LITMIR.BIZ

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in the car.”

      “All right.”

      I found a clean towel for her and left her alone. I took the guitar and my own suitcase and carried them out to the car. It was a raw night, with a stiff breeze off the lake at my back. I locked the trunk and took a good long look around the neighborhood. There was nothing more than I had seen from the window, so I felt about the same as before, only colder.

      Inside, she was still in the bathroom. I picked up the other two suitcases and took them to the car. The trunk was well loaded now, but I managed to get everything in and lock it. When I got back this time, she was coming from the bedroom, smelling of soap. Her white jacket was on the sofa and I helped her into it.

      “Looks as if you lost your hat,” I said.

      “Yeah,” she said.

      “Excuse me,” I said, and went into the bedroom.

      I took off my jacket, got my gun from the closet and put it on, with the damn harness and all, and my jacket over it. When I rejoined her in the office, she had picked up the gun I had saved from the fracas and was turning it in her hand, examining it. It was a .38 revolver and far too big for her.

      “You want this one, too?” she asked.

      “Not exactly,” I said, “but I don’t want to leave it lying around—for children to play with.”

      She replaced it on the desk with something of a bang. I opened a desk drawer, took out the money she had given me and put it in her hand.

      “There are only two things certain in life,” I said. “Just in case we should get separated, you’ll need some money.”

      She looked at me curiously, then at the money in her fist.

      “You’re funny,” she said.

      “Well, I guess it’s not one of my serious days.”

      She pushed the money into a pocket of the suede jacket and I put the .38 into a pocket of my own.

      “Shall we blow?” I said.

      She came along without hesitation. At the top of the steps I cased the street in both directions, then led her to the car, briskly but not at a run. She hadn’t shown any signs of panic and I didn’t want any to develop. I decided she had been scared at first for fear I would laugh at her story, and what would she do then? Now that was over with and she didn’t seem scared any more.

      * * * *

      I drove around the Near North Side for a few minutes, got on Lake Shore Drive and went out north, then came off it, heading for the Loop on Michigan Avenue. By then I was satisfied we weren’t being chased.

      Cress didn’t show any curiosity. Maybe she had figured it out for herself, or maybe she just didn’t give a damn. As it turned out, I discovered, when I pulled into the garage of a medium-sized commercial hotel downtown, she was asleep.

      I had picked the place because I knew it to be well run and to have a good house cop; because everything she would need was inside, so she wouldn’t have to go out on the street; and because it was a handy location for the work I would have to do the next day—or later that same day, come to think of it.

      We had two rooms, adjoining, with the connecting door unlocked. While she sat at the dressing table, brushing her long hair, I explained that I would go out in the morning and wasn’t sure when I’d get back but that she would be all right here. If she needed anything, all she had to do was to get on the phone and tell the desk what she wanted and somebody would bring it up. She could order her meals from room service. She wouldn’t have to leave the hotel.

      “I feel like a queen on a white horse,” she said.

      “All right. That’s good,” I said.

      “That’s the way Richie always made me feel,” she said.

      “Was it at The Mill you first met Richie Darden?”

      “Yes—at The Mill—I was working there and he came—he wasn’t on the show, but he had his guitar and naturally somebody noticed and they all began clapping and calling for him. I was waiting on him and when they started this, Richie asked me, ‘Do you think I should?’ And I said, ‘Sure—can you sing?’ ‘I know a few songs,’ he said. So I said, ‘Go ahead then,’ and Richie said, ‘Okay, honey, but you pay attention, because I’ll be singing them all to you.’ Which he did—right to me, and when he finished, I was crying.”

      She was crying a little now, and the brushing had stopped. Her mouth moved and after a while I realized she was singing, softly, on her breath, to her own reflection in the mirror, with that long hair down on her shoulders. It was a familiar song, simple and plaintive; I had heard it before somewhere, or maybe I just thought I had. Her voice was small and not always strictly true; it lacked color and confidence, but she sang straight from the heart.

      The joys of love

      Are but a moment long;

      The pain of love endures

      The whole life long.

      My love loves me,

      And all the wonders I see—

      A rainbow shines in my window,

      My love loves me.

      And now he’s gone

      Like a dream that fades into dawn;

      But the words stay, locked in my heartstrings,

      My love loves me.

      She faltered at the end and she was crying in earnest now, big tears welling from her eyes and flowing down that narrow, sad face. She put her head down on her arms.

      “Richie…!” she cried. “Richie—come back.”

      I had no words of comfort for her. There was too much time between us. What hurts like death at seventeen may be a muffled pang at my age, and there is no way to explain this across the years.

      I looked at Richie Darden’s suitcase, next to hers, and at the guitar and wondered what that world was like inside their heads.

      “Richie—” she moaned into her arms.

      I put my hand on her shoulder, but she took no notice.

      “Try to get a little sleep,” I said. “I’ll be right in the next room.”

      I left her alone, closing the door between us to give her privacy. I undressed, put on pajamas and a dressing gown, in case I should have to get up in a hurry, and got into bed. With nothing to distract it, my headache got in some concentrated licks, but gradually I learned to relax under it, and in time it dulled. I checked two or three times and the light still showed under the connecting door. I dozed off and the next time I checked, the light was out. I settled back, ready to sleep, and the door opened. I lifted my head and after a minute I could see her standing in the dark, wearing a night gown and some sort of bathrobe that was too long for her and fell in folds on the floor around her feet.

      “Mac—” she said.

      “Yes, Cress?”

      “Can we leave the door open?”

      “Sure. Any way you want it.”

      She lingered in the doorway. Her hand came up and brushed her hair back from her face.

      “Are you frightened, Cress?” I asked.

      I got up on my elbow. She lifted the robe clear of the floor and came to the bed, sat on the edge of it with her hands in her lap.

      “No—not exactly,” she said. “I was just thinking—what are you going to do tomorrow?”

      “I’m going to visit the mug shop—rogues’ gallery—and see if I can get a make on those three guys we had the spat with. And then I thought I would talk to your friend Roger at The Mill and see what he knows.”

      “Well,

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