meat as big as his hand, and he felt the saliva flow in his mouth when she slid it onto his plate.
“Fifty-fifty,” he said, slicing it in half and putting one piece on the other plate.
“I usually just fry some oatmeal in the juices…”
“We’ll have that for dessert. This is the start of a new era, equal rights for men and women.” She smiled at him and slid into her chair without another word. Damn, he thought, for another look like that I’d give her the whole thing.
There was seacress with it, weedcrackers to sop up the gravy and another bottle of cold beer from which she allowed him to pour her a small glass. The meat was indescribably good and he cut it into very small pieces, savoring each one slowly. He could not remember having eaten as well in his entire life. When he had finished he sat back and sighed with contentment. It was good, yet it was almost too good, and he knew it wouldn’t last: he felt a little gnaw of irritation as the words
“I hope you didn’t mind, but I was more than a little drunk last night.” It sounded crude and he was sorry the instant he had said it.
“I didn’t mind at all. I thought you were very sweet.”
“Sweet!” He laughed at himself. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that before. I thought you were angry at me ever since I came back.”
“I’ve been busy, that’s all, the place was a mess and you were hungry. I think I know what yon need.”
She moved swiftly around the table and was on his lap, the whole womanly warm length of her and her arms were around his neck. It was a kiss, the kind he remembered, and he discovered that her halter was closed on the front by two buttons which he opened and pressed his face against the smooth fragrance of her skin.
“Let’s go inside,” she said huskily.
She lay next to him afterward, relaxed and without shame, while his fingers traced the outline of her splendid body. The occasional sounds that pierced the sealed window and closed curtains only emphasized the twilight solitude of the bedroom. When he kissed the corner of her mouth she smiled dreamily, her eyes half closed.
“Shirl…” he said, but could not continue. He had no practice in voicing his emotions. The words were there, but he could not say them aloud. Yet the way his hands moved on her skin conveyed his meaning more clearly than words could; her body trembled in response and she moved closer to him. There was a hoarseness in her voice, even though she whispered.
“You’re really good in bed, different — do you know that? You make me feel things that I have never felt before.” His muscles tightened suddenly and she turned to him. “Are you angry at that? Should I make believe that you are the only man I ever slept with?”
“No, of course not. It’s none of my business and doesn’t affect me.” The tautness of his body put the lie to his words.
Shirl rolled on her back and looked at the motes of dust glinting in the beam of light that came through the crack between the curtains. “I’m not trying to excuse anything, Andy, just to tell you. I grew up in one of those real strict families, I never went out or did anything and my father watched me all the time. I don’t think I minded very much, there was just nothing to do, that’s all. Dad liked me, he probably thought he was doing what was right for me. He was retired, they made him retire when he was fifty-five, and he had his pension and the money from the house, so he just sat around and drank. Then, when I was twenty, I entered this beauty contest and won first prize. I remember I gave my prize money to my father to take care of and that’s the last time I saw him. There was one of the judges, he had asked me for a date that night, so I went out with him, then I went to live with him.”
Just like that? Andy said to himself, but he didn’t say it aloud. He smiled at himself: what rights did he have?
“You’re not laughing at me?” she said, touching her finger to his lips, a hurt in her voice.
“Good God, no! I was laughing at myself because — if you must know — I was being a little jealous. And I have no right to be.”
“You have every right in the world,” she said, kissing him slowly and lingeringly. “For me at least, this is very different. I haven’t known that many men, and they were all men like Mike. I was just sort of there, I felt…”
“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t care.” He meant it. “I just care about you here and now and not another thing in the world.”
10
Andy was almost to the bottom of his list, and his feet hurt. Ninth Avenue simmered in the afternoon sun and every patch of shadow was filled with sprawled figures, old people, nursing mothers, teen-agers with their heads close together, laughing with their arms about one another. People of all ages on every side, bare and dusty limbs projecting, scattered about like corpses in the aftermath of a battle. Only the children played in the sun, but they moved about slowly and their shouts were subdued. There was a fit of screaming and sudden movement as they eddied about two boys coming from the direction of the docks, whose arms were spotted with bites and streaks of uncongealed blood. On the end of a string they carried their prize, a large gray dead rat. They would eat well tonight. In the center of the crowded street the tugtruck traffic moved at a snail’s pace, the human draught animals leaning exhaustedly into their traces, mouths gaping for air. Andy pushed through between them, looking for the Western Union office.
It would be impossible to check every person who had gone in or out of O’Brien’s apartment during the previous week, but he had to at least try the most obvious leads. Any visitor to the building could have discovered the disconnected burglar alarm in the cellar, but only someone who had been in the apartment could have seen that this alarm had been cut off as well. There had been a short circuit eight days before the murder, and the alarm on the door had been disconnected until it could be fixed. The killer, or some informant, could easily have seen this if he had been in the apartment. Andy had made a list of possibilities and was checking them out. They were all negative. No meter readers had visited the apartment, and all the deliveries had been made by men who had been coming there for years. Negative, all the way down the line.
Western Union was another long shot. There had been plenty of telegrams delivered to the building during that week, and the doorman was sure that some of them had been to O’Brien. He and the elevator boy had both remembered a telegram coming the night before the murder, it had been brought by a new messenger, a Chinese boy they had said. The chances were a thousand to one that it didn’t mean anything — but it still had to be checked out. Any lead at all, no matter how slight would have to be investigated. Whatever happened it would at least be something to report to the lieutenant, to keep him off Andy’s neck for a while. The yellow and blue sign hung out over the sidewalk and he turned in under it.
A long counter divided the office and at the far end of it was a bench on which three boys were sitting. A fourth boy stood at the counter talking to the dispatcher. None of them was Chinese. The boy at the counter took a message board from the man there and went out. Andy walked over, but before he could say anything the man shook his head angrily.
“Not here,” he snapped. “Front counter for telegrams, can’t you see I’m the dispatcher?”
Andy looked at the sullen fatigue and the deep lines cut into the man’s face by the perpetually pulled-down corners of his mouth, and at the clutter of boards and chalk and washable teletype tape on the desk before him, the peeling gold paint on the little sign that said
“Police business,” he said. “You’re the man I want to talk to, Mr. Burgger.”
“I haven’t done anything, there’s nothing for you to talk to me about.”
