you know I sent for Mr. Jeliff. He was Mr. Johnson's only friend in town. It was funny, him not being a butcher himself. I never knew what he did, though I will say he had plenty of money.”
By this time I was in the house. “I'm not from the police,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Why do you want to see him?”
“I'm a friend. St Louis. Has anything happened to him?”
“Oh!” she said. “Oh!” She hurried up the stairs, moving fast for so big a woman. I began to feel funny. It was one of those things you get sometimes, premonitions, it says in the dictionary, that tell you something is wrong. I didn't try to think what it could be; I just waited until she came downstairs with two men. I saw they were plain- clothes cops.
“This is him,” the woman said.
The younger of the cops got behind me so I couldn't run away. The other, a middle-sized man with a pasty face, squinted at me.
“What do you want with Johnson?”
“I'd like to see him.”
“Why?”
“I'm a friend.”
“Yeah?”
“That's what he said,” the fat woman gasped. She was out of breath from the stairs.
“Is he in trouble?” I asked.
The cop laughed. I didn't see what was funny. The woman began to weep. I looked at the cop.
“He's dead,” he said, watching me. “He got knocked off this morning.” I was half expecting it, but still it gave me a jolt. I'd had a letter from him only two days ago. He wasn't in any trouble then.
“My God!” I said. “Who did it?”
The cop behind me spoke. “Suppose we ask you that.” His voice was harsh.
“I didn't.” I pretended to be frightened. “I hardly knew him.”
“Yeah? Then why are you calling on him?”
“I was just looking him up. I'm from St Louis. I used to know him there. Slightly. Very slightly. I got in this afternoon, and I didn't know anybody else in town.”
“How did you know ...?”
The pasty-faced cop broke in. “Save the questions. We'll take him down to the station. Chief'll want to sec him.”
“I don't want to go to jail.”
“Don't get scared. If your nose is clean, nothing'll happen.”
“But my name will be in the papers. I'm a hardware salesman. It'll hurt my business.”
“That's your lookout,” the young cop said.
We started for the station; but on the sidewalk they decided I'd better look at the body. They wanted an identification. We went back up the stairs and into the house. We passed the fat woman, still weeping, and climbed another flight of stairs. I wondered if Oke had been making love to her He used to say they were all alike with your eyes closed. His room was on the second floor. It was a large room with a bay window, a double bed with a clean white spread, a hand-carved mahogany dresser, and a couple of mohair chairs. I could see an elm tree out the window.
The body was in the bathroom under a sheet. “I don't want to look at him,” I said. “I'll get sick.”
“A big guy like you!” the pasty-faced cop said. I said: “I'm not used to bodies.”
The young cop pulled off the sheet. “It's time you were.” Oke was lying on his side in front of the toilet. He looked smaller dead, and not so fat. He had on a shirt, pants and black silk socks. The pants' fly was unbuttoned. He had been shot just behind the right ear. There was a brown smear under his head, and blood had darkened his blond hair.
“That's Mr. Johnson,” I said.
We looked at him. At the right of the toilet was an open window. The bullet had come through there. I could sec the back yards of three houses.
“Hell of a time to shoot a man,” the young cop said. “Just when he was taking a ...”
“Never mind,” the pasty-faced cop said. The young cop slid the sheet back over the body. We left the house and got in a green Dodge sedan. The young cop sat in back with me. They didn't talk. The station, like everything else, was built of red bricks. We went right into the chief's office.
He was a fat man with a red face and pale blue eyes, and his name was Piper. He had a cigar in his mouth. His salt-and-pepper suit looked as though he had slept in it. An elk's tooth hung from a gold chain on his vest. “Who's this?” he said, staring at me.
The pasty-faced cop told him. The chief's eyes went over me, and then they went to the window.
“What's your name?” he asked.
I told him Karl Craven. I pretended to be scared. I told him I knew Mr. Johnson, but not intimately. I said Mr. Johnson used to bowl and drink beer with our crowd in St Louis. I said he had worked for a collection agency. I
