Morelli shook his head. “I don’t know. She don’t do much talking about people.”
“She was wearing a diamond engagement ring. Know anything about it?”
“Nothing except she didn’t get it from me. She wasn’t wearing it when I see her.”
“Do you think she meant to throw in with Pepplcr again when he got out?”
“Maybe. She didn’t seem to worry much about him being in, but she liked to work with him all right and I guess thev’d’ve teamed up again.”
“And how about the cousin of Dick O’Brien, the skinny dark-headed lush? What became of him?”
Morelli looked at me in surprise. “Search me.”
Studsy returned alone. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said as he sat down, “but I think somebody could do something with that cluck if they took hold of her right.”
Morelli said: “By the throat.”
Studsy grinned good-naturedly. “No. She’s trying to get somewhere. She works hard at her singing lessons and–”
Morelli looked at his empty glass and said: “This tiger milk of yours must be doing her pipes a lot of good.” He turned his head to yell at Pete: “Hey, you with the knapsack, some more of the same. We got to sing in the choir tomorrow.”
Pete said: “Coming up, Sheppy.” His lined gray face lost its dull apathy when Morelli spoke to him.
An immensely fat blond man–so blond he was nearly albino–who had been sitting at Miriam’s table came over and said to me in a thin, tremulous, effeminate voice: “So you’re the party who put it to little Art Nunhei–”
Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and smashed a big fist into the fat man’s face. I noticed, foolishly, that he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man’s head. The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on hands and knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man’s collar in back, twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli’s help they got the fat man to his feet and hustled him out.
Pete looked after them and sucked a tooth. “That God-damned Sparrow,” he explained to me, “you can’t take no chances on him when he’s drinking.”
Studsy was at the next table, the one that had been upset, helping people pick up themselves and their possessions. “That’s bad,” he was saying, “bad for business, but where you going to draw the line? I ain’t running a dive, but I ain’t trying to run a young ladies’ seminary neither.”
Dorothy was pale, frightened; Nora wide-eyed and amazed. “It’s a madhouse,” she said. “What’d they do that for?”
“You know as much about it as I do,” I told her.
Morelli and the bar-tenders came in again, looking pretty pleased with themselves. Morelli and Studsy returned to their seats at our table.
“You boys are impulsive,” I said.
Studsy repeated, “Impulsive,” and laughed, “Ha-ha-ha.”
Morelli was serious. “Any time that guy starts anything, you got to start it first. It’s too late when he gets going. We seen him like that before, ain’t we, Studsy?”
“Like what?” I asked. “He hadn’t done anything.”
“He hadn’t, all right,” Morelli said slowly, “but it’s a kind of feeling you get about him sometimes. Ain’t that right, Studsy?”
Studsy said: “Uh-huh, he’s hysterical.”
23
It was about two o’clock when we said good-night to Studsy and Morelli and left the Pigiron Club.
Dorothy slumped down in her corner of the taxicab and said: going to be sick. I know I am.” She sounded as if she was telling the truth. Nora said: “That booze.” She put her head on my shoulder. “Your wife is drunk, Nicky. Listen, you’ve got to tell me what happened–everything. Not now, tomorrow. I don’t understand a thing that was said or a thing that was done. They’re marvelous.”