grabbed the telephone, and it wasn’t until the longdistance
operator was putting through the call that I
wondered what I was going to say to her. This had to
be done face to face. Well, I could tell her to come
home. The hotel switchboard answered.
“Mrs. Warren, please,” I said.
“I believe she’s checked out,” the girl replied. “One
moment, please; I’ll give you the desk.”
She’d said she was going to stay over till Sunday.
What had changed her mind so suddenly? “Desk,” a
man’s voice said.
“This is John Warren. I’m trying to reach my wife on
a very urgent matter. Could you tell me how long ago
she checked out?”
“Yes, sir. It was shortly before seven this evening.”
“Do you know whether she received a long-distance
call? Or made one?”
“Hmmm—I think there was a call for her from
Carthage, Alabama, but she didn’t get it—”
“How’s that?” I interrupted.
“It was before she came in. Around five-thirty.”
“Was there any message, or a number to call back?”
“No, sir. There was no information at all, so we
didn’t make out a slip on it. I just happened to
remember it because Mrs. Warren asked when she
came in if there’d been any calls, and I checked with
the board and told her about it. She made no calls
herself, though; we have no toll charges on the bill.”
“Wait—you mean besides the one at 1:30 this
afternoon?”
“No. There were none at all, Mr. Warren.”
I was gripping the receiver so hard my fingers hurt,
and I had to restrain an impulse to shout. “You’d
better check again if your information’s no better than
that. She called me at 1:30.”
“It must have been from outside the hotel, sir. We
always clear with the switchboard when making up
the bill, especially on unscheduled checkouts, and we
have no record of it.”
The Long Saturday Night — 20
“I’m still lying here in bed. . . .” Well, she hadn’t
said whose. I traced a thoughtful doodle along the
table top with my forefinger, said, “Thank you very
much,” and dropped the receiver back on the cradle.
As I was turning away I suddenly remembered the
three or four trumpet notes I’d heard in the
background when she was talking to me, and it struck
me now there’d been something oddly familiar about
them. God, had she been on a military reservation? No
—I’d spent a good part of my life being ordered by
buglers in the Army and in military schools when I
was a boy, and even with my tin ear I could recognize
any of the calls after the first few notes. It was
something else. It must have been just music, which
to me was always a more or less unintelligible jumble
of sounds. I cursed. What difference did it make?
I went out to the kitchen, poured another big slug of
bourbon—straight this time—and stood by the table
looking down at the opened gift box containing the
cigarette lighter. The whiskey helped, but it was still
sickening as I began to probe through the mess with a
stick, trying to classify the things that crawled out of
it. Some were facts, some were assumptions, and
some were mere guesses, but they all oozed off in the
same direction. If the girl had been right about
Roberts, you could at least assume she might be right
about the rest of it. You don’t think he was the only
one, do you? And it was a cinch it wasn’t Roberts who
tried to get her at the hotel in New Orleans. He was
already dead.
I suddenly remembered trying to get her last night,
with no success. Maybe the story about being out on
Bourbon Street with the Dickinsons was as big a lie as
the rest of it. And why had she checked out of the
hotel so abruptly? According to the clerk, she still
hadn’t come in at five-thirty, but she was checked out
and gone before seven, while she’d told me she was
going to stay till Sunday. She hadn’t received any
phone call from here; she’d merely asked if there had
been one, and when she learned there had, she’d
packed and taken off.
The Long Saturday Night — 21
I noticed again the letter from the broker’s office
sticking out from under the box the lighter had come
in, and without quite knowing why, I slipped it out,
tore open the envelope, and then stared
uncomprehendingly at the typed verification form it
contained. She had liquidated the account three days
ago. Why? What had she needed $6000 for? We had a
joint checking-account here, and I never questioned
the checks she cashed. I crushed it in my hand and
threw it on the rug. It didn’t matter. Roberts was what
we were going to have out, and we’d do it before she
got through this living room.
I glanced at my watch. The way she drove, she’d be
here in less than an hour. Dropping the cigarette
lighter in my pocket, I switched off the light and sat
down to wait, conscious of the cold weight of anger in
my chest and of the whiskey mounting to my head.
The Long Saturday Night — 22
3
Forty minutes later gravel crunched in the driveway
beyond the far wall of the living room. I heard the
garage door bang as it came up. The door closed.
The weight in my chest was so heavy now I could
hardly breathe. Her key turned in the kitchen door.
