“You ain’t got a watch?”

“Don’t need one, man. Infallible sense of rhythm. It ticks off in my head, like.”

I looked at my wrist. “Thirty minutes off,” I told Brannigan. “It’s a quarter after.”

“Sure. Hell, this loony probably loses a week every time he misses a fix. What the devil, say she got here about three. You’re not positive it was three-thirty when she got to your place. Call it three-twenty. She comes here, asks him for help, gets turned down. He changes his mind, follows her… well, why bother? We’ve been through all that.”

“Wouldn’t convict him in court,” I said meaninglessly. “Not without a later witness.”

“If I had him alive to take to court, I’d have a confession.”

“I suppose,” I said. I didn’t know why I was questioning it. Henshaw wouldn’t have known the right time if they’d roped him to one of the hands of the clock on the city hall tower. I was simply feeling let down, maybe cheated a little. It was a trifle tough to feel vengeful toward what was left of Arthur Leeds.

The apartment didn’t tell me anything about him either. He had a lot of records, good hi-fi equipment off in a corner. He subscribed to half a dozen music magazines. He was reading a paperback called Sidewalk Caesar by someone named Donald Honig. That morning’s Tribune was folded back to Red Smith.

I turned to Henshaw. “What about today?” I asked him. “Leeds say anything about last night?”

“Never asked, dad. Man’s chicks are his castle.”

“He act like he had something on his mind?”

“Dad, you cats just don’t pay heed. Like I pronounced previously, he was all dismembered over that H. If that cat acted anymore shook up, you could have traded him in for a new Waring blender and got coin thrown in on the deal.”

“How did you know Catherine Hawes?”

“Her?” He shrugged. “She pops up, man. Like she’s here, like she’s there, comprenez? How do I know my old lady? Who remembers? How do I know God? Like I mean, that cat is around, too. I believed in him the other day, for true. Last Tuesday. Great, man, great!”

Brannigan cracked his knuckles disgustedly. “You satisfied?”

I nodded.

“Police routine,” he said. “Meet every nitwit in town. You want an answer to anything, you go to the nuts. I got a couple calls to make, Harry. You going to knock off now?”

“Might as well get some sleep,” I said. I knew I had to see Estelle first. I also wanted to see Sally Kline, to get some background on Leeds. I wanted to make the son of a bitch come to life a little.

Brannigan was at the phone. “You going to want anything else from me?” I asked him.

“This morning’s statement will probably do. Take it slow, fellow. And next time call a cop who doesn’t spend all his time at a desk, huh? I’m a menace when I get out on the street, for crying out loud.”

“See you, Nate. Thanks.”

“Right, Harry.”

I went out, still feeling anti-climactic. Probably part of it was the temperature. I was just beyond the door when Henshaw started to giggle obscenely behind me. “Hey, man,” he said, “how about that? When the chicks ask me where Leedsie is I got to inform them, that cat is hung up. You dig that? Hung up? Hung up?”

He was laughing like a jackass but I stopped hearing him before I got to the second landing. I picked up Vesti la Giubba down there instead. Someone was bellowing it in an off-register Haig and Haig tenor behind a door that had been left open against the heat. The man had a swell audience out back in the yard, but apparently he didn’t know it yet.

Caruso’s girlfriend didn’t know it either. Or probably it was only his wife. “Can I get dressed now, Herb,” I heard her call out, “or do you want to use me first?”

Life was going on. You couldn’t be sure exactly why.

CHAPTER 17

I felt groggy in the hack on the way uptown. I’d been fighting sleep more than I suspected. With all of it finished now I had abruptly sagged to half mast.

Estelle asked who it was through the speaker and a second later I got the buzz and went in. She was waiting in the doorway as I came down the corridor.

She tried a smile but she didn’t have the tools for it, not today. There were lines around her mouth like cracks in pale china, and her eyes were dull. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said.

“Just got clear,” I told her.

“You look dreadful, Harry. I guess you haven’t been to bed at all, have you?”

“Going now. We just wrapped it up, Estelle.”

She looked at me vaguely, not quite understanding. She was wearing a white linen blouse with ruffles at the collar like Benjamin Franklin, and the plain gray jacket which matched her skirt was across the back of one of the sterile, antiseptic living-room chairs. I supposed the furniture would get sat in by relatives in a day or two and then not again until the next funeral in the family.

The air-conditioning was on and I walked over to the machine. Estelle had closed the door and was standing near it, watching me with a curious frown.

“Someone named Arthur Leeds,” I said. “A musician in Greenwich Village. Cathy went to him when she ran off with the money. He followed her up to my place.”

“You mean—” She swallowed, then clasped her hand over her mouth and whirled toward the wall. She started to sob, biting her fist.

“It’s over now, Estelle. Completely over. Leeds is dead. He had an accident running from us. And you don’t have to worry about our friend Duke anymore either. He was picked up also.”

She stood there with her back turned. I walked over to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Estelle. Listen, what about your mother? Did you see her?”

She nodded, not looking at me. “Yes,” she said distantly. “But I didn’t… I didn’t say anything.”

“Is she all right otherwise?”

“Yes. But, oh, Harry, it’s all so…” She shuddered again, then held her breath for a long moment. Finally she turned back toward me, wiping her eyes and trying the same unsuccessful smile. “I’m sorry. Can I… I’m afraid we haven’t got anything but Scotch. Will that be all right?”

“Fine. But then I better scram.”

She poured the drink at a cabinet. She put in the Scotch first and then had to go into the kitchen for ice. Estelle was the sort who would do it that way.

I dropped myself onto the couch. After a minute she came out and sat down a little away from me. She had not made a drink for herself. She kept her hands in her lap, like something someone had asked her to keep an eye on for a while.

The drink would have been just right for a teetotaling Lilliputian. I sipped it without saying anything. It survived for three or four seconds.

“You never heard Cathy mention this Leeds, Estelle?”

She shook her head, looking as if she were thinking of something else altogether. Probably she was. I put the glass down on a coffee table. When I looked back she had begun to cry again.

“Harry, I’m so… must you go, Harry?”

“God, I’ve got to. I feel like an unplugged lamp. On top of that my head’s been throbbing like six other guys’.”

She was facing me. She reached up hesitantly, touching my temple with her fingertips, and I could feel it when she did. “He hit you so hard, I…” She winced, drawing her hand away. “It’s gotten all black and blue.”

“Another Scotch might help,” I said. “I could stick around that long.”

“Oh, I — of course.” She got up, started to reach for the glass, changed her mind and brought over the bottle instead. “Forgive me. I never do know how much. There hasn’t really been any whisky in the house since you and Cathy stopped visiting. We—”

She broke up again. I poured a second drink.

“Harry… would you sleep here? I’m so alone. If I could just be able to know you’re here, in the next room. I know I haven’t any right to ask, you’ve done so much already. But it would be such a comfort. You could use my bedroom. I can make it dark enough. And I can turn on the air-conditioner in there also, it would be—”