“All right, so she didn’t. How’d Mrs. Lanerd stand up to the news about her husband?”
A punch in the jaw wouldn’t have hit him as hard. “Marge might have grown to dislike the bastard, in time, if he’d lived,” he said dejectedly, “but now she’ll never forget him.”
I didn’t contradict him.
Chapter twenty-seven:
Clues from a wallet
A patrol car with two stony-eyed sergeants idled before the Continental Building as I left. The sight of a uniform wasn’t as reassuring as it might have been, considering the danger I was in.
There was enough ringing in my ears without having to listen to a bawling-out from Hacklin or Reidy Duman or Harry Weissman for having stayed the hand of authority in its descent on Ruth or Auguste or Edie. It wouldn’t have helped my headache to explain how my Buick happened to stand on a Brooklyn corner with its windshield riddled.
It struck me forcibly, at the sight of those minions of the law, that maybe I’d been betting my cards too strong. When the showdown came I might look pretty silly, backing my judgment against all the badges. But I couldn’t afford to drop; I had so much at stake I’d have to play it out, regardless.
Keith Walch wasn’t at Iceville when I got to the big rink on West Fifty-Second. About a dozen girls in short white skirts and high white shoes, swinging long colored capes from their shoulders, swooped around the ice; Over the Waves came out of a wire recorder like a wheezy carousel. It was cool in there after the Death Valley temperature of the street; the butterfly capes and the easy, rhythmic movements were soothing to watch.
One of the cuties swooped over, stopped in a silvery spray of ice. Mister Walch? She didn’t know; she thought he might be in the Iceville office with Miss Millett. She bobbed her head in the direction of the office.