Duffy said, “I’m sorry, honey.” He felt a sudden tenderness for her. “I’m just shooting off my mouth. I’m just wild. A no-good out of work. Forget it, will you?”
She looked at him for several seconds. “You’re going through with this, I know,” she said. “You’re going to hurt people and you’re going to get hurt. Just to satisfy a little pride, a little ego in you. I can’t stop you. When you’re tired of this, come and see us. But stay away until you’ve got it out of your system. I’ve loved you a lot in the past; don’t make me hate you ever, will you?”
She patted his hand that rested on the table, then she walked out of the room. Duffy stood looking at the closed door. Then once more he took off his coat, went over and shot the bolt on the door, kicked off his shoes, and lay down on the bed. He reached up and turned off the light.
In the dark, he lay for a long time thinking. Then he said in a low voice, “Some nice hot place with plenty of yellow sand. With sky a real blue and just you and me.” He put out his hand to the empty pillow at his side and let his fingers lightly touch the cool linen.
The room felt suddenly cold and empty.
CHAPTER XIV
EDWIN ENGLISH WAS a tall, thick-set guy, with a round fleshy face, blue-white hair, and cold, fishy eyes. He sat at a big flat-top desk, a cigar burning slowly in his short white fingers, staring with blank eyes at Duffy.
He sat there for maybe twenty minutes listening to Duffy talk. He examined with no sign of interest the note-book Duffy threw on to the desk. Then he put the cigar back in his mouth and half-closed his eyes. He sat there for some time looking through Duffy at something hanging on the wall behind Duffy’s head.
Duffy was satisfied that he had told him everything, concisely and clearly. He thought he had made a swell job of it.
English took the cigar out of his mouth and tapped the top of the desk with a well-manicured finger-nail. “I could turn you up for a murder rap, it seems,” he said.