their jobs. Lots of them get married and still manage to work. Don’t ask me how they do it, because I don’t know, but it has been done; and if you’re resourceful, you should be able to figure out some way. They tell me lots of men want to support their wives, and in order to do it, they have to work. Some men even put off marrying until they can get jobs. It seems a shame, but that’s what actually happens. They claim there are statistics to prove it.”