'Get some ice and a glass, Bert. Mr. Arthur wants a drink. If you're too mucky-muck to drink with me, Mr. Arthur isn't.'
'The name is Archer.'
'Get _two_ glasses,' he said with his foolish grin. 'Mr. Archer wants a drink, too. Sit down,' he said to me. 'Take the load off your feet. Tell me about poor little Helen.'
We sat on the couch. I filled him in quickly on the circumstances of the murder, including the threat that preceded it, and Helen's feeling that Bridgeton was catching up with her.
'What did she mean by that?' The lines of the grin were still in his face like clown marks but the grin had become a rictus.
'I've come a long way to see if you can help me answer that question.'
'Me? Why come to me? I never knew what went on in her mind, she never _let_ me know. She was too bright for me.' His mood swayed into heavy drunken self-pity. 'I sweated and slaved to buy her an education like I never had, but she wouldn't give her poor old father the time of day.'
'I understand you had a bad quarrel and she left borne.'
'She told you, eh?'
I nodded. I had decided to keep Mrs. Hoffman out of it. He was the kind of man who wouldn't want his wife ahead of him in anything.
'She tell you the names she called me, crook and Nazi, when all I was doing was my bounden duty? You're a cop, you know how a man feels when your own family undermines you.' He peered at me sideways. 'You are a cop, aren't you?'
'I have been.'
'What do you do for a living now?'
'Private investigation.'
'Who for?'
'A man named Kincaid, nobody you know. I knew your daughter slightly, and I have a personal interest in finding out who killed her. I think the answer may be here in Bridgeton.'
'I don't see how. She never set foot in this town for twenty years, until last spring. She only came home then to tell her mother she was getting a divorce. From _him_.' He gestured toward the back of the house, where I could hear ice being chipped.
'Did she do any talking to you?'
'I only saw her the once. She said hello-how-are-you and that was about it. She told her mother that she'd had it with Bert and her mother couldn't talk her out of it. Bert even followed her out to Reno to try and convince her to come back, but it was no go. He isn't enough of a man to hold a woman.'
Hoffman finished his drink and set his tumbler down on the floor. He remained slumped forward for about a minute, and I was afraid he was going to get sick or pass out on me. But he came back up to a sitting position and muttered something about wanting to help me.
'Fine. Who was Luke Deloney?'
'Friend of mine. Big man in town back before the war. She told you about him, too, eh?'
'You could tell me more, Lieutenant. I hear you have a memory like an elephant.'
'Did Helen say that?'
'Yes.' The lie didn't cost me anything, not even a pang of conscience.
'At least she had some respect for her old man, eh?'
'A good deal.'
He breathed with enormous relief. It would pass, as everything passes when a man is drinking seriously to kill awareness. But for the moment he was feeling good. He believed his daughter had conceded a point in their bitter life-long struggle.
'Luke was born in nineteen-oh-three on Spring Street,' he said with great care, 'in the twenty-one- hundred block, way out on the south side--two blocks over from where I lived when I was a kid. I knew him in grade school. He was the kind of a kid who saved up his paper-route money to buy a Valentine for everybody in his class. He actually did that. The principal used to take him around to the various rooms to show off his mental arithmetic. He did have a good head on his shoulders, I'll give him that. He skipped two grades. He was a corner.
'Old man Deloney was a cement finisher, and cement started to come in strong for construction after the World War. Luke bought himself a mixer with money he'd saved and went into business for himself. He did real well in the twenties. At his peak he had over five hundred men working for him all over the state. Even the depression didn't cramp his style. He was a wheeler and a dealer as well as a builder. The only things going up in those days were public works, so he went out in a big way for the federal and state contracts. He married Senator Osborne's daughter, and that didn't do him any harm, either.'
'I hear Mrs. Deloney's still alive.'
'Sure she is. She lives in the house the Senator built in nineteen-oh-one on Glenview Avenue on the north side. Number one-oh-three, I think.' He was straining to live up to his encyclopedic reputation.
I made a mental note of the address. Preceded by clinking, Bert Haggerty came into the room with ice and water and glasses on a tin tray. I cleared a space on the desk and he set the tray down. It had originally belonged to the Bridgeton Inn.
'You took long enough,' Hoffman said offhandedly.
Haggerty stiffened. His eyes seemed to regroup themselves more closely at the sides of his nose.
'Don't talk to me like that, Earl. I'm not a servant.'
'If you don't like it you know what you can do.'
'I realize you're tight, but there's a limit--'
'Who's tight? I'm not tight.'
'You've been drinking for twenty-four hours.'
'So what? A man has a right to drown his sorrows. But my brain is as clear as a bell. Ask Mr. Arthur here. Mr. Archer.'
Haggerty laughed, mirthlessly, falsetto. It was a very queer sound, and I tried to cover it over with a broad flourish:
'The Lieutenant's been filling me in on some ancient history. He has a memory like an elephant.'
But Hoffman wasn't feeling good any more. He rose cumbrously and advanced on Haggerty and me. One of his eyes looked at each of us. I felt like a man in a cage with a sick bear and his keeper.
'What's funny, Bert? You think my sorrow is funny, is that it? She wouldn't be dead if you were man enough to keep her at home. Why didn't you bring her home from Reno with you?'
'You can't blame me for everything,' Haggerty said a little wildly. 'I got along with her better than you did. If she hadn't had a father-fixation--'
'Don't give me that, you lousy intellectual. Ineffectual. Ineffectual intellectual. You're not the only one that can use fourbit words. And stop calling me Earl. We're not related. We never would have been if I had any say in the matter. We're not even related and you come into my house spying on my personal habits. What are you, an old woman?'
Haggerty was speechless. He looked at me helplessly.
'I'll break your neck,' his father-in-law said.
I stepped between them. 'Let's have no violence, Lieutenant. It wouldn't look good on the blotter.'
'The little pipsqueak accused me. He said I'm drunk. You tell him he's mistaken. Make him apologize.'
I turned to Haggerty, closing one eye. 'Lieutenant Hoffman is sober, Bert. He can carry his liquor. Now you better get out of here before something happens.'
He was glad to. I followed him out into the hall.
'This is the third or fourth time,' he said in a low voice. 'I didn't mean to set him off again.'
'Let him cool for a bit. I'll sit with him. I'd like to talk to you afterward.'
'I'll wait outside in my car.'
I went back into the bear cage. Hoffman was sitting on the edge of the couch with his head supported by his hands.
'Everything's gone to hell in a hand-car,' he said. 'That pussy willow of a Bert Haggerty gets under my
