“Nothing that'll be any skin off yours,” I said, “Just answer my questions.”
“So ask one.”
“I did. I asked you what you knew about her.”
“Look friend. I used her place a few times. That's all. If she tells you different, she's even a bigger liar than I thought she was.”
“She come in often?”
“No. Call it half a dozen times, maybe. No more.”
“But you've seen her quite a bit.”
“Like you say — two or three times a week. But I never took to her so much. The only times I ever really talked to her was when she came in here — and that hasn't been for quite a while.”
“What makes you think she's a liar?”
“You kidding? That girl can outlie anybody I ever heard. There used to be a couple of old-time con men come in here and lie to each other, just for practice. But hell, they weren't even in her league.”
“For instance?”
“Well, for instance, there was this stuff about a tapeworm. She's got this terrific shape on her, and so when I say something about it — you know, just kind of kidding her along a little — she says the way she keeps it is that she's got a tapeworm. That's the way she keeps from getting fat, see? She had this tapeworm put inside her by a doc in Europe. She says, over there, it's legal; all the women do it. But not over here. Here, it's against the law.”
“Bar talk, maybe,” I said.
“Nope, it isn't that. She doesn't drink much. It's just that she just plain can't help lying. Why, once she told me she was a Canadian. She went on and on about how her folks had this big stash up there and how she'd grown up speaking French and English at the same time. And then, about two weeks later, she sat right there where you're sitting now and gave me a long story about how she was brought up on this big-assed ranch down in Texas.” He lit a cigarette and let the smoke dribble slowly through his nostrils. “I could go on for the rest of the day,” he said. “One wild story after another. It was like she knew goddam well you knew she was lying, but she had to do it anyway. She just couldn't help herself.”
“All right,” I said. “Apart from the lying, what can you tell—”
“You've got it all,” he said. “Why should I stiff you? The only other thing I can tell you about her is that she never wore anything under her dress. No brassiere, I mean. She'd sit there and drive the boys nuts. If she wasn't sitting there swinging those knockers around, she was all the time yanking up her skirt and fooling with her garters. Between one thing and the other, she had the boys in a bad way.”
“And that's the story?” I said.
“That's it,” he said. “I don't know one damn thing about her, except what I told you. Lies, legs, and knockers — that's all I know.”
“How about the man in the picture?” I asked. “She ever come in here with him?”
“Every time. I never saw her with anybody else.”
“You know who he is?”
“His name's Marty something; I don't know what.”
“You know where I can find him?”
“Why don't you ask Nadine?”
“I'm asking you.”
“How should I know? He never says much. In fact, he never says anything. All he does is sit there and drink beer and look down the front of Nadine's dress.”
“You know what he does for a living?”
“No. But if you ask me, he's some kind of hustler. He's got it written all over him.”
“Any theories, Eddie?”
“Pimp, maybe. He's got the look-but then, so do half the characters that come in here. Present company excepted, of course.”
“Anything special about him?”
“If there is, it sure don't stick out. He talks kind of Southern. Real soft and lazylike. One night there was this dock walloper came in. A big bruiser-type guy with a real mean eye, and juiced up just enough to be nasty. He was sitting next to Marty, and I guess he must have been tuning in on his conversation with Nadine, because pretty soon he starts making out he's got a Southern accent.”
The lady loner down the bar banged her glass down hard enough to shatter it. “Service!” she yelled. “What'n hell kind of bartender are you, Eddie?”
“You're cut off, Mildred,” he said. “Go pass out some place else.” He shook his head. “What a way to make a buck,” he said to me. “Anyhow, this big guy is pretty pitiful. You know, like maybe he hasn't got all his agates. And so Marty is just sitting there, getting redder and redder, and all of a sudden he comes up off his stool and grabs this big guy by the front of his coat and lifts him clean off the floor. You never saw anything like it. He didn't say one word, Marty didn't; he just holds this guy up off the floor and looks him in the eye. My God, what a look he gives him! It'd chill your blood.”
“This Marty's a pretty good size, is he?”
“Yeah, he's pretty big. But this other guy is a damn sight bigger. He'd shade Marty fifty pounds, at least.”
“What happened?”
“Well, like I say, Marty isn't saying one word. He's just standing there holding this guy up by his coat and giving him the eye. The guy's like he's frozen stiff. And all at once his coat starts to come apart at the seams and he just sort of oozes down through it, real slow like, all the way to the floor. Must have taken him damn near a minute to get there, and all the time there's not a sound in this whole bar. Nobody can believe what they're looking at. And then the guy's feet finally touch the floor, and Marty just politely turns him around so he's facing the door and gives him a little push. Just a little tap on the shoulder, you know. But that was all, brother, that was all. The bruiser takes off. Hell, he didn't even look back once.”
I took a sip of my ice water.
“Marty and Nadine get along together?” I asked.
“Like mother and son,” he said. “Man, you should see them. She babies him like he was about nine years old.”
“How old is he, by the way?”
“About thirty — give or take a couple years.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“They get along beautiful. Nadine does all the paying, too. She won't let Marty spend a dime. All friend Marty does is slop up beer and look down her dress. It's like she had a magnet hanging down there.”
“How long's Marty been around?”
“Couple months, I guess. That's the first I ever saw of him, anyhow.”
“You think any of your other customers could give me a line on him?”
“I doubt it. He only talks to Nadine. I'll, bet that guy hasn't said more than ten words to anybody else in all the times he's been in here.”
“A little service down here, God damn it,” the lady loner said to nobody in particular.
“Anything else you can tell me, Eddie?” I asked.
“Nothing that'd do you any good, chief.”
“All right,” I said, getting off the stool. “If you think of anything else, give me a call at the station house. My name's Selby.”
“Sure thing, chief. I'll do that.”
“And ditto if Marty should happen to drop in. If I'm not there, ask for Detective Rayder. If he isn't there either, leave a message.”
I walked outside, turned back in the direction of the specialty store above the dead girl's apartment, then paused.
The store was on the other side of Bleecker, little more than half a block away, and I was surprised at the size of the crowd that had already obstructed the sidewalk and was beginning to spill over into the street. The reporters and photographers would be there by now, I knew, as well as two or three D.A.'s men, a cop or so from Homicide West, and a growing number of brass hats from Headquarters and the other precincts.