16. Explanation of paragraph 16

     The cops were reluctant to leave without getting their hand on somebody besides grandfather; the night had been distinctly a defeat for them. Furthermore, they obviously didn’t like the ‘layout’; something looked – and I can see their viewpoint – phony. They began to poke into things again. A reporter, a thin-faced, wispy man, came up to me. I had put on one of mother’s dress, not being able to find anything else. The reporter looked at me with mingled suspicion and interest. ‘Just what the hell is the real lowdown here, Bud?’ he asked. I decided to be frank with him. ‘We had ghosts,’ I said. He gazed at me a long time as if I were a slot machine into which he had, without results, dropped a coin. Then he walked away. The cops followed him, the one grandfather shot holding his now bandaged arm, cursing and blaspheming. ‘I’m gonna get my gun back from that old bird,’ said the zither-cop. ‘Yeh,’ said Joe, ‘You – and who else?’ I told them I would bring it to the station house the next day.