Light came on in the kitchen, and I heard the old
magic tapping of high heels as she came toward the
front of the house. Then she was silhouetted in the
doorway, suitcase in one hand and her purse under
her arm as she groped for the switch. The lights came
on.
“Hello,” I said. “Welcome home.”
She gasped. The suitcase fell to the floor, followed
by her purse. Then her eyes blazed with anger. “What
are you sitting there in the dark for? You scared me
half to death!”
She was very beautiful in anger, I thought—or any
time, for that matter. She wore a slim dark suit and a
white blouse, but she didn’t have her coat. Maybe
she’d left it in the car; she was as careless of mink as
another woman might be of a housecoat.
“If this is your idea of a joke. . . .” Her voice trailed
off uncertainly as I still said nothing. “What’s the
matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
The Long Saturday Night — 23
“I want to know why you suddenly decided to come
home,” I said.
“Well, you wanted me to. But I must say, if this is
the way you’re going to act. . . .”
“I want to know why,” I repeated. She had come on
into the room and started to peel off her gloves. She
could make even that sexy and full of the promise of
greater things to come. If she’d ever become a
professional strip-teaser, I thought, she’d have the
bald heads giving off wisps of steam by the time she
started toying with the first zipper. It was obvious to
her now that something was wrong, so I was about to
get the good old laboratory-approved answer that
answered everything. She gave me a sidelong glance.
“Well! Do I have to have a reason?”
“I just wondered,” I said, playing along with it.
“Maybe it was talking to you this afternoon,” she
murmured.
There was just enough pause for me to pick up my
cue and join the act. All I had to do was stand up, take
two steps toward her, and we’d be in bed in ninety
seconds flat. And the hell of it was that once I started
there’d be no more possibility of turning back than of
changing my mind halfway down about going over
Niagara Falls. Maybe she was a liar, and a cheat, and
capable of using sex with the precise calculation of a
tournament bridge player executing a squeeze play,
but she was good at it. I reached in my pocket for the
cigarette lighter and began tossing it in my hand.
She was still talking, probably to cover her
bewilderment at this lack of response. “. . . Get so
darned rumpled in a car.” She twitched at the skirt,
which was only slightly rump-sprung—and that by one
of the shapeliest behinds this side of a barbershop
calendar—and checked the stocking seams. The
stockings, it appeared then, had to be pulled up. This
might have seemed rather pointless in view of the fact
that as soon as it penetrated my thick skull her
delights were available now on a help-yourself basis;
rather than having to wait while she rubbed cold
cream on her face and had a sandwich and a glass of
The Long Saturday Night — 24
milk, the stockings were supposed to wind up on the
bedroom floor along with assorted slips, garter belts,
and panties—except of course that the act itself
involved a great deal of unconscious skirt-raising and
the revelation of rounded and satiny expanses of thigh
above the tops of them. For her, this was admittedly
crude, but maybe desperate situations called for
desperate measures; when you had to probe the
enemy across this type of terrain, you used only the
battle-proven troops. She straightened, still talking,
and gave me that half-pixie, half-inscrutable smile she
does so well. “Does it seem awfully warm in here, or is
it —is—?” Her voice faltered and trailed off to a stop.
She’d seen the lighter.
“Is it what?” I asked politely.
She swallowed, licked her lips, and tried to go on,
while her eyes grew wider and wider as they followed
its course—up—down—up— “—is it just—just—?”
“Just you?” I asked. “I never thought of that, but I’ll
bet it is. And it’s damned flattering too. It isn’t often a
husband gets this kind of testimonial.”
She gasped. Her mouth dropped open, and a hand
came up in front of it as if I were going to hit her from
ten feet away. She backed up a step, her legs hit the
sofa at the left of the dining room door, and she sat
down. “I don’t know—don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean its heart-warming as hell when a girl who’s
shopped around over the neighborhood still feels an
urge to come home for a good time. Unless, of course,
you just dropped in to cash a check!” I began to break
up in rage then. I stood up and started toward her.
She tried to get off the sofa and run. I threw her
back, and pinned her there with a handful of blouse
and bra. “What’s the matter?” I asked thickly. “Don’t
you want to hear the news? Your boy friend is dead.”
She twisted and beat at my wrist, her eyes crawling
with fear. “Have you gone crazy? Let me go!”
I leaned down in her face and shouted: “How long
has this been going on?”
