The Long Wait

Chapter Five

I had to help Logan out to the Chewy and feed him cigarettes until he was ready to go back to town. He kept shaking his head to clear it and there were raw patches on his elbows from where he skidded along the floor, but he wasn’t holding it against me.

When he kicked the engine over he said, “Where’d you pick up that rough stuff?”

“That went with the job, I guess.”

“Ever think that you might have been a pug before?”

I frowned at him, then shook my head. “If I was I don’t remember it.”

“You’re no amateur at that business, kiddo. Suppose I do a little poking around and see what I can find. Maybe you have a history I can run down.”

“Go to it, pal. I tried and didn’t get very far.”

“You might not like what I dig up.”

I tossed the cigarette out the window and watched it sizzle out in the water. “Maybe not, but it’s better than not knowing,” I told him finally. “Sometimes I get to thinking things that give me the willies. I can do things I didn’t know I could do... or at least my hands do them without thinking. I can handle a rod like a knife and fork and I know how to kill a guy the easy way. One day I found out I could open a lock with a piece of wire as easy as with a key. Nobody ever taught me how to use nitro or a burning torch either. The boys used to kid me... said I’d make a good safe cracker.

“It was real funny at first, then it wasn’t so funny. I picked up an old safe on a dump heap and tried to open it. You know how long it took? Four minutes working the dial. The boys caught me at it and I showed them how to blow the thing apart with a little soup. That door came off like it was sliced off.”

I looked at Logan and grinned. “See what you can do with that angle. Maybe I’m wanted for burglary someplace.”

“And if you are?”

I held out my hands where the fingerprints used to be.

He shrugged. “Lindsey says they can still bring out impressions.”

“Okay, let ’em try. I’m willing.”

“You seem to be pretty cocky about it.”

“Why not? You think I didn’t try to find out who I was? Hell, man, I went to the Army, Navy, Marines and Veteran’s Bureau trying to see what they could do. I’ve had a half-dozen doctors and experts try to bring out even the faintest sign of a print. They didn’t get anywhere.”

Logan nodded, the warning plain in his face. “I’ll look around then. If I dig anything up I’ll let you know.”

“Before or after you give it to Lindsey?”

“That depends on how good it is,” he told me.

He swung the car around and headed back up the highway. Traffic was light in both directions and we just loped along taking it easy. I knew he was feeling around for words, then he came right out with it. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Find this Vera you spoke of.”

His face got tight again. “Why her?”

“Because she’s the key, that’s why. I told you what was in that letter Johnny wrote. They took everything he had and she laughed while they did it because she was part of it.”

“Goddamn it!” His hand smacked the wheel violently. “Don’t push everything on her. You’re not sure, you know!”

“You still in love with her?”

“No.” He glanced at me and his face wrinkled up. “No, I’m not. But I was and maybe that makes the difference.”

“How well did you know her?”

“Well enough and long enough to know she wasn’t a tramp.”

“Logan,” I said, “in the few years that I remember anything, I’ve found out that no man knows a damn thing about any woman and that goes double when he’s in love with her.”

I handed him a cigarette and held up a light. “This newspaper of yours. Does it have any police photos?”

He looked at me over the light. “Some. Why?”

“Maybe it has one of the murder room where Minnow was shot?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go see, huh?”

He looked at me again without saying anything, took a drag on the cigarette and shoved the car in gear.

He drove through town to the News building and I waited downstairs while he was gone. Ten minutes later he walked over to the car with a brown folder between his fingers, got in and handed me four blown-up photos.

The first one showed Minnow dead, slumped forward on his desk, the blotter soaking up the blood that ran down his face. All around him were papers that he had been working on. In one hand was a pencil that had snapped in two when it dug into the desk with a convulsive movement. A stack of letters had been knocked to the floor by the same final twitch and showed spread out on the floor in the corner of the photo.

The other two pictures were angle shots of the body taking in part of the office background, showing one of the filing cabinets open. Minnow’s coat and hat on a clothes tree, a bookcase that apparently contained his law books and an umbrella stand. The last picture showed the gun on the floor.

