“Only fair.”
“How are you and Bertha getting along?”
“Swell.”
“Don’t see any footprints on your hip pockets.”
“Not yet.”
“She’ll get you in time. You can stall her off for a while, but you’re just living on borrowed time. She’ll earmark you, put her brand on you, kid you along until you’re fattened up, and then send you to the slaughterhouse. After she has your hide nicely tanned and made into leather, she’ll start looking for another victim.”
“That’s where I fool her,” I said. “I won’t get fat.”
He grinned. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nineteen-thirty-seven. Unsolved murder. Man by the name of Howard Chandler Craig.”
He had bushy eyebrows. When he frowned, they came down over his eyes like black thunderclouds piling up behind a mountain. Now I got the full effect of them.