himself all jammed up with some floozy and a bottle of hootch and what he’s done looks to him as if he’d stolen the bishop’s pants. After all, the guy’s going on twenty-nine years old and if he wants to roll in the gutter that’s his business. He’ll find somebody to blame it on after a while.”
“I hate to believe you, Mr. Marlowe,” she said slowly. “I’d hate for mother—”
“Something was said about twenty dollars,” I cut in.
She looked shocked. “Do I have to pay you now?”
“What would be the custom in Manhattan, Kansas?”
“We don’t have any private detectives in Manhattan. Just the regular police. That is, I don’t think we do.”
She probed in the inside of her tool kit again and dragged out a red change purse and from that she took a number of bills, all neatly folded and separate. Three fives and five ones. There didn’t seem to be much left. She kind of held the purse so I could see how empty it was. Then she straightened the bills out on the desk and put one on top of the other and pushed them across. Very slowly, very sadly, as if she was drowning a favorite kitten.
“I’ll give you a receipt,” I said.
“I don’t need a receipt, Mr. Marlowe.”
“I do. You won’t give me your name and address, so I want something with your name on it.”
“What for?”
“To show I’m representing you.” I got the receipt book out and made the receipt and held the book for her to sign the duplicate. She didn’t want to. After a moment reluctantly she took the hard pencil and wrote “Orfamay Quest” in a neat secretary’s writing across the face of the duplicate.
“Still no address?” I asked.
“I’d rather not.”
“Call me any time then. My home number is in the phone book too. Bristol Apartments, Apartment 428.”
“I shan’t be very likely to visit you,” she said coldly.
“I haven’t asked you yet,” I said. “Call me around four if you like. I might have something. And then again I might not.”
She stood up. “I hope mother won’t think I’ve done wrong,” she said, picking at her lip now with the pale fingernail. “Coming here, I mean.”
“Just don’t tell me any more of the things your mother won’t like,” I said. “Just leave that part out.”
“Well really!”
“And stop saying ‘well really’.”
“I think you are a very offensive person,” she said.
“No, you don’t. You think I’m cute. And I think you’re a fascinating little liar. You don’t think I’m doing this for any twenty bucks, do you?”
She gave me a level, suddenly cool stare. “Then why?” Then when I didn’t answer she added, “Because spring is in the air?”
I still didn’t answer. She blushed a little. Then she giggled.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was just plain bored with doing nothing. Perhaps it was the spring too. And something in her eyes that was much older than Manhattan, Kansas.
“I think you’re very nice—really,” she said softly. Then she turned quickly and almost ran out of the office. Her steps along the corridor outside made tiny, sharp pecky sounds, kind of like mother drumming on the edge of the dinner table when father tried to promote himself a second piece of pie. And him with no money any more. No nothing. Just sitting in a rocker on the front porch back there in Manhattan, Kansas, with his empty pipe in his mouth. Rocking on the front porch, slow and easy, because when you’ve had a stroke you have to take it slow and easy. And wait for the next one. And the empty pipe in his mouth. No tobacco. Nothing to do but wait.
I put Orfamay Quest’s twenty hard-earned dollars in an envelope and wrote her name on it and dropped it in the desk drawer. I didn’t like the idea of running around loose with that much currency on me.
3
You could know Bay City a long time without knowing Idaho Street. And you could know a lot of Idaho Street without knowing Number 449. The block in front of it had a broken paving that had almost gone back to dirt. The warped fence of a lumberyard bordered the cracked sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Halfway up the block the rusted rails of a spur track turned in to a pair of high, chained wooden gates that seem not to have been opened for twenty years. Little boys with chalk had been writing and drawing pictures on the gates and all along the fence.
Number 449 had a shallow, paintless front porch on which five wood and cane rockers loafed dissolutely, held together with wire and the moisture of the beach air. The green shades over the lower windows of the house were two thirds down and full of cracks. Beside the front door there was a large printed sign “No Vacancies.” That had been there a long time too. It had got faded and flyspecked. The door opened on a long hall from which stairs went up a third of the way back. To the right there was a narrow shelf with a chained, indelible pencil hanging beside it. There was a push button and a yellow and black sign above which read “Manager,” and was held up by three thumbtacks no two of which matched. There was a pay phone on the opposite wall.
I pushed the bell. It rang somewhere near by but nothing happened. I rang it again. The same nothing happened. I prowled along to a door with a black and white metal sign on it—“Manager.” I knocked on that. Then I kicked it. Nobody seemed to mind my kicking it.
I went back out of the house and down around the side where a narrow concrete walk led to the service entrance. It looked as if it was in the right place to belong to the manager’s apartment. The rest of the house would be just rooms. There was a dirty garbage pail on the small porch and a wooden box full of liquor bottles. Behind the screen the back door of the house was open. It was gloomy inside. I put my face against the screen and peered in.
