A lovely old woman. I liked being with her. I liked getting her drunk for my own sordid purposes. I was a swell guy. I enjoyed being me. You find almost anything under your hand in my business, but I was beginning to be a little sick at my stomach.

I opened the envelope my hand was clutching and drew out a glazed still. It was like the others but it was different, much nicer. The girl wore a Pierrot costume from the waist up. Under the white conical hat with a black pompon on the top, her fluffed out hair had a dark tinge that might have been red. The face was in proffle but the visible eye seemed to have gaiety in it. I wouldn’t say the face was lovely and unspoiled. I’m not that good at faces. But it was pretty. People had been nice to that face, or nice enough for their circle. Yet it was a very ordinary face and its prettiness was strictly assembly line. You would see a dozen faces like it on a city block in the noon hour.

Below the waist the photo was mostly legs and very nice legs at that. It was signed across the lower right hand corner: “Always yours — Velma Valento.”

I held it up in front of the Florian woman, out of her reach. She lunged but came short.

“Why hide it?” I asked.

She made no sound except thick breathing. I slipped the photo back into the envelope and the envelope into my pocket.

“Why hide it?” I asked again. “What makes it different from the others? Where is she?”

“She’s dead,” the woman said. “She was a good kid, but she’s dead, copper. Beat it.”

The tawny mangled brows worked up and down. Her hand opened and the whiskey bottle slid to the carpet and began to gurgle. I bent to pick it up. She tried to kick me in the face. I stepped away from her.

“And that still doesn’t say why you hid it,” I told her. “When did she die? How?”

“I am a poor sick old woman,” she grunted. “Get away from me, you son of a bitch.”