Might as Well Be Dead

“You don’t have to. You can have your meals in your room, and it’s a nice room. I’m not asking you, lady, I’m telling you. Fifty hours ago I had to swallow hard to keep from having personal feelings about you, and I don’t want to do it again, as I would have to if you were found with your skull battered. I’m perfectly willing to help get your guy out to you alive, but not to your corpse. This specimen has killed Molloy, and Johnny Keems, and now Ella Reyes. I don’t know his reason for killing her, but he might have as good a one for killing you, or think he had, and he’s not going to. Go pack a bag, and step on it. We’re in a hurry.”

I’ll be damned if she didn’t start to reach out a hand to me and then jerk it back. The instinct of a woman never to pass up an advantage probably goes back to when we had tails. But she jerked it back.

She stood up. “I think this is foolish,” she said, “but I don’t want to die now.” She left me.

Another improvement. It hadn’t been long since she had said she might as well be dead. She reappeared shortly with a hat and jacket on and carrying a brown leather suitcase. I took the case, and we were off.

To save time I intended to explain the program en route in the taxi, but I didn’t get to. After I had told the hackie, “City Mortuary, Four hundred East Twenty-ninth,” and he had given us a second look, and we had started to roll, she said she wanted to ask me a question and I told her to shoot.

She moved closer to me to get her mouth six inches from my ear, and asked, “Why did Peter try to get away with the gun in his pocket?”

“You really don’t know,” I said.

“No, I-How could I know?”

“You might have figured it out. He thought your fingerprints were on the gun and he wanted to ditch it.”

She stared. Her face was so close I couldn’t see it. “But how could-No! He couldn’t think that! He couldn’t!”

“If you want to keep this private, tone it down. Why couldn’t he? You could. Sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander. You are now inclined to change your mind, but you have been worked on. He hasn’t been in touch as you have, so I suppose he still thinks it. Why shouldn’t he?”

“Peter thinks I killed Mike?”

“Of course. Since he knows he didn’t. Goose is right.”

She gripped my arm with both hands. “Mr. Goodwin, I want to see him. I’ve got to see him now!”