The Long Saturday Night — 25
She drew up both feet, put them in my stomach, and
kicked out like an uncoiling spring. There was the
strength of desperation in it. The blouse tore. I
lurched backward to keep my balance, hit the coffee
table with the backs of my legs, and sprawled on the
floor just past the end of it. She shot past me into the
hall. I scrambled to my feet and tore after her. In the
darkness I miscalculated the turn beyond the den and
crashed into the wall. She had too much lead on me
now, and just before I reached the bedroom door I
heard it slam and then the click as she threw the
night latch.
I crashed into it with my shoulder. It held. I hit it
again, heard something start to give way, and the
third time it flew open as the bolt tore off part of the
door facing. I regained my balance, spun around, and
groped for the light switch. She was nowhere in sight.
Over to the left the door to the bath was closed. Just
as I reached it, I heard the doorbell ringing in the
front of the house. I twisted at the knob; it was locked.
I backed up and hit it the way I had the other one, but
nothing gave. I tried again; a throw rug skidded under
my feet and I fell against the door with the point of my
shoulder. My breath was whistling in my throat from
rage and frustration. I kicked the rug out of the way
and lunged at it again. She screamed. I was backing
up to hit it once more when I finally became conscious
that the doorbell was ringing continuously now. Some
vestige of sanity returned. Whoever was out there
would hear the uproar and call the police. “I’ll be
back!” I shouted through the door, and strode down
the hall. When I switched on the porch light and
yanked open the front door, I saw it was Mulholland,
the beefy, handsome face looking mean under the
shadow of his hat.
I was winded, and had to draw a breath before I
could speak. “What do you want?”
“You,” he said curtly.
“What do you mean ‘you,’ you silly bastard?” I
snapped. “If you’ve got some reason for leaning on
that doorbell, let’s hear what it is.”
The Long Saturday Night — 26
“I’m taking you in. Scanlon wants you.”
“What for?”
“Maybe you’ll find out when you get there.”
“Like hell. Ill find out now.”
“Suit yourself.” There was an eager and very ugly
light in the greenish eyes. “He told me to bring you in,
but he didn’t say how. If you want to go in handcuffs,
with a lump on your head, it’s all the same to me.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “Is he there now?”
“He’s there.”
I turned abruptly and went down the hallway to the
living room. He followed me and stood in the doorway.
I dialed the sheriffs office, and while I was waiting I
saw he was looking toward the dining-room door.
About half the suitcase showed beyond the end of the
sofa, though her purse was out of sight from where he
stood. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, popped a
match with his thumbnail the way he’d probably seen
some tough type do it in the movies, and favored me
with a nasty smile. “You wouldn’t have been thinking
of running out, would you?”
I stared at him contemptuously without bothering to
answer. It occurred to me he was probably itching for
a chance to belt me one and that I wasn’t being very
smart, but at the moment I was too full of rage to
care. Scanlon answered the phone.
“Warren,” I said. “What’s this about wanting to see
me?”
“That’s right.”
“What about?”
“Some questions I want to ask you.”
“All right. It probably hasn’t escaped your attention
that I’ve lived in this town for 33 years, and there’s a
good chance I could find the courthouse without help.
When you want to see me, I’ve got a telephone. So
you can tell this farcical jerk you sent out here—”
“For crissake, if you’ve got to make a speech, could
you do it tomorrow? Some of us would like to go home
and get to bed.”
The Long Saturday Night — 27
“I’ll be down the first thing in the morning.”
“I want to see you right now.” There was an
ominous quietness in the way he said it.
There was no use arguing. “All right,” I said
savagely. “But next time don’t be so ambiguous. Send
three men and surround the house.” I slammed down
the receiver.
She’d probably be gone when I got back. ‘Well, let
her go, I thought numbly. What difference did it make
now? It was obvious she was guilty, and there was
nothing to be gained by any more fish-wife screaming
at each other. Mulholland jerked his head. He went
out the front. I threw on a topcoat, and hesitated,
looking down the hallway toward the bedroom. Well,
what was there to say? Goodbye? It’s been nice
knowing you? I turned, followed him out, and closed
the door.
The county car was parked in the drive. Mulholland
nodded curtly toward the front seat. I got in and lit a
cigarette. The streets were deserted now, except for a
few cars in front of Fuller’s Cafe, and the wet
pavement was shiny and black under the lights. The
ropes of tinsel swayed, glittering coldly in the dark
thrust of the wind. Why had she done it? It hurt, and
went on hurting, and the wound only added to the
cold weight of anger inside me. I pushed her off me
and tried to think. The girl must have called Scanlon;
there didn’t seem to be any other explanation for this.
