“No. He was a rat and he held out on the people he was ratting for. He asked for what he got, only don’t expect me to forget that I left him with you and Guild, and the next time anybody saw him he was dead.”

“I don’t want you to forget anything. I’d like you to remember whether—”

“I’ve got to go to the can,” she said and walked away. Her carriage was remarkably graceful.

“I don’t know as I’d want to be mixed up with that dame,” Studsy said thoughtfully. “She’s mean medicine.” Morelli winked at me.

Dorothy touched my arm.

“I don’t understand, Nick.”

I told her that was all right and addressed Morelli: “You were telling us about Julia Wolf.”

“Uh-huh. Well, old man Kane booted her out when she was fifteen or sixteen and got in some kind of a jam with a high-school teacher and she took up with a guy called Face Peppler, a smart kid if he didn’t talk too much. I remember once me and Face were—” He broke off and cleared his throat. “Anyways, Face and her stuck together—it must be five, six years, throwing out the time he was in the army and she was living with some guy that I can’t remember his name—a cousin of Dick O’Brien’s, a skinny dark-headed guy that liked his liquor. But she went back to Face when he come out of the army, and they stuck together till they got nailed trying to shake down some bird from Toronto. Face took it and got her off with six months—they gave him the business. Last I heard he was still in. I saw her when she came out—she touched me for a couple hundred to blow town. I hear from her once, when she sends it back to me and tells me Julia Wolf’s her name now and she likes the big city fine, but I know Face is hearing from her right along. So when I move here in ’28, I look her up. She’s—”

Miriam came back and stood with her hands on her hips as before. “I’ve been thinking over what you said. You must think I’m pretty dumb.”

“No,” I said, not very truthfully.

“It’s a cinch I’m not dumb enough to fall for that song and dance you tried to give me. I can see things when they’re right in front of me.”

“All right.”

“It’s not all right. You killed Art and—”

“Not so loud, girlie.” Studsy rose and took her arm. His voice was soothing. “Come along. I want to talk to you.” He led her towards the bar.

Morelli winked again. “He likes that. Well, I was saying I looked her up when I moved here, and she told me she had this job with Wynant and he was nuts about her and she was sitting pretty. It seems they learned her shorthand in Ohio when she was doing her six months and she figures maybe it’ll be an in to something—you know, maybe she can get a job somewheres where they’ll go out and leave the safe open. A agency had sent her over to do a couple days’ work for Wynant and she figured maybe he’d be worth more for a long pull than for a quick tap and a get-away, so she give him the business and wound up with a steady connection. She was smart enough to tell him she had a record and was trying to go straight now and all that, so’s not to have the racket spoiled if he found out anyhow, because she said his lawyer was a little leery of her and might have her looked up. I don’t know just what she was doing, you understand, because it’s her game and she don’t need my help, and even if we are pals in a way, there’s no sense in telling me anything I might want to go to her boss with. Understand, she wasn’t my girl or anything—we was just a couple old friends, been kids playing together. Well, I used to see her every once in a while—we used to come here a lot—till he kicked up too much of a fuss and then she said she was going to cut it out, she wasn’t going to lose a soft bed over a few drinks with me. So that was that. That was October, I guess, and she stuck to it. I haven’t seen her since.”

“Who else did she run around with?” I asked.

Morelli shook his head. “I don’t know. She don’t do much talking about people.”

“She was wearing a diamond engagement ring. Know anything about it?”

“Nothing except she didn’t get it from me. She wasn’t wearing it when I seen her.”

“Do you think she meant to throw in with Peppier again when he got out?”

“Maybe. She didn’t seem to worry much about him being in, but she liked to work with him all right and I guess they’d’ve teamed up again.”

“And how about the cousin of Dick O’Brien, the skinny dark-headed lush? What became of him?”

Morelli looked at me in surprise. “Search me.”

Studsy returned alone. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said as he sat down, “but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right.”

Morelli said: “By the throat.”

Studsy grinned good-naturedly. “No. She’s trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and—”

Morelli looked at his empty glass and said: “This tiger milk of yours must be doing her pipes a lot of good.” He turned his head to yell at Pete: “Hey, you with the knapsack, some more of the same. We got to sing in the choir tomorrow.”

Pete said: “Coming up, Sheppy.” His lined gray face lost its dull apathy when Morelli spoke to him.

An immensely fat blond man—so blond he was nearly albino—who had been sitting at Miriam’s table came over and said to me in a thin, tremulous, effeminate voice: “So you’re the party who put it to little Art Nunhei—”

Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and smashed a big fist into the fat man’s face. I noticed, foolishly, that he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man’s head. The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on hands and knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man’s collar in back, twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli’s help they got the fat man to his feet and hustled him out.

Pete looked after them and sucked a tooth. “That god-damned Sparrow,” he explained to me, “you can’t take no chances on him when he’s drinking.”

Studsy was at the next table, the one that had been upset, helping people pick up themselves and their possessions. “That’s bad,” he was saying, “bad for business, but where you going to draw the line? I ain’t running a dive, but I ain’t trying to run a young ladies’ seminary neither.”

Dorothy was pale, frightened; Nora wide-eyed and amazed. “It’s a madhouse,” she said. “What’d they do that for?”

“You know as much about it as I do,” I told her.

Morelli and the bar-tenders came in again, looking pretty pleased with themselves. Morelli and Studsy returned to their seats at our table. “You boys are impulsive,” I said.

Studsy repeated, “Impulsive,” and laughed, “Ha-ha-ha.”

Morelli was serious. “Any time that guy starts anything, you got to start it first. It’s too late when he gets going. We seen him like that before, ain’t we, Studsy?”

“Like what?” I asked. “He hadn’t done anything.”

“He hadn’t, all right,” Morelli said slowly, “but it’s a kind of feeling you get about him sometimes. Ain’t that right, Studsy?”

Studsy said: “Uh-huh, he’s hysterical.”

23

It was about two o’clock when we said goodnight to Studsy and Morelli and left the Pigiron Club. Dorothy slumped down in her corner of the taxicab and said: “I’m going to be sick. I know I am.” She sounded as if she was telling the truth.

Nora said: “That booze.” She put her head on my shoulder. “Your wife is drunk, Nicky. Listen, you’ve got to tell me what happened—everything. Not now, tomorrow. I don’t understand a thing that was said or a thing that was done. They’re marvelous.”