there. He sat where she would have waited on him, but the buxom dark girl came up instead. He waited till she brought his order and asked, 'Isn’t Mrs. Fleming here?'
'No, she’s off sick.' She hardly looked at him, didn’t seem to recognize him as one of the cops who had been here.
Galeano ate his macaroni and cheese, not thinking much. Come down to it, Carey and the rest of those damned cynics had done all the thinking on it. All from the old viewpoint, drilled into any cop as any lawyer, what was the crime, who profited, how was it done, by whom. Damn it, he felt sorry for her: and maybe he was being stupid. He could follow the way Mendoza and Carey thought, logically-and there were questions to be answered about Marta Fleming. But he found that sometime just in the last couple of hours he had come back to simple feeling, and what the feeling said was, that’s an honest girl, telling the truth. And if that was simple in another sense, the hell with being too smart.
He paid the bill, put on his coat, went out and drove down to Westlake Avenue. He had to turn to park on the legal side. The place was quiet except for a faint hint of singing in a whiskeyish voice, from the top floor. He pushed the bell; pushed it again. After a while the door was pulled back and she stood there. She had a navy wool robe belted tightly around her, and her russet-blonde-tawny hair was uncombed, her nose red.
'Mrs. Fleming-'
'You!' she said. 'Police again! Am I never any more to have peace?'
'Now listen,' said Galeano. 'I-'
'Gott im Himmel! Go away!' she said furiously. 'I do not wish to talk to you-is that for you enough plain language?'
Galeano began to feel slightly irritated. All the various things the people he’d talked to had said about her slid past his mind. 'If you’d just 1isten-'
'I will not listen to you, stupid pig of a policeman! Go away!' she said arrogantly.
Galeano, that mild and even-tempered man, quite suddenly lost his temper. He reached out and took her by the shoulders and shook her hard, back and forth. 'Who’s stupid, you damned silly woman? It’s no wonder you haven’t made any friends here, keeping your damned stiff-necked pride, never meeting people halfway! All I wanted to tell you, damn it, is that I believe your damned silly story-I think you’re honest-and God forgive me for maybe being a fool! Now if you want to go on being a Goddamned martyr, it’s perfectly all right with me, but all I can say is, I think you’re a bigger Goddamned fool!'
He shook her again and let her go and stepped back.
'Oh!' she said, and for a minute he thought she was going to hit him, and then she crumpled against the door-frame and began to cry in great gulping sobs. 'But I am not a martyr-all my fault-because I was weak-and nobody, nobody, nobody to talk- sehr einsam, niemand-Ach, die kleine Keitzchen, die kleine Katzchen, aber -all my fault- ach, so richt, I cannot talk with people, tell how-' She fell forward, sobbing, and Galeano caught her in his arms.
NINE
He was alarmed. She was sobbing so hard her whole body shook, and she made strangling noises in her throat. He half carried her over to the couch, and she lay huddled over one arm uttering great gulping sobs. He didn’t know what to do; he’d never seen anything like it.
'Hey,' he said uneasily, 'are you all right? Marta?'
Gradually the sobs lessened in intensity; she shook with several long shudders, half straightened up, put her face in her hands, and then after a long moment she ' sniffed, groped in her pocket for a handkerchief, and blew her nose. She was still shaking a little, and she said in a muffled voice, 'I am ashamed. I am sorry-to lose control so-'
'Don’t you feel better?' asked Galeano.
She blew her nose again. 'Yes, I do,' she said, sounding surprised. 'It-it is not easy that I-'
'Everybody needs to let off steam once in a while,' said Galeano. 'You just kept it all bottled up too long.'
And surprisingly, Marta suddenly laughed-a wobbly and half tearful laugh. 'You are so very right,' she said. 'It has been-what’s the phrase-one damned thing after another.'
Galeano was so relieved he laughed too, uproariously.
'You’d better tell me all about it. Maybe I’d understand better. You know, what you need right now is a good stiff drink. It won’t do your cold any harm, either.'
'Yes, I have caught a cold. There is a bottle of brandy, I was going to mix it with some lemon-'
'The hell with the lemon.' Galeano went out to the kitchen, found the brandy, poured her a stiff four fingers and gave himself a smaller one. 'You get outside that, and if you talk some you’ll feel better yet.'
She drank a third of it at once, took a long breath, shuddered and sat back, closing her eyes. 'I am,' she said dreamily, 'very tired. I think you are a kind person. You see, I cannot help but feel it was all my fault-all my fault.' She drank more brandy. Between that and the sudden flood of expended emotion all her reticences were down, overrun. 'Because I never should have married him. I never loved him as a wife should. It was wrong. We learn too late.'
'Why did you?' asked Galeano.
She looked at the brandy, her dark eyes brooding.
'My father-he owned a small manufacturing business in Lingen, our home. It was prosperous, we had thought there was money-there was always money, we were not very rich but my sister and I were not raised to work at jobs, at the convent you don’t learn shorthand, typing. Then Papa died, and it seemed there had been speculation, he left my mother nothing. Oh, the building was worth something, the land-that is all. I had to find work-Elisa was too young then.' She finished the brandy. 'There was an American unit stationed near, the girls go out with them, and a girl I knew introduced me to Edwin. He asked me to marry him. I did not love him, I liked him well enough is all. My mother said it is the best chance I will ever have, in America there is always opportunity and he is a good honest man. She is very old-fashioned,' said Marta, smiling a little, 'and she said love is not everything in marriage. I saw all that for myself-and so I married him.'
'And it didn’t work out?' asked Galeano.
She gave a short laugh. 'Oh! Yes, it worked out, as you say-the way such marriages do! He was not an educated man, but he was good and kind-he was clever with his hands, and a hard worker, he might have made much of himself, gone places as they say. After I had the baby, I felt reconciled- meine kleine Katzchen. But she died-so soon, she died. The doctor said, a thing wrong in her heart, she would never have lived long, but- And then Edwin was hurt in the accident, and those doctors said he would always be so, an invalid, helpless, in the wheelchair. It was like a nightmare beginning, and it does not end. There was no money, no compensation for him-I do not understand all that, but we had a lawyer-that cost a great deal of money too, I still owe the lawyer money, and it all came to nothing. He needed a great deal of care. It was then I began to think, all my fault, for I should not have married him, feeling no love for him. I try to be a good Catholic, I knew my duty, to look after him as a wife should. He was of no faith, we were not married in the Church, but one takes vows nevertheless. But it was hard. Oh, for him too! I realize-but it was difficult.'
'And then-what did happen that day?' asked Galeano. 'Three weeks ago tomorrow?'
She opened her eyes and put one hand to her temple, slowly. 'Mother of God, have I not asked myself?' she said quietly. 'We had come here, because the rent is much cheaper and I can walk to work. In that way, it was better, but not all ways. He had been very despairing, ever since the baby died, and he had said to me many times, he would be better dead, such a burden on me and no good to anyone. I had been afraid he would kill himself. It would not be a sin to him perhaps, but to me-I had come home, several times since we are here, to find him drunk. That terrible old man upstairs-he would come, pretending sympathy, and bring him whiskey. I tried to talk to him, ask him not to do so, but it was no use-no use. And then-there was that day.' She was silent, and unobtrusively Galeano tipped the rest of his drink into her glass. She finished it absently. 'It was such a very usual day to begin with. I left for the restaurant. I had got him dressed and into his chair, given him breakfast. The woman across the hall was leaving also. And then, when I was at work, I remembered my letter. The last evening I had written a
