Silence fell, and we kicked it around between us for a while.
Then she dropped her feet to the floor with a light thud and came over and put in a new candle. A new stump, rather, but the light turned yellow again, and the fungus color faded from the walls.
“It’s easy,” she said.
I didn’t know what she meant for a minute.
“It’s easy to see what it was that happened to you in
Sloppy’s tonight. Anybody with half a head can figure that out.”
I kicked up my chin without raising my eyes to her.
“Figuring it out is one thing, proving it another. You mean Roman, don’t you?”
“She was his; you took her away from him.”
“He’s in Miami. You could pick up the phone right now and call his number there, and he’d get on at the other end.”
“Sure. That doesn’t change anything.”
“I know that as well as you. But who cares about remote control? It’s the mechanics of the thing at this end that I’ve got to worry about.” I plowed through my hair. “I still can’t see how, in all that crowd around us, there was nobody who noticed the knife being driven into her. Or at least saw it in the guy’s hand, whoever he was. He couldn’t just hold it still and push from scratch. He’d have to draw it back, at least equal to its own blade length, and then drive it, like you do with any pointed weapon. How is it nobody saw his arm swing, saw the thing gleam?”
“Maybe,” she tried to help me out, “somebody did and hasn’t told about it.”
“Or maybe,” I said, “somebody did and doesn’t know it yet.”
She looked at me, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
I’d gotten to my feet, staring fixedly. Not at anything she could see, but at something I could. “Wait a minute; I think I’ve got something. I think I’ve found a possible out for myself, if it will only pay off!”
She came in closer, ready to help me.
“Let me see if I can get this straight,” I said, “before I start getting steam up over it. Got something I can draw with?”
“Only that lip pencil I used before.”
“Anything.”
She brought it over with a couple of quick long strides.
“Can I use your wall?”
“Shoot.”
I went over to it and dashed off four hurried lines that closed up a square. She came up behind me and held the candle-bottle by my shoulder so we could see better. “There are four sides to any position. These are the four sides around us where we were standing. This is us, in the middle.” I scratched a hasty X. “Now let me see if I can remember how it went. On one side there was the bar. That’ll be in this line here. That cut us off at elbow height. It didn’t go in from there anyway; it went in on the other side of her.”
“Make an arrow to show which side it went in from,” she suggested.
I made an arrow hitting the X. “Now on these two sides — the arrow side and the side here, behind the two of us — they were packed all around us like sardines. Their own bodies hid the knife play from them; it went on out of sight down in between somewhere. But there’s one side left, this fourth side here. That’s the one side where there was a little clearance — only a few feet, maybe — but still a little opening. You can always see things better from a short distance off than when you’re right up next to them — on top of them, you might say. That’s the side I’m counting on. That’s the only side that had any kind of perspective on us at all.”
“And who was on that side — more of the crowd?”
“There was only one guy blocking off that entire side — the photographer that works Sloppy Joe’s. Now do you begin to get what I’m driving at? The crowd was there, yes, but backed up behind him. He had this black hood, or whatever it is they use, spread out, cutting them off. He was, for all practical purposes, the entire fourth side. The whole opening was only a tiny thing, anyway.”
“Then you think the photographer saw it?”
“Not at first hand. His own head was down under the blamed hood. But I think there’s a good chance his camera caught it. And that’s the one witness that doesn’t lie, that can’t be fixed — a camera plate.”
She didn’t act any too sure. “It goes like this.” She gave her fingers a snap. “It would have to be awfully fast. The two of them would have to come right — like that — together.”
“It doesn’t have to show the actual moment of incision. First he had to get it out, then he had to strip the wrappings, then he had to poise it, then he had to shoot it in, then he had to leave it there. That’s five or six different steps. It could have got any one of those, and it would still be just as much help to me. It all depends on how much of us he got into focus.
“The knife went in down about here.” I showed her where, on her own figure. “If he took us just head and shoulders, he missed it; it was too low. But if he took us at half length — say from the waist up — there’s a good chance something may show on his plate. Even if it’s just enough to show that it wasn’t my own hand holding the knife, but somebody else’s, that’s all I need. At least it’ll be a lot better than what I’m bucking now.”
I flipped the lipstick over onto the cot.
“He’s still got that plate with him, in the back of his camera or somewhere!”
I buttoned up my coat and started for the door. “I’m going. I only wish this had hit me sooner. I’ve got to find out who he is and where I can get hold of him again!”
She parked the candle, got over to the door ahead of me, turned, and motioned me back.
“You better let me tackle it. I can do it for you, and a whole lot quicker and easier than you can. You’ll only be sticking your neck out.”
“You’ve done enough for me already. This is my own jam, not yours.”
She gave me the back of her arm in rebuttal. “You can’t even talk the language; how you going to ask anyone? Where you going to go looking for him — around Sloppy’s? You can’t even show your face around there without getting picked up. Talk sense, chico, will you? I can do it in half the time. Nobody knows me or thinks I have anything to do with you. I can come and go like I please. Sit here quiet, now. Lock the door after me and don’t open it up for anyone. I’ll knock like this, double, when I come back, so you’ll know it’s me.” She showed me how.
“I feel like a heel,” I said, “letting you do my dirty work for me.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for a guy the cops were once down on, just like they’re down on you now. Flowers on a grave. How many times do I have to tell you? Stay here; I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The door opened narrowly; she peered, slipped through; it closed again and she was gone.
I stood there listening to her go for a few minutes; you could hardly hear her, just a soft whisper going down the stairs. Then I kicked down the latch with my foot and turned away and ambled across the ghostly, candlelit room.
I sank back on the cot and sat there, thinking. Thinking what a honeymoon this had turned out to be. Her on a slab at the morgue and me hiding out in an outcast’s room in the Chinese quarter.
Time seemed to stand still, just hang there, stuck. I had no watch to nudge it along — I’d never had one in my whole life, now that I came to think of it — and there wasn’t anything in the room to go by either. Only the slow, slow sinking of the candle flame, and I didn’t have the knack for turning that into numbers. Once in a while I could hear faint, far-off churches here and there across the town jangle thinly like plucked wires, but I couldn’t make head or tail of them either. They weren’t even; one would start in just as another was getting ready to finish, and that would run the score up higher than there were hours in any night. I couldn’t tell where one left off and the next began. What did it matter? I had no date.