“I like it cool,” she said. After a swallow of beer, she used a musing tone to say, “Jake Spivey.”
“Old Jake.”
“Clay Corcoran was going to tell us something about him.”
“Whoever shot Corcoran didn’t shoot him just to keep him from talking to us.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Too pat, too neat, too…”
“Convenient?”
“That, too,” he said.
“But there’s that other link between Jake Spivey and Corcoran,” she said.
“If you can believe Harold Snow. Maybe I’ll ask Jake tomorrow.”
“Think he’ll tell you?”
“He might.” Dill picked up his pants, rose, and began to put them on.
“My God!” she said. “One leg at a time — just like everybody else.”
“What’d you expect?”
“After this afternoon, something — well, different.”
Dill smiled. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
Dill turned to examine the Maxfield Parrish print again. “Girls,” he said finally. “Definitely girls.” He turned back to Singe. “That old guy at the church.”
“The reporter?”
“Yeah. Laffter. I think I’d better talk to him.”
“Call him.”
Dill shook his head. “Somebody leaked Felicity’s money problems to him right after she died. He sat on the story until today, but now he’s going with it because somebody else told him to. I’d like to find out who all those somebodies are.”
“You know where he lives?”
“Laffter? I know where he hangs out. You like steak?”
She shrugged. “I’ll eat it. Where d’you have in mind?”
“The Press Club.”
“When?”
“Around eight.”
“What’ll we do till then?”
Dill grinned. “We can go try out your bed.”
She returned his grin. “You’d have to take off your pants again.”
“I can manage that.”
They didn’t make it to the Press Club that Saturday night until 8:35 because Dill decided he wanted to stop by his hotel to change his shirt and see if there were any messages. There was one in his box to call Senator Ramirez in Tucumcari, but when Dill called all he got was the answering machine’s polite bilingual apology.
The temperature had dropped to 92 degrees when they entered the Press Club, Dill in a fresh white shirt and the blue funeral suit, and Anna Maude Singe in a sleeveless yellow dress that he thought was linen, but which she said was some kind of wrinkle-resistant synthetic.
He rang the Press Club bell. Inside, Levides the Greek watched them approach the L-shaped bar. There were two spaces open at the small end of the L and Levides jerked his head toward them. When they were settled onto the stools, Levides said to Anna Maude Singe: “You used to come in here sometimes with AP Geary, didn’t you?”
“As opposed to?”
“UPI Geary.”
“I don’t know UPI Geary.”
“He’s a slob, too. Singe, isn’t it?”
“Anna Maude.”
“Right.” Levides nodded at Dill, but kept his eyes on Singe. “You’re not doing a whole hell of a lot better.”
“He’s all I could scrape up,” she said.
Levides turned to Dill. “Hell of a funeral, I hear. One guy gets killed. A thousand cops standing around and somebody shoots some poor sap and nobody sees anything. I started to come. I wish I had now.”
“Scotch,” Dill said.
“What about you?” Levides said to Singe.
“White wine.”
After he served Singe her wine and Dill his Scotch and water, Levides said, “You see the paper?”
“Tomorrow’s?” Dill said.
Levides nodded, reached underneath the bar, and came up with an early edition of the Sunday Tribune folded to page three. “Chuckles claims your sister got rich.”
It was a two-column bylined sidebar tucked beneath the three-column story that reported the murder at the cemetery. The two-column headline read:
The story was written in what Dill always thought of as the Tribune’s patented dry-as-dust style, which it used to recount rape, murder, child molestation, treason, Democratic sweeps, and other assorted calamities that would be read over the family breakfast table. The story contained nothing Dill didn’t already know. He himself had been quoted by Laffter in the final paragraph as having no comment.
Dill passed the newspaper to Singe and asked Levides, “Is Laffter here yet?”
“He’s back in his corner, drunk as a bear, and spooning up his chili and whatever.”
“Ask Harry the Waiter if he can get us a table next to him.”
As he considered Dill’s request, Levides used a knuckle to brush his mustache thoughtfully. “Why the hell not?” he said finally and went in search of Harry the Waiter.
It took Singe only another thirty seconds to finish the story. She put the newspaper back on the bar and said to Dill, “Nothing new in any of that; nothing even faintly libelous. I think I counted five uses of ‘alleged.’ Everything except her death is alleged. They come right out and admit she’s dead.”
“I noticed,” Dill said and drank some more of his Scotch. “I’m going to get nasty with the old guy.”
“Laffter?”
He nodded.
“Nastier than you were with Harold this afternoon?”
Again, Dill nodded.
“This I’ve got to see.”
“I want your cold approval.”
“Cold, clipped, and lawyerly.”
“Right. And no matter what I say, don’t look surprised.”
“Okay.” She sipped her wine and then examined him curiously. “Where’d you learn to do this?”
“Do what?”
Before Singe could reply, Levides returned to the small end of the bar. “Harry the Waiter says he can put you next to Chuckles in about five minutes. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“He wants to know what you wanta eat.”
Dill looked at Anna Maude Singe and asked, “Filet, baked potato, and salad?”
She nodded. “One rare.”
“And one medium rare.”
Levides nodded and went away again. And again Anna Maude Singe turned to Dill and asked, “Where’d you learn to do what you did to Harold this afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” Dill said. “I think I’ve always been that way.”
“But it is an act, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Dill said, “it’s an act,” and wondered if it really was.
Chapter 25
The old man had spilled some chili-mac on his yellowing pongee shirt. He was trying to mop it off with the napkin he had dipped into his water glass when Dill and Singe sat down next to him. Laffter looked up at them and then went back to work on the chili stain. The padded bench that ran along the wall ended in the corner where the old man sat. Singe also sat on the bench, Dill in a chair across the table from her. Without looking up at Dill, the old man said, “Like my story?”
“I think I counted alleged thirteen times.”
“I used it four times, but some shit on the desk stuck in another one.” He looked up then. “What’s on your mind?”
“You want a drink?”
“If you’re buying, sure.” He nodded at Anna Maude Singe. “Who’s she?”
“My lawyer,” Dill said. “Miss Singe, Mr. Laffter, who some call Chuckles.”
Singe turned her head and nodded at Laffter coolly. “Do you chuckle a lot, Mr. Laffter?”
“Hardly at all,” the old man said.
Harry the Waiter appeared at Dill’s table with napkins and silver. As he laid them out, he asked if Dill and Singe would like fresh drinks. Dill told him they’d stick with the ones they’d brought from the bar, but added, “You can bring Chuckles a drink.”