I was profoundly grateful for what she was doing and what she was, for what she was doing was wonderful, as I said, and what she was, was little and lovely and tough as a boot.
CHAPTER 7
As it turned out, the three-o’clock appointment was canceled, which was a relief, and I decided about that time that I’d call Sid and have her come on down and pick me up. I had my telephone out of its cradle and my index finger pointed at the dial when Millie cracked the door to the outer office and poked her red head through the crack.
“There’s a man here to see you,” she said.
“I don’t want to see a man. I want to go home, and that’s where I’m going.”
“Well, I’ve got a notion this may not be a simple matter of what you want or don’t want. I’ve got a notion it’s going to be sort of compulsory.”
“Why the hell don’t you try being reasonably direct and lucid for a change? State his name and business.”
“His name is Cotton McBride, and his business is being a policeman. Not just an ordinary policeman, either. He’s no less than a detective.”
“Damn it, I know who and what Cotton McBride is. Did he say what he wants to see me about?”
“No, he didn’t. I guess policemen are naturally secretive about such things. It’s too bad, too, because I’m curious to know. You obviously haven’t done anything illegal today, so it must be something left over from last night, and I’m wondering how someone could get involved with the police on a night when nothing at all happened to him. Isn’t that what you said?”
“If I said anything whatever, it was far too much. In the future, if you so much as ask me how I’m feeling, I’ll plead the fifth amendment. Send Mr. McBride in.”
“It’s Lieutenant McBride. That’s what he said. He looks official, and so you’d better use his official title.”
“Thanks very much for the advice. Send him in.”
She withdrew her bright head with its bright, inquisitive eyes, and I thought how odd everyone becomes when anything sufficiently out of the ordinary happens. As a lawyer, it is not unusual for me to traffic moderately with the police, but now, because of what had happened last night to Beth, a call by a cop was suddenly something with all sorts of implications, and that’s the way everyone becomes, the way Millie was—susceptible to exaggerated notions and given to exorbitant expectations.
As for me, I wasn’t expecting very much, because Cotton McBride wasn’t very much to expect. He must have been ten years older than I, but I had known him casually for a long time, since before the time he’d sent off to Chicago for his first mail-order course in private detecting, including fingerprint kit, and I think that he had changed less in appearance in all those years than anyone else I knew. He was thin and dry, with limp pale hair and round shoulders and a chronic expression of quiet despair, and he did not look much older now than he had twenty years ago. This was not because he kept himself looking young, but because I couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t looked old. Even as a kid he had seemed dry and withered and a little tired, always wearing his expression of quiet despair. Wearing it now with a wilted seersucker suit and a black string tie, he made me think, as he came into the room, of an unsuccessful mortician.
“Hello, Cotton,” I said. “Millie says I ought to call you lieutenant. She says you look official.”
“I heard her. That’s a neat redhead, Gid, but she doesn’t show much respect. An officer of the law is entitled to a little more respect, it seems to me.”
“I wouldn’t take it too personally. She doesn’t show much respect for me, either.”
“I judged that from the rest I heard. She shows a lot of other stuff, though, that probably makes up for it. That’s a neat redhead, and I’m bound to admit it. You always had an eye for the lookers, Gid. I remember that about you.”
“Do you? Maybe so. It’s not an uncommon post-puberty trait among males.”
“What I’d like to know is how you get that little wife of yours to tolerate it. Seems to me that a wife wouldn’t be very favorable to having a redhead like that around.”
“My wife’s vain. She simply can’t conceive of my looking twice at anyone but her.”
“A man would be a fool if he did. Even at the redhead. A man married to someone like that little wife of yours, I mean.” He sat down uninvited in a chair beside my desk, dropping his stained straw hat on the floor beside him. “I never had any luck with the girls myself. Guys like you had all the luck.”
“Some of it bad, Cotton. Girls have a way of being bad luck at times.”
“That’s true enough. A man in my business sees a lot of it. I’ve seen more than one man in bad trouble because some woman got him there. On the other hand, I’ve seen women in the same condition because of some man. Like the one who got herself killed out in Dreamer’s Park last night. Beth Thatcher. Married for a while to Wilson Thatcher. But you know that better than almost anybody else. You heard about her getting killed, I suppose.”
“I heard.”
“Seems to me you
