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friend.”
    Was this a competition? “I don’t know ... I just thought . . . ”
    “Why don’t we both try to find out what happened?”
    “Together?”
    “Together,” she said.
    Together sounded good.
    Not until after the game, while riding home on the Third Avenue El, did I realize that I’d forgotten to ask Margie about going with me to the movie premiere. Even if I had remembered, I wouldn’t have brought it up though. It wouldn’t have been appropriate under the circumstances.
    I had the feeling that before anything could develop between Margie and me, Florence Hampton’s death would have to be put behind us. And the best way to do that was to find out how and why she died.
    I tried to imagine what could have happened to her Saturday night.
    I started with the simplest explanation: after the party she meets with Virgil Ewing—or with somebody who heard Ewing’s suggestion and thought it a good idea. Anyway, she meets one of her suitors and they go skinny dipping. She has a cramp, or is too drunk to swim, and drowns.
    Two problems with that scenario. One, why didn’t her swimming date report her death? It could be because the publicity would hurt his career—and if it was Tom Kelly who was with her, it could also cost him his marriage. The second problem was tougher to explain: if she was so afraid of the water, she wouldn’t have gone swimming in the first place. Maybe Margie was wrong about that, but why would Florence Hampton tell her she couldn’t swim if it wasn’t true?
    Okay, so how could somebody who’s afraid of the water end up naked in the Atlantic Ocean? Again, she meets someone on the beach. Not for swimming, but for a romantic rendezvous. It gets to the point where their clothes are off. Then what? She gets sick—the heat and the champagne overwhelm her—and maybe she passes out. Her partner brings her into the water to revive her. But then how would she drown? If she passed out, he wouldn’t just dump her in the water, he’d hold her up.
    Maybe she didn’t get sick. Maybe there was an argument and she was beaten or choked—but not too badly, or the police wouldn’t have called her death an accident. And I hadn’t seen any marks on her body. Anyway, then she gets thrown into the water. Did the man who threw her in know she couldn’t swim? Was it murder? Or was it unintentional, just a way to punctuate an argument that got out of hand?
    Whatever did happen, I was convinced that someone was with her when she died. And I was starting to believe that her death was no accident.
    Things no longer looked as bright as they had when I was dancing with Margie Turner on Saturday night.
    Even the baseball diamond, the one place where hope always survives no matter how lopsided the score, seemed dimmer. Not only did the Dodgers beat us again Monday afternoon, but the mood of the ballpark was funereal. Florence Hampton’s death left the Brooklyn fans too glum to cheer their team’s victory.
    Before the game, Charlie Ebbets addressed the crowd through a megaphone set up behind the pitcher’s mound. He said polite, insipid things about her. I thought he should have treated her better when she was alive—it was just two days ago that he threw her friends out of the ballpark. Come to think of it, I never did find out what that was all about. Why wouldn’t he want his ballpark used in a movie?

Chapter Six
    T he flags around the outfield fence were still at half-mast, the same as they had been yesterday afternoon. But it was the Pittsburgh banner that was nearest the right field foul pole today. By beating us in the first two games of the series, the Dodgers had pulled themselves out of the National League cellar and into seventh place.
    There was some relief from the heat today, provided by scattered clouds and gusting breezes. Winds can swirl strangely in a ballpark, and they blew today with home team bias. The Dodgers’ flag flew straight out, as if the breeze was giving them a good omen.