“Reported to the authorities?”
“Oh, yes. You have to. It’s the law.”
“Did you have any idea anything at all might have been bugging the doctor?”
“Gee, it’s hard to say. I mean he wasn’t one of those always-the-same people. When he’d get involved in some project, he’d get sort of remote, especially when things wouldn’t be going well. And he wouldn’t want to talk about it. So… maybe something was bothering him, because he’d been acting the way he usually did when things weren’t going the way he expected. But I just know he wouldn’t kill himself.”
“Anything questionable in the autopsy?”
“Like maybe he was knocked out first? No. No sign of it and no trace of anything but morphine, and that was more than a trace.”
I was slouched deep in the armchair, legs resting on a round formica table. After the silence had lasted a little while, I looked over at her. She was staring at me. She had one eye a third closed and the other half closed. She had one brow arched and she had her lips pulled back away from her rather pretty teeth. It was a strange, fixed grimace, not quite smirk and not quite sneer.
“Hi!” she said in a husky voice, and I suddenly realized that the stare had been meant to be erotic and inviting. It startled me.
“Oh, come on, Penny!”
“Well… listen. You’re cute. You know that? Pretty damn cute. What I was thinking, that sumbitch was so ready to think I cheated, right? I was thinking Eke they say about having the name and the game too. Whoose going anyplace anyways? Friday night, iznit? Dowanna waysh… waste the li’l pill I took this morning, do I?”
“Time to take you home.”
“Yah, yah, yah. Thanks a lot. You must find me real attractive, McGee. Freckles turn you off? Doan like dumpy-legged women?”
“I like them just fine, nurse. Settle down.”
She came around toward me and stood and gave me that fixed buggy stare again, put her glass on the table, then did a kind of half spin and tumbled solidly onto my lap, managing to give me a pretty good chop in the eye with her elbow as she did so. It hit some kind of nerve that started my eye weeping. She snuggled into me, cheek against my chest, and gave me another breathy “Hi!”
“Penny-friend, it is a lousy way to try to get even with good old Rick. You’re bold with booze. You’d hate yourself.” “D’wanna take d’vantage of a girl?”
“Sure. Glad to. You think it over and come back tomorrow night and scratch on the door.”
She gave a long, weary exhalation and for a moment I wondered if she was suddenly passing out. But then in a level and perfectly articulated voice she said, “I have a good head for booze.”
“Hmmm. Why the act?”
“It ain’t easy, McGee, for a cold-sober girl to offer her all to the passing stranger. Maybe for some, but not for Penny Woertz. No! Don’t push me up. I can tell you easier if I’m not looked at.”
“Tell me what?”
“It’s a bad hang-up for me. With Rick. He really is mean. Do you know how a guy can be mean? Cruel little things. Know why he can get away with being like that?”
“Because you’re the only one with the hang-up?”
“Right. You’re pretty smart. Know what I’ll do now?”
“What will you do?”
“Get very firm with myself. Tell myself it was a no-good thing. Chin up, tummy in, walk straight, girl. Think of him every three minutes of every waking hour for two or three or four days, and then dial the private line in his office and humble myself and whimper and beg and apologize for things I didn’t do. And be ashamed of myself and kind of sick-joyful at the same time.”
“No character, hey?”
“I used to think I had lots. He got to me in… a kind of physical way. I think of him and get to wanting him so bad my head hums and my ears roar and the world gets tilty.”
“Hmm. Humiliating?”
“That’s the word. I want out. I want free. So while I was in your bathroom blubbering because he walked out, I had this idea of how to get loose, if I could work up enough nerve.”