I turned them to odd angles, checking them again. They were pretty clear in detail and a lot of the papers on the desk were readable. Most of them were parts of briefs, one a copy of an indictment and the rest of a general legal nature. Some of the letters scattered around had canceled stamps on them while a few were outgoing. One or two had something written across the face to identify the contents and nothing else.

When I finished I tucked them back in the folder. Logan said, “Well. What do you make out of them?”

“Nice gun,” I said.

“Police positive. Fully loaded and one shot fired.” His mouth tightened. “Your prints were all over it.”

“Not mine.”

“That’s right. His. It didn’t take long to check them, either. The bonding company the bank used had them on file right here in town. They checked with Army files in Washington.”

I could feel the frown start creasing my forehead. Something was wrong as hell. I pulled the photos out, looked them over carefully again and shoved them back in disgust. I said, “How easy would it be for somebody to get in the building?”

“It wouldn’t be hard to force a window. Not that it would have been necessary. A couple were open. One was in the hall off the back court that led directly up to Minnow’s office.”

“I see.” I handed him the stuff back and sucked on my cigarette. I couldn’t get it out of my mind that something stunk and my nose wasn’t big enough to catch the smell. Without thinking I finally asked, “What was Minnow working on that night?”

“The same thing he always worked on. He was after something that would incriminate Servo and get rid of the rottenness in this town.”

“Is it just Servo?”

“There’s a lot of them. Servo’s the boy with the brains. No, that’s not the word. Let’s say nerve. He’s ruthless. It’s a sort of gentlemanly ruthlessness that he’s acquired. He owns everything and everybody. Hell, you got to face it, nobody in the city government wants to make a move against him.”

“Wonderful situation.”

“For Servo. Someday it’ll change.”

I said, “Well, thanks for the stuff. Having you around is a big help.”

His eyes squinted under the scarred lids. “That’s okay. I’m still waiting for that big story. Maybe more.”

“Vera?”

“Yeah. I’d still take her back no matter what she was.”

“You mean as long as she wasn’t a killer or an accessory before the fact,” I grinned at him.

He said something nasty.

“There’s something I forgot to ask you,” I said. “Vera and Johnny worked together until the monkey business in the bank came out. How long after it happened did she continue to work there?”

“Not very long. The two of them took their vacations together. It was during that time that the auditors checked the books and uncovered the theft. I never got to see Vera to talk to after that. She just left the bank and started hanging around the gambling houses in town. She was making quite a splash when Servo picked her up. After that she was with him constantly until the day she just dropped out of sight.”

“No trace of her since?”

“No trace,” he repeated dully.

“I want a picture of her, Logan. Got one?”

He reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “There’s one in the cardcase,” he told me, “on the bottom of the pile.”

I shuffled through the cards until I found it, a two-by-three-inch photo on heavy linen paper. And there she was, a lovely natural blonde with hair like new butter flowing down to her shoulders. The photographer had caught her in a coquettish pose, but there was a freshness about her that had to be real. Her mouth was full and soft, her nose tilted gently, ready to laugh. It was hard to tell much about her eyes. They might have been soft eyes or they might have been hard. I couldn’t tell.

Logan said, “What do you think?”

“Beautiful.”

“She was that all right. You can keep that picture if you want it.”

“Thanks.” I stuck it in my pocket and handed his wallet back.

“You still didn’t tell me what you were going to do about it,” he said.

I watched the houses flash by the window a minute. “Logan, Johnny was run out of town because he was involved in something big. Like two hundred thousand bucks is big. I don’t think Johnny took that dough.”

“Frame?”

“Maybe. Vera was involved and when I find her I’ll find the answers.”

There was a red light up ahead and Logan slowed down for it. When he came to a stop he stared at me meaningly. “I’m pretty well convinced you’re not McBride, but when you started telling me about those unnatural talents of yours I started thinking of something.”

I caught it fast. “You mean did I discover I was a handy man with figures too?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Chum, the only figures I’m good with walk on high heels. I still count on my fingers. I’d make a lousy bank teller.”

“And the Johnny McBride you knew?”

