“Uh-huh,” the voice dragged itself out of her throat like a sick man getting out of bed.

“You are the Mrs. Florian whose husband once ran a place of entertainment on Central Avenue? Mike Florian?”

She thumbed a wick of hair past her large ear. Her eyes glittered with surprise. Her heavy clogged voice said:

“Wha-what? My goodness sakes alive. Mike’s been gone these five years. Who did you say you was?”

The screen door was still shut and hooked.

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’d like a little information.”

She stared at me a long dreary minute. Then with effort she unhooked the door and turned away from it.

“Come on in then. I ain’t had time to get cleaned up yet,” she whined. “Cops, huh?”

I stepped through the door and hooked the screen again. A large handsome cabinet radio droned to the left of the door in the corner of the room. It was the only decent piece of furniture the place had. It looked brand new. Everything was junk — dirty overstuffed pieces, a wooden rocker that matched the one on the porch, a square arch into a dining room with a stained table, finger marks all over the swing door to the kitchen beyond. A couple of frayed lamps with once gaudy shades that were now as gay as super-annuated streetwalkers.

The woman sat down in the rocker and flopped her slippers and looked at me. I looked at the radio and sat down at the end of a davenport. She saw me looking at it. A bogus heartiness, as weak as a Chinaman’s tea, moved into her face and voice. “All the comp’ny I got,” she said. Then she tittered. “Mike ain’t done nothing new, has he? I don’t get cops calling on me much.”

Her titter contained a loose alcoholic overtone. I leaned back against something hard, felt for it and brought up an empty quart gin bottle. The woman tittered again.

“A joke that was,” she said. “But I hope to Christ they’s enough cheap blondes where he is. He never got enough of them here.”