“Well, we been together a long time,” Kingsley spoke matter-of-factly. “She was hooked to me long before she met Grogan. Then I’m doing a stretch, and she comes to visit me and says she’s latched onto something and it looks like gravy. There’s this certain moneybag, this Walter Grogan, and she’s living with him and just playing for time until she can hit for dividends. I tell her no, I don’t like it. Not because she was letting him get in. What the hell, I never cared who she slept with. For a cash return, that is. If you understand what I mean.”

Corey nodded.

Kingsley went on, “But I didn’t want her messing with Grogan. Because I’d heard about Grogan. You’re in stir, you’re always hearing about this one and that one, and I told her it’s always a mistake to cruise a racketman. It’s a good way to get some bones busted when he finds out he’s getting cruised. She tells me not to worry, she knows what she’s doing. And then gradually I’m getting to see it her way. Because it ain’t like she’s cruising him for a hundred here and a hundred there. It’s more like she’s putting a blindfold on him, selling him the idea that with her the money comes second. What comes first is reading the philosophers and looking at paintings and going to lectures and so forth.”

“And meanwhile, of course, she’s finding out more and more about his finances. Not that he ever tells her. And not that she sees it on paper. But there’s times he’s on the phone and there’s another phone upstairs. Other times he’s talking with syndicate people and they’re sitting around in the parlor and she’s upstairs in the hallway, listening.

“And what it all comes to, she says there’s reason to believe he’s got hot lettuce put away somewhere. She figures it’s around a hundred grand.”

Corey smiled thinly.

Kingsley went on, “Well, anyway, it got me thinking. I mean, what the hell. You don’t walk away from a hundred grand. So the first thing I did when I got outta prison, I started a campaign to get released from parole. For a long time it was no go. I couldn’t get to first base at the parole office. But then something happened. I found exactly what I needed. A front. The perfect front.”

“Lillian?”

“Check,” Kingsley said. “And we’re married only three months when the parole office lets me off the leash. Because they don’t keep a man on parole when he’s living the good clean life with a decent respectable woman.”

“And Lita? What about Lita?”