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about it. “Maybe that’s the answer.”
    “And you won’t worry about this girl Ida Spain?”
    “No,” he answered after a moment. “I won’t worry about her any more. I’ll forget Ida Spain. I’ll even forget about that hole in Bill’s forehead.”
    She went back to the kitchen, and he sat silently for a long time. And then finally she said, from beyond the doorway, “You never did get to see her, did you?”
    “Who?”
    “Ida Spain. You never did get to see her.”
    “No,” he said, with a sort of a sigh. “And I guess now I never will….”

The Night People
    “N OTHING EVER HAPPENS ON Saturdays,” the city editor complained, his yellowed teeth digging into the pipe stem. “That’s why we have to use gimmicks to sell papers.”
    I cleared my throat and nodded in agreement, acting exactly like the cub reporter that I was. “Yes, sir,” I mumbled, because it seemed the proper thing to say.
    “Business closes down, Congress isn’t usually in session, the government officials take the weekend off, and worst of all—there are fewer people downtown to buy our papers.”
    “You’re right.”
    “On Sunday we can sell ’em ads and comics, but on Saturday afternoon it’s rough. And that’s goin’ to be your assignment. You’re goin’ to dig me up a story—every Saturday—for the afternoon edition. A story that no one else has—a story that’s big enough for front-page headlines. Understand?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Any questions?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Good. It’s two-thirty now. You’ve got till ten A.M. to bring in your first big story, kid. Go to it.”
    “Thank you, sir,” I mumbled.
    “You’ll get a by-line if it’s any good,” he called after me. “Remember, before ten o’clock….”
    I nodded silently to myself and went out into the city….
    But where to find a story in the middle of the night when Saturday’s dawn was still so many hours away? The bars would have closed at two, and even the drunks would be well on their way home by this time. I stood in the doorway of the Times-Chronicle and lit a cigarette, thinking about it.
    Perhaps an after-hours joint…. Sure, why not a story about what goes on during the night moments? But that would be feature-story stuff, not for front-page headlines. It wouldn’t sell papers on a damp Saturday afternoon.
    What would?
    I started walking, turning up the collar of my raincoat against the soaking drizzle that drifted down over the city streets.
    “Hello, mister….”
    I turned, barely able to make out the girl in the shadows. “Yes?”
    “Lonely?”
    I figured her for a streetwalker and as she came into the light I had no reason to change my mind. She wore a raincoat open at the neck to reveal a dark sweater. Her lipstick showed signs of fast, irregular repair, and I guessed that she’d already had at least one customer tonight.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not your type.”
    “I’m everybody’s type,” she answered, moving closer through the mist.
    “Know any place where I can get a little action?”
    “My apartment.”
    “Different kind. Cards, dice, that action.”
    “You a queer?” she asked, watching me more closely.
    “I hope not. Come on, where’s some action.”
    She sighed and made a motion of resignation. “Slip me a five for my time and I’ll take you to a place.”
    “It’s a deal.” I uncoiled a wrinkled fin from my wallet and passed it to her in the night. “How far?”
    “Not far,” she said. “Follow me,” and she led the way down a side street where a broken streetlight added to the gloom of the dark. And as I followed her I felt like a hundred other men must have felt, perhaps following her down this same street, though with a different purpose.
    I stepped cautiously around the streetlight’s broken glass, half seen in the night’s dimness, and ahead I saw the muted activity of a place that might have been a barbershop or a poolroom. But wasn’t.
    We went in, and she nodded to the man