“Okey, it’s a nice town. So is Chicago. You could live there a long time and not see a Tommygun. Sure, it’s a nice town. It’s probably no crookeder than Los Angeles. But you can only buy a piece of a big city. You can buy a town this size all complete, with the original box and tissue paper. That’s the difference. And that makes me want out.”
She stood up and pushed her chin at me. “You’ll go bed now and right here. I have a spare bedroom and you can turn right in and — “
“Promise to lock your door?”
She flushed and bit her lip “Sometimes I think you’re a world-beater,” she said, “and sometimes I think you’re worst heel I ever met.”
“On either count would you run me over to where I can get a taxi?”
“You’ll stay here,” she snapped. “You’re not fit. You’re a sick man.”
“I’m not too sick to have my brain picked,” I said nastily.
She ran out of the room so fast she almost tripped over the two steps from the living room up to the hall. She came back in nothing flat with a long flannel coat on over her slack suit and no hat and her reddish hair looking as mad as her face. She opened a side door and threw it away from her, bounced through it and her steps clattered on the driveway. A garage door made a faint sound lifting. A car door opened and slammed shut again. The starter ground and the motor caught and the lights flared past the open French door of the living room.
I picked my hat out of a chair and switched off a couple of lamps and saw that the French door had a Yale lock. I looked back a moment before I closed the door. It was a nice room. It would be a nice room to wear slippers in.
I shut the door and the little car slid up beside me and I went around behind it to get in.
She drove me all the way home, tight-lipped, angry. She drove like a fury. When I got out in front of my apartment house she said goodnight in a frosty voice and swirled the little car in the middle of the street and was gone before I could get my keys out of my pocket.
They locked the lobby door at eleven. I unlocked it and passed into the always musty lobby and along to the stairs and the elevator. I rode up to my floor. Bleak light shone along it. Milk bottles stood in front of service doors. The red fire door loomed at the back. It had an open screen that let in a lazy trickle of air that never quite swept the cooking smell out. I was home in a sleeping world, a world as harmless as a sleeping cat.
I unlocked the door of my apartment and went in and sniffed the smell of it, just standing there, against the door for a little while before I put the light on. A homely smell, a smell of dust and tobacco smoke, the smell of a world where men live, and keep on living.
I undressed and went to bed. I had nightmares and woke out of them sweating. But in the morning I was a well man again.
29
I was sitting on the side of my bed in my pajamas, thinking about getting up, but not yet committed. I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as I ought to, not as sick as I would feel if I had a salaried job. My head hurt and felt large and hot and my tongue was dry and had gravel on it and my throat was stiff and my jaw was not untender. But I had had worse mornings.
It was a gray morning with high fog, not yet warm but likely to be. I heaved up off the bed and rubbed the pit of my stomach where it was sore from vomiting. My left foot felt fine. It didn’t have an ache in it. So I had to kick the corner of the bed with it.
I was still swearing when there was a sharp tap at the door, the kind of bossy knock that makes you want to open the door two inches, emit the succulent raspberry and slam it again.
I opened it a little wider than two inches. Detective-Lieutenant Randall stood there, in a brown gabardine suit, with a pork pie lightweight felt on his head, very neat and clean and solemn and with a nasty look in his eye.
He pushed the door slightly and I stepped away from it. He came in and closed it and looked around. “I’ve been looking for you for two days,” he said. He didn’t look at me. His eyes measured the room.
“I’ve been sick.”
He walked around with a light springy step, his creamy gray hair shining, his hat under his arm now, his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t a very big man for a cop. He took one hand out of his pocket and placed the hat carefully on top of some magazines.
“Not here,” he said.
“In a hospital.”
“Which hospital?”
“A pet hospital.”
He jerked as if I had slapped his face. Dull color showed behind his skin.
“A little early in the day, isn’t it — for that sort of thing?”
I didn’t say anything. I lit a cigarette. I took one draw on it and sat down on the bed again, quickly.
“No cure for lads like you, is there?” he said. “Except to throw you in the sneezer.”
“I’ve been a sick man and I haven’t had my morning coffee. You can’t expect a very high grade of wit.”
“I told you not to work on this case.”
“You’re not God. You’re not even Jesus Christ.” I took another drag on the cigarette. Somewhere down inside me felt raw, but I liked it a little better.
“You’d be amazed how much trouble I could make you.”
“Probably.”
“Do you know why I haven’t done it so far?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” He was leaning over a little, sharp as a terrier, with that stony look in his eyes they all get sooner or later.
“You couldn’t find me.”
He leaned back and rocked on his heels. His face shone a little. “I thought you were going to say something else,” he said. “And if you said it, I was going to smack you on the button.”
“Twenty million dollars wouldn’t scare you. But you might get orders.”
He breathed hard, with his mouth a little open. Very slowly he got a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and tore the wrapper. His fingers were trembling a little. He put a cigarette between his lips and went over to my magazine table for a match folder. He lit the cigarette carefully, put the match in the ashtray and not on the floor, and inhaled.
“I gave you some advice over the telephone the other day,” he said. “Thursday.”
“Friday.”
“Yes — Friday. It didn’t take. I can understand why. But I didn’t know at that time you had been holding out evidence. I was just recommending a line of action that seemed like a good idea in this case.”
“What evidence?”
He stared at me silently.
“Will you have some coffee?” I asked. “It might make you human.”
“No.”
“I will.” I stood up and started for the kitchenette.
“Sit down,” Randall snapped. “I’m far from through.”
I kept on going out to the kitchenette, ran some water into the kettle and put it on the stove. I took a drink of cold water from the faucet, then another. I came back with a third glass in my hand to stand in the doorway and look at him. He hadn’t moved. The veil of his smoke was almost a solid thing to one side of him. He was looking at the floor.
“Why was it wrong to go to Mrs. Grayle when she sent for me?” I asked.
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
