“Nothing much,” I said, weighing my words. “My office was ransacked early this morning; nothing missing or...”
“Why didn't you tell me that?” Saltz roared.
“Don't crowd me, that's what I'm doing—now. Rest of the day I spent on another case,” I lied. “By the by, the police ever have anything on a Marion Lodge, also known as Mary Long? She was a call-girl a year or two ago. Dead uncle's estate is looking for her, she came into some property.”
Saltz grunted a few words into his desk phone, then took out a package of mints, tossed one at me. “You stink like a saloon. Looking for the killers in a bottle?”
“Never tell where they might be?” I said, chewing on the candy. We didn't speak for a few minutes, Saltz staring at me as though I wasn't there, then he said, “Darling, I find out you're holding out on me, I'll give you a chance to try your judo against a couple guys with rubber hoses. Remember that.”
His heavy neck would be almost perfect to try out my new hold. I didn't know why I disliked the jerk, but I sure did. I said, “Have to ask the professor what to do in a case like that.”
His phone rang. He listened for a moment, then hung up. “A Marion Lodge was arrested for hustling in 1950. Released on a thousand-dollar bail. Case dismissed without coming to trial.”
“Why?”
“Usual reasons—witnesses changed their minds, refused to talk.”
“What was her home address?”
Saltz shook his head. “Knock off. That was two years ago or over, she wouldn't be there any more.”
I got up. Saltz said, “Keep in touch with me.”
I said I would and at the door he said, “This might interest you, couple thugs tried to burglarize Anita's folks' home this afternoon. Old man scared them off with a shotgun blast. Interesting?”
“Another piece for the jig-saw. Interesting to you?”
“Saltz and Darling, the TV quiz kids! Get out of here.”
9
Outside I called Thelma Johnson and she still hadn't heard from Will. I stopped for gas, drove out to Queens, getting hooked in the late traffic. I'd seen the Rogers once or twice when Anita had worked late and I'd driven her home. Mrs. Rogers was a heavy woman in her late forties who worked in a local bakery. Rogers worked in a gas station, was thin, the quiet type: spoke with stilted words as though his choppers were false and he was afraid they'd . drop out if he opened his mouth too wide.
They lived in one of the cheap-looking bungalows that mushroomed up all over Queens and Long Island immediately after the last war, and sold for about three times what they were worth. When I rang the bell he opened the door, dressed in a faded pair of coveralls. We shook hands and he said, “Glad you came out, Hal.”
He led me to the kitchen where he was boiling hot dogs, had a bottle of beer working. “Emma is staying at her brother's. Upset, of course, and then today this robbery.... Eat supper with me.”
I speared a frank, wrapped a slice of bread around it, poured myself some beer, asked about the robbery. The old man had taken the day off, to be around Mrs. Rogers, and shortly after eleven in the morning he'd heard a noise at the rear porch door, saw two men trying to jimmy the door. He couldn't describe them except that they looked “rough.” He'd taken down a shotgun from the wall, slipped in a shell... they took off when he fired. He showed me where most of the porch door was ripped away. “Aimed high. I know, at fifteen feet I could have splattered them with a shotgun, but... after what happened to Anita, I didn't want to hurt nobody. Too much hurting and killing in this world.”
We finished the franks and a few more bottles of beer as I asked about Anita's boyfriends... could be I was going off half-cocked about the importance of the sliver of rock in all this. Rogers said, “Hal, Emma and I made a mistake, although I suppose it wasn't our fault—we had Anita late in life. As a result, when she grew up we were both too old to give her much companionship, and maybe she wasn't too happy at home, that's why her drive to... Well, now that she's gone I feel like my own life is done, empty.”
“One thing you can be sure of—I'll get her killer or killers if I don't do another thing in life.”
He gave me a tight smile. “Revenge—what does it mean? Won't bring our Anita back. Hal, you asked about boys.... Well, it was hard for Emma and me to understand Anita, we weren't one generation apart, we were several. She was a little wild, excitement seemed to be in her blood like a drug. She was too eager, intense, to have any boyfriends, or any friends, her own age. Guess she sort of frightened them off. I don't mean she was a wanton but... you spent eight hours a day with her, know what I mean.”
“Let's say now and then she was silly.”
He nodded his head slowly, kept nodding for a few seconds. “Hal, I want to ask you something, frankly and honestly. Seem like an odd question for a father to be asking... but... she was mad about you and knowing how impulsive she was, did you... two... ever... sleep together?”
His eyes were hard on me and I wondered where that shotgun was at the moment. “No, sir, Mr. Rogers, we never did. Frankly, I was afraid of Anita. That's the truth.”
He sighed. “That's too bad.”
“Hal, when a loved one dies you sit back and take stock of her life. Anita never had much and I hoped she had at least known and enjoyed the thing she wanted most—love.”
The old man amazed me, but I knew I was talking to a hell of an honest man, even if he thought sex was “love.”
He said, “That must sound like an awful thing for a father to say.”
