said.
“Does it bother you, knowing you’re cuckolding Dr. Schweitzer?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Okay.” She gave me a funny, quizzical look, as if that wasn’t exactly the answer she was expecting.
“How long after you got married did he ship out?”
“Right after.”
Getting hitched was his idea, I guessed, the idea being to keep her on the hook while he was gone, but I didn’t say it. “If you’re feeling bad about it . . . ”
“I know, I know, he’s probably bedded down with a dozen grateful Kraut widows after he vaccinated their kids.” She snatched the letter out of my hand. “I just thought you ought to have an idea who you’re messing with is all.”
Then she grinned and stood facing me, hands on her hips, tits thrust forward. “You want to try and take my uniform off, smart guy?” she said, and I started peeling away her stiff whites piece by piece, with their arousing starch smell.
I knew exactly who I was messing with.
MUCH LATER IN the dark as I lay there listening to the radiator popping, she startled me by saying quietly, “Wayne? You asleep?”
“Nope.”
“How’d you get the scar?”
“Which scar?”
“You know which.”
It wouldn’t do to tell her the truth. Broadminded though she was, “stabbed by a rival pimp in Rome” wasn’t going to score me any points romantically, so I said “Iwo Jima.”
“I happen to know you spent the whole war in Europe,” she said, but she didn’t press the point, and after a while we went to sleep.
AT ELEVEN IN the morning we strolled over to Drake’s for breakfast. The man with the cauliflower nose was gone, replaced by a funereal chain smoker who made a show of letting his ash extend out over the grill until the last possible moment, at which point he tapped it onto the floor.
The Sunday Star had a rehash of yesterday’s murder without much new information, but with some illuminating photos from the society files of the unfortunate couple at various charity events. One of them seemed chosen specifically for the enervated dementia in Christine Lamburton’s eyes as she stood in a semicircle of worn-out former debs honoring themselves for rolling bandages during the war, or some such laudable sacrifice. Nutty as Mrs. Lamburton looked in that picture, I recognized it as the kind of crazy that can seem like a whole lot of fun at first, before the scary kicks in; late in the game had the old boy ever seen that cockeyed glint and worried, just a little, for his life?
Victoria’s appetite was healthy and she managed an entire plate of corned beef hash and three fried eggs, and I settled for Cream of Wheat with a side of bacon. Afterwards we walked down Broadway to where my car was parked and I kissed her goodbye. I was about to pull away from the curb when she knocked on the window, opened the door, and slid in beside me.
“When are you coming back next?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “Hard to know when I’ll be free for a couple days.”
“Let me know in advance next time. I’ll take some time off.” She kissed me again, the taste of her mouth a pleasant mix of coffee and corned beef and Doublemint, and then she slid out of the car and walked carefully back up the icy pavement to her building.
DOCTOR BECK OWNED an apartment building on Troost off of Van Brunt, one of those places with a big staircase up the middle and three floors of apartments on either side. He kept one apartment on the first floor for his own use, and I wondered what the other tenants made of their occasional short-term neighbors, sad young women moving in for a week or so and then moving on to their other distant lives. I suppose in between those brief tenancies the doctor must have entertained women there himself.
The girl I was picking up today was a stranger to me, the first I’d chauffeured back to Wichita under similar circumstances since before the war. She was skinny and sniffly and peaked, and she didn’t say anything when Beck gave her last-minute instructions for the coming few days. She didn’t speak until we got down to Emporia, about halfway to Wichita, and that was just to express a desire to go to the bathroom.
“You want something to eat?”
“I don’t have any cash on me,” she said as I pulled off onto Telegraph Street.
“You don’t need cash,” I said.
SHE NIBBLED AT a grilled cheese sandwich and