Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

"Of course not." He was puckering his lips and frowning at me. He was about my height, narrow-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with a long face that showed the cheekbones. He went on, "I wouldn't want an innocent man punished for anything, certainly not for murder. But I doubt very much if my wife can give you any information that would help. She's not – she's taking it pretty hard."

"Sure. Believe me, I don't want to make it any harder for her."

"Well – where's your coat?"

"There." I pointed to it, on the floor by the wall.

"Get it. There's no sense in waiting out here." With a key ring in his hand, he went to the door of 7D. When I came with my coat he was holding the door open and I entered. The foyer was about the size of a pool table. He hung my coat in the closet before he took his off, and as he was hanging his up the door opened and a woman entered. At the sight of me she gawked a second, then whirled to him.

"Barry! You let him in?"

From her tone I knew then and there that I had had a break, him coming first.

"Now, dear." He put an arm across her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. "He only wants some information, if we have any. He thinks -"

"We have no information for anybody! You know that!"

I spoke up. "But you must have a preference, Mrs. Fleming. If an innocent man is convicted of murdering your sister, the trouble is that the guilty man goes free. Do you want that?"

She focused up at me. Up, because she wasn't more than an inch over five feet. "It's none of your business what I want," she said, and meant it.

"No," I said, "but it's your business. I'm not a newshound trying to get a headline, I'm a private detective trying to dig up some facts. I already have some. I know why you won't see reporters, why you have no information for anybody. Because your sister was a doxy, and you -"

"My sister was a what?"

"D,O,X,Y, doxy. I happen to like that better than concubine or paramour or mistress. I don't -"

I stopped because I had to, to protect my face. When a woman flies at you to claw, what you do depends on the woman. If she has real tiger in her you may even have to plug her, but with Stella Fleming, with her short reach, all I had to do was stiff-arm her, with my palm flat on her mouth. Then the husband got her shoulders from behind and pulled her back and told me, "You'd better go."