“She was. Until—” She let it trail off.

“You’ll have to tell the cops, Fern.”

She nodded. “They had a fight. At a party, just a few nights ago. Both she and Josie had a crush on Pete Peters, the novelist. He’s — well, just part of the gang down here. I told you before how I met Ephraim coming out of Josie’s room that morning. I’ve met Pete coming out a dozen mornings. But the thing is, if I were Dana’s roommate I would have seen Pete over there also—” She paused, and her arms dropped between her thighs. “I guess Josie and Dana were both kidding themselves, thinking Pete was playing it straight. But then something came up at the party, somebody made a crack, and Dana blew her top. She was drunk, I guess, but she called Josie every name in the book, and then she told Pete to take her home. Pete said no, but it was curious, somehow. He didn’t say he wouldn’t go with Dana — I’m almost certain he said he had to stay. In fact I was tempted to ask Josie later if—”

“She might have been pregnant?”

“I don’t know, Harry, I—”

I was scowling. “Ephraim’s interest doesn’t make much sense if everyone knew Josie was going with this Peters—”

“You saw Ephraim — he’s a little crazy. He told Josie the other night he wanted to marry her. I think he felt — well, I got the idea he wanted to do it deliberately, knowing she might have another man’s child. As if it might add some simulated sort of tragic stature to his life, like Byron’s limp or something—”

“You said she went uptown a lot. Anybody special she saw?”

“Connie, yes.”

“Connie?”

“I don’t know his last name. She’s never said anything about him, nothing at all. He just calls, two or three nights a week, and if Josie isn’t busy she goes up. Oh, God, I mean went up. It was always odd, I guess probably he’s a married man—”

She turned aside. I waited again.

“The cops will have one other set of questions, Fern—”

Her breasts rose and fell sharply in profile.

“I got to Vinnie’s Place about ten to twelve,” I said. “They’ll want to know what time you got there.”

“I saw you come in,” she said distantly. “I couldn’t have been there more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Gregory and Allen might know, those two boys I was sitting with.”

“Before that?”

“I went to see that old Humphrey Bogart film. Casablanca. Over on Sixth Avenue. I guess I went about eight-thirty.”

“Alone?”

The cigarette lifted in a gesture of futility. “I just wish that were all that was on my mind.”

I watched her. Her hands were across her knees. Smoke trailed up from one of them, disappearing against the sheen of her hair.

“That bullet — it was from a twenty-two, wasn’t it?”

“It looked like it.”

“It will be. I owned one. A Colt Huntsman that someone gave me once.”

“Owned?”

“It was stolen out of my dresser. Two weeks ago. I didn’t report it, because we’d had a party that weekend and I thought some poet had probably pawned it for a meal. But now—”

The siren cut her off, whining once like a troubled animal outside. She was looking down desolately and she drew in her breath, holding it. And then she did something that twisted my stomach into a sick knot.

I got over there as fast as I could, but not fast enough. She hadn’t said a word, moving only the hand which held the cigarette. I was standing over her when she let the dead butt drop to the floor.

“Fern,” I said. “Oh, Christ—ⁿ

She got up, shaking. I stared at her lifted wrist. The doorbell rang with a single authoritative blast.

The foul odor of singed flesh followed me when I went to the buzzer.

CHAPTER 5

The cop who caught it was a lean, long-necked, wide-shouldered sergeant named DiMaggio. He had a face roughly the shape and color of a clumsily peeled Idaho potato, and he had a jaw like the end of a cigarette carton.

He was strictly business. He let us tell him that we had come in together and found the body, and then he spent twelve or fourteen minutes supervising his lab men. After that he spent twenty more with Fern in her bedroom. There was another detective with him, an amiable, laconic redhead named Toomey.

Fern stayed inside when they came out. Toomey rejoined the technicians and DiMaggio indicated the kitchen with a nod. I followed him. He hoisted one flat hip over the edge of the sink, then swung the door shut with the toe of a shoe big enough to row.

“You have something with your name on it?” he asked me.

I gave him my wallet, open to my state license. He stared at the ticket for a lot more time than it would take to read it. Then he let out his breath, with all the weary resignation of a plumber finding a coat hanger in a drain.

“A private detective,” he said without inflection. He handed the wallet back. “Must be an exciting line of work. Thrills, adventure—”

He wasn’t smiling. I didn’t say anything.

“Anything exciting happen to you lately, Mr. Fannin?”

I supposed I was expected to lend myself to the routine. “I had a real scary one two weeks ago,” I said.

“What would that have been, Mr. Fannin?”

“A dognaping,” I said.

“Oh?”

“The owner decided to pay the ransom. I had to meet the dognaper in a dark street in Flatbush at four o’clock in the morning.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Things work out without trouble?”

“The dog bit me.”

That changed his expression the way drops of syrup change the expression on a buckwheat cake, no more. He took a cigarette.

“What are you working on now, Mr. Fannin?”

DiMaggio. Toomey had called him Joe, which people would do. On his birth certificate it probably said Melvin.

“I was in a bar on Hudson Street,” I told him mechanically. “Vinnie’s Place. Before midnight tonight I’d never seen Fern Hoerner in my life. Somebody insulted her and I walked her home. She was in here and I happened to look into that bedroom. Before approximately twelve forty-five I’d never seen the Welch girl either. Anything else I can tell you would be hearsay, based on conversation with Miss Hoerner. Except for what went on in the bar — that involved Josie Welch also.”

“Tell it.”

I went into detail about Ephraim Turk, then summarized what Fern had said about background. When I finished he leaned there chewing on it. He was an obvious kind of cop and there would be an obvious question for him to ask. He had already asked it once.

“What are you working on, Fannin?”

I didn’t answer.

“You simply happened to be in Vinnie’s. You weren’t there because you were trying to make contact with Miss Hoerner for some reason — or to get into this apartment?”

“Oh, now look, just because I’ve got this license—”

“Just because. I want to know what you’re working on, Fannin. I think I want to know right about now.”

I sat there for another minute. He had too many preconceived notions and too much sheer habit to take any story of mine on faith. “Would Captain Nate Brannigan be on duty up at Central Homicide tonight?” I asked him.

He stared at me. “Exactly what does that mean?”

“It means I went in there for a drink. All the rest was just luck.”

He cracked a knuckle the size of a walnut, not looking at me.

“I had a security case,” I told him then. “Woman named Skelly found some cash. She decided to leave it in the precinct safe instead.”

“You could have mentioned this before, you know.”

“We got off the road.”

“So we did.” He finally made up his mind to smile, although it was still an effort. “You know Brannigan pretty well?”

“Four, five years.”

He went to the door. “What the hell — it didn’t look very kosher.”

“I figured it wouldn’t.”

“Yeah. You’ll have to see a stenographer later. Stick around if you want.”

“Thanks.”

Toomey was alone in the living room. “Watch your language in front of the man, Floyd,” DiMaggio told him. “He’s a P.I. with connections.”