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“Sure I do,” he said. “I miss her a lot. She was my one and only girlfriend for three whole months.”

Hip, hip, hooray! Let’s hear it for the Ham! Greater love hath no man than to stay faithful for three, count ’em, three whole months!

“So what happened, Jimmy?” I asked. “Why did you break up with her?”

“I wasn’t the one who cut loose,” he insisted. “She broke up with me. I was really torn up about it for a while.” His eyes were getting teary. (From true pain, deep guilt, or pure “poetic” sensitivity? I couldn’t tell.) I hoped he wouldn’t start bawling like he had at the Vanguard.

“But my cousin was so in love with you!” Abby broke in. “Every letter she sent me was all about you! Why would she call it quits?”

“Well,” he said, looking down at the dusty floor and shuffling his feet, “I guess I didn’t treat her too good. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I really didn’t. But I just couldn’t walk the line. I’m a wild and crazy poet, dig it? I’m a natural-born, hot-blooded man. One chick’s just not enough for me.”

“So why were you so torn up when she broke it off?” I asked.

“Because I loved her. She moved me. I wrote good poems when she was with me. Otto loved her, too.” Looking around for his little dog, and finding him nestled in my arms, Jimmy stepped over to me and scooped Otto up in his own arms. “I really hated it when Judy moved in with that old rich guy,” he muttered, hugging Otto tight to his chest, beginning to pace the room in circles like a caged panther.

“You mean Gregory Smythe?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She never told me the cube’s name. She knew I didn’t want to hear about him. It made me too mad.”

Mad enough to kill her? I wondered. “Did you keep seeing Judy after she moved to Chelsea? Did you visit her at her new apartment?”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t go inside that pad for all the bread in the bank. I wouldn’t set foot in the whole fucking neighborhood. It made me sick to think about her living there with that perverted old fart. I saw Judy sometimes-at the Vanguard, or the Kettle of Fish, or some other Village hangout-but I never went anywhere near that lousy damn apartment.”

That’s not what Elsie Londergan says, I thought, remembering that she’d seen Jimmy in the neighborhood a couple of times. “You mean you never went to Chelsea while Judy was living there? Not even once?”

“Not on your life!” he declared. “I never even… no, wait a second… I just remembered something…” He stopped his angry pacing and turned to face us. “I did go there one time. But I didn’t go up to Judy’s apartment. I just went to the Chelsea Realty office to tell Judy’s fucking landlord to leave her the hell alone.”

“What?!” Abby and I cried in unison.

“You went to see Roscoe Swift?” I sputtered.

“Yeah, Swift. That was the creep’s name.”

“Why did you tell him to leave Judy alone?” Abby urged. “Was he bothering her somehow?”

“Sure was. All the time. He kept showing up at her apartment, late at night, without even calling first, claiming there was some problem with the heat, or that her sink was leaking into the apartment underneath, or that somebody had complained she was playing the radio too loud. And once he was inside the apartment, he’d make a pass at her. He’d tell her she was really sexy, and then he’d try to cop a feel or give her a kiss. Once he even pinched her on the ass. He always came late so he could catch her in her nightgown.”

“But he knew a man was paying her rent,” I said, “so he knew she had a lover. How could he be so sure she’d be alone?”

“I can answer that one,” Abby said. “Swift knew that Smythe was married, right? I mean, that’s the way these arrangements usually work. So it was a pretty safe bet that if he went to Judy’s place real late, her dear old daddy-o would have already gone home to his dear old wife.”

Suddenly feeling exhausted, I sat down on the side of the bed again. So many complicated questions-so many confounding answers. I looked up at Jimmy and said, “So Judy told you that Swift was making advances and asked you to take care of it?”

Jimmy started pacing in circles again. “She told me Swift was bugging her, but she didn’t ask me to do anything about it. Going to see the little creep was my own idea. I marched into his office and told him if he ever touched Judy again I’d break his legs and cut his filthy rod off. Scared him pretty good. He didn’t bother her so much after that.”

“Did Judy tell Smythe that Swift was annoying her?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy grunted. “Like I said, she never mentioned Smythe-or whatever the hell the old fart’s name was-to me.”

My brain was spinning with the new information. And the new details were getting all tangled up with the old ones. And I didn’t know what to believe, or what not to believe, or what to believe just a little bit. Finally realizing I couldn’t possibly come up with any sound conjectures on the spot-that I needed some time to think things over, try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together-I decided to just fire off a few more questions while Jimmy was in a talkative mood.

“Do you have any idea who killed Judy?” I asked, training my eyes on Jimmy’s face, watching for telltale expressions. “Do you think it could have been Swift?”

“I don’t know who did it,” he said, frowning. “The newspapers said it was a random burglar, but it could have been Swift, I guess. He’s a nasty little fucker. But does that make him a murderer? I don’t know, doll. I really don’t know.” Looking as sad and tired and frustrated as I felt, Jimmy came and sat down next to me on the bed. Otto stretched his skinny body over Jimmy’s bent arm, nuzzled his nose into the cup of my hand, and licked my palm and fingers.

“Did you know that Smythe gave Judy some diamond jewelry?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said, fingering his beard again. “But she wouldn’t have told me even if he did. And I never saw her wearing any ice, either. Judy wasn’t the diamond-flashing type.”

I stored his response in my mental file cabinet and moved on. “Why did you follow me home from the Vanguard the other night?”

Jimmy widened his eyes and furrowed his brow. “You knew about that?”

“I saw you lurking in the laundromat doorway.”

He looked embarrassed for a moment, but quickly regained his composure. “It was only because you said you were a good friend of Judy’s,” he declared, “and I wanted to see you again. You never told me your name, so the only way I could keep track of you was to find out where you lived.”

Since he already knew where my apartment was (and may, in fact, have already broken into it), I didn’t see any reason to keep my identity a secret from him any longer. “My name is Paige Turner,” I said, ripping a piece of paper out of the little notebook in my purse, which I had tossed on the bed when I began my search of his apartment. “And here’s my phone number.” I wrote the info down on the slip of paper and handed it to him. “Will you call me if you think of anything-anything at all-that might help the police find Judy’s murderer?”

“Sure thing, doll.” He started to fold the paper up and stick it in his pocket, but thought better of it. “Can I borrow your pen?” he asked. Then, still holding Otto in his arms, he stood up, walked over to Abby, and handed the pen and the slip of paper to her. “Here you go, Miss Muffet,” he said with a goatish grin. “Better put your number down here, too. If I ever get to Pittsburgh, I’ll give you a ring.”

“Okay, baby!” Abby cooed, flapping her lashes so fast I thought they’d stir up a dust storm. She wrote what I assumed was a fake number down on the piece of paper and handed it back to him. “I’d ask for your number, too,” she said, “but the phone book already gave it to me. Mind if I use it the next time I’m in town?”