“So he was out of town,” Higgins said. “You didn’t see him last night.”
“Someone else was with me,” Mamie said. “I can prove it. When I woke up yesterday noon Tony was gone. He never told me where he was going or what he did. He said it was none of my business.” She dabbed at her eyes. “What did he do? Tell me what he did.”
“Who was with you?”
“Stevie.”
“Jordan?”
“Yes.”
“All night?”
Mamie blew her nose delicately. Her eyes above the handkerchief were wary.
“Not in the way you mean,” she said.
“I don’t care what he did there! I want to know if he was there.”
“Why do you want to know?” He just kept looking at her and she knew stalling wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She said, “He drove me home.”
“And stayed?”
“Not then. He went away and came back.”
“When did he come back?”
“I don’t know. Late, I guess.”
“How late?”
“I don’t know. I had a bottle of rye and I wasn’t paying much attention to the time. I was just sitting there and...”
“Why did Jordan come back?”
“For a drink.”
“We found a full quart of scotch in his car.”
Her eyes hardened. “You did, did you?”
“Maybe he likes to drink up other people’s liquor first, eh?”
She didn’t answer.
“I guess he figured if Murillo could use you so could he, eh?”
“Use me,” she echoed in a tight voice. He let that sink in and he could see it was sinking in from the way her body seemed to grow rigid and taller.
“For a sucker,” Higgins said.
“Who was murdered?” she said at last.
“A girl, a blind girl.”
“Blind? Not...” She gulped. “Who was she?”
“Kelsey Heath.”
“Kelsey Heath,” Mamie said. “Heath.”
“She was killed about three or three-thirty in the morning.”
“How?”
“With a knife.”
She rubbed the damp spot under her breasts.
“We know Jordan was up there,” Higgins said, “about that time. No law against that, of course. But we have to check up on him because we found that the front door of the Heaths’ house had been left unlocked. An outsider could have killed her. So we tried Jordan out.”
“And he ran away,” Mamie said.
“He might just have been nervous,” Higgins said. “He didn’t have any motive for killing the girl.”
“Oh, didn’t he?” Mamie said in a hard voice.
“We don’t know of any.”
“Well, you should of been around last night when he was talking in his sleep. Kelsey Heath. Do you know who Kelsey Heath is? She’s the girl who killed Geraldine.” She paused to look slyly over at Higgins. “Well, you want to know about it? Kelsey Heath was driving the car. There were four of them in it but Geraldine was the one who was killed. Stevie went to see the car when it was in the garage, he went to see the blood on it, that’s how crazy it made him. You got a cigarette?”
Higgins gave her one and lit it. She inhaled, letting the smoke curl out through her nose. “Well, that would of been all right, he would of gotten over Geraldine dying. But it’s happened again. Johnny Heath has taken another girl away from him. You saw her in the show, a thin little thing who does handsprings and gives herself airs. Thinks she’s Jesus Christ’s first cousin. Well anyway, Stevie likes her, and he’s just beginning to get some place when Johnny Heath starts coming in and sees Marcie.”
Higgins said, “Geraldine was Jordan’s girl?”
“She slept with him. When Johnny Heath started to take her out she left Stevie flat, moved right out on him.”
Higgins smiled at the shock and reproof in her voice. Mamie would never walk out on her man. One hundred and ten Charles Street had better be watched very carefully. Murillo, like any other criminal big or small, would try to get to his girl after a crime.
“Well, a man don’t like that,” Mamie was saying. “If he does the walking out himself, well that’s different, he’s still got his self-respect. Women don’t need that kind of selfrespect, we get it from other things like nice clothes and hair-dos. Maybe if men could dress different, fix themselves up like, they wouldn’t be so touchy.”
Higgins agreed with her. “Jordan was touchy, was he?”
“Not more than most, I guess, but when you lose two girls to the same man it throws you. He acted funny when he drove me home, he kept bringing up Geraldine all the time. She’s been dead for two years now and I think when someone’s been dead for two years you ought to let her stay dead. But Stevie said it would happen again. He said Johnny Heath would come some night and take Marcie out and there’d be another accident — a lot of crazy talk like that.”
“Threatening talk?”
“Yeah, but not against the girl, Kelsey Heath. It was all against Johnny Heath himself. Well, he drove me home and I got out and went in the house. About an hour later...”
“What time?”
“Maybe four. He came back again and said he wanted to come in and have a drink. Him with all that scotch in the car, the damn cheapskate. So I let him in because — well, I was just sitting there anyway, might as well have company. He came in and we finished the rye and he went to sleep on the couch. That was when he talked in his sleep. He kept talking about Johnny Heath. I had to wake him up.”
She stopped and fished around inside her dress for her handkerchief. As soon as she found the handkerchief the tears came to her eyes. Perfect synchronization, Higgins thought, and a talent for tears. He watched her big soft eyes and then his gaze traveled down to her mouth. It was pulled tight and thin.
“I hate to rat on Stevie like this,” she said through the handkerchief. “But he said Johnny Heath had killed Geraldine, murdered her. When I woke him up he said he had to phone Marcie, that’s the one who does handsprings, and see if she was all right. I told him he couldn’t phone from the house at that time of morning because that’s my landlady’s rule. He went out to phone from a drugstore and never came back. That’s all.”
She replaced the handkerchief, smiled brightly at Higgins and turned to walk away.
“No, it isn’t all,” Higgins said grimly. “Come back here.”
“I have to go and change.”
“I want Murillo.”
“I swear to God I don’t know where he is,” Mamie cried. “I swear it. He never told me anything like that! There’d be weeks when I never heard from him at all.”
“He lived with you, didn’t he?”
“Sometimes. I told you, sometimes. But I guessed he had another place.”
“A hideout.”
“I guess.”
“And you never tried to find out where it was?”
She looked at him defiantly. “I tried, all right! What do you think I’m made of? I thought he might... might have another woman. So I asked him. And you know what that got me? A sock on the jaw. So I quit trying.”
“Murillo still smoke?”
“Smoke?”
“Jujus.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know anything at all about marihuana, I suppose?”
“Not a thing.”
They were still trying to stare each other down when Joey strode through the door again.
“Still here?” he said to Higgins. “Go and get dressed, Mamie. Tell Marcie Moore she’s wanted on the phone.”
Mamie disappeared, and a minute later Marcie came out of the dressing room. She wore the same costume and she had the black cape clutched tight around her body.
She looked uncertainly from Joey to Higgins.