LITMIR.BIZ

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could see that anyone coming home late would have to use a flashlight to get his mail.

      We went on through swinging glass doors to the inside hall, which ran straight back to a red-lighted rear exit. Midway along, a narrow staircase reared.

      “Mine’s on the third floor at the back,” she said. I was looking along the hall.

      “You said you left by the back door because these three guys were coming in the front.”

      “Yes.”

      “But they weren’t inside yet?”

      “No, they were just opening the outside door. I ran out the back and up the alley to Division Street and there was a taxi.”

      “How did you know they were after you? Had you seen them before?”

      “Yes, they were hanging around The Mill—the coffeehouse—where I work. It’s up the street here.”

      “Had they accosted you at The Mill?”

      “Well—yes, sort of. See, I was a waitress there and they were sitting back in a corner—this was the night before last. It’s pretty dark in The Mill and these were older fellows and they were just fooling around, I thought. You know, they would make dirty little jokes and—like that—and they kept ordering coffee, and I was about to tell Roger—he’s the manager—to get somebody else to wait on them, when one of them said, ‘Lay off now,’ he said. ‘She’s Richie Darden’s girl.’ So they knew who I was.”

      “Did they ask any questions?”

      She looked along the deserted hall, upward to the staircase.

      “We’d better get started,” I said.

      “No,” she said, “they didn’t ask any questions then. But later, when I was leaving, about two-thirty, they were waiting for me beside the building on the side street.

      “‘Heard from Richie lately?’ one of them asked.

      “‘I forgot something,’ I said, and I went back in The Mill and told Roger there were some fellows outside giving me a bad time and I was afraid to walk home. So Roger said I could wait for him and he would see me home. And about half an hour later we left and he walked me home. We didn’t see them around anywhere.”

      We made the first landing and she was somewhat out of breath, so I eased off on the questions till we reached the third floor. She paused there, leaning against the wall in her borrowed jacket and cap, her long, serious face hovering.

      “How did you know they might kill you?” I asked. “That they would kill to get hold of the suitcase?”

      Her eyes shifted for a moment, then that pointed chin thrust at me.

      “Because,” she said, “when I was waiting on them at The Mill, one of them—his jacket pulled open for a second, and he had a gun strapped under his arm—and I saw it.”

      “I see,” I said.

      “You still don’t believe me.”

      “Come on,” I said, “let’s get your things and get back to the car.”

      “Do you have a gun?” she said.

      “Yes, I have one, but I don’t like to carry it around.”

      “Why not?”

      “You can get in trouble with a gun.”

      “Even in self-defense?”

      “Even then.”

      I reached for her hand and she let me lead her down the hall to the rear of the building. Her hand was cold, small and still in mine.

      “This one,” she said.

      I found the key she had given me, unlocked the door and pushed it open.

      “Where’s the light?” I asked.

      “To your left just inside the door.”

      I reached in and switched on the light.

      “All right,” I said, “all clear.”

      We went in and closed the door.

      The apartment was small and, though not disorderly, seemed cluttered, because the furniture was too big for the space and there was no discrimination in its placement. This wouldn’t be Cress’s fault; it was obviously a furnished apartment. An alcove contained a Pullman kitchen, and two pairs of stockings hung over the sink. That was the only disorder in the kitchen; the dishes were put away and the sink and the top of the two-burner gas plate were clean. All this I could see from the main room, in which there were a double bed, neatly made up, a large armchair, and beside the bed, a straight chair with an alarm clock and telephone on its seat. Opposite the foot of the bed was a high chiffonier with a cloth cover on top, a boudoir lamp, a scattering of guitar picks, mingled with bottles of masculine and feminine toiletries, and a large photograph in an easel of a young man in blue jeans and a sport shirt, holding a guitar. The photograph was signed simply, “Richie.” He was a muscular fellow, with an Irish smile and thick, black hair. His hands on the guitar were large and strong.

      “That’s Richie,” Cress said.

      “Nice-looking fellow,” I said.

      She was gazing at the picture and I left her with it and turned to a wardrobe set against the wall, between the bathroom door and the door to the hall. It was in two sections, both covered by roll-down doors. I rolled up the left side and there were some jeans and slacks on hangers and two pairs of worn men’s shoes.

      “Richie was living here too?” I said.

      She didn’t answer right away and I glanced around. She was looking at me with that little chin in the air.

      “Yes,” she said proudly, “he was.”

      “All right,” I said.

      “Like man and wife,” she said firmly.

      “Okay, just asking.”

      I rolled up the other door and saw a pathetically meager array of skirts, sweaters and one cheap print dress. On the floor beneath them, as if to drive the poignancy all the way home, sat a pair of gold evening slippers, in good condition aside from a little dust. They looked as if they had never been worn.

      On a shelf above the hangers was a suitcase.

      “Could we use this to pack in?” I said.

      “Sure,” she said.

      When I got it down, a flutter of newspapers came with it and drifted to the floor at my feet. I looked on the shelf and saw a large stack of folded papers. I picked up one that had fallen and it was a weekly, published in a small town in Indiana that I had never heard of. I looked at some more of those on the floor and there were a couple from that same town and three or four from other small towns in Indiana and Illinois.

      “These papers—” I said.

      She looked at them over my shoulder.

      “Richie’s,” she said. “He bought them from a big stand where they sell out-of-town papers.”

      “Was he looking for notices—about himself?”

      “Oh no—he used them for material—for songs. Richie said small-town newspapers were one of the best places to get ideas for where to look for songs. ‘That’s where folks really live,’ he used to say.”

      “I see,” I said.

      I opened the suitcase on the bed and she began to gather up the things off the chiffonier. I went to the wardrobe again and started through Richie’s pockets, surreptitiously, watching her with an edge of my vision. She didn’t seem to notice. She lingered awhile over the photograph, finally folded it into one of her sweaters and laid it away in the suitcase. I didn’t find anything in the jeans and I had my hand in one of the pockets of some slacks when she said:

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