Page 38 of If Looks Could Kill
As I’d suspected, there was no living with Pearl once she’d heard about my encounter with the girl in the window.
“How could you let her get away without learning her full name?” she fumed again, for the dozenth time, the following evening as we walked home from teaching night classes at the Mission School. “How many Coras can there be in all of Connecticut?”
“One less than there ought to be,” I pointed out, but Pearl was not amused.
We passed Iceland Brothers delicatessen, and a blast of fragrant hot pastrami almost yanked me off the pavement.
“We’re no closer to finding her than we were before,” she lamented.
“That’s not true,” I told her. “A first name is something. Maybe Freyda can help us find out more about a Cora at that particular, er, establishment.”
“Freyda,” Pearl scoffed. “Much help she’s been.”
“You’re in quite the mood,” I told Pearl. “Of course Freyda’s been helpful. Without her, we wouldn’t even have known where to look.”
“If I’d been there last night,” Pearl said, “I wouldn’t have let Cora get away. I would’ve pulled her away from that wretched life right then and there.”
I pictured Pearl arm-wrestling with Cigar Man. “I’d have enjoyed watching you try.”
“You don’t have much faith in me, do you?”
I ignored this.
“What we learned,” I said at length, “is that she is indeed trapped in this place, and she wants out of it. Enough that she was willing to take the risk of giving me a message.”
“Of course she wants out of it,” Pearl said. “How could she not?”
“My point is, if we find a way to help her escape, she’ll cooperate. That’s important.”
“Notif,” said Pearl. “When.”
“Fine. When.”
“We need more information,” Pearl said. “We need that name and that city or town.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll just knock her over in the street one more time and say, ‘Oh, excuse me, I didn’t catch your surname last time, and where exactly should I send your family their Christmas card?’?”
“There you go again,” said Pearl, “being flippant when you ought to be serious.”
There you go again, I thought, being a killjoy of the first water.
But I didn’t say it, and for such noble self-restraint, I deserve a blue ribbon.
Freyda stopped by our flat a few nights later to say hello, and she had no news to report. I felt six shades of significant when I, in fact, had news to report. In no time I’d told her about my encounter with Cora Something from Something, Connecticut.
Her eyes bulged at my story. “Youknocked her overon the sidewalk?”
I nodded sheepishly. “She only stumbled,” I said. “I couldn’t think of a better way.”
Freyda whistled. “With her pimp standing right there?”
“It’s probably just as well,” I admitted, “that I don’t know much about that world.”
“It’s hardly anything to go on,” Pearl said. “We’re scarcely better off.”
Freyda pursed her lips. “Cora is a unique name. I’ll bet I can learn something.”
“How?” I asked her. “What will you do? Go inside the crib?”
