doubt.
“I’m not at all sure of his guilt. I certainly don’t think you should go around making accusations.”
“I see.” His voice was wooden. He’d asked a question of a man and been answered by a profession. Which was the way I wanted it for the time being.
I offered Padilla a cigarette. He refused it. I sat down on a bench against the wall. Padilla remained standing. An uneasy silence set in, and continued for quite a long time.
“You could be right, Mr. Gunnarson,” he said at last. “It’s been a bad day for me. I go along calm and cool for months at a time, and then something happens, and I lose my head. You think I’m punchy, maybe? I took a lot of blows in the head when I was a kid fighting.”
“No. I think you’re human.”
After another long silence, he said: “I can use a cigarette, since you were so kind to offer. I left mine out at the club behind the bar.”
I gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. Before it had burned up, Dr. Simeon opened the metal door and glanced out. “There you are. I didn’t know whether or not you were waiting. I have some preliminary findings. I’d say it’s practically certain she died in the same way Broadman did, of asphyxia.”
Padilla spoke up. “Does that mean she was gassed?”
“That’s one form of asphyxia. There are several. In the present case, as in Broadman’s, indications are that death resulted from simple lack of oxygen. There’s a similar edema-a waterlogged condition-in the pleural cavity. And again, there are no external marks of violence. I haven’t got to the neck structures yet, but I’ll venture the opinion that she was smothered.” Simeon stepped out into the corridor. “I’d better phone this in to Wills before I continue.”
I stood beside Simeon’s desk while he tried to reach Wills, and then Granada. After a baffling five minutes, he hung up. “Can’t reach either of them. Well, they’re the ones who were in the hurry.”
“Did she take the sleeping pills?” I asked him.
“There are indications of it. I should be able to tell you more about that later. Now I’d better get back to the lady. She may have something more she wants me to know.”
Padilla glared at him from the doorway, outraged by his levity. Simeon appeared not to notice. He went out, and his rubber-soled shoes whispered away along the corridor.
I said to Padilla: “Let’s go down to Secundina’s place.”
Evening light ran in the alley like red-stained water. The berries on the Cotoneaster tree were the color of nail polish and blood. Secundina’s sister came to the door when we knocked. The baby was sleeping in her arm.
She looked at Padilla with hard eyes. “You again.”
“Me again.”
“What do you want this time?”
“Ask you some questions, Arcadia. Don’t be like that.”
“I answered all the questions. What’s the use? The old woman says they wanted her dead in the hospital, they gave her knockout pills. Maybe she’s right.”
“They don’t do things like that at the hospital,” I said.
“How do I know what they do there?” She held the child away from me, with her lifted hand between my eyes and his face.
“This is Mr. Gunnarson,” Padilla said. “He won’t give the little one
Arcadia Torres failed to acknowledge the introduction. Her intense, dark gaze was focused on Padilla. “What happened today? Secundina died today. You know it.”
“Did she do it herself, with sleeping pills?”
“She took the sleeping pills from the hospital, the whole bottle. The copper-the policeman-he said when he came back here, there wasn’t enough pills to kill her. But she’s dead, ain’t she?”
“What would make her do such a thing?” Padilla said.
“She was crazy about that Gus of hers, I guess. And she was scared. When she got feeling like that, she’d drink down anything. Mrs. Donato said that she had
“What do you mean by anything, Mrs. Torres?”
“Anything she could get. Sleeping pills or GI gin, they call it, or the cough medicine. They had her name on a list at all the drugstores. Indian list, they call it.”
“Did she take other drugs when she could get them?”
Her beautiful drooping mouth set itself in stubborn lines. Her Madonna eyes took on the dusty glassiness that I had seen in her sister’s eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did she have a habit?” Padilla asked her softly.
“Not any more she didn’t. She was off of it. Maybe she smoked a little marijuana, like on a party.”
“You mentioned that she was frightened,” I said. “What was she frightened of?”
“Getting killed.”
“So she tried to kill herself? It doesn’t make sense.”
“You didn’t know Secundina.”
“But you did, Mrs. Torres. Do you honestly believe she killed herself, or tried to?”
“That’s what the old woman says. She says that my sister is burning in hell for it now.”
“Is Mrs. Donato here?”
Arcadia shook her head. “She went to the
“Were you here when they took her away in the ambulance?”
“I saw them.”
“Was she alive then?”
“I thought she was alive.”
“Who called the ambulance?”
“The policeman.”
“Sergeant Granada?”
She nodded.
“What was Granada doing here?”
“He wanted to talk to her about Gus.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me. He sent her a message by the corner grocery. But when he got here, she was out, lying on the bed. He went in and found her.”
“Did you see them together?”
“After he called the ambulance, I did.”
“And she was alive then?”
“She was breathing, I think. But she wouldn’t wake up.”
“Was she afraid of Granada?”
“I don’t know. She was afraid of a lot of things.”
Padilla spoke sharply to her. “Answer the question!”
She gave her head a violent shake which left it tilted on her neck away from me. She answered Padilla in Spanish.
“What does she say, Tony?”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you any more, I’m sorry. When a bad thing like this happens we-I mean they turn against people, you know, people from uptown. Maybe if you let me talk to her?”
“Go ahead. I’ll wait in the car.”
I smoked a couple of cigarettes and watched the daylight dying on Pelly Street. Dark boys in twos and threes were prowling the sidewalk. The neon signs of the bars and cafes hung like