And now that it seemed obvious her information was
correct, I could be in serious trouble. A lot depended
on whether or not she’d actually come forward and
identified herself and produced the cigarette lighter;
Scanlon wouldn’t put much faith in an anonymous
telephone call. Or would he? At the moment, my
opinion of the county police force was unprintable.
The courthouse was dark now except for the
sheriff’s offices and a couple of windows on one of the
upper floors where the custodian was working.
Mulholland parked in front, and I got out without
waiting for him, strode up the steps, and shoved
through the swinging, rubber-flapped doors. I could
The Long Saturday Night — 28
hear his heels in the corridor behind me as I turned in
the doorway. The big room was empty, but just as I
came in Scanlon emerged from his private office. The
shotgun was still on the desk. He nodded toward a
chair at the corner of it. “Sit down.”
I dropped the topcoat on the desk at my left, and sat
down. Mulholland sprawled in the swivel chair behind
another desk with his legs stretched out, watching me
with what looked like amused satisfaction. Well, I’d
get to him in a minute.
“I gather you had some reason for this?” I asked.
Scanlon took a cigar from his shirt pocket and bit
the end off it. “That’s right. I do.”
“Good,” I said. “So maybe if it’s not classified
information, I might even find out what it is.”
Scanlon struck a match, holding it in front of his
cigar while he went on staring at me. “I thought you’d
heard. We’re investigating a murder.”
“And what have I got to do with it?”
“I didn’t say you had anything to do with it. But you
were out there at the time he was killed, and I want to
hear your story again.”
“Why?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Did Roberts tell you he was
going hunting this morning?”
“No.” Why had she done it? My insides twisted.
Scanlon said something else. “What?” I asked.
“But you recognized his car, when you parked at the
end of the road, and knew he was in one of the
blinds?”
So that was it. “I’ve told you three times,” I said.
“His car was not there when I parked. He came after I
did.”
It was obvious now the girl had called him. And also
fairly obvious, on the other hand, that she hadn’t
identified herself. So he had the motive he’d lacked, if
he believed it and could prove it. But without proof,
he couldn’t even mention it. Accusing another man’s
wife of infidelity on the strength of a crank telephone
The Long Saturday Night — 29
call could be risky even for a law-enforcement officer.
So all he could do was accept the unsupported word
of this telephoning creep and hammer at me with
some oblique line of attack, hoping to trip me up. I
wondered suddenly how much of this great zeal was
due to the fact he already had one unsolved murder
galling him. I was being made a goat. Rage came up
into my throat and threatened to choke me.
I leaned forward over the desk. “Am I being accused
of killing Roberts?”
“You’re being questioned.”
“Why?”
“I’ve told you—”
“You haven’t told me anything. And until I’m told
why I’m under suspicion, you can shove it.”
He pounded a hand on the desk and pointed the
cigar in my face, the gray eyes as bleak as Arctic ice.
“Let’s say you’re under suspicion because you
happened to be living in the same century when
Roberts was killed. That’s good enough for me, and
it’s good enough for you. If you want to play tough, I’ll
have you jugged as a material witness.”
“Why don’t you accuse me of killing Junior Delevan,
while you’re at it? It’s only been a couple of years, and
maybe you could clean out all your old files.”
“Never mind Delevan!” he snapped.
“I also shot Cock Robin, and sank the Titanic—”
“Shut up.”
“Can I use your telephone?”
He waved a hand toward the instrument. “Why?”
“I want to call the American consul,” I said.
I dialed George Clement’s house number. “Duke,” I
said, when he answered. “Can you come down to the
sheriffs office for a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. “But what’s the trouble?”
“For some reason that nobody’ll bother to explain, I
seem to be suspected of murdering Dan Roberts—”
“But that’s ridiculous—”
The Long Saturday Night — 30
“My impression exactly. And I’d like some legal
advice.”
“I’ve just gone to bed, but I’ll be there as soon as I
can.”
“Take your time. I can wait. And so can they.” I
hung up.
“You’re acting like a damned fool,” Scanlon
snapped.
“I am a damned fool,” I said. “I voted for you.”
“You and Roberts pretty good friends?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say he was a close friend at all. He was
an acquaintance. And a tenant.”
“You ever have any trouble with him?”
