Night My Friend by Edward D. Hoch

and found a pay phone nearby. But no one answered at the congressman’s number. Johnny dialled the office of Cotton Cravess and waited.
    Presently a gruff voice answered. “Hello?”
    “Could I speak to Jim Yorkman, please?”
    “Yorkman? I don’t know if he’s here.”
    “He’s there. Let me speak to him. Tell him it’s Johnny Nocturne.”
    Outside, a truck was dropping off the first copies of the morning newspaper, for the night travellers who could not wait till dawn for their news. Johnny motioned to Nancy. “Get me a copy of that.”
    From the telephone came the familiar voice of Cotton Cravess. “What do you want, Johnny?”
    “Right now I want to speak with Jim Yorkman.”
    “What about?”
    “I told him I’d call. Put him on.”
    Cotton Cravess snorted into the phone. “The deal’s off. You can blab all you want now.”
    “No songs on your radio station?”
    “No songs on my radio station.”
    Johnny snatched the newspaper from Nancy and propped it up in the phone booth. “Let me read you a few headlines from the morning paper, Cotton.”
    “What?”
    “ COP KILLING LINKED TO GIRL’S DEATH: POLICE HINT POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS. ”
    “What the hell!”
    “It’s all out, Cotton. I’d suggest you resign from the campaign.”
    “Go to hell!”
    Johnny sighed. “You’re already in on the girl’s death and the bribery attempts, but I can still keep you out of the cop’s murder if you play ball with me.”
    “What? Are you crazy, Nocturne? Are you trying to blackmail me?”
    “Just let me come up and talk to you.”
    He was silent on the other end of the line for a moment, but finally the voice came over again. “All right. Bring that newspaper with you.”
    Johnny hung up and left the booth. “Come on, Nan, we’ve got a date.”
    “Johnny, would you mind right now telling me what this is all about?” she asked.
    “Well, the whole business is a little strange for me. I don’t usually get involved in politics or things like that. But what you told me about Joan of Arc started me thinking.”
    They were walking now through the brisk darkness, passing only occasionally into the pools of light from the street lamps overhead.
    “What about Joan of Arc?” Nancy asked.
    “I hate to go into it, after you’ve spent over a year gathering your material, but of course your reasoning about Joan is somewhat in error.”
    She paused beneath a street light and looked at him. “You should stick to songwriting, Johnny. History is more in my line.”
    “You’re not the first person that’s told me that, but I think I have to explain it anyway, so you’ll understand this thing.”
    “Go on.”
    “Earlier you brought up four points about Joan to prove she was a witch: her name, the manner of her death, her commander’s guilt, and her knowledge of this guilt. I’ll take the points in order. First, you say Joan was the most common name for witches, but this implies that Joan’s parents—or at least her mother—must have also been a witch, and trained her in the black art. If such was the case, though, I’m sure it would have been brought out at her trial, when they tried to uncover all sorts of evidence linking her with witchcraft.”
    Nancy Stevens started walking again, and he fell into step at her side. “What’s all this got to do with Cotton Cravess?”
    He ignored the question for the moment and went on. “Your second point—that Joan’s death might have been a carefully planned sacrifice to the devil—is hardly possible. Had Joan really been a witch, and really wanted to die, she could simply have told the truth about her Satanic activities. The facts of history show that she certainly didn’t want to die. Which leaves you with only two points, Nan, both of which—even if true—prove only that Joan knew her commander was practising witchcraft.”
    “Isn’t that evidence enough against her?”
    Johnny gazed up at the night sky, where a thousand glistening diamonds glowed and