After he was gone, Stella came in from the kitchen and said dinner would be ready soon.
Another day passed and another. I was on edge, restless. I took walks along the Drive, I dropped in on friends, I went to the movies. Then I’d come back to Oscar’s apartment and there would be Stella jiggling.
Understand me. I didn’t particularly hanker for her – certainly not enough to risk fooling around with anything of Oscar Trotter’s. Besides, I doubted that she would play. She seemed to like me, but strictly as her husband’s friend. She was completely devoted to him.
No, it was just that any juicy dame within constant eyesight made my restlessness so much harder to take.
We were playing Scrabble on the cardtable, Oscar and Stella and I, when the doorbell rang.
It was evening, around eight-thirty. Oscar, of course, was way ahead; he was unbeatable at any game that required brains. Stella was way behind. I was in the middle, where I usually found myself in everything. As it was Stella’s turn to play, I went to answer the doorbell.
A girl stood in the hall – a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl in a simple gray dress and a crazy little gray hat.
“Mr Trotter?” she said.
“You’re right, I’m not,” I said. “He’s inside.”
Without being invited in, she stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. “Please tell him Mrs Garden would like to see him.”
“Sure.” I started to turn and stopped. “Garden?” I said. “Any relative of—”
I caught myself. In my racket you became cautious about naming certain names under certain circumstances, especially when you weren’t supposed to know them. There were all kinds of traps.
Gravely she said, “I was Wally’s wife.” She put her head back. “You must be Johnny. Wally told me about you.”
I gawked at her. Standing primly and trimly in the foyer, she made me think of golden fields and cool streams and the dreams of youth.
I said, “Wait here,” and went into the living room. Stella was scowling at the Scrabble board and Oscar was telling her irritably to do something or pass. I beckoned to him. He rose from the cardtable and came over to me.
“Wally’s wife is in the foyer,” I said.
Oscar took off his eyeglasses, a sign that he was disturbed. “He never mentioned a wife to me.”
“To me either. He wasn’t much of a talker.”
“What does she want?”
“Seems to me,” I said, “our worry is what does she know. If Wally—”
And then she was in the living room. Having waited maybe thirty seconds in the foyer, she wasn’t waiting any longer. She headed straight for Oscar.
“You must be Mr Trotter,” she said. “I’m Abby Garden.”
Abby, I thought – exactly the name for a lovely girl of twenty, if she was that old.
Oscar put his glasses back on to stare at her. He seemed as startled as I’d been that such a dish could have been the moon-faced kid’s wife. But he didn’t say anything to her. In fact, his nod was rather curt. Then he looked across the room at Stella.
Stella was twisted around on her chair, giving Abby Garden that feminine once-over which in a moment took in age, weight, figure, clothes, make-up. Stella didn’t look enthusiastic. Which was natural enough, considering that whatever she had the other girl had better.
“Baby,” Oscar said to Stella, “take a walk to Broadway and buy a pack of cigarettes.”
There were cigarettes all over the apartment. At another time he might have given her the order in one word, “Blow!” but this evening he was being polite about it in front of a guest. It amounted to the same thing. Stella undulated up the length of the room, and on the way her eyes never left the girl. No doubt she didn’t care for being chased out for her. But she left, all right.
Me, whenever I told a dame to do anything, she either kicked up a fuss or ignored me. What did Oscar have?
I fixed drinks for the three of us. Abby wanted a rye highball without too much ginger ale. Her hand brushed mine as she took the glass from me. That was sheer accident, but all the same my fingers tingled.
“Now then, Mrs Garden,” Oscar said. His long legs stretched from the armchair in which he lounged. “What’s your business with me?”
She rolled her glass between her palms. “Wally told me his share would come to thousands of dollars.”
“And who,” he said, “might Wally be?”
“Please, Mr Trotter.” Abby leaned forward. “We can be open and above board. Wally had no secrets from me. I didn’t like it when he told me he was going in on that – that robbery. He’d already done one stretch. Six months for stealing cars. Before I met him.” She bit her lower lip. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
Oscar looked utterly disgusted. He had no use for a man who blabbered to anybody, including his wife. Wally may very well have endangered us all.
“So?” Oscar said.
“Oh, you needn’t worry I told the police. They asked me, of course. They questioned me for hours after they found poor Wally. But I told them I knew nothing about any holdup or who was in it.” She gave him a piece of a small smile. “You see, I didn’t want to get into trouble. After all, if I’d known beforehand, I was a kind of accessory, wasn’t I?”
“So?” Oscar said again.
“There was one detective especially – a fat man named Brant. He kept asking me if I knew you.” She looked Oscar straight in the eye. “He said you killed Wally.”
“Now why would I do any such thing?”
“Brant said Wally was wounded during the getaway and then you or one of the others killed him with a knife to get him out of the way.”
“My dear,” Oscar said, more in sorrow than in anger, “can it be possible you fell for that line?”
“Is it a line? That’s what I want to know.”
Oscar sighed. “I see you’re not familiar with police tricks. This is a particularly shabby one. Don’t you see they made up this story to induce you to talk?”
“Then he wasn’t killed with a knife?”
“No, my dear. The bullet killed him. He died in my arms. Wasn’t that so, Johnny?”
“Yes,” I said.
That word was my first contribution to the conversation, and my last for another while. Nursing a Scotch-on-the-rocks, I sat on the hassock near Abby’s legs. They were beautifully turned legs. I looked up at her face. She was drinking her highball, and over the rim of the glass her wide blue eyes were fixed with rapt attention on Oscar, who was, now, being a salesman.
He was as good at that as at anything else. His honeyed voice was hypnotic, telling her how he’d loved Wally like a son, how he would have given his right arm to have saved him after that dastardly bookkeeper had plugged him, how the conniving, heartless coppers were out to make her hate him and thus betray him with that fantastic yarn that he, Oscar Trotter, would either have harmed or permitted anybody else to have harmed a hair of one of his own men.
He was good, and on top of that she apparently wasn’t too bright. He sold her and she bought.
“Wally always warned me not to trust a cop.” She split a very warm smile between both of us. “You look like such nice men. So much nicer than that fat detective.”
Oscar purred, “Then I take it we’re friends, Abby?”
“Oh, yes.” She put her highball glass down on the coffee table. “And in a way we’re partners, aren’t we? When will I get my share?”
Suddenly there was frost in the room. The cheekbones ridged Oscar’s lean face.
“What share?” he said softly.
“Why, Wally’s share. He earned it, didn’t he?” She was completely relaxed; she was free and easy and charming. “I read in the papers that there were twenty-two thousand dollars. One-fifth of that—”