“What time did she go out?”
“Around five, a little before five.”
“What time did she come back?”
“I left before she came back.”
“And the doctor?”
“He was there, far as I know.”
“He didn’t go out with her?”
“No, he said he was going to take a siesta.”
“When did you see her after that?”
“I didn’t.”
“You saw her in Tom’s Café around eight.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that.” Florie was getting rattled.
“Did she give you money?”
She hesitated. “No.” But she had to turn and look at the red plastic purse on the dresser.
“Why did she give you money?”
“She didn’t.”
“How much money?”
“Just my back pay,” she stammered. “They owed me back pay.”
“How much back pay?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot of back pay. Isn’t it?”
She lifted her heavy gaze to the ceiling and brought it down again to the red purse on the dresser. She watched the purse intently, as if it was alive and struggling to take flight. “It was a bonus.” She had found a word. “She gave me a bonus.”
“What for? She didn’t like you.”
“You don’t like me anyway,” she said in a childish voice. “I didn’t do anything bad. I don’t see how you have to jump on me.”
“I like you fine,” I lied. “Only it happens I’m trying to solve some murders. You’re an important witness.”
“Me?”
“You. What did she pay you to keep quiet about?”
“If I’m a witness, do I have to give the money back? The bonus?”
“Not if you keep your mouth shut about it.”
“You won’t tell?”
“I couldn’t be bothered. What did she buy from you, Florie?”
I waited, listening to her breathing.
“It was the blood,” she said. “I found some dried drops of blood on the floor of the examination room. I cleaned it up.”
“When?”
“Monday two weeks ago, the first day I saw Mrs. Benning. I asked doctor about the blood and he said he had an emergency over the weekend – a tourist that cut his finger. I didn’t think of it again until Mrs. Benning brought it up last night.”
“Like the woman who urged her children not to put peas in their noses.”
“Who was she?” Florie asked almost brightly.
“It’s a story. The point is that the children put peas in their noses as soon as she turned her back. I’ll bet a nickel you told Desmond about the blood the minute Mrs. Benning turned hers.”
“I did not,” she said, with that peculiar whining intonation which means guilty as charged but I can’t help it if people are always leading me astray.
She introduced a diversion: “Anyway, his name isn’t Desmond. It’s Heist or something like that. I caught a glimpse of his driver’s license.”
“When?”
“Last night in the car.”
“The Buick?”
“Yeah. Personally I think he stole it. I had nothing to do with it. He already had it when he came to move me out of the apartment. He tried to tell me he found it, can you imagine. He said it was worth five thousand, probably more. I told him that was a lot of money for a secondhand Buick, but he just laughed.”
“Was it a green 1948 two-door sedan?”
“I don’t know the years. It was a two-door Buick, and that was the color. He stole it, didn’t he?”
“I think he found it all right. Did he say where?”
“No. It must have been in town, though. He had no car at suppertime and then at ten o’clock when he picked me up at the apartment, he was driving this Buick. Where would a guy find a Buick?”
“It’s a good question. Put on your clothes, Florie. I’ll look away.”
“You’re not going to arrest me? I didn’t do nothing wrong – anything wrong.”
“I want you to try to identify somebody, that’s all.”
“Who?”
“That’s another good question.”
I went to the window and tried to open it. I could hardly breathe the hot foul air sealed in the little room. The window rose four inches and stuck forever. It faced north towards the City Hall and the Mission Hotel. In the sun-stopped streets a few pedestrians trudged, a few cars crawled and snored. Behind me I heard the twang of a snagged comb, Florie’s quiet swearing, the pull and snap of a girdle, the slither of silk stockings, heels on the floor, water running in the sink.
At the rear of a bus depot below the window, a dusty blue bus was loading passengers: a pregnant Mexican woman herding half-naked brown children, a fieldworker in overalls who might have been the father of the children, an old man with a cane casting a tripod shadow on the asphalt, two young soldiers looking bored with any possible journey through any valley under any sky. The line moved forward slowly like a colored snake drunk with sun.
“Ready,” Florie said.
She had on a bright red jacket over the batiste blouse. Her hair was combed back from her face, which looked harder under a white and red cosmetic mask. She peered at me anxiously, clutching the red plastic purse.
“Where are we going?”
“To the hospital.”
“Is he in the hospital?”
“We’ll see.”
I carried her cardboard suitcase down to the lobby. Heiss had paid for the room in advance. The aged clerk didn’t ask me about the telegram. The contract players followed our progress across the lobby to the street with knowing looks.
In my car, Florie relaxed into hangover somnolence. I drove across town to the county hospital. Obscured by the dust and insect splashes on the windshield, wavering in the heat, the streets and buildings were like an image of a city refracted through Florie’s mind. The asphalt was soft as flesh under the wheels.
It was cold enough in the morgue.
Chapter 25
She came out shivering, holding the red purse against her breast like an external heart that wouldn’t hold still. I supported her elbow. At the ambulance door she pulled away from me and went out by herself to the car. She stumbled on high heels across the gravel, dazed by too much light.
When I got in behind the wheel she looked at me with horror as if my face had been scorched, and slid far over against the opposite door. Her eyes were like large marbles made of black glass.
I took the yellow Western Union envelope out of my inside pocket: Mr. Julian Desmond, c/o Great West Hotel, Bella City, California. As long as Heiss was alive, it was a crime to open it. Since he was dead, it was legitimate evidence.
It contained a night letter sent from Detroit by someone who signed himself “Van”:
ONCEOVER LIGHTLY DURANOS AIRMAIL REPORT FOLLOWS. LEO ARRESTED FELONIOUS ASSAULT 1925 AGE TWENTY SERVED SIX ARRESTED 1927 KIDNAPPING NO CASE ALLEGED MEMBER OR PROTECTEE PURPLE GANG ARRESTED 1930 SUSPICION MURDER NOLLE PROSSED NO WITNESSES 1932 MURDER AIRTIGHT ALIBI ACQUITTED. BREAKUP PURPLE GANG LEO TO CHICAGO RAN GOON SQUAD THREE-FOUR YEARS THEN SYNDICATE TIEUP LEGIT FRONT HATCHECK CONCESSIONS. ARRESTED CONTRIBUTING DELINQUENCY MINOR EARLY 1942 COMMITTED STATE HOSPITAL DIAGNOSIS UNKNOWN RELEASED OCTOBER 1942 GUARDIANSHIP SISTER UNA PUBLIC STENOGRAPHER AND BOOKKEEPER. ENFORCER FOR NUMBERS RING ATTEMPTING TAKE OVER ROUGE AND WILLOW RUN PLANTS BROKEN UP 1943. 1944 LEO AND UNA ORGANIZED DETROIT-BASED NUMBERS RING STILL GOING GOOD PROTECTION ESTIMATED WEEKLY NET TWO TO THREE GEES. LEO AND UNA NOT SEEN MICHIGAN SINCE JANUARY YPSILANTI HOUSE CLOSED BANKS BEING RUN BY WILLIAM GARIBALDI ALIAS GARBOLD OLDTIME PURPLE ALUMNUS. NO RECORD ELIZABETH BENNING LEO LIVING WITH BESS WIONOWSKI PRIOR DEPARTURE MICHIGAN. DO I DIG DEEPER.