Just like that? Andy said to himself, but he didn’t say it aloud. He smiled at himself: what rights did he have?
“You’re not laughing at me?” she said, touching her finger to his lips, a hurt in her voice.
“Good God no! I was laughing at myself because—if you must know—I was being a little jealous. And I have no right to be.”
“You have every right in the world,” she said, kissing him slowly and lingeringly. “For me at least, this is very different. I haven’t known that many men, and they were all men like Mike. I was just sort of there, I felt….”
“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t care.” He meant it. “I just care about you here and now and not another thing in the world.”
10
Andy was almost to the bottom of his list, and his feet hurt. Ninth Avenue simmered in the afternoon sun and every patch of shadow was filled with sprawled figures, old people, nursing mothers, teen-agers with their heads close together, laughing with their arms about one another. People of all ages on every side, bare and dusty limbs projecting, scattered about like corpses in the aftermath of a battle. Only the children played in the sun, but they moved about slowly and their shouts were subdued. There was a fit of screaming and sudden movement as they eddied about two boys coming from the direction of the docks, whose arms were spotted with bites and streaks of uncongealed blood. On the end of a string they carried their prize, a large gray dead rat. They would eat well tonight. In the center of the crowded street the tugtruck traffic moved at a snail’s pace, the human draught animals leaning exhaustedly into their traces, mouth gaping for air. Andy pushed through between them, looking for the Western union office.
It would be impossible to check every person who had gone in or out O’Brien’s apartment during the previous week, but he had to at least try the most obvious leads. Any visitor to the building could have discovered the disconnected burglar alarm in the cellar, but only someone who had been in the apartment could have seen that this alarm had been cut off as well. There had been a short circuit eight days before the murder, and the alarm on the door had been disconnected until it could be fixed. The killer, or some informant, could easily have seen this if he had been in the apartment. Andy had made a list of possibilities and was checking them out. They were all negative. No meter readers had visited the apartment, and all the deliveries had been made by men who had been coming there for years. Negative, all the way down the line.
Western union was another long shot. There had been plenty of telegrams delivered to the building during that week, and the doorman was sure that some of them had been to O’Brien. He and the elevator boy had both remembered a telegram coming the night before the murder, it had been brought by a new messenger, a Chinese boy they had said. The chances were a thousand to one that it didn’t mean anything—but it still had to be checked out. Any lead at all, no matter how slight would have to be investigated. Whatever happened it would at least be something to report to the lieutenant, to keep him off Andy’s neck for a while. The yellow and blue sign hung out over the sidewalk and he turned in under it.
A long counter divided the office and at the far end of it was a bench on which three boys were sitting. A fourth boy stood at the counter talking to the dispatcher. None of them was Chinese. The boy at the counter took a message board from the man there and went out. Andy walked over, but before he could say anything the man shook his head angrily.
“Not here,” he snapped. “Front counter for telegrams, can’t you see I’m the dispatcher?”
Andy looked at the sullen fatigue and the deep lines cut into the man’s face by the perpetually pulled-down corners of his mouth, and at the clutter of boards and chalk and washable teletype tape on the desk before him, the peeling gold paint on the little sign that said Mr. Burgger. All the years of bitterness were clear to see in the clutter of the desk and the hatred in his eyes. It would take patience to get any cooperation from this man. Andy flashed his badge.
“Police business,” he said. “You’re the man I want to talk to, Mr. Burgger.”
“I haven’t done anything, there’s nothing for you to talk to me about.”
“No one’s accusing you. It’s information I need to aid an investigation….”
“I can’t help you. I don’t have any police information.”
“Let me decide that. Is Twenty-eighth Street inside your delivery area?”
Burgger hesitated, then nodded slowly and reluctantly as though he were being forced to reveal a state secret. “Do you have any Chinese messenger boys?”