I talked to McCloor in the hospital. He lay on his back in bed with a couple of pillows slanting his head up. The skin was pale and tight around his mouth and eyes, but there was nothing else to show he was in pain.
“You sure devastated me, bo,” he said when I came in.
“Sorry,” I said, “but—”
“I ain’t beefing. I asked for it.”
“Why’d you kill Holy Joe?” I asked, offhand, as I pulled a chair up beside the bed.
“Uh-uh—you’re tooting the wrong ringer.”
I laughed and told him I was the man in the room with Joe when it happened.
McCloor grinned and said:
“I thought I’d seen you somewheres before. So that’s where it was. I didn’t pay no attention to your mug, just so your hands didn’t move.”
“Why’d you kill him?”
He pursed his lips, screwed up his eyes at me, thought something over, and said:
“He killed a broad I knew.”
“He killed Sue Hambleton?” I asked.