The Third Figure by Collin Wilcox Page A

trance.
    “Yes,” I answered. “Even though they were separated, Mrs. Vennezio is naturally anxious to know who murdered her husband. I’m sure you can understand that.”
    She nodded, woodenly. Then she asked, “Are you a private detective, Mr. Drake?”
    I somehow felt unwilling to become enmeshed in the lengthy business of explaining my alleged prowess of clairvoyance. So I simply nodded. She seemed to accept it. Immediately, I wondered whether she thought I’d come representing the Outfit. It would be a possible explanation for her curiously hushed responses. Fear paralyzed, especially if guilt were the catalyst.
    Perhaps I had my opening.
    Lowering my voice to a more impersonal note, I said, “Would you mind telling me something of your relationship with Dominic Vennezio, Mrs. Hanson?” Then, thinking about it, I hastily amended: “That is, when did you meet him, how often did you see him, et cetera?”
    “I’ve known him—” She blinked and swallowed. “I knew him for about two years.” Her voice was still controlled, her eyes were still steady. But her fingers, I noticed, incessantly twisted. Her legs, I also noticed, were beautifully shaped.
    “You were working in a real estate office, I understand, when you first met him.”
    “Yes.”
    “And then, soon afterward, Mr. Vennezio set up his own real estate office. And you worked for him. Is that right?”
    She nodded. Waiting. Again I felt the resignation with which she answered me—and the strange compulsion.
    “And you became, ah, friends.”
    For a moment she remained perfectly motionless, staring at me with her wide-set gray eyes. Then, very distinctly, she said:
    “I became his mistress.”
    I drew a deep breath. I was infuriatingly aware that I must be blushing as I said, “Thank you for being so honest, Mrs. Hanson. It’s very helpful.”
    With a quiet, ironic sarcasm she said, “Do I have a choice?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I mean that I’ve been waiting for you—or someone like you—ever since they killed Dominic. I’m only surprised that it took so long. And I’m also surprised at you.”
    “At me?” I felt myself suddenly at a sheepish loss.
    She nodded. “You’re much different from what I’d expected. I’ve only met a few of Dom’s—associates—but none of them was like you.”
    “But I’m not—I mean—” I realized that I was shifting uncomfortably in my chair, squirming before her increasingly obvious scorn.
    “I know. You don’t work for them. Not really. I wasn’t a gangster’s girl friend, either. Not really. That’s what the other women were. I was something special. I have ‘class,’ as Dominic used to say. Refinement.”
    Suddenly I felt a sense of shame. Should I try to explain? I decided against it. She could be answering out of fear, feeling that she only had a choice between my questions or something much worse. If I disassociated myself from the Outfit, therefore, I might be the loser.
    And, besides, she was right. Since noon that day, I’d been an employee of the Outfit—or at least a tacit associate.
    So, with a kind of hostile guilt I took the role of the impersonal inquisitor.
    “Tell me something about your life before you met Dominic, Mrs. Hanson.”
    “What would you like to know? How far back should I start?”
    I shrugged. I was aware of a rising cynicism in myself—a blunt, bitter response to her own cynical, self-debasing hostility.
    “Start wherever you like.”
    Silently she looked at me, deciding. In her tightened mouth and chilled gray eyes I could plainly see contempt. Then, with a slow, eloquent movement she raised her shoulders, seemingly indifferent. She began speaking in a low, precise monotone. Her voice seemed to express both the numbness of defeat and the defiance of someone with no more to lose.
    “It all started, I suppose, forty-one years ago, when I was born. That’s where it always starts, I’m told. My father was an awning salesman—a successful awning