“She walk?”
“Morris drove her when he went to work.” She couldn’t help but smile and puff up a little when saying her lard- bottomed husband’s name. “I’m going over there now myself. We’re going to visit Uncle Sol.”
“I’ll follow you,” I said. “Maybe Fearless is over there too.”
“He wasn’t when I called.”
“When was that?”
“About seven-fifteen. I called to make sure that everything was okay.”
Fanny’s husband was just out of prison and in the hospital with knife wounds inflicted by a criminal who was still on the loose — and her niece calls to ask is everything okay. I could see why that old woman turned to Fearless and me for help.
GELLA PARKED in the driveway, and I pulled up to the curb. By the time I got to the front door, she’d had enough time to ring the bell and knock.
“Nice day,” I said while we waited for Fanny to answer.
“What? Oh yes. Yes it
I could hear the three short notes, then the long tone — then an even longer silence. Gella looked at me, and I tried to look unconcerned.
“She probably in the bathtub or something,” I said.
“Aunt Hedva never bathes in the daytime,” Gella pronounced with all the weight of a hanging judge.
I took out the key Fanny had given me and used it in the lock. When I pushed the door open the girl ran in.
“Hedva! Fanny!” She ran up the stairs in great galloping bounds.
I wandered into the den. For some reason I expected her to be there.
Her foot, half in a blue canvas shoe, was visible from around the cushioned chair.
“She’s here,” I said loudly enough for Gella to hear.
I didn’t move. Gella’s heavy feet hurried quickly to the stairs and down. When she got to my side she froze.
The wail from Fanny’s niece was enough to break anybody’s heart. She threw the chair aside and fell in a heap next to the corpse. There was no question about Fanny being dead. Her small face was a dark blue, and her tongue protruded. She looked like some demented soul from an old Bosch painting.
I moved backward and lowered myself toward the chair. But the chair wasn’t where I remembered it, so I fell to the floor. It didn’t bother me to sit there, flat on my ass.
As I said before, I’ve been around hard times, but the death of that tiny woman who had taken me in without the slightest hesitation hit me hard. It was like I was groggy or something. I crawled over to Gella and put my hands on her shoulders. She rose and we held each other, her for a shoulder to cry on and me so I didn’t fall again.
“What can we do?” she wailed.
“Cops,” I said. “Call ’em.”
She went to use the phone in the kitchen while I remained, silent witness to an old woman’s death. From various windows sunlight poured into the rooms. Blobs of light and hard-lined shadows were everywhere. Birds were singing. Cars going up and down the street made the sounds of rushing wind. There was a mambo band playing on a radio somewhere down the block. I wouldn’t have heard any of it if it weren’t for the silence imposed by death.
Gella came back into the room. When she saw Fanny she fell to her knees again.
“There’s nothing we can do until they get here,” I told her. “Why?” she asked me.
I was looking at her, trying to think if there was an answer in the world to fit that question. My mouth opened and I was about to say something, but I had no idea what.
Just then the phone rang. I went into the kitchen as much to get away from the body as to answer the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Lockwood?”
“Who?”
“Tyrell Lockwood?”
“Who is this?”
“William Grove.”
