“Who was Faye?” Joe asked.

They went into Mr. Griffin’s saloon. Mr. Griffin didn’t like anything about liquor, and he hated drunks with a deadly scorn. He owned and operated Griffin’s Saloon on Main Street, and on a Saturday night he might refuse to serve twenty men he thought had had enough. The result was that he got the best trade in his cool, orderly, quiet place. It was a saloon in which to make deals and to talk quietly without interruption.

Joe and Alf sat at the round table at the back and had three beers apiece. Joe learned everything true and untrue, founded and unfounded, every ugly conjecture. Out of it he got complete confusion but a few ideas. Something might have been not exactly on the level about the death of Faye. Kate might be the wife of Adam Trask. He hid that quickly—Trask might want to pay off. The Faye thing might be too hot to touch. Joe had to think about that—alone.

At the end of a couple of hours Alf was restive. Joe had not played ball. He had traded nothing, not one single piece of information or guess. Alf found himself thinking, Fella that close-mouthed must have something to hide. Wonder who would have a line on him?

Alf said finally, “Understand, I like Kate. She gives me a job now and then and she’s generous and quick to pay. Probably nothing to all the palaver about her. Still, when you think of it, she’s a pretty cold piece of woman. She’s got a real bad eye. You think?”

“I get along fine,” said Joe.

Alf was angry at Joe’s perfidy, so he put in a needle. “I had a funny idea,” he said. “It was when I built that lean-to without no window. She laid that cold eye on me one day and the idea come to me. If she knew all the things I heard, and she was to offer me a drink or even a cupcake—why, I’d say, ‘No thank you, ma’am,’ ”

“Me and her get along just fine,” said Joe. “I got to meet a guy.”

Joe went to his room to think. He was uneasy. He jumped up and looked in his suitcase and opened all the bureau drawers. He thought somebody had been going through his things. Just came to him. There was nothing to find. It made him nervous. He tried to arrange the things he had heard.

There was a tap on the door and Thelma came in, her eyes swollen and her nose red. “What’s got into Kate?”

“She’s been sick.”

“I don’t mean that. I was in the kitchen shaking up a milkshake in a fruit jar and she came in and worked me over.”

“Was you maybe shaking up a little bourbon in it?”

“Hell, no. Just vanilla extract. She can’t talk like that to me.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

“Well, I won’t take it.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Joe. “Get out, Thelma!”

Thelma looked at him out of her dark, handsome, brooding eyes, and she regained the island of safety a woman depends on. “Joe,” she asked, “are you really just pure son of a bitch or do you just pretend to be?”

“What do you care?” Joe asked.

“I don’t,” said Thelma. “You son of a bitch.”

2

Joe planned to move slowly, cautiously, and only after long consideration. “I got the breaks, I got to use ’em right,” he told himself.

He went in to get his evening orders and took them from the back of Kate’s head. She was at her desk, green eyeshade low, and she did not look around at him. She finished her terse orders and then went on, “Joe, I wonder if you’ve been attending to business. I’ve been sick. But I’m well again or very nearly well.”

“Something wrong?”

“Just a symptom. I’d rather Thelma drank whisky than vanilla extract, and I don’t want her to drink whisky. I think you’ve been slipping.”

His mind scurried for a hiding place. “Well, I been busy,” he said.

“Busy?”

“Sure. Doing that stuff for you.”

“What stuff?”

“You know—about Ethel.”

“Forget Ethel!”

“Okay,” said Joe. And then it came without his expecting it. “I met a fella yesterday said he seen her.”

If Joe had not known her he would not have given the little pause, the rigid ten seconds of silence, its due.

At the end of it Kate asked softly, “Where?”

“Here.”

She turned her swivel chair slowly around to face him. “I shouldn’t have let you work in the dark, Joe. It’s hard to confess a fault but I owe it to you. I don’t have to remind you I got Ethel floated out of the county. I thought she’d done something to me.” A melancholy came into her voice. “I was wrong. I found out later. It’s been working on me ever since. She didn’t do anything to me. I want to find her and make it up to her. I guess you think it’s strange for me to feel that way.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Find her for me, Joe. I’ll feel better when I’ve made it up to her—the poor old girl.”

“I’ll try, ma’am.”

“And, Joe—if you need any money, let me know. And if you find her, just tell her what I said. If she doesn’t want to come here, find out where I can telephone her. Need any money?”

“Not right now, ma’am. But I’ll have to go out of the house more than I ought.”

“You go ahead. That’s all, Joe.”

He wanted to hug himself. In the hall he gripped his elbows and let his joy run through him. And he began to believe he had planned the whole thing. He went through the darkened parlor with its low early evening spatter of conversation. He stepped outside and looked up at the stars swimming in schools through the wind-driven clouds.