I asked for the 1919 register and found neither name. I walked out feeling the deputy’s black eyes staring at the back of my neck.
There was one newspaper, the Blade. The lettered sign on the window showed it was a weekly. I went in and tapped on the counter.
The noise made by a typewriter came to a stop, and an auburn-haired girl with brown eyes and white teeth came from behind a partition to ask me what I wanted. I said, “Two things. Your files for 1918, and the name of a good place to eat.”
“Have you tried the Elite?” she asked.
“I had breakfast there.”
She said, “Oh,” and then, after a moment, said, “You might try the Grotto, or the Palace Hotel dining-room. You want the files for 1918?”
I nodded.
I didn’t get any more glimpses of her teeth, just two tightly-closed lips and opaque brown eyes. She started to say something, changed her mind, and went into a back room. After a while she came out with a board clip filled with newspapers. “Was there something in particular you wanted?” she asked.
I said, “No,” and started in with January 1, 1918. I glanced quickly through a couple of issues, and said, “I thought you were a weekly.”
“We are now,” she said, “but in 1918 we were a daily.”