“It’s the canal. Your pals pushed me in, but I managed to climb out. Want to talk about it?”
“You got no call to break in here and attack me. I oughtta call the cops.”
“Do, Mrs. Polter. Be my guest. There’s nothing I’d like better than for you and me to talk to the cops. In fact, I’m kind of expecting one of them to call you. You hear from a Detective Finchley over at Area One?”
“He the nigger cop? Yeah, he was by. I got nothing to say to any of’em.”
“Niggers or cops?” I tried to get the words out lightly, but a picture of Conrad Rawlings’s copper torso against my own flashed through my head and made me choke. I tried to push my anger back—she wouldn’t share information more readily for a lecture on the evils of racism.
“Either of ‘em. I told him he wants to talk to me he oughtta get himself a search warrant. I know my rights, I says to him, and he can’t come pushing me around.”
“So which is it? You don’t want to call the local station to complain about my being here? Or you want me to get Finchley back here with a warrant?” My teeth were starting to chatter from cold. This made it harder to focus on the conversation, which didn’t seem to be going anywhere anyway.
With one of her abrupt turnarounds Mrs. Polter said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and change, honey. You got something dry up there you can put on. Then you and me can have a bit of a talk. Without dragging the cops into it.”
I was still holding the fire extinguisher. Before going into the dark stairwell I handed it to her. I didn’t think she was going to attack me at this point.
Under the forty-watt bulb in Mitch’s old room I took off my wet clothes and rubbed myself warm with a towel out of my suitcase. From the disarray in the case it was apparent my landlady had indeed gone rummaging.
I pulled on the clean T-shirt and sweatpants and wondered what to do with my gun. The jacket that had concealed my shoulder holster was too wet to put back on. In the end I strapped the gun next to my bare skin, where it rubbed uncomfortably.
The floor creaked outside my door. I whirled and opened it. One of my fellow boarders had been drooling at me through the keyhole.
“Yes, I’ve got breasts. Now you’ve had a chance to look at them, go someplace else and play.”
He blinked at me nervously and scuttled backward up the hall. I shut the door, but didn’t bother to try to block the view—what I really didn’t want people staring at was the gun, but it was too late now to try to hide that.
I had a change of socks, but no shoes. My loafers were too wet to put back on. I decided to keep my clean pair of socks for the drive home. I padded back downstairs in my bare feet, going slowly so as not to cut myself on nails or loose edges of linoleum.
My landlady was watching a high-speed chase scene involving Clint Eastwood and a chimpanzee. Her oldest lodger, Sam, was sitting on the couch, drinking a Miller and laughing at the chimp. When Mrs. Polter saw me behind her, she jerked her head at Sam. He stood up obediently, disentangling a couch spring from his threadbare suit.
She waved a hand from me to the couch. It was the only other seat in the room besides her outsize vinyl armchair. I looked at it dubiously. The places where fabric still covered the springs were littered with cracker crumbs. I perched on one of the arms, which wobbled dangerously beneath me.
Mrs. Polter regretfully muted the sound just as Clint and the chimp pushed a second car off the road. I’d certainly rather watch that than talk to me too.
“So you went into the canal, huh?”
“Didn’t your pals tell you? We had quite an evening together. When they tried to use my body as part of the roadway, I decided that she who fights and runs away would live to fight another day.”
“Who tried to run you over?” she muttered, her eyes on the screen.
“Milton Chamfers, Mrs. Polter. You know him: you phoned him as soon as you heard from me, to tell him I was returning to the neighborhood.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, Mrs. Polter.” I got off the couch arm and snatched the remote device out of her hand. “Why don’t we get back to Clint later? My adventures Friday night were every bit as exciting as his. I promise to describe them in vivid Technicolor if you’ll just listen to me.”
I clicked the power switch and the giant Mitsubishi went blank.
“Hey, you got no call—” she yelled.
“Lily, you okay?” Sam hovered nervously in the doorway. He must have just moved a few steps into the dark hall, ready to leap to her defense.
“Oh, go eat your dinner, Sam. I can take care of her.”
He tried beckoning to her. When she didn’t budge, he sidled into the room and leaned over her chair. “Ron says she’s got a gun. He seen it when she was dressing.”
Mrs. Polter gave a crack of laughter. “So, she’s got a gun. She’d have to have a cannon to cut through my flesh. Don’t worry about it, Sam.”