I’d already answered that once, and saw no point in
going into it again. I lit a cigarette and leaned back in
the chair. “I have nothing to say.”
“You mean you won’t answer?”
“I mean I won’t answer anything until I’ve been
advised to by a lawyer. If you want to check that, ask
me what time it is.”
He slammed a hand on the desk. “You think I’m
doing this for fun?”
“That’s what puzzles me. I’d like to know myself.”
We alternately glared and shouted at each other
until George arrived in a little over ten minutes. He’s
51, six feet tall, ramrod straight, with graying hair
and a clipped gray mustache. At first glance he always
strikes you as a little on the stuffy side, or at least
over-correct, but he unbends when he knows you and
he’s a very astute lawyer and a deadly, if cautious,
poker player. He’s a passionate big-game fisherman,
makes several trips to Florida or the Bahamas each
year, and has two mounted sails and a dolphin in his
offices, which take up a good part of the second floor
of the Duquesne building. Fleurelle, his wife, is very
wealthy, and the acknowledged leader of everything
social in town, though it is my private opinion she has
more than a trace of dragon blood and that George is
The Long Saturday Night — 31
pretty well policed. She’s always regarded me as a
roughneck.
George smiled and nodded to the others. “Good
evening, Sheriff. Mr. Mulholland.” He turned to me
then. “Well, Hotspur, what seems to be the trouble?”
“I’m not sure myself,” I said. “All I know is Scanlon
sent this musical-comedy Gestapo agent to haul me
out of bed—”
Everybody erupted at once. Mulholland started to
get up as if he were going to take a swing at me.
Scanlon waved him off curtly. “Sit down!”
“I’ve had a bellyful of this guy!” Mulholland
snapped.
“Who hasn’t?” Scanlon asked. “Anyway, there’s no
use your hanging around any longer. You might as
well go home.”
“Sheriff,” George put in quietly, “maybe if I could
speak to Duke alone for a moment—”
Scanlon ground out his cigar, rattling the ashtray.
“Hell, yes. If you could knock some sense into that pig
head, maybe we’d get somewhere.”
Mulholland shucked off his gunbelt and holster,
dropped them in a desk drawer, stared coldly at me,
and stalked out. George and I moved over to one of
the desks at the far corner of the room. I felt better
now that he was here, and wondered if part of my
anger had been merely to cover up the fact I was
scared. We lighted cigarettes, and he said, “All right,
let’s have it.”
I told him about the anonymous telephone call, and
added, “So she probably called Scanlon too.”
He nodded. “It seems likely. But he hasn’t actually
said so?”
“No. That’s what burns me. He wouldn’t dare admit
he took any stock in a nut telephone call, but still he’d
haul me down here and put me through the wringer.
As far as I’m concerned, he can go to hell.”
He shook his head with a wry smile. “Well, you’re
consistent, anyway. So far, you haven’t done anything
right.”
The Long Saturday Night — 32
“But, dammit, George—”
“No, you listen to me a minute. The girl, of course,
is obviously a mental case, but no police officer worth
his salt ever ignores any lead that comes up, no
matter how tenuous. So Scanlon is obliged to check
out her tip if he possibly can, even though he knows
there’s nothing to it. But instead of helping him
eliminate it, so far you’ve done everything you could
to convince him there might be some truth in it after
all. Now stop acting like a wild boar with a toothache,
or you will need a lawyer.”
“You mean I could be charged with murder just on
the strength of a poison telephone call and the fact I
happened to be out at Grossman Slough when he was
killed?”
“It’s not likely, without some kind of proof, unless
you keep insisting on giving the impression you’ve got
something to hide. But there are a couple of other
factors you’ve apparently overlooked. In the first
place, Scanlon can make it very tough for you if you
don’t cooperate. Legally, too, and there’s nothing I
could do for you. With the weekend coming up, he
could hold you without any charge at all until Monday.
And in the second place, hindering the investigation
by fighting him just makes it that much harder for him
to find out who did kill Roberts, which—if you’re
under suspicion—is as much in your interest as it is in
his. So stop acting like an adolescent and answer his
questions; you have to, anyway, so you might as well
do it gracefully. And for God’s sake, stop riding
Mulholland.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
He sighed. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that sending
Mulholland to pick you up could have been
deliberate? Scanlon’s a smooth operator, and as
brainy as they come, and the chances are he was
trying to capitalize on that low flash-point of yours. A
man who loses his temper is always more likely to say
too much, or trip himself. Also, what Scanlon is trying
to check is this hypothetical motive of jealousy; so
The Long Saturday Night — 33
behaving as if you were capable of unreasoning
jealousy certainly isn’t helping you much.”
