that doesn’t matter. When I married Nicky, I washed my hands of show business. A wife stays home and minds the children, like Nicky says.”
“Getting back to Estelle Carey…”
“I was at fault.”
Drury leaned forward. “Pardon?”
She gestured with the lacy hanky. “I have been a sick wife for a long, long time. Nick couldn’t be blamed for seeking the company of a gorgeous creature like Estelle-and she
Was as in past tense.
She went nobly on: “None of us knows what life has in store for us. We are all in God’s hands.”
Anyway, Estelle was.
She smiled bravely. “I have only pity for Estelle Carey. She missed everything that is fine in life-home, family, the respect and esteem that are every woman’s birthright.”
“No bitterness at all, then.”
She shook her head no. “I’m sorry for her from the bottom of my heart. Since this has happened, I’ve gone to church and lit candles in her memory. Her murder was a terrible, terrible thing.”
Drury smiled politely, rising, gesturing to her. “Thank you, Mrs. Circella. You’re free to go now. Thank you for stopping by.”
She rose, smiled politely back at him. Fluttered her eyelashes. Great eyes on this dame. “Certainly, Captain Drury,” she said.
“Sergeant Donahoe, in the hall there, will show you out.”
She walked by me, snugging on navy gloves, trailing a wake of expensive tasteful perfume. I closed the door behind her.
Drury sat back down. “What do you think?”
I was still standing. “Some classy broad.”
“I mean, is she on the level?”
“Yeah. In her way.”
“What do you mean, in her way?”
I shrugged. “She’s lying to herself, not to you. She’s human; she hated Estelle like any good wife would. But she prefers to affect her good-Catholic-wife, stiff-upper-lip, superiority-through-suffering stance. It gets her through the day.”
“In other words, her marriage is an arrangement she can live with.”
“I’d say so.”
“I say if she’d been in town Tuesday, we might have a real suspect.”
“No. I don’t think so. I can’t picture that sweet little thing with an icepick in her hand.”
“Sometimes women can surprise you, Nate.”
“Hell, they always surprise me. Personally, I wouldn’t mind finding a wife like that-beautiful, devoted, expects you to fool around on the side. I didn’t know they made ’em like that anymore.”
“You want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Nick.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I don’t think she’s a killer. I don’t think she even
“The papers are going to love her,” Drury said, glumly cynical. “They’ll fall all over themselves for that ‘every woman’s birthright’ speech.”
“You got that right. Anything else you’d care to share with me? Or should I let you get back to your couple of hundred suspects?”
His face narrowed into anger, or at least a semblance thereof. He shook his finger at me. “Yes there is. Why didn’t you give me D’Angelo’s name?”
“Oh. So Uncle Sam finally ran him down for you, huh?”
“Yes, and we were out to see him this morning. And we discovered you’d been there Wednesday night. What gives?”
I held my hands out, palms open. “He was on Guadalcanal with me, Bill. He was in that same shell hole as Barney and me. We almost got killed together. I owed him a warning of what was ahead for him-cops, reporters. He had that much coming.”
“Being in the service together doesn’t justify withholding information…”
“Yes it does.”
He shook his head. “Go on, make me feel like a heel. You been to fight the big war and I haven’t. Make me feel like a piker.” He thrust his finger at me. “But if you’re going to be sniffing around the edges of this case, don’t you goddamn
“Understood.”
“Now do me a favor and get the hell out of here.”
I did.
On my way out, I stopped by Sergeant Donahoe’s desk. “You got it?” I asked him.
He nodded and looked around furtively and opened a desk drawer and got out a sack.
“Two gee’s?” he whispered, holding on to the thing with both hands.
“Two gee’s,” I whispered back. “In cash. You’ll have the dough tomorrow.”
“I better,” he said, with his usual hound-dog expression, and handed me the sack.
I took it and walked down the stairs, out of Town Hall Station, in front of which the pretty, petite Mrs. Nick Circella was talking to Hal Davis and some other reporters, halfheartedly shielding her face with a gloved hand whenever a flashbulb went off.
I tucked Estelle Carey’s diary under my arm and walked by them.
That night I met Sally backstage at the Brown Derby at half past one; she stepped out of her dressing room wearing a white sweater and black slacks and a black fur coat and a white turban and looked like a million. Not Nicky Dean’s hidden million, maybe, but a treasure just the same.
“How can you look so chipper?” I asked her. “You just did four shows.”
She touched my cheek with a gentle hand, the nails of which were long and red and shiny. “I get a little sleep at night,” she said. “
“I hear it’s the latest rage,” I said.
She looped her arm in mine and we walked to the stage door. “It’ll get better for you. Wait and see.”
We’d spent Tuesday night together, in my Murphy bed, so she knew all about my sleeping trouble. She knew I would toss and turn, and then finally drop off only to quickly wake up in a cold sweat.
“I go back there when I sleep,” I told her. We were walking out on Monroe. It was cold, but not bitterly cold.
“Back there..?”
“To the Island.”
Our feet made flat, crunching sounds on the snowy sidewalk.
“Did you talk to your doctors about this?”
“Not really. I ducked the issue. I wanted to get home. I figured it would let up, once I did.”
She squeezed my arm. “Give it time. This is only your fourth day back. Say. Why don’t you see if a change of scenery helps your sleep habits? I’ve got a room at the Drake, you know.”
I grinned at her. “Surely not that plush white penthouse that fairy friend of yours sublet you, way back when.”
She laughed, sadly. “No. I don’t know what became of him, or his penthouse. It’s just a room. With a bed.”
“You talked me into it.”
We crossed Clark Street, heading for the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge. Traffic was light for a Friday night. Of course, the bars had already been closed for forty minutes.
“Do you know what this is about?” she asked.
