Chase: Roman

dangerous slipping back, wishful thinking that could do nothing more than weaken his resolve.
        
        The girl who was in charge of the Press-Dispatch morgue room was only two inches under six feet, and nearly six in her low heels, almost as tall as Chase, with yellow hair to the middle of her back, a skirt to the middle of her thighs, and legs that just went on forever. Her name was Glenda Kleaver, and she spoke with an anachronistically small, soft, feminine voice that was yet strangely at home in her fine, big body.
        She demonstrated the use of microfilm viewers to Chase and explained that all editions prior to January 1, 1966, were now stored on film to conserve space. She explained the procedure for ordering the proper spools and for obtaining the mint editions that had not yet been transferred to film.
        Several reporters were sitting at the machines, twisting the control knobs and staring into the viewers, jotting on note pads beside them.
        Chase said, ‘Do you get many outsiders here?’
        The girl smiled at him, and he decided she could not be more than nineteen or twenty, though she had that burnish of life which Louise Allenby lacked. She leaned back against the edge of her desk, crossing her slim legs, fished a cigarette from a pack on the desk and lighted it. She said, ‘I'm trying to quit these things, so don't be surprised if I only hold it and don't smoke it.’ She crossed her arms under her large breasts and said, ‘A newspaper morgue is chiefly for the use of the staff and for the police. But we keep it open to the public without charge. We get maybe a dozen people a week.’
        ‘What are they looking for here?’
        ‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.
        He hesitated only a moment, then gave her the same story he had first given Mrs Onufer at the Metropolitan Bureau of Vital Statistics. He said, ‘I'm gathering facts for a family history.’
        Glenda Kleaver nodded, raised the cigarette to her lips, then put it down without drawing on it. She said, That's what most outsiders come here for. You'd be surprised how many people are tracking down their ancestors with an idea of immortalizing them.’
        There was a distinct note of sarcasm in her voice, and he felt that he had to justify the lie he'd told her. ‘I don't want to immortalize anyone,’ he said. ‘My family history will go unwritten.’
        ‘Just curiosity, then?’ she asked. She picked up her cigarette from the ashtray and held it.
        ‘Yes,’ he said.
        ‘I haven't the least bit of curiosity about dead relatives. I don't even like the living relatives very much.’
        He laughed. ‘No sense of pride in your name, your lineage?’
        ‘None. It's probably more mutt than thoroughbred, anyway.’ She put her cigarette down now, her slim fingers holding it like a precise surgical instrument.
        Chase would have liked to go on talking about anything but Judge, because he felt terribly at ease with her, more at ease than he had felt in the presence of a woman since… Since Jules Verne, the underground operation in Nam. But he recognized his urge to be garrulous as a further evasion of the issue at hand. He said, ‘So I don't have to sign anything to use the files?’
        ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have to get everything for you, and you have to return it to me before you leave.’
        He tried to think of some way he could ask her about any outsiders who had used the morgue this past Tuesday, but no convenient cover story came to mind. He could not employ the same device he had used with Mrs Onufer, the tale of the nosy reporter, for he would not find any sympathy with that routine, not here of all places. If he told her the truth or a portion of the truth, she might or might not believe him, and if she did not, he would feel like a prize ass. Oddly enough, though he had only just met her, he did not want to be embarrassed in front of her. In the end, he could say nothing.
        Besides, another ugly possibility had occurred to him. There were two reporters in the room just then, and one of them was quite likely to learn who he was and what he was doing there if he said anything to the girl. He could not escape, then, seeing his picture on the front page and reading all about this latest development in his life. They might treat the story either straight or tongue-in-cheek (probably the latter if they talked to the police and then to