'Then I'll tell you. Internal Revenue is after Leo for the money he took off the top. If they can't find him and the money, maybe even if they can, they'll pin the rap on Davis. At the very least he'll lose his license for fronting for a concealed interest. At worst he'll go to the federal pen for the rest of his life.'
'He isn't the only one.'
'If you mean Leo, the rest of his life isn't worth much.'
'What about the rest of my life?'
She touched her furred angora breast. 'I'm not even thirty yet. I don't want to go to prison.'
'Then you better make a deal.'
'And turn Leo in? I will not.'
'They won't do anything to him, in his condition.'
'They'll lock him up. He won't get his therapy. He'll never learn to talk or write or-' She stopped herself in mid-sentence.
'Or tell you where the money is?'
She hesitated. 'What money? You said the money was gone.'
'The hundred grand is. But my information is that Leo took millions off the top. Where is it?'
'I wish I knew, Mister.'
Through her composed mask I could see the calculation going on behind her eyes. 'What did you say your name was?'
'Archer. Does Leo know where the money is?'
'I think so. He still has some of his brain left. But it's hard to tell how much he understands. He always pretends to understand everything I say. So the other day I tried him on some gibberish. He smiled and nodded just the same.'
'What did you say?'
'I wouldn't want to repeat it. It was just a lot of dirty words about what I'd do for him if he'd learn to talk. Or even write.'
Tensely, she clasped her arms across her chest, 'It drives me crazy when I think of what I went through in the hopes of a little peace and security. The beatings he handed out, and the other stuff: Don't think I didn't have other chances. But I stuck with Leo. Stuck is the word. Now I'm stuck with a cripple and it's costing us two grand a month to live-six hundred a month just for doctors and therapy - and I don't know where next month's money is coming from.'
Her voice rose. 'I'd be a millionaire if I had my rights.'
'Or your wrongs.'
She tossed her head. 'I earned that money, I ground it out like coffee over the years. Don't tell me I've got no right to it. I've got a right to a decent living.'
'Who told you that?'
'Nobody had to tell me. A woman with my looks - I can pick and choose.'
It was childish talk, self-hypnotic and pathetic. It gave me a hint of the self-enclosed fantasy that had paired her off with Leo Spillman and kept her with him, insulated from life by his larger fantasy.
'You mean you get picked and chosen. Why don't you go out and hustle? You're a big strong girl.'
She was still on her adolescent high horse. 'How dare you? I'm not a prostitute.'
'I don't mean that kind of hustle. Get a job.'
'I've never had to work for a living, thank you.'
'It's time you did. If you keep dreaming about those vanished millions you'll dream yourself into Camarillo or Corona.'
'Don't you dare make threats to me!'
'It isn't me threatening you. It's your dreams. If you won't lift a finger to help yourself, go back to Harry.'
'That feeb? He couldn't even stay out of hospital.'
'He gave everything he had.'
She was silent. Her face was like a colored picture straining in agony to come to life. Life glittered first in her eyes. A tear made a track down her cheek. I found myself standing beside her comforting her. Then her head was like an artificial dahlia on my shoulder, and I could feel the sorrowful little movements of her body becoming less sorrowful.
The therapist tapped on the door and opened it. She had changed into street clothes. 'I'm leaving, Mrs. Ketchel. Mr. Ketchel is safe and snug in his wheelchair.'
She looked at us severely: 'But don't leave him out too long now.'
'I won't,' Kitty said. 'Thank you.'
The woman didn't move. 'I was wondering if you can pay me something on last week, and for staying Monday night. I have bills to meet, too.'
Kitty went to her bedroom and came back with a twenty-dollar bill. She thrust it at the woman. 'Will this take care of it for now?'
'I guess it will have to. I don't begrudge my services, understand, but a woman has a right to honest pay for honest work.'
'Don't worry, you'll get your money. Our dividend checks are slow in arriving this month.'
The woman gave her disbelieving look, and left the house. Kitty was rigid with anger. She rapped her fists together in the air.
'The old bag! She humiliated me.'
'Are there any dividends coming?'
'There's nothing coming. I'm having to sell my jewels. And I was saving them for a rainy day.'
'It looks like a wet summer.'
'What are you, a rainmaker?'
She moved toward me, humming an old song about what we'd do on a rain-rain-rainy day. Her breast nudged me gently. 'I'd do a lot for any man who would help me find Leo's money.'
She was being deliberately provocative now, but our moment had passed.
'Would you tell me the truth, for instance?'
'What about?'
'Roy Fablon. Did Leo kill him?'
After a long thinking pause, she said: 'He didn't mean to.
It was an accident. They had a fight about - something.'
'Something?'
'If you have to know, it was Roy Fablon's daughter. The older Leo got, the more he went for the young chicks. It was embarrassing. Maybe I shouldn't have done what I did, but I passed the word to Mrs. Fablon about Leo making a deal for the girl with Fablon.'
'You told Mrs. Fablon?'
'That's correct. I was acting in self-defense. Also I was doing the girl a favor. Mrs. Fablon straightened her husband out, and he said nix to Leo.'
'I can't understand why he didn't say nix in the first place.'
'He owed Leo a lot of money, and that was all the leverage Leo ever needed. Also Fablon pretended not to know what the deal meant. You know what I mean?'
'I know what you mean.'
'Like Leo was a philanthropist or something. He'd sell his sick mother's blood for ten dollars a pint and take a deposit on the bottle, Leo would. But he was going to send the girl to school in Switzerland, to improve her mind. And Fablon thought that would be great, until his wife got wind of it. Frankly I think that Fablon hated the girl.'
'I thought he was crazy about her.'
'Sometimes there isn't much difference between the two. Ask me, I'm an expert. Fablon turned against her when she got pregnant by some fellow, apparently, and Fablon would go to any lengths to get her away from him.'
'Who was he?'
'I don't know. Mrs. Fablon didn't know, either, or else she didn't want to tell me. Anyway, Fablon came to the