I bobbed my head. “He was a mathematical whiz, that guy. He kept the company accounts.”

The light changed and the car rolled ahead. We were on the edge of town now and Logan took the time to point out some of the bigger hot spots. Most of the places were just starting to get a play and before the hour was out they’d be packed to the doors. Most of the cars in the parking lots were from out of town and about half from out of the state entirely. Lyncastle had the kind of reputation to draw the tourists.

I noticed little blue signs in a lot of the windows and mentioned it to Logan.

“Members of the Business Group,” he said, “Servo’s outfit.”

“What happens if you don’t belong?”

“Oh hell, there’s no rough stuff involved. About a tenth of the places are independents, but they don’t make out so well. If there is any trouble and you are a member of the group, there’s a lot of money for the best lawyers. Besides that, Servo has a liquor monopoly in town and if you don’t belong you don’t get the kind of stuff the customers want.”

“Never any trouble from the public?”

Logan grunted mirthlessly. “There would have been at one time. There would still be if the damn public would get the merchants out of politics and run the town themselves. What the hell, you can’t blame them too much. There’s a lot of new money in town now if you can stand to live with the kind of people who have it.”

“You ought to have an opinion on it, Logan. What is it?”

I saw his lips come back in a sneer. “I’ve covered murder cases, I’ve seen kids who were raped on the streets, I watched them pull young mangled bodies from the wrecks of cars that had a drunk at the wheel, I’ve had to live under laws set up by a pack of ignorant bastards who take all the cream and throw the rest to the people who vote for them. Now you know what my opinion is.”

“Who runs the town now?”

“Balls.”

“I mean it.”

“Who the hell knows?”

“You should know, you’re a newspaperman,” I said.

“Yeah, I should know, a lot of things. Look, feller, whoever is at the top pulling the strings does it under the nicest cover you ever saw. There’s more money in this town than you can imagine, but it isn’t going down into any books. We’ve had the feds in here and boys from the attorney general’s office trying to get to the bottom of it and they all come up shaking their heads.

“A lot of people try to put it on Servo, but he’s clean. He pays his taxes and stays out of trouble. They try it on the mayor and the city council and what happens? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nobody knows from nothing.”

He stopped abruptly and looked at me sidewise. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing special.” We were in the center of town by then and slowing down for another light. “Let me out on the corner, Logan.”

He pulled in to the curb and stopped. I swung out of the car and slammed the door shut. He said, “If you stay alive long enough to find out anything, you can reach me at the office.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m going to backtrack over your story, you know.”

“I expected that.”

“Where can I find you?”

I laughed at him. “You can’t, pal. I’ll find you. If I’m still alive, that is.”

I watched him pull away into traffic, then went into a joint and had a beer. The place was called Little Bohemia and had a blue sign in the window. There were slots all around the walls going full blast, an ornate juke box to drown out the sound of more money going into them than was coming out, a sheet-covered roulette wheel and two crap tables in the back and a chrome and plastic bar forming a huge oval in the center of the place.

Beer was two-bits a throw.

A sign said something about not serving minors, but I’d like to have a buck for every overpainted chippy in the place who hadn’t seen eighteen yet. Most of them were there for strictly one reason, sipping their drinks until they found a sucker to finance some faster drinking.

I had my beer and went next door where there was no blue sign in the window. Beer was a dime, but there weren’t any customers, either. The bartender was feeding the relic of a slot machine until he saw me. I said, “Where’d that come from?”

“Boss had it in his cellar ever since Prohibition. What’ll you have?”

“Beer. Where’s the crowd?”

“You new around here?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. They come in later. They get squeezed outa the other joints or run out of dough. Then we get ’em here.”

“You ought to get in some slots.”

“Yeah, tell that to the boss. He’s one of them rugged individuals, he is.”

“He won’t play Servo’s game, hey?”

“I thought you was new around here.”

“Hell, this town makes the news all over.”

“Yeah. Another beer?”

“One more.” He set it up for me, had one with me, then I asked, “Look, maybe you can help me out. I’m looking for a girl named Vera West. She’s a relative of mine, see? About five years ago she got in some kind of a jam at the bank here in town, then went to the dogs. She used to go around with Servo.”

