Periera don't say nothin'. I get hold of Fernandez by The collar. I yank him up an' I take him over to Henrietta.
'Tell the lady you're sorry, punk,' I say, 'because if you don't I'm goin' to smack it out of you. Get busy.'
Just to help him along I flatten his nose - which is not so well anyhow, with my thumb.
He comes across, an' says his stuff.
I take him outside to the top of the stair leadin' down to the dance floor an' I kick him down. He bounces considerable. When he gets to the bottom he sits up like he was tryin' to remember what his first name was.
I go back.
'Listen, Periera,' I say. 'Where does this guy Maloney live?'
He says he lives in some dump near Indio, so I tell him to get out a car an' drive Maloney home. He looks like he is goin' to object but he thinks better of it. I tell him that he had better take the Fernandez bird off as well, an' he says all right.
I turn around to Henrietta. There is a little smile in her eye. I give her a big wink.
'Get your wrap, sister,' I tell her. 'You an' me is goin' to do a little drivin'. I wanna talk to you.'
She looks at me an' she laughs.
'You've got your nerve, Mr Frayme,' she says.
CHAPTER 4
SITTIN' IN the car, drivin' easy with Henrietta smokin' a cigarette an' lookin' straight ahead in front of her, I was feelin' pretty good. I was thinkin' that if there wasn't so much crime mixed up with this 'G' business it would he a swell sorta job.
After a bit I ask her if she wants to go any place in particular, an' she says no, but that if we keep ahead an' take a turn right pretty soon we will come to some dump where they are open all night an' that she reckons that we might as well drink some coffee while we are talkin'.
I take a peek at her sideways, an' I'm tellin' you that this dame is certainly the goods. She has got that peculiar sort of way of talkin' an' doin' everything that gets you guessin'. Most dames woulda been hot to know what I wanted to talk to 'em about, but this Henrietta just don't ask a thing. She sits there lookin' straight ahead with them sapphire blue eyes of hers, an' a little smile playin' around her mouth. She gets me curious because she don't seem very interested in anything much - not even herself-an' there ain't many dames like that.
Pretty soon we come to the intersection that she has talked about an' we turn right. Away ahead I can see the lights of this place where we are goin' to get coffee. I slow down a bit because I want to put in a spot of thinkin' myself about what spiel I am goin' to pull on this Henrietta. I reckon that I have gotta tell her some sorta stuff that is liable to make her open up an' yet I have also got to keep who I am an' what I am doin' around here under cover. However, I have always found that if you are goin' to tell a fairy story you might as well make it a good one, so I get busy thinkin' about the idea that I am goin' to pull on her, after which I step on the gas an' we travel plenty.
Suddenly she starts talkin'.
'I think that was a swell job you did on Fernandez, Mr Frayme,' she says, lookin' at me outa the corner of her eye. 'He thinks he's tough. But maybe he'll alter his opinion after that little session he had with you.'
'That wasn't nothin',' I tell her. 'Anyhow, I don't like this Fernandez. He looks to me like a punk, an' I didn't like to see him bustin' your boy friend about. lHe looks a regular guy that Maloney bird.'
'He's pretty good,' she says, 'I like him.'
I pull up an' she stops talkin'.
We go in this place. It is the usual one story adobe building with a few tables stuck around an' a wop who is half asleep takin' coffee to a coupla old guys who are sittin' at a table. Besides these there ain't any one else there.
We sit down an' I order some coffee. I give her a cigarette, an' when I have lit it she holds it up an' looks at the smoke curlin' up.
'I'm afraid that you won't be very popular with Fernandez after this, Mr Frayme,' she says, 'and what he is going to do about me I don't know.
I ask her what she means by that crack.
She laughs, an' I can see her little teeth gleamin'.
'Fernandez wants me to marry him,' she says. 'He thinks he's madly in love with me, but what he'll think tomorrow after he's had a little facial treatinent and got rid of some of the black eyes and bruises, I don't know.'
'Well, well, well,' I say, 'an' here was I thinkin' that you was stuck on this Maloney. You don't really mean to say that you would consider hitchin' up with a bird like that Fernandez,' I tell her.
She smiles again. She certainly is a mysterious dame.
'I don't know what I think,' she says. 'Maybe I'll have to marry Fernandez.' She looks at me an' she gives a little laugh. 'Don't let's worry about him just now,' she says. 'You tell me what you want to talk to me about.'
The wop brings the coffee an' it smells good to me. When she lifts up her cup her wrap falls off her shoulders an' I see that she has gotta pair of shoulders that mighta been copied off this dame Venus that you probably heard about, an' who seems to have started plenty trouble in her time. Henrietta sees me lookin' an' she gives me a sorta whimsical look like you would give a kid who was bein' naughty, an' I begin thinkin' that this dame has gotta way with her that I could go nuts about if I was a guy who went nuts about the shape of dames' shoulders, which is a thing I would probably do, only just when I am getting good an' interested in things like that I get sent off to the other end of the country on some bum case or other.
Well, here we go, I think to myself, an' I start in on the spiel I have thought up in the car while I was drivin' to this dump.
'Look, lady,' I tell her, 'this is the way it is: I work for a firm of New York attorneys who have got a branch office in Magdalena, Mexico, that I run for 'em. Well, a month or so ago I am in New York on some business an' I get around with a guy who is workin' in the District Attorney's office there. This guy starts tellin' me about your husband Granworth Aymes bumpin' himself off last January an' he tells me that they have got some interestin' new evidence an' that they reckon they may re-open this case.'
I stop talkin' an' start drinkin' my coffee. Over the top of the cup I am watchin' her. I can see that her fingers holdin' the cigarette are tremblin' an' she has gone plenty white round the mouth. It don't look to me that what I have just said has pleased her any.
She takes a pull at herself but when she begins to talk her voice ain't so low as it was before. There is a spot of excitement in it
'That's very interesting,' she says. 'What new evidence could they find? I didn't know there was any question about my husband's suicide. I thought it was all over and finished with.'
She stubs out the cigarette end on an ashtray. By this time she has got hold of herself. I put my cup down an' give her another cigarette an' light one for myself.
'You see it's this way,' I go on. 'A coroner's inquest don't matter very much if the DA in charge of the case thinks that he's found some new stuff that means something. Anyhow this guy in the DA's office tells me that they have discovered that you wasn't in Connecticut on the night that Granworth Aymes is supposed to have bumped himself off. They have found out that you was in New York an' another thing is that they have gotta big idea that the last person to see Granworth Aymes before he died was you, see?'
'I see,' she says. Her voice is sorta dull, the life has gone out of it.
'These guys get all sorts of funny ideas in their heads,' I say, 'but you know what coppers an' district attorneys are. They just gotta try an' hang something on somebody. They wouldn't be doin' the job they do if they didn't like pullin' people in.
'You see it looks like somebody has dropped a hint around there that Granworth Aymes didn't commit suicide.
