He came up close to me and looked me over.
“This woman is dead.”
I didn’t say anything; my heart was punchy from knowing it.
“You were the man with her?”
“I was the man with her.”
“Your name?”
“Scott. Bill Scott.” He had a notebook going. “Make it William as long as it’s for the blotter.”
“Her name?”
That was going to hurt. I shifted my jaw into low. “How do you want it — formal, or the way it really was, or — the way it was going to be?”
You didn’t horse around with him. “I want her name. That’s a plain enough question. Or isn’t it?”
“Eve,” I said softly. “Mrs. Eddie Roman on the books. It was going to be—”
That hurt too much; it took half the lining of my throat with it.
“It was going to be?”
“Mrs. Bill Scott,” I whispered. “Somebody didn’t give us a chance.”
“And where is Mr. Roman?” “Not,” I said, “where I’d like him to be. Which is frying in hell.”
“Your address in La Habana?”
“Down here where my shoes are standing.”
“Hers?”
“Neither of us have any. We got in on the Ward liner that docked at three this afternoon. So if you’ve got to have an address, put us down for staterooms B-21 and B-23, just across the passage from one another. My razor blades and our toothbrushes are still in there, so I guess that makes it an address.”
“Just across the passage from one another.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Once was enough on that.”
He put the notebook away. I thought that ended it I was wrong; that only began it. “Now,” he said.
“Now what?”
“You had a quarrel with her here in this bar?”
“I had a quarrel with her like hell here in this bar.”
He just looked at me. I got it. I was a half lap behind again, like when I’d picked her up from the floor.
“Wait a minute. What was that for, just then? Which way are you heading?”
“Toward facts. Toward the truth.”
“Well, you’re going the wrong way, then.” I kept my voice steady. My throat swelled a little, pressed out against my collar; that was all. “I didn’t do it.”
Somebody in the official group around set off a string of little Spanish firecrackers: pop, pop, pop, pop. He switched the sound off with a cut of his hand. As if to say, “I know that as well as you, but he’s entitled to a hearing.” I liked that even less than the original protest.
“Is this your knife?” They’d picked it up long ago.
That jade handle, carved into the shape of a monkey holding its eyes covered, had looked damn familiar from the beginning. I’d placed it by now. I knew I’d better tell them; they were going to find out for themselves in another minute anyway. There was nothing to hide about it after all.
“No,” I said. “But it’s a very close match. I did buy one just like it this afternoon in a curiosity shop. Wait a minute, I’ll show you. I’ve got it in my pocket right—”
They caught the half start my hand made toward the inside pocket of my coat, grabbed me in about three different places: my shoulder, my elbow, and my wrist. Also on the opposite arm, in about three more.
“Wait a minute, don’t get so excited,” I said in cold reproof. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
“We don’t know,” he told me. “But whatever it is, we’ll do it for you.”
“What’re you trying to do — make a suspect out of me, searching me like this?”
He gave me a lesson in grammar. “You don’t make something out of a thing when it’s that already.”
I made a sandwich of that between two lumps and swallowed it.
They went over me thoroughly. I kept waiting for them to get to it, to bring it out, so they could see it wasn’t the same one. When they had finished the knife didn’t come out, just the receipt for it.
I squirmed around in their clutches while they were scanning it. “Wait a minute, there’s a knife in there that goes with that!” I kept writhing, trying to get up and into that particular pocket myself. There was too much dead weight anchoring my arms.
Finally one of them pulled the lining up to show me. It came up empty.
“But there was a knife in there!”
Acosta tapped it palmwise a couple of times. “There was a knife in there. And this is it!”
I kept my voice steady, low. This would be straightened out in a minute. No use getting excited; that would only hinder my being able to make them understand.
“Now look, just listen to me a minute. That couldn’t be the one. I didn’t take mine out. It was still wrapped, the way he gave it to me. I’ll tell you just how too. In... in green oiled paper, held down with two rubber bands, one at each end.”
He jerked his thumb at the two holding onto me, and they swiveled me aside out of the way. The way you roll something standing on a truncated base. He crouched down into that twilight she’d died in at the foot of the bar. He pawed three times, here, there, over in the next place, came up with a crumpled ball of green oiled paper and two rubber bands in his palm.
“Very accurate.” He nodded.
I pitched my chin upward at him. “Are you trying to tell me I stood there in the middle of that crowd, deliberately took that knife out of my pocket, stripped the paper and the rubber bands off it, and drove it into her — without being seen?”
“Are you trying to tell us somebody else did that, without your feeling, seeing, or hearing him? Listen how this stuff crackles.” He gave the paper wad a crunch, and it sputtered and hissed in the middle of his hand like something alive.
He waited a minute for that to sink in. Then he gave me an unwarm smile. It didn’t mean “Let’s be buddies.”
“Do you still deny this is your knife?”
I kept staring at the damn thing, half scared of it now myself. It was bewitched or something. How could it get out of there, where I’d had it, and into her?
He took the receipt from the man holding it, translated it aloud for my benefit, word for word. It wasn’t one of those shorthand things you get up North. It was written out in great detail; it was a young book. It was in flowery Spanish. When I’d seen him composing it back there where I’d bought it, I’d thought that was the custom down there, to write out a complete description of each purchase, practically give its life history.
“ ‘The Curiosity and Novelty Shop of Tio Chin,’ ” Acosta read off, “ ‘42, Pasaje Angosta. For the sale of one ornamental knife, imported oriental, jade grip, to the Mister Scott—’ ”
Maybe his reading it out like that brought the scene back. A light suddenly dawned on me. I saw what it was that had been bothering me all along. It was going to be all right now. The worst was over. “Wait,” I interrupted him breathlessly. “Let me see that knife; let me see it closer. Just hold the handle up so I can get a good look at it. It’s a pretty small carving.”
He held it up sort of ironically, pinched between two fingers at the neck.
“It’s holding its eyes covered, the little monkey. Right?”
“We see that too,” he said dryly.
“Well, that isn’t the one I bought.”
I waited triumphantly for that to sink it. If it did, you couldn’t tell.
“He had a set of three there — eyes, ears, and mouth. You know, illustrating the old proverb or whatever it is, ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’ I didn’t want all three. I asked her which I should pick, and she suggested the one holding its ears. And that’s the one I took. This is a mate to it, but it’s not the same knife. This is somebody else’s knife. He’ll tell you, the old guy where I bought it. Let’s go back there; I can prove it by him.”