mine in my hand. After a while he noticed this.

"You didn't drink your drink. Whatyou trying to do, pull a fast one on me? Insult my hosh—my hoshpit—?" Hislips were too numb to frame the word.

"No insult intended. I didn't comehere for a drinking party, Lieutenant. I'm seriously interested in who killedyour daughter. Assuming Deloney was murdered—"

"He wasn't."

"Assuming he was, the same person mayhave killed Helen. In view of everything I've heard, from her and other people,I think it's likely. Don't you?"

I was trying to get his mind under mycontrol: the sloppy drunken sentimental part, and the drunken violent part, andthe hard intelligent part hidden at the core.

"Deloney was an accident," hesaid clearly and stubbornly.

"Helen didn't think so. She claimedit was murder, and that she knew a witness to the murder."

"She was lying, trying to make melook bad. All she ever wanted to do was make her old man look bad."

His voice had risen. We sat and listenedto its echoes. He dropped his empty glass, which bounced on the rug, andclenched the fist which seemed to be his main instrument of expression. I gotready to block it, but he didn't throw it at me.

Heavily and repeatedly, he struck himselfin the face, on the eyes and cheeks, on the mouth, under the jaw. The blowsleft dull red welts in his clay-colored flesh. His lower lip split.

Hoffman said through the blood: "Iclobbered my poor little daughter. I chased her out of the house. She nevercame back."

Large tears the color of pure distilledalchohol or grief rolled from his puffing eyes and down his damaged face. Hefell sideways on the couch. He wasn't dead. His heart was beating strongly. Istraightened him out—his legs were as heavy as sandbags—and put a bolster underhis head. With blind eyes staring straight up into the light, he began tosnore.

I closed the roll-top desk. The key was init, and I turned it on the liquor and switched off the light and took the keyoutside with me.

chapter20

Bert Haggerty was sitting in the Chevroletcoupé, wearing a stalled expression. I got in beside him and handed himthe key.

"What's this?"

"The key to the liquor. You better keep it.Hoffman's had as much as he can take."

"Did he throw you out?"

"No. He passed out, while hitting himself in theface. Hard."

Haggerty thrust his long sensitive nose toward me."Why would Earl do a thing like that?"

"He seemed to be punishing himself for hittinghis daughter a long time ago."

"Helen told me about that. Earl treated her brutallybefore she left home. It's one thing I can't forgive him for."

"He can't forgive himself. Did Helen tell youwhat they quarreled about?"

"Vaguely. It was something to do witha murder here in Bridgeton. Helen believed, or pretended to believe, that herfather deliberately let the murderer go free."

"Why do you say she pretended tobelieve it?"

"My dear dead wife," he said,wincing at the phrase, "had quite a flair for the dramatic, especially inher younger days."

"Did you know her before she leftBridgeton?"

"For a few months. I met her inChicago at a party in Hyde Park. After she left home I helped her to get a jobas a cub reporter. I was working for the City News Bureau then. But as I wassaying, Helen always had this dramatic flair and when nothing happened in herlife for it to feed on she'd make something happen or pretend that it hadhappened. Her favorite character was Mata Hari," he said with a chucklethat was half a sob.

"So you think she invented this murder?"

I suppose I thought so at the time, because Icertainly didn't take it seriously. I have no opinion now. Does itmatter?"

"It could matter very much. Did Helen ever talkto you about Luke Deloney?"

"Who?"

"Luke Deloney, the man who waskilled. He owned the apartment building they lived in, and occupied thepenthouse himself."

Haggerty lit a cigarette before heanswered. His first few words came out as visible puffs of smoke: "I don'trecall the name. If she talked about him, it couldn't have made much of animpression on me."

"Her mother seems to think Helen hada crush on Deloney."

"Mrs. Hoffman's a pretty good woman,and I love her like a mother, but she gets some wild ideas."

"How do you know that this one is sowild? Was Helen in love with you then?"

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, likean unweaned child sucking on a dry bottle. It burned down to his yellowfingers. He tossed it into the street with a sudden angry gesture.

"She never was in love with me. I was

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009