“And of course they knew she was a hype, her arms and all; they’re checking everybody’s arms and thank God mine are okay. They asked me mostly about where we worked, Mike’s. I think they figure Mike Karas is a dealer, what with Mame working for him.”
“Is he, Billie?”
“I don’t know, honey. He’s in some racket, but it isn’t dope.”
I said, “Well, I don’t see what either of us has to worry about. It’s not our – My God, I just remembered something.”
“What, Howie?”
“A guy saw me going in her room, a milkman. Mame was in the hall paying him off when I went up. She told me to go on in and I did, right past him.”
“Jesus, Howie, did she call you by name when she told you to go on in? If they get a name, even a first name, and you living right across the street—”
I thought hard. “Pretty sure she didn’t, Billie. She told me to go in and take a load off, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t add a Howie to it. Anyway, they may never find the milkman was there. He isn’t likely to stick his neck out by coming to them. How was she killed, Billie?”
“Somebody said a shiv, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Who found her and how come?”
“I don’t know. They were asking me questions, not me asking them. That part’ll be in the papers, though.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s let it go till this evening, then. How’s about this evening, Billie, are you going to The Best Chance anyway?”
“I got to, tonight, after that. If I don’t show up, they’ll want to know why and where I was and everything. And listen, don’t you come around either, after hours tonight or in the morning. You stay away from that building, Howie. If they find that milkman they might even have him staked out watching for you. Don’t even walk past. You better even stay off that block, go in and out the back way to your own room. And we better not even see each other till the heat’s off or till we know what the score is.”
I sighed.
I was ten minutes late reporting back and Burke glared at me again but still didn’t say anything. I guess I was still relatively dependable for a dishwasher, but I was learning.
I made the rest of the wine last me till Baldy, the evening shift dishwasher, showed up to relieve me. Burke paid me off for the day then, and I was rich again.
Someone was shaking me, shaking me hard. I woke to fuzz and fog and Billie the Kid was peering through it at me, looking really scared, more scared than when she’d asked me yesterday if I’d killed Mame.
“Howie, wake up.” I was in my own little shoebox of a room, Billie standing by my cot bending over me. I wasn’t covered, but the extent of my undressing had been to kick off my shoes.
“Howie, listen, you’re in trouble, honey. You got to get out of here, back way like I come in. Hurry.”
I sat up and wanted to know the time.
“Only nine, Howie. But hurry. Here. This will help you.” She screwed off the top of a half-pint bottle of whisky. “Drink some quick. Help you wake up.”
I took a drink and the whisky burned rawly down my throat. For a moment I thought it was going to make me sick to my stomach, but then it decided to stay down and it did clear my head a little. Not much, but a little.
“What’s wrong, Billie?”
“Put on your shoes. I’ll tell you, but not here.”
Luckily my shoes were loafers and I could step into them. I went to the basin of water, rubbed some on my face. While I washed and dried and ran a comb through my hair Billie was going through the dresser; a towel on the bed, everything I owned piled on it. It didn’t make much of a bundle.
She handed it to me and then was pulling me out into the hallway, me and everything I owned. Apparently I wasn’t coming back here, or Billie didn’t think I was.
Out into the alley, through to Sixth Street and over Sixth to Main, south on Main. A restaurant with booths, mostly empty. The waitress came over and I ordered coffee, black. Billie ordered ham and eggs and toast and when the waitress left she leaned across the table. “I didn’t want to argue with her in front of you, Howie, but that food I ordered is for you; you’re going to eat it all. You got to be sober.”
I groaned, but knew it would be easier to eat than to argue with a Billie the Kid as vehement as this one.
“What is it, Billie? What’s up?”
“Did you read the papers last night?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t read any papers up to about nine o’clock and after that I didn’t remember what I’d done or hadn’t. But I wouldn’t have read any papers. That reminded me to look in my pockets to see what money I had left, if any. No change, but thank God there were some crumpled bills. A five and two ones, when I pulled them out and looked under cover of the table. I’d had a little over nine out of the ten Billie had given me to buy us a drink with, a little under five I’d got from Burke. That made fourteen and I’d spent seven of it somehow – and God knows how since I couldn’t possibly have drunk that much muskie or even that much whisky at Fifth Street prices. But at least I hadn’t been rolled, so it could have been worse.
“They got that milkman, Howie,” Billie was saying. “Right off. He’d given Mame a receipt and she’d dropped it on that little table by the door so they knew he’d been there and they found him and he says he’ll know you if he sees you. He described you too. You thinking straight by now, Howie?”
“Sure I’m thinking straight. What if they do find me? Damn it, I didn’t kill her. Didn’t have any reason to. They can’t do any more than question me.”
“Howie, haven’t you ever been in trouble with cops? Not on anything serious, I guess, or you wouldn’t talk like that. That milkman would put you right on the scene at close to the right time and that’s all they’d want. They got nobody else to work on.
“Sure they’ll question you. With fists and rubber hoses they’ll question you. They’ll beat the hell out of you for days on end, tie you in a chair with five hundred watts in your eyes and slap you every time you close them. Sure they’ll question you. They’ll question you till you wish you had killed Mame so you could tell ’em and get it over with and get some sleep. Howie, cops are tough, mean bastards when they’re trying to pin down a murder rap. This is a murder rap, Howie.”
I smiled a little without meaning to. Not because what she’d been saying was funny, but because I was thinking of the headlines if they did beat the truth out of me, or if I had to tell all to beat the rap. Chicago Scion in Heroin Murder Case. Chicago papers please copy.
I saw the hurt look on Billie’s face and straightened mine. “Sorry,” I said. “I was laughing at something else. Go on.”
But the waitress was coming and Billie waited till she’d left. She shoved the ham and eggs and toast in front of me. “Eat,” she said. I ate.
“And that isn’t all, Howie. They’ll frame you on some other charge to hold you. Howie, they might even frame you on the murder rap itself if they don’t find who else did it. They could do it easy, just take a few little things from her room – it had been searched – and claim you had ’em on you or they were in your room. How’d you prove they weren’t? And what’d your word be against a cop’s? They could put you in the little room and gas you, Howie. And there’s something else, too.”
“Something worse that that?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean what they’d do to me, Howie. And that’d be for sure. A perjury rap, a nice long one. See, I signed a statement after they questioned me, and that’d make it perjury for me if you tell ’em the truth about why you went up to see Mame. And what else could you tell them?”