Free Way of a Wanton by Richard S. Prather

eyes looked at me from a round, vacuous face. She'd been reading something on the stained-walnut desk behind which she sat, and I'd have given eight to five right then that it was either her own column, Tillie the Toiler, or Dotty Dripple.  
    She was really a galloping horror. She had hands of the type generally called “dishpan hands,” but the same thing might have been said of her face. She looked like a woman who would disappear every Halloween and turn up dancing around a bubbling pot; give her a broom and you'd lose her.  
    Still giving me the blank stare, she said, “Yes?” going up. She had a voice like Howdy Doody's.  
    I decided to play it light. Maybe this hag had really believed her own words. The least I could do was give her the benefit of the doubt.  
    â€œGood morning, Miss Hillman,” I said pleasantly. “My name's Scott. I, uh"—I give her the nicest smile I could find—"crawled out of my shell to correct a misapprehension. About your item in this morning's Crier .”  
    She sucked at something in one of her teeth. Or maybe one of Dr. Cowen's teeth. She knew who I was, all right. “I'm very busy,” she said shortly. “Can't you get to the point?”  
    â€œYeah, lady, I'll get to the point.” Just like that she'd popped me. Here I was all sweetness and light and damn near ready to tickle her under the chin, and she was giving me this old routine. I slammed the door behind me and walked up to her desk. I came at her so fast that she scooted backward three inches in her swivel chair.  
    I said deliberately, “The point is pretty damn obvious, don't you think? In the first place, I don't like my name in your sticky column. In the second place, I resent libel and slander. Specifically I object to the implied accusation that a local ape man made me crawl, which he didn't, and the further implication that I could be scared off a case. Maybe I could be, but it hasn't happened yet.”  
    She said sweetly, “What case, Mr. Scott? What are you talking about? And I'm certain your name isn't in the column ... the sticky column, I believe you said?”  
    I'd had a death grip on the Crier , opened to this dear girl's word; now I slid it across the desk at her and started to point out my name. Then I stopped. Actually, my name wasn't in there.  
    She had noticed my hesitation and was smiling at me, happy as a clam, and I said, “Isn't it obvious who you were talking about?”  
    â€œWhom, Mr. Scott. About whom I was talking, you mean.”  
    â€œ You know bloody well what I mean! ”  
    Grammar lessons she was giving me. Pretty soon old sweetness-and-light Scott's brain arteries were going to open up and start squirting at each other. I sprayed air through my teeth and said more slowly, and more quietly, “Look, you know that's me who—whom—whom—well, godalmightydamn.”  
    Oh, she was happy now. She was having a ball. Only once in about a year do I get as griped at anybody as I now was at this quivering monstrosity, and a guy never builds toward peaceful relations feeling that way.  
    I took a couple of deep breaths and said, “Miss Hillman, I don't know where you got your information—though I've got an idea—but the item's as phony as house dice. For your information, I'm the boy who called the cops—and when I did it I hadn't promised to be good. Also, I have a client for whom I'm now investigating the murder of Zoe Townsend. Tooth and nail. There's an item for your column. For free.”  
    â€œI'm afraid it isn't very newsworthy, Mr. Scott.”  
    â€œYeah? Well, it's true. Does that eliminate it?”  
    She didn't say anything. I said, “I came in here to ask you, pleasantly, if you'd correct the erroneous impression you gave in this column. I say quiet seriously that it could be damaging to me. Now, how about it?”