“I’d been asking her what was the matter, and not getting anything out of her. Then she starts whining that she’s poisoned. ‘I’m poisoned, Babe,’ she whines. ‘Arsenic. That damned Holy Joe,’ she says. Then she won’t say anything else, and it’s not a hell of a while after that that she kicks off.”
“Yeah? Then what’d you do?”
“I went gunning for Holy Joe. I knew him but didn’t know where he jungled up, and didn’t find out till yesterday. You was there when I came. You know about that. I had picked up a boiler and parked it over on Turk Street, for the getaway. When I got back to it, there was a copper standing close to it. I figured he might have spotted it as a hot one and was waiting to see who came for it, so I let it alone, and caught a street car instead, and cut for the yards. Down there I ran into a whole flock of hammer and saws and had to go overboard in China Basin, swimming up to a pier, being ranked again by a watchman there, swimming off to another, and finally getting through the line only to run into another bad break. I wouldn’t of flagged that taxi if the ‘For Hire’ flag hadn’t been up.”
“You knew Sue was planning to take a run-out on you with Joe?”
“I don’t know it yet,” he said. “I knew damned well she was cheating on me, but I didn’t know who with.”
“What would you have done if you had known that?” I asked.
“Me?” He grinned wolfishly. “Just what I did.”
“Killed the pair of them,” I said.
He rubbed his lower lip with a thumb and asked calmly:
“You think I killed Sue?”