Doolin opened his eyes wide, slowly. He finished his coffee, waited.
Halloran smiled faintly, said: “In the first place, I hate coppers.” He tightened his arm around Mrs. Sare. “In the second place I don’t particularly care for Miss Darmond — she can God damned well fry on the griddle from now on, so far as I’m concerned. In the third place — I like it...”
Doolin glanced at Mrs. Sare, turned his head slowly back towards Halloran.
“I’ve got three months to live,” Halloran went on — “at the outside.” His voice was cold, entirely unemotional. “I was shell-shocked and gassed and kicked around pretty generally in France in ’eighteen. They stuck me together and sent me back and I’ve lasted rather well. But my heart is shot, and my lungs are bad, and so on — the doctors are getting pretty sore because I’m still on my feet...”
He grinned widely. “I’m going to have all the fun I can in whatever time is left. We’re not going to call copper, and we’re going to play this for everything we can get out of it. You’re my bodyguard and your salary is five hundred a week, but your job isn’t to guard me — it’s to see that there’s plenty of excitement. And instead of waiting for Martinelli to come to us, we’re going to Martinelli.”
Doolin looked blankly at Mrs. Sare. She was smiling in a very curious way. Halloran said: “Are you working?” Doolin smiled slowly with all his face. He said: “Sure.”
Doolin dried his hands and smoothed his hair, whistling tunelessly, went through the small cheaply furnished living room of his apartment to the door of the kitchenette. He picked up a newspaper from a table near the door, unfolded it and glanced at the headlines, said: “They’re calling the Winfield kill ‘Murder in Blue’ because it happened in a blue bathtub. Is that a laugh!”
A rather pretty fresh-faced girl was stirring something in a white sauce-pan on the little gas stove. She looked up and smiled and said: “Dinner’ll be ready in a minute,” wiped her hands on her apron and began setting the table.
Doolin leaned against the wall and skimmed through the rest of the paper. The Coleman case was limited to a quarter column — the police had been unable to trace the car. There was even less about Mazie Decker. The police were “working on a theory...”
The police were working on a theory, too, on the Winfield killing. Miss Darmond had been found near the door of Winfield’s apartment with a great bruise on her head, the night of the murder; she said the last she remembered was opening the door and struggling with someone. The “Best Minds” of the Force believed her story up to that point; they were working on the angle that she had an accomplice.