The bartender sipped his beer and made circles with the glass on the bar. “Servo has lots of women.”

“This one was a blonde, a real honey blonde.”

“Nice build?”

I couldn’t say for sure, but women take care of those things if they haven’t already got them so I just nodded.

“He had one tomato a long time ago who was a knockout. She was a blonde.”

“Remember her name?”

He made more circles with the glass. “Mac, if I did know I don’t think I’d tell you. I’m a family man. I work here and let it go at that.”

“Servo’s trouble?” I tried to act surprised.

“Not personally... he’s too much of a big shot to do his own knuckle-work. Let’s quit asking questions.”

“Sure, sure,” I agreed “but you know how it is. I’d like to find her.”

He spoke more to the open door than to me. “The babes Servo makes usually wind up in the cellar. Try the red light district once.”

I tossed the beer down and pushed the change out to him. “I’ll do that Thanks.” He picked up the change with a nod and was feeding it in the slot when I went out the door.

It was hot as hell again. The sky was a hazy gray and over in the east I could see the outlines of an early thunderstorm building up. It didn’t seem to bother any of the people on the street Not with all those nice air-conditioned places with the blue signs in the window to wait out the weather. That was another monopoly Servo seemed to have.

I took it easy walking down the street, acting like I had all the time in the world on my hands. I spent an hour at it, getting an idea of what made the city tick. There were a lot of things that helped, like the cops who poured the coal on the residents for parking overtime while anybody with a tag from outside the city got away with murder. Practically.

Like the candy store where I bought the paper and saw a guy in a flashy sports outfit stuff a roll of bills in a briefcase and hand it over to another guy who had a car waiting outside.

Like the women who had everything but “for rent” signs hanging from their nipples cruising the streets for customers.

Like the expensive-looking guy who had an early load on being helped into a police car very gently with orders from the bar owner to see that he got to the train station safely.

Like the shoeshine boys who charged a half a buck for a polish and rub then griped when there wasn’t any tip besides.

Oh, Lyncastle was a great town. Great.

Then I saw Lindsey. He was having a coke at the counter of a modern version of an old general store. The sign over the front read “Philbert’s” in neon script and a directory listed what was to be found inside. Food and drugs on the left. Sodas on the right and beer further back. Hardware, paints and home supplies up the middle aisles. Printing, photostating and office supplies in the back.

I walked in and sat down beside him. Like the spider and Miss Muffet. I said, “Howdy, pardner,” and he didn’t even look at me. His face seemed to puff up around his mouth and the straw flattened out from too much pressure at the top. I said, “Cat got your tongue?”

He turned around slowly. “Johnny, you’re too goddamned wise for your own good.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’m telling you again.”

“Then get some smarter cops. That deal you pulled this morning stunk.”

“You seem to know a lot about cops.”

I ordered a coke and a sandwich for myself. “I do... about the kind you have in this burg. You know about them?”

“I know about them.” His voice was a flat snarl.

“Then keep them off my back, Lindsey. When you slap me with a murder charge you can do what you damn well please, but until then, lay off.”

“You bastard!” He almost whispered it.

I took a bite of my sandwich and grinned at him. “You know it’s a wonder you don’t at least ask me whether or not I killed your friend.”

He was so mad he could hardly speak. “I don’t have to!”

“Don’t then, but if you’re the least bit interested, I didn’t kill anybody.”

His teeth made a white pattern under his lips and in the mirror behind the counter I couldn’t see his eyes at all. I went ahead and finished my sandwich, drowning it with my coke. When I was done I shoved a quarter across the counter and picked a cigarette out of Lindsey’s pack.

“Someday... if you get around to it, try giving me a lie-detector test,” I said. “I won’t mind a bit.”

He stopped playing with the straw and his eyes came open enough so I could see the color of them. They were blue. His mouth relaxed and that puffed-up business went away. He didn’t get it. Not a bit. So I let him sit there until he did get it.

