She chewed a piece of lemon peel and said for the thirtieth or fortieth time:
“It won’t come out of your pocket. What do you care?”
“It’s not the money,” I said, “it’s the principle of the thing.”
She made a face at me and put her glass where she thought the table was. She was eight inches wrong. I don’t remember if the glass broke when it hit the floor, or what happened to it. I do remember that I was encouraged by her missing the table.
“Another thing,” I opened up a new argumentative line, “I’m not sure I really need whatever you can tell me. If I have to get along without it, I think I can.”
“It’ll be nice if you can, but don’t forget I’m the last person who saw him alive, except whoever killed him.”
“Wrong,” I said. “His wife saw him come out, walk away, and fall.”
“His wife!”
“Yeah. She was sitting in a coupé down the street.”
“How did she know he was here?”
“She says Thaler phoned her that her husband had come here with the check.”
“You’re trying to kid me,” the girl said. “Max couldn’t have known it.”
“I’m telling you what Mrs. Willsson told Noonan and me.”
The girl spit what was left of the lemon peel out on the floor, further disarranged her hair by running her fingers through it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and slapped the table.
“All right, Mr. Knowitall,” she said, “I’m going to play with you. You can think it’s not going to cost you anything, but I’ll get mine before we’re through. You think I won’t?” she challenged me, peering at me as if I were a block away.
This was no time to revive the money argument, so I said: “I hope you do.” I think I said it three or four times, quite earnestly.
“I will. Now listen to me. You’re drunk, and I’m drunk, and I’m just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know. That’s the kind of girl I am. If I like a person I’ll tell them anything they want to know. Just ask me. Go ahead, ask me.”
I did:
“What did Willsson give you five thousand dollars for?”
“For fun.” She leaned back to laugh. Then: “Listen. He was hunting for scandal. I had some of it, some affidavits and things that I thought might be good for a piece of change some day. I’m a girl that likes to pick up a little jack when she can. So I had put these things away. When Donald began going after scalps I let him know that I had these things, and that they were for sale. I gave him enough of a peep at them to let him know they were good. And they were good. Then we talked how much. He wasn’t as tight as you–nobody ever was–but he was a little bit close. So the bargain hung fire, till yesterday.
“Then I gave him the rush, phoned him and told him I had another customer for the stuff and that if he wanted it he’d have to show up that night with either five thousand smacks in cash or a certified check. That was hooey, but he hadn’t been around much, so he fell for it.”
“Why ten o’clock?” I asked.
“Why not? That’s as good a time as any other. The main thing on a deal like that is to give them a definite time. Now you want to know why it had to be cash or a certified check? All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. That’s the kind of girl I am. Always was.”
She went on that way for five minutes, telling me in detail just which and what sort of a girl she was, and always had been, and why. I yes-yes’d her until I got a chance to cut in with:
“All right, now why did it have to be a certified check?”
She shut one eye, waggled a forefinger at me, and said:
“So he couldn’t stop payment. Because he couldn’t have used the stuff I sold him. It was good, all right. It was too good. It would have put his old man in jail with the rest of them. It would have nailed Papa Elihu tighter than anyone else.”