“The police and I have worked together before.”
“Please do as I say, Mr. Hand. I sent the police to you, and when you told them what you knew, you did all that was necessary. Now stay out of it.”
“Right. Thanks, anyhow, for seeing me.”
“Not at all. And now you must excuse me. I’ve had a difficult day, and I need to rest. Marty will show you out.”
She turned away and left the room, and Marty, minding the manners of a shirttail cousin, showed me out. He said goodbye at the front door, and I crossed the veranda and got into my car. I drove forward to the concrete apron, U-turned and came back down the drive, around the ellipse, and out the exit.
On the way downtown I decided that I might as well spend some time, just for luck, in the Normandy Lounge. I went there and crawled onto a stool at the bar. I ordered a beer from the same bartender who had drawn my beer yesterday. A television set on a high shelf behind the bar was alight and alive with the organized antics of a couple of college football teams, reminding me that it was Saturday. The teams took turns trying to move the ball, but the only time they moved it very far was when they kicked it.
“Another beer,” I said. The bartender drew it and served it. Bored by the game, his services temporarily unclaimed, he was ready for an ear to bend. Mine, being conspicuous, seemed to attract him.
“You been in the fight game?” he asked.
“Not I,” I said. “Things are rough enough.”
“Seems like I seen you before. A picture or something. Somewhere.”
“Maybe it was yesterday. I was in here.”
“Oh, sure. I knew I’d seen you somewhere. A guy don’t forget a face like yours. You’re no beauty, Mister. No offense meant.”
“None taken. I guess it’s true you remember the extremes. The uglies and the lovelies. Like that platinum-headed honey a couple of stools down.”
“Where? What lovely? Mister, you’re seeing things.”
“Not now. Yesterday.”
“Oh. That one. A doll. A sexpot. Plenty of class, though. You can always tell the ones with class.”
“That’s right. I could go for a woman like that. If I knew who she was I could work out a strategy.”
“Mister, if you don’t mind my saying so, you ain’t exactly the type.”
“You never know. Lots of lovelies go for uglies. You know her name?”
“Nix. We didn’t introduce ourselves.”
“She come in here often?”
“Never seen her before. Probably a guest in the hotel. Just someone passing through.”
“How about the man she was with?”
“Was she with a man? I never noticed.”
A customer down the bar held up his empty glass, and the bartender went to fill it. I helped myself to a handful of salted peanuts and left. Outside on the sidewalk, I ate the peanuts one by one while I tried to make up my mind if I should quit or give it one more try. One more try, I decided. Asking questions was a harmless diversion, unless I began to get some significant answers, and I had in mind the person to ask who would be most likely to have the answers.
I found her hunched over a typewriter in a blue fog, a cigarette, dripping smoke, hanging from a corner of her mouth. A pair of goggles was clinging to the end of her nose, and her red hair looked like it had recently been combed with an egg beater. She was wearing a sweater that fit her like a sweat shirt, and a skirt that she must have picked up at a rummage sale. I couldn’t see her legs, but it was ten to one that her seams were crooked. It would be a mistake, however, to jump to any rash conclusion.
If you looked behind the goggles, you could see a face worth looking for. Inside the ragbag were a hundred and ten pounds of pleasant surprises. If you wonder how I knew, you are free to speculate. I will only say that she was a lovely, however disguised, who had no aversion to uglies. When she chose to make the effort, after hours, she could knock your eye out. Her name was Henrietta Savage, Hetty for short, and she wrote a column concerning things about town. You know the kind of stuff. Mostly about the fun spots, and who’s doing what, where. It was innocuous enough, the kind of gossip that never goes to court, but in the process of gathering it Hetty had become a veritable morgue of interesting and enlightening items that had never seen print. She peered up at me over her goggles without appreciable enthusiasm, and the limp cigarette assumed a belligerent position.
“Don’t bother to sit down, Percy,” she said. “Go away. I’ll meet you in the bar across the street after five.”
“You’re an avaricious female,” I said. “How did you know I just got paid a fat fee?”
“Thanks for the confession. In that case, we’ll have dinner later and a night on the town.”
“Not unless you renovate yourself. I’ve got my reputation as a playboy to consider. Do you sleep in those clothes?”
“There’s a possibility that you may find out. In the meanwhile, goodbye. Go away. Wait for me in the bar.”
“I’m going, and I’ll wait. Right after you answer a couple of questions for me. Come on, Hetty. Dinner and the town for a couple of answers?”
“Maybe lobster?”
“Pick him out of the tank yourself.”
“What questions?”
“You know Benedict Coon III? That’s just preliminary. It doesn’t count.”
“Your tense is wrong. He’s dead. You’ll find the story on page one. Anyhow, I knew him, and make the next one count.”
“All right. Who was the blond he was playing footsie with?”
“Benny? Playing footsie? Percy, you’re libeling the dead.”
“Not I. I believe in ghosts. I saw them together only yesterday, in the Normandy Lounge. Just barely, of course. You have to strike a match in that place to see your watch.”
“You
