Bertha stopped screaming as fast as though I had put my hand over her mouth. She waited three or four seconds without saying anything. I knew she was there because I could hear her heavy breathing over the phone. Her indignation had used up the reserve oxygen in her system and she sounded as though she’d been running upstairs.
“Well?” I asked.
“Okay, lover,” she said. “What’s the address?”
The spluttering began all over again when I gave it to her so I hung up.
Three
It was a good thirty minutes before Bertha Cool showed up and she was mad enough to have bitten her initials on an iron fence rail.
She slammed the car to a stop, and I walked around behind, came up on the right-hand side, opened the door, got in beside her and sat down.
Bertha had her chin pushed forward like a prow of a battleship. Her little beady eyes were glittering angrily.
“What the hell have you been into now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”