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are.”
    â€œAnn?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou have a good voice.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œYou know what?” she said, sounding like a six year old.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI’m sleepy now.”
    Inge slept for a half hour or so. Bruno kept an eye on me as I drank my coffee and toured the poor room.
    I didn’t know much about blindness or blind people. I thought they all read best sellers in Braille. So I was surprised to find, in the rickety, badly painted little bookcase near the bathroom, a few paperbacks, a couple of public library books and several other texts and magazines—even a couple of flesh rags—all in normal print. I also spotted a couple of well worn steno pads with mindless doodles penciled on the front covers.
    I picked up one of the library books. Days of Luxe: Luxury Liners on the Hudson Piers read the cover. The Irish of Hell’s Kitchen, 1909–1969 read another.
    I looked at a couple of the other titles: Life and Death on the New York Docks and A Complete History of the Stevedores Union .
    How weird. No accounting for what people like to read. I wondered if someone came over and read to Inge regularly. And then it occurred to me that the books had to have belonged to Sig.
    Of course. Not that I’d have pegged him for any kind of scholar, either.
    When Inge woke she looked utterly lost. I waited while she washed up and then we went out for a pizza, Bruno in tow.
    I was drinking alone in a tavern in the middle of the day. Something no properly raised black woman would ever do—it was acting nasty, acting like trash. And not a particularly nice tavern at that.
    But I needed a bourbon, bad, and I needed to think.
    So I had found little Mrs. Sig. And her fatherless baby—that would be Bruno in the cartoon version of this story.
    Now what was I going to do about it?
    Inge and Bruno were going to have it tough without Siggy. But it looked like they’d had it just as tough with him. Sig looked like any other down on his luck musician when I met him, yet he had plenty of money. Money as dirty as a tenement toilet, I wagered. But he hadn’t used it, and he hadn’t shared it with Inge. She didn’t seem to have a clue to who he really was, no inkling he was a cop. I wondered if there was a legitimate Mrs. Sig somewhere—a real wife.
    What to do? I could mail Inge a couple of hundred bucks anonymously. I could say it was from an old fan. Or I could just forget about her—try to, anyway. I could follow Aubrey’s line of reasoning, too: finders, keepers. After all, Conlin left the money in my house, not Inge’s. Truth was, I didn’t know whether he’d meant to give a dime to Inge or the legitimate Mrs. He may even have been fixing to dump the both of them. Yeah—nice guy.
    That was just it, though. I’m under no illusion that I’m the queen of mature judgment, but I don’t pick bad guys, heartless bastards. They might be fuck ups, they might be dumb, they might have a little larceny in their hearts, drink too much, think a little too highly of themselves for their own good, but nine times out of ten they are nice. And I couldn’t imagine one of them sponging off a hapless blind girlfriend and then stiffing her when he hit the jackpot. There had to be a reason Sig hadn’t told Inge about that money yet.
    Yes, I had compassion for blind Inge. But I had to learn how to have a little compassion for poor little Nanette, too. Who needed a break. Who was about to fall on some pretty tough times herself, now that Walter had split.
    Sure, a couple of hundred bucks in a plain brown wrapper would be just fine for Inge. Hell, I wouldn’t turn it down if I were in her place.
    I heard Ernestine whispering then: Honey, Some doors are closed for a good reason. Crack this one a little bit more, and your heart’s truly gone be ready for Satan .
    I called for another bourbon, no ice, asked the bartender