“Wait a minute!” I stared at him. “You mean, of
Mulholland? Why would I be jealous of that posturing
nitwit?”
“Face it, Duke; you’ve never liked him since he and
Frances were in that Little Theatre play last spring.
It’s ridiculous, naturally, but you’ve gone out of your
way to insult him.”
“Nuts! I’d forgotten all about it.”
He smiled and held up a hand. “All right, all right.
Don’t bite my head off. Just take my advice and
cooperate with Scanlon. I’ll stick around and drive
you home.”
“Should I say anything about the telephone call?”
“No. It’s his problem; let him cope with it.” He
smiled, and you could see the well-oiled legal mind at
work.
“Never deny an accusation that hasn’t been made.”
We went back to where Scanlon was waiting. Jealous
of Mulholland, I thought scornfully. I hadn’t even
thought of that play for months.
The Long Saturday Night — 34
4
It took less than an hour, and was a very relaxed
interrogation. It was, in fact, too relaxed now; it was
obvious he had realized this other approach was a
mistake and was only going through the motions in
order to justify getting me down here. He was
marking time until he could get some proof or
verification of that girl’s story; when he had that, he’d
land on me like a brick wall. I had to repeat the story
of the whole morning, from my arrival at Crossman
Slough and the blinds until the time I was back on the
highway again on the way home, sometime around
ten, and answer a lot of questions that were slanted to
give the impression that what he was after was some
detail I might have overlooked before, which would
point to the third person who obviously had to be out
there. Had I heard a car at any time? No. Had I heard
anybody wading out to the blind where Roberts was?
No. It was too far away, at least 150 yards. George sat
at another desk, quietly smoking and taking no part in
it.
At last, Scanlon rubbed a hand wearily across his
face, and said, “Well, that’s all, I guess.” Then, as we
were leaving, he tossed me a parting shot. “Looks as if
the only lead to this is going to be the motive; we’re
The Long Saturday Night — 35
not going to get anywhere until we find out why he
was killed.”
We went out and got into George’s car. As we pulled
away from the curb, he said, “Forget that telephone
call, Duke. There’s always at least one psycho in every
town.”
“I know,” I said.
He turned into the cold desolation of Clebourne
Street where the tinsel swayed and rustled in the
wind. There was something reptilian about it. I had a
splitting headache from the whiskey I’d drunk, and I
was thinking of Frances again. She’d be gone now,
and nobody knew she’d come home, but inevitably
there was going to be talk when it was learned we
were separated and being divorced. Scanlon would
take a long hard look at it, but he couldn’t prove it
had been because of Roberts—not with what he had
now. George turned right where the traffic light was
blinking amber at the corner of Montrose, and drove
the five blocks to the house in silence. When he pulled
into the circular drive and stopped, he asked, “When
will Frances be home?”
Not even George, I thought. “Sunday,” I said.
“Unless she changes her mind again.”
“Fleurelle will be back Saturday.” She was in
Scottsdale, Arizona, visiting her sister. “We’d like to
have you over for bridge next week.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks, counselor.”
“Don’t let this thing worry you. Scanlon’ll clear it up
eventually; the chances are a thousand to one it
wasn’t anybody from Carthage at all. Some enemy he
made a long time ago, before he came here—which,
incidentally, may have been the reason he was here,
in the first place. He was quite a ladies’ man, I
understand, and he might have made himself very
unpopular with some husband or male relative
somewhere.”
“I suppose so,” I said, and got out. “Good night,
George.”
The Long Saturday Night — 36
“Good night.” He swung on around the drive, and
the red taillights disappeared in the direction we’d
come. He lived in a big house on Clebourne on the
east edge of town. I unlocked the front door, and went
down the hallway to the living room. She’d left the
light on. The suitcase and her purse were gone. I
stood for a moment looking at the place where they
had lain, feeling sick and empty as I had a mental
picture of her grabbing them up and fleeing. It was a
hell of a way for something to end. I could see her
now, tearing the night apart with the Mercedes, like
the ripping of cloth. To where? Back to New Orleans,
and then to Nevada? More likely to Miami, I thought;
that was where she was from, and Florida was as
good a place as any to get a divorce. Well, I’d hear
from her, or from her lawyer. I shrugged wearily and
went out in the kitchen.
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