“Where would you go and what would you do?”
Her eyes grew hard. “Say, don’t you think you can frighten me with that line. Any time I need a man to live on, I’ll take an overdose of sleep medicine. I can walk out of here right now with nothing but my bare hands, and — well, I’ll get by, and I won’t sell myself, either.”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know. I’d find something. How about it? Do I start?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.”
She said, “I suppose you won’t open up.”
I said, “If you don’t want to tell me anything you know about what happened to Pug, I hope you never do.”
She came over to stand in front of me. “All right,” she said, “I’ll give it to you in words of one syllable. You can have anything you want out of me. You can ask me anything, and I’ll do it. And if you ask me what about Pug, and what do I know about the night he was bumped off, I — well, I’d probably rat, but the minute you asked me that question, I’d know why you’d been doing all this,” and she swept her hand in a gesture which included the auto camp. “And when I knew that you’d been doing it just to get me so, that I couldn’t say no to anything you’d ask — I’d be so sick inside, I could never feel clean or decent again, or think there was anything clean left in the world — ever. You got that straight?”
“Yes.”
“All right then. What do we do next?”