“If you don’t already know, it’s none of your damned business to find it out. What is it you’re really after, Ms. Detective Warshawski? Who you protecting or hurting or covering up for?”

No one else was in the shop. I sat on one of the stools next to the tiny chess table. “What’s that supposed to mean? I told you what I wanted and why. Who’s suggesting it’s something else?”

“That’s well done, all innocent indignation. I’m impressed.”

I clasped my fingers under my chin, studying him. “You’re protecting this guy who’s hanging around your shop. I don’t know how to persuade you I’m not here to hurt anyone—”

He slapped his paper onto the small space between us. “You can’t.”

“But I’m starting to think you know where Lamont Gadsden went all those years ago. Is it his mother who’s got you so angry? She is a difficult woman, I know. Is there some secret from the old days that I don’t know about?”

“I think I already said more than you needed to hear.” He got up and went behind his counter.

“Rose Hebert saw you enter the Waltz Right Inn right after Lamont went in there with Johnny Merton the night before the big snow. That was the last time anyone knew him to be alive.”

“Now I know you’re lying!” He crashed a fistful of tools onto the counter. “Rose Hebert in the Waltz Right Inn? You overplayed your hand right there, lady.”

I smiled through thin lips. “You might not jump to conclusions if you listened more closely. I didn’t say Ms. Hebert was in the bar. I said she saw you enter it. Just as she’d watched Lamont and the Hammer a few minutes earlier. Wishing she could be part of everyone else’s good time.”

Rivers shifted a pair of shears from hand to hand, measuring me. At least he was thinking over what I said. “I wouldn’t dispute a lady’s word, especially not a lady as sanctified as Miss Rose. But I went to the Waltz Right Inn a lot in those days, and I saw Lamont there more nights than not. The night before the big snow doesn’t stand out in my mind, Ms. Investigator.”

“Is it Johnny Merton you’re afraid of? I don’t blame you. He scares me, too. Between him and Ella Gadsden, I don’t know which makes me more nervous.”

“Maybe you scare easier than me, and maybe there’s a reason for that.”

“What about Steve Sawyer? I know now he was convicted of murder, but he’s disappeared, too. There’s no record of him in the Department of Corrections. Is he the person you’re trying to protect?”

“How dare you! How dare you, bitch, come in here and flaunt him at me!”