“You’re a funny guy, Howie. I don’t understand you.”
Suddenly I wanted to change the subject. “Billie, how come Mame doesn’t drink?”
“Don’t you know hypes don’t like to drink?”
“Sure, but I didn’t spot Mame for one.”
“Hype with a big H for heroin, Howie. Doesn’t show it much, though. I’ll give you that.”
“I haven’t known enough junkies to be any judge,” I said. “The only one I know for sure is the cook at Burke’s.”
“Don’t ever try it, Howie. It’s bad stuff. I joy-popped once just to see what it was like, but never again. Too easy to get to like it. And Howie, it can make things rough.”
I said, “I hear your words of wisdom and shall stick to drink. Speaking of which—” I poured myself another.
I got to the restaurant – it’s on Main, a block from Fifth – at a quarter after eleven, only fifteen minutes late. Burke was at the stove – he does his own cooking until noon, when Ramon comes on – and turned to glare at me but didn’t say anything.
Still feeling good from the drinks, I dived into my dishwashing.
The good feeling was mostly gone, though, by noon, when Ramon came on. He had a fresh bandage on his forehead; I wondered if there was a new knife wound under it. He already had two knife scars, old ones, on his cheek and on his chin. He looked mean, too, and I decided to stay out of his way. Ramon’s got a nasty temper when he needs a jolt, and it was pretty obvious that he needed one. He looked like a man with a kingsize monkey, and he was. I’d often wondered how he fed it. Cooks draw good money compared to other restaurant help, but even a cook doesn’t get enough to support a five or six cap a day habit, not at a joint like Burke’s anyway. Ramon was tall for a Mexican, but he was thin and his face looked gaunt. It’s an ugly face except when he grins and his teeth flash white. But he wouldn’t be grinning this afternoon, not if he needed a jolt.
Burke went front to work the register and help at the counter for the noon rush, and Ramon took over at the stove. We worked in silence until the rush was over, about two o’clock.
He came over to me then. He was sniffling and his eyes were running. He said, “Howie, you do me a favor. I’m burning, Howie, I need a fix, quick. I got to sneak out, fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll try to watch things. What’s working?”
“Two hamburg steak dinners on. Done one side, five more minutes other side. You know what else to put on.”
“Sure, and if Burke comes back I’ll tell him you’re in the can. But you’d better hurry.”
He rushed out, not even bothering to take off his apron or chef’s hat. I timed five minutes on the clock and then I took up the steaks, added the trimmings and put them on the ledge, standing at an angle back of the window so Burke couldn’t see that it was I and not Ramon who was putting them there. A few minutes later the waitress put in a call for stuffed peppers, a pair; they were already cooked and I didn’t have any trouble dishing them.
Ramon came back before anything else happened. He looked like a different man – he would be for as long as the fix lasted. His teeth flashed. “Million thanks, Howie.” He handed me a flat pint bottle of muscatel. “For you, my friend.”
“Ramon,” I said, “you are a gentleman and a scholar.” He went back to his stove and started scraping it. I bent down out of sight to open the bottle. I took a good long drink and then hid it back out of sight under one of the tubs.
Two-thirty, and my half-hour lunch break. Only I wasn’t hungry. I took another drink of the muskie and put it back. I could have killed it but the rest of the afternoon would go better if I rationed it and made it last until near quitting time.
I wandered over to the alley entrance, rolling a cigarette. A beautiful bright day out; it would have been wonderful to be at the beach with Billie the Kid.
Only Billie the Kid wasn’t at the beach; she was coming toward me from the mouth of the alley. She was still wearing the dress she’d pulled on over the bathing suit but she wasn’t at the beach. She was walking toward me, looking worried, looking frightened.
I walked to meet her. She grabbed my arm, tightly. “Howie. Howie, did you kill Mame?”
“Did I – what?”
Her eyes were big, looking up at me. “Howie, if you did, I don’t care. I’ll help you, give you money to get away. But—”
“Whoa,” I said, “Whoa, Billie. I didn’t kill Mame. I didn’t even rape her. She was okay when I left. What happened? Or are you dreaming this up?”
“She’s dead, Howie, murdered. And about the time you were there. They found her a little after noon and say she’d been dead somewhere around two hours. Let’s go have a drink and I’ll tell you what all happened.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ve got most of my lunch time left. Only I haven’t been paid yet—”
“Come on, hurry.” As we walked out of the alley she took a bill from her purse and stuffed it into my pocket. We took the nearest ginmill and ordered drinks at a booth at the back where we weren’t near enough anyone to be heard. The bill she’d put in my pocket was a sawbuck. When the waitress brought our drinks and the change I shoved it toward Billie. She shook her head and pushed it back. “Keep it and owe me ten, Howie. You might need it in case – well, just in case.” I said, “Okay, Billie, but I’ll pay this back.” I would, too, but it probably wouldn’t be until I mailed it to her from Chicago and it would probably surprise the hell out of her to get it.
I said, “Now tell me, but quit looking so worried. I’m as innocent as new-fallen snow – and I don’t mean cocaine. Let me reconstruct my end first, and then tell yours. I got to work at eleven-twenty. Walked straight there from your place, so it would have been ten after when I left you. And – let’s see, from the other end, it was ten o’clock when I woke up, wouldn’t have been over ten or fifteen minutes before I knocked on your door, another few minutes before I got to Mame’s and I was up there only a few minutes. Say I saw her last around twenty after ten, and she was okay then. Over.”
“Huh? Over what?”
“I mean, you take it. From when I left you, about ten minutes after eleven.”
“Oh. Well, I straightened the room, did a couple things, and left, it must have been a little after twelve on account of the noon whistles had blown just a few minutes ago. I was going to the beach. I was going to walk over to the terminal and catch the Santa Monica bus, go to Ocean Park. Only first I stopped in the drugstore right on the corner for a cup of coffee. I was there maybe ten–fifteen minutes letting it cool enough to drink and drinking it. While I was there I heard a cop car stop near but I didn’t think anything of it; they’re always picking up drunks and all.
“But while I was there, too, I remembered I’d forgot to bring my sunglasses and sun-tan oil, so I went back to get them.
“Minute I got inside the cops were waiting and they asked if I lived there and then started asking questions, did I know Mame and when I saw her last and all.”
“Did you tell them you’d talked to her on the phone?”
“Course not, Howie. I’m not a dope. I knew by then something had happened to her and if I told them about that call and what it was about, it would have brought you in and put you on the spot. I didn’t even tell them you were with me, let alone going up to Mame’s. I kept you out of it.
“They’re really questioning everybody, Howie. They didn’t pull me in but they kept me in my own room questioning me till just fifteen minutes ago. See, they really worked on me because I admitted I knew Mame – I had to admit that ’cause we work at the same place and they’d have found that out.