After the First Death

17

I GOT HER PURSE FROM THE CHAIR, OPENED IT, TOOK OUT MY twenty. She watched without a word as I did this. I closed the purse and put it down on the chair. I got onto the bed and moved over against the wall to leave her access to the door. She looked at the chair and at the door and at me.

“Jackie.”

She waited.

“You can put your clothes on. I won’t touch you. You can get dressed, and if you want you can leave. Or you can get dressed and sit down and let me talk for a few minutes, and if you do that you can have the twenty dollars back. Either way you walk out of here. I’m not a killer.”

“You say.”

“I never killed anyone.”

“I know you’re him. I got eyes.”

“I’m Alex Penn, yes.”

“First that other girl, and then Robin-”

“I never hurt either of them.”

“You say.”

I pointed to the chair. “First get your clothes on. Then you can decide whether or not you want the twenty dollars. If you’d rather leave, you don’t even have to run. You can walk out.”

“I don’t-”

“Get dressed.”

She went over to the chair and began dressing. I ignored her and put my shoes on again and rebuttoned my shirt. She dressed even more speedily and economically than she undressed. When she finished she turned to me. She looked as though she was hunting for words.

I got out the twenty and handed it to her. She shook her head and took a step backward. I shrugged and set the twenty down on top of the bed.

“You keep the money,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

“I don’t want it now.” She got a cigarette but couldn’t get the match lit. I got to my feet and scratched a match for her. She was afraid to come to me for the light, and I saw her fear and smiled at it, and that put her a little at ease. She drew deeply on the cigarette, let the smoke out in a sigh.

“You want to talk about something.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s what you picked me up for, to talk. About Robin.”

“Right.”

She thought about this. “You didn’t kill Robin.”

“No.”

“Or anybody else, that’s what you said, Doug. Oh, look at that, I called you Doug. Not that I ever figured it was your name. I don’t suppose anybody gives his straight name to a girl. But you need something to call a person, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“What do I call you? Alexander?”

“Just Alex.”

“Alex. I like that Alex.” She savored the name, then abruptly remembered what we were here for. “If you didn’t kill Robin,” she said, “then who did?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“But you went out with her that night, didn’t you? To the Maxfield?”

I gave her a capsule version of what had happened that night and the following morning. I told her briefly how memory had returned, how I knew with complete assurance that another hand had wielded the knife and left me to take the blame. She listened to every word and her eyes never left my face.

When I ran out of words we stood there in that little room and looked at each other for a long time.

Until finally she said, “You want to know something crazy? I believe you.”

No one had said that before.

We caught a taxi on Eighth Avenue. She had said that we couldn’t stay in the hotel, that it was not safe. “I have a place uptown that’s safe. God, I must be crazy. I have an apartment on Eighty-ninth Street, I never take anyone there.” So we left the hotel and took a cab, and in it I sat so that the driver could not catch my face in his mirror. She gave him the address, and he read us as a soldier and a whore on the way to a bed, and we sat in stony silence until the cab dropped us on Eighty-ninth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam.

When he pulled away, properly paid and tipped, she took my arm. “It’s a block from here, toward the park. In case he remembers your face later, this way he won’t know the address.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

We walked to her building, a brownstone in a row of brownstones. Her apartment was on the third floor. We climbed stairs, and she opened the door with a key. When we were inside she locked the door and set the police lock, a steel bar set into a plate on the floor and angled against the door.

“I don’t drink, so I don’t keep anything around. I could make some coffee.”

“Oh, don’t bother “

“Sure, I’ll make us both some coffee. Sit down, I’ll make the coffee.”

She went into the kitchen and I heard water running. I wandered around the living room. The furniture was old and the rug worn, but the pieces were comfortable together. I walked to the window. It faced out on a blank wall, an air shaft, but I pulled the shade anyway.

“The water’s up,” she said. “I only have instant, I hope it’s all right“

“Instant is fine.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Just black is fine.”

“You’re like me, but I always put in an icecube so it cools faster. You want an icecube?”

“I’ll try it.”

We settled down on the couch with cups of black coffee. She curled her thin legs under her, and I caught an instant of déjà vu. It took a minute to identify it and then I remembered how Linda had curled herself into the identical position two nights back.

She said, Tve been here almost three years. I never brought anyone here before. Not even when it’s been very warm and the hotels just won’t let anybody in, not even girls they know well. I would always find a hotel in some other neighborhood where I could get in, maybe Twenty-third Street. Or I would just not work that night but I would never bring a trick here, not once.”

“I appreciate it.”

“But you’re not safe around Times Square, you know. I think the uniform is a very good idea, but even so someone is gonna recognize you sooner or later. Here, nobody knows you’re here. Except me.”

I lit us each a cigarette.

“Cause once the cops get you, you’re dead.”

“I know it”

“I wish I could say that I saw something, like somebody following you and Robin to the Maxfield. But I didn’t even see you pick her up. I was with somebody.”

“You told me.”

“Well, at the time I would of told you that anyway. Not to get involved, you understand?” She sipped her coffee. “Do you have any idea who did it? Any suspects?”

“Nothing much.”

“Tell me.”

So I did. I gave her the unabridged edition this time, all of it, front to back. She was the first person to hear the whole thing, and it did me good to tell it. She was just the right kind of sounding board. She stayed with every word, nodding to show that she was following me, interrupting now and then when she wanted a point cleared up. Linda disgusted her, MacEwan appalled her, and the problem of finding out who did what appeared to intrigue her.

She didn’t think much of my idea of picking up a girl and asking her questions. “No one would tell you anything,” she said. “They’d just run.”

“You didn’t run.”

“Well, I told you I was crazy.” She considered that. “What happened was I decided to trust you.”

“I trust you, too.”

“What’s to trust? What could I do to you?”

“Call the police.”

“Me?” She laughed. “The police and I”-holding up two fingers pressed together-“are not exactly like this.”

“Even so.”

“I hate to tell you this, I’m not proud of it, but I’ve been arrested. I’ve been in jail. Not just once. A few times.”

“That must be rough.”

“Rough! You know the House of Detention? In the Village?”

“I know where it is.”

She turned her eyes away. “I shouldn’t mention it. You can’t think much of me.”

“I was inside just once, but for a lot longer than you.”

“It’s different.”

“Maybe in some ways. I think I understand you better than you think, Jackie. You don’t have to worry about what you say to me.”

Long silence. Then, “There’s worse.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you probably know it already. One of the reasons I couldn’t stay at the hotel forever, I had to come back here.”

During the past few minutes her eyes had been running, and she had been sniffing nervously. I knew what was coming.

“You saw my arms.”

“Sure.”

“Well, then, you know.”

“Sure. You use stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

A longer silence this time. Then, “I have to fix now. I don’t want you to see me. It would make you sick.”

“No, it wouldn’t”

“I don’t mean sick, I mean you wouldn’t like me, seeing it. I want to go in the other room.”

“All right.”

“Alex?”

“What?”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

“All right.”

“You’ll stay here? You won’t leave? Because I think maybe I can help you. I mean finding out who did it. You won’t go?”

“Where would I go?”

“I don’t know. Away, I guess.”

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Good.” She was rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. She got to her feet and walked quickly out of the room. “I’ll be right back, Alex. I won’t be more than a minute, I’ll be right back.”