'I don't know what I'll be doing. There are a few pieces I wouldn't mind owning. But sometimes I come to auctions the way some people go to the track even when they don't feel like betting. Just to sit in the sun and watch the horses run. I like the way an auction room feels. I like to hear the hammer drop. You seen enough? Let's go.'
His car was parked at a garage on Seventy-eighth Street. We rode over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and through Long Island City. Here and there street prostitutes stood along the curb singly or in pairs.
'Not many out last night,' he said. 'I guess they feel safer in daylight.'
'You were here last night?'
'Just driving around. He picked up Cookie around here, then drove out Queens Boulevard. Or did he take the expressway? I don't guess it matters.'
'No.'
We took Queens Boulevard. 'Want to thank you for coming to the funeral,' he said.
'I wanted to come.'
'Fine-looking woman with you.'
'Thank you.'
'Jan, you say her name was?'
'That's right.'
'You go with her or—'
'We're friends.'
'Uh-huh.' He braked for a light. 'Ruby didn't come.'
'I know.'
'What I told you was a bunch of shit. I didn't want to contradict what I told the others. Ruby split, she packed up and went.'
'When did this happen?'
'Sometime yesterday, I guess. Last night I had a message on my service. I was running around all yesterday, trying to get this funeral organized. I thought it went okay, didn't you?'
'It was a nice service.'
'That's what I thought. Anyway, there's a message to call Ruby and a 415 area code. That's San Francisco. I thought, huh? And I called, and she said she had decided to move on. I thought it was some kind of a joke, you know? Then I went over there and checked her apartment, and all her things were gone. Her clothes. She left the furniture. That makes three empty apartments I got, man. Big housing shortage, nobody can find a place to live, and I'm sitting on three empty apartments.
Something, huh?'
'You sure it was her you spoke to?'
'Positive.'
'And she was in San Francisco?'
'Had to be. Or Berkeley or Oakland or some such place. I dialed the number, area code and all. She had to be out there to have that kind of number, didn't she?'
'Did she say why she left?'
'Said it was time to move on. Doing her inscrutable oriental number.'
'You think she was afraid of getting killed?'
'Powhattan Motel,' he said, pointing. 'That's the place, isn't it?'
'That's the place.'
'And you were out here to find the body.'
'It had already been found. But I was out here before they moved it.'
'Must have been some sight.'
'It wasn't pretty.'
'That Cookie worked alone. No pimp.'
'That's what the police said.'
'Well, she coulda had a pimp that they didn't know about. But I talked to some people. She worked alone, and if she ever knew Duffy Green, nobody ever heard tell of it.' He turned right at the corner.
'We'll head back to my house, okay?'
'All right.'
'I'll make us some coffee. You liked that coffee I fixed last time, didn't you?'
'It was good.'
'Well, I'll fix us some more.'
