Dorothy touched my arm. “Nick, listen to me first. I–” She broke off. Everybody was staring at her.
“What?” I asked.
“I–I want to talk to you first.”
“Go ahead.”
“I mean alone,” she said.
I patted her hand. “Afterwards.”
Mimi led me into her bedroom and carefully shut the door. I sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. Mimi leaned back against the door and smiled at me very gently and trustingly. Half a minute passed that way.
Then she said, “You do like me, Nick,” and when I said nothing she asked, “Don’t you?”
“No.”
She laughed and came away from the door. “You mean you don’t approve of me.” She sat on the bed beside me. “But you do like me well enough to help me?”
“That depends.”
“Depends on wha–”
The door opened and Dorothy came in. “Nick, I’ve got to–”
Mimi jumped up and confronted her daughter. “Get out of here,” she said through her teeth.
Dorothy flinched, but she said: “I won’t. You’re not going to make a–”
Mimi slashed Dorothy across the mouth with the back of her right hand. “Get out of here.”
Dorothy screamed and put a hand to her mouth. Holding it there, holding her wide frightened eyes on Mimi’s face, she backed out of the room.
Mimi shut the door again.
I said: “You must come over to our place some time and bring your little white whips.”
She did not seem to hear me. Her eyes were heavy, brooding, and her lips were thrust out a little in a half-smile, and when she spoke, her voice seemed heavier, throatier, than usual. “My daughter’s in love with you.’,
“Nonsense.”
“She is and she’s jealous of me. She has absolute spasms whenever I get within ten feet of you.” She spoke as if thinking of something else.
“Nonsense. Maybe she’s got a little hangover from that crush she had on me when she was twelve, but that’s all it is.”
Mimi shook her head. “You’re wrong, but never mind.” She sat down on the bed beside me again. “You’ve got to help me out of this. I–”
“Sure,” I said. “You’re a delicate fleur that needs a great big man’s protection.”
“Oh, that?” She waved a hand at the door through which Dorothy had gone. “You’re surely not getting– Why, it’s nothing you haven’t heard about before–and seen and done, for that matter. It’s nothing to worry you.” She smiled as before, with heavy, brooding eyes, and lips thrust out a little. “If you want Dorry, take her, but don’t get sentimental about it. But never mind that. Of course I’m not a delicate–fleur. You never thought I was.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Well, then,” she said with an air of finality.
“Well then what?”
“Stop being so damned coquettish,” she said. “You know what I mean. You understand me as well as I understand you.”
“Just about, but you’ve been doing the coquetting ever since–”
“I know. That was a game. I’m not playing now. That son of a bitch made a fool of me, Nick, an out and out fool, and now he’s in trouble and expects me to help him. I’ll help him.” She put a hand on my knee and her pointed nails dug into my flesh. “The police, they don’t believe me. How can I make them believe that he’s lying, that I know nothing more than I’ve told them about the murder?”
“You probably can’t,” I said slowly, “especially since Jorgensen’s only repeating what you told me a few hours ago.”
She caught her breath, and her nails dug into me again. “Did you tell them that?”
“Not yet.” I took her hand off my knee.
She sighed with relief. “And of course you won’t tell them now, will you?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a lie. He lied and I lied. I didn’t find anything, anything at all.”
I said: “We’re back where we were earlier, and I believe you just as much now as I did then. What happened to those new terms we were on? You understanding me, me understanding you, no coquetting, no games, no playing.”
She slapped my hand lightly. “All right. I did find something–not much, but something–and I’m not going to give it up to help that son of a bitch. You can understand how I feel about it, Nick. You’d feel the same–“