“How well did she know him?”
He shook his head. “Now you’re getting personal, and I’m the wrong person. If Phil was alive you could ask him, and he might tell you. Me, I don’t know.”
I smiled at him. “All that does, Mr. Aland, is make me curious. Somebody in this house murdered Kampf. So we ask you questions, and when we come to one you shy at, naturally we wonder why. If you don’t like talking about Kampf and that girl, think what it could mean. For instance, it could mean that the girl was yours, and Kampf took her away from you, and that was why you killed him when he came here yesterday. Or it could—”
“She wasn’t mine!”
“Uh-huh. Or it could mean that although she wasn’t yours, you were under a deep obligation to her, and Kampf had given her a dirty deal, or he was threatening her with something, and she wanted him disposed of, and you obliged. Or of course it could be merely that Kampf had something on you.”
He had his head tilted back so he could look down on me. “You’re in the wrong racket,” he asserted. “You ought to be writing TV scripts.”
I stuck with him only a few more minutes, having got all I could hope for under the circumstances. Since I was letting him assume that I was a city employee, I couldn’t very well try to pry him loose for a trip to Wolfe’s place. Also I had two more calls to make, and there was no telling when I might be interrupted by a phone call or a courier to one of them from downtown. The only further item I gathered from Jerome Aland was that he wasn’t trying to get from under by slipping in any insinuations about his co-tenants. He had no opinions or ideas about who had killed poor Phil. When I left he stood up, but he let me go and open the door for myself.
I went down a flight, to Meegan’s door, and knocked and waited. Just as I was raising a fist to make it louder and better there were footsteps inside, and the door opened. Meegan was still in his shirt sleeves and still uncombed.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Back again,” I said firmly but not offensively. “With a few questions. If you don’t mind?”