When I turned she was watching me. She looked away. It was the second or third time I’d caught her doing that, and I wondered what she was thinking.

“Were you armed when you went to that detective’s apartment?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Were you drunk?”

“I’d had five or six drinks.”

“You must have known he might be armed. After all, he was a policeman.”

“I suppose so,” I said irritably. “I didn’t even think about it. All I was interested in at the time was bending his fat face for him. And as for having a gun myself, I could have thrown away twenty of them by this time. With the case I’ve got, a lawyer would tell me to plead guilty and pray.”

She shook her head. “I thought the paper said he was killed with a knife. That should prove you didn’t have a gun, or you’d have used it. Whose knife was it? His?”

“How do I know?” I said. “I didn’t see it.”

“You’re not really serious about that?”

“Of course not. The electric chair just brings out the clown in me. How’d you like to see my impersonation of Red Skelton?”

“Don’t get sarcastic. I’m not forcing you to stay here.” She lay back on the chaise longue and gestured toward the couch with her cigarette. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it?”

“What do you care?” I asked.

“I probably don’t. But if we’re going to stay cooped up together the rest of our lives, we might as well talk.”

I sat down, diagonally across the coffee table from her, and lighted a smoke. “I’d had trouble with him before. About two weeks ago I threatened to knock his roof in if he didn’t watch his step. It was in front of witnesses, so that helps too. Don’t bother telling me that sort of thing is stupid; I know it, but when it comes to characters like Stedman I’ve got a very short fuse. He’s a Lover Boy, one of those big, flashy, conceited types that has to spread himself out as much as possible to give all the girls a break. Especially the ones whose husbands are away a lot.

“My wife used to be a nightclub singer. We’ve been married about a year. It didn’t work out very well, because it’s no cinch being married to a guy on a tanker unless you just like being alone most of the time. We run up the East Coast and back like a commuter train, gone fifteen days and home one, except that we do get a long vacation once a year. She couldn’t take it. Last trip in I found out she’d been running around with Stedman. He was single and had an apartment there in the same building, the Wakefield, in the 1200 block on Forest Avenue. We had a real fight about it, and the same night I ran into Stedman in the Sidelines Bar, up in the next block, and had a few words with him.