The National bank of Lyncastle was a white stone building that occupied half a city block in the heart of town. I got in a few minutes before closing when the place was about empty and I wasn’t there two seconds before I noticed the sudden silence. It was a dead kind of silence that comes when machines stop operating and people are momentarily stunned.

There was a uniformed guard standing behind one of those glass-topped tables trying to decide between pulling his gun out and saying hello. I said hello first, so he didn’t pull his gun out. He swallowed hard, looked a little foolish and said tentatively, “Johnny?”

“Who else, Pop?”

He gulped again, his eyes darting around for advice that didn’t come.

“Where’s Mr. Gardiner, Pop?”

“In... his office.”

“Feel like telling him I’m out here?”

He didn’t feel like it, but he picked up the wall phone anyway. He didn’t have to. The gate down the end swung open and the guy standing there couldn’t have been anything else but the president. I started the walk across the marble floor and heard the last closing of the bronze doors behind me.

“Hello, Mr. Gardiner.”

Amazement. Nothing but pure amazement was there on his face. Havis Gardiner was one of those tall, spare guys with graying hair like you see in the ads, only now he resembled a kid seeing a circus for the first time. Too damn excited to do anything but stare.

I said, “I want to speak to you alone.”

“Of all the colossal nerve...” The amazement made a quick change into fury.

“Yeah, I have that, Mr. Gardiner. I still want to talk to you in private. In case you’re worried, the police know I’m in town. Now, do we talk?”

His lips pressed together. “I’m at a board meeting.” I grinned at him just once and his hands made tight fists. “It can be postponed for this,” he added.

I went in through the gate and it made a mechanical clang when it closed. Outside everybody started talking at once, an awed murmur that disappeared when we were in the office marked “President.” Gardiner made a quick call that ended the board meeting and swung around in his chair to face me.

It was some dump, plush and mahogany with all the trimmings. He didn’t ask me to sit down, but I pulled up a chair anyway. If there was going to be any talking done, I was going to have to start it. Havis Gardiner was trying so hard to control his temper he was about to blow a blood vessel.

“I’m looking for Vera West, Mr. Gardiner. Got any idea where she is?”

Instead of answering my question he picked up the phone and asked for the police. He told them I was there and wanted to know the reason why.

Somebody told him.

His face came apart at the seams and he hung up slowly. “So you think you’ve gotten away with it!” he rasped.

“That’s right, I did. Now let’s talk about Vera West.”

Gardiner studied me for a full minute, his eyes going over me from head to toe. “I certainly don’t know where she is, McBride. And do you know what I’d do if I were you?”

“Yeah, cut my throat. Shut up and listen to me a second. I’m going to tell you right out and you can believe it or not, but you’ll be better off if you do. I never stole a cent from this outfit. Okay, so I took a powder, but that’s my business.”

The study he was making of me took on an intense concentration. Every emotion he was possible of having flitted across his face until he wound up leaning halfway across the desk toward me.

“What are you saying, McBride?”

“That I was trapped in a nice frame. Is that plain enough?”

“No, it isn’t.

“Let me put it this way then. Why was I accused of misappropriating that two hundred grand?”

Gardiner couldn’t decide whether to be puzzled or worried. He opened his hands, stared at them, then looked back at me again. “You know, McBride, if the law had caught up with you I wouldn’t even consider arguing this matter. Your coming back voluntarily, even with a possible escape like those missing fingerprints of yours, changes the matter somewhat.

“It should,” I said. “Nobody ever heard my side of it before.”

“What is your side?”

“Tell me how it happened first.”

His hands made a gesture of resignation. “I... I don’t know quite what to think now, McBride. Only Miss West had access to those unclaimed account books. She never had use of them either. I happened to notice her with them one day and wondered why she was taking them out of the vault. She said you wanted to see them. I was curious enough to check and believed I found evidence of fraud.”

“How much was missing?”

His mouth pursed speculatively, as if I should know without asking. “Two hundred one thousand and eighty-four dollars exactly,” he said.

“That’s a screwy total.”

“The district attorney thought the same thing. An indication that there was an intention of taking more and more. The eighty-four dollars was