things.'
'Boy, I'll say. And let me tell you something, I liked that guy. He was little, and he had a kind of a funny name, but I liked him. He appreciated me, that's why.'
'Sure.'
'He told me some things about you,' she said. 'What he told me, it didn't seem like you'd be the guy killed him. I mean, even if you were going to, you know? You'd have more sense than do it right in your own room like that.'
'Fine.' He had to let her ramble a minute; if he tried to hurry her, she'd just get her back up.
She said, 'So I don't see why you got to stick around.
'Not all the way,' he said. 'Not till Regan's satisfied.'
'Listen,' she said, 'who's in charge around here, anyway? Is it Regan, or is it your buddy, the fat one?'
'Younger's in charge, but Regan's the cop.'
'Well, that's just dandy. Are they ever gonna get the guy that did it?'
'No.'
She hadn't expected that answer. She shook her head and said, 'What? Why the hell not?'
'Because I got him,' Parker told her. 'It's a long story, you don't want to hear it.'
'Are you kidding? Sure I want to hear it.'
'You don't.'
She looked at his face, and for a second or two she was going to argue, and then she changed her mind. 'Okay, I don't,' she said. 'So what's the point?'
'The point is, we've got to give Regan somebody else.'
'Like who, for instance?'
'Anybody. Somebody not here any more.'
'And he's supposed to swallow it?'
'Younger is, and he will. It's got to be just a good enough story so Younger can get away with accepting it and closing the case. Once Younger calls the case solved, there's nothing Regan can do any more. He's only in like on an advisory capacity, till they find out who did it.'
Doubtfully she said, 'All right, if you say so. How do we tell this story?'
'It depends. What did you tell Regan so far?'
'Hah. Which time? He wouldn't trust me across the street, that Regan. First I tell him one thing, then I tell him. something else.'
Impatience was getting to Parker. Younger might take it into his head to drop by Joe's house any time, and Parker didn't want Younger upset. He wanted Younger thinking he had everything under control.
He said, 'Just tell me what you told him.'
She shrugged and waved her arms and said, 'The first time, I told him the truth. The second time, I told him I made a mistake.' She walked across the room and got herself a cigarette from the dresser.
'Get me one, too,' he said. This was going to take a while.
She smoked a filter brand. She gave him one and he ripped the filter off it before he took a light from the match she held up for him. She looked at him with brown eyes, steadily, while he lit his cigarette. She still thought he was there for sex.
He wasn't. Maybe later, when this was all cleared up. He still had one woman waiting for him in Miami, but he'd been getting tired of her anyway. Later on he'd make up his mind, not now.
He sat down in the leatherette chair and said, 'Tell me what you told him the first time. Detail by detail. Tell me like I'm him and you're doing it just like you did.'
'I don't see the point, but why not?' She sat down in the other chair, crossed her legs, and looked up at the ceiling. 'Dear Inspector Regan,' she said, 'it all began when I was five years-'
'I don't have time for that, Rhonda.'
Something in his voice drained the cuteness out of her. 'All right,' she said, flat. 'This is what I told him. Adolph and I come here on vacation, just passing through. Adolph saw you in the lobby when we came in, and said he knew you and he was going to go say hello. I don't know what went on between you, but you beat him up and threatened to kill him. That's it.'
'What about bringing him back to his room? What about running into you there?'
She shook her head. 'No. I didn't say anything about that, I just did it straight and simple. You beat him up and he came back to the room afterwards and told me you were the one did it.'
'You told Regan that? That Tiftus came back to the room afterwards and told you I beat him up?'
