Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Morning
Alabama was sitting behind the desk munching on a donut with her feet propped up when Wilde opened the door into the main room. By the look on her face she was getting a kick out of the one on his. “How long have you been here?”
She ignored him, looked at Secret and said, “I hope he’s better than he sounds.”
Secret smiled.
“He was okay.”
Wilde looked at her.
“Okay?”
She nodded.
“Just okay?”
“There’s nothing wrong with okay,” she said, “Especially for your first time. You’ll get better.”
“My first time?”
“Right,” she said. “We all have one. We’re clumsy and awkward then we improve.”
Wilde lit a cigarette and blew smoke at her.
“Not funny.”
Alabama picked a tie off the desk and threw it to Wilde. “You forgot that on the doorknob.” To Secret, “Don’t count on him improving. He’s not all that trainable.”
“I already figured that out.”
Wilde hated libraries.
He hated the musty smells and the squeaky wheels of the shelving carts and most of all he hated the quiet air. He couldn’t think when it was that quiet. Well, that wasn’t completely true, he could think but what he usually thought about was the fact that he needed to keep quiet.
After Secret left, Wilde told Alabama that Secret remembered reading something about a woman falling from a building in New York two or three years ago.
“Go down to the library, dig through the old New York papers and see what you can find out about it.”
“Why?”
“I’m curious if the woman was wearing a red dress.”
“You think there’s a connection to what happened here?”
He shrugged.
“That’s what you’re going to find out.”
She pecked a kiss on his cheek and headed for the door
“Yes, master.”
Then she was gone.
He stood there in silence.
Something was wrong.
His brain was trying to grasp a thought but was having trouble.
Then it came to him.
He leaned out the window and waited for Alabama to appear at street level.
“Hey, ’Bama.”
She looked up.
“What?”
“I really don’t want you to see Robert Mitchum again.”
She blew him a kiss.
“I won’t if you don’t see Secret again.”
“That’s different and you know it.”
“Actually I don’t.”