I braked, slewed in behind a parked florist’s truck. The streets were swarming, shirt-sleeved men standing around open-front candy stores, old women sitting in darkened doorways, couples jitterbugging on the sidewalk to music from an orchestra in a second-floor dance hall.
Tildy was still crouched, low on the seat, twisted around so she could look out through the jagged glass of the rear window. There weren’t any taxis coming up the avenue behind us; from the sound of that smashup I thought that particular cab wouldn’t be in shape to drive for a while.
She didn’t seem as much frightened as stunned when I helped her out, made some banal crack about “the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be” for the benefit of bystanders who were showing curiosity about our windshield. The only thing she said, as I led her down the subway steps, was, “He was trying to kill me.” I couldn’t deny that!
Psychology sharps use a trick to impress their pupils with the difficulty of observing and remembering an unexpected incident of violence. In the middle of a lecture two students will suddenly stand up, engage in a fierce fisticuff. A third stooge attempts to interfere, gets knocked down for his pains. A girl finally separates the contestants. The prof then asks one and all to put down on paper their recollection of what went on. He usually gets as many variations of the facts as there are students in the class. So I didn’t expect to get much help from Tildy’s description of what had happened. I was in error.
“When that guy in the cab started blasting, I was so busy handling the car I didn’t get a look in my rearview,” I told her while we walked up to the end of the platform to avoid the crowd. “You see him?”
“It was the same man.” A tiny sliver of glass had stuck to her cheek; she removed it, held it on her finder tip in fascination. “The one who came to the hotel.”
“Not the guy who shot Johnny the Grocer?”
“No, no. The one who — who must have killed Herb Roffis.”
I was fed up with all that hodelyo; probably a delayed take from those near misses and the damage to a good Buick. “Godsake, give me something to go on,” I said crossly. “Mustache? Beard? Fan ears? Pug nose? Was he dark? Or light?”
She leaned close; the Manhattan-bound train thundered in; it was hard to hear anything. “Florid, I should call him. Yes. A red face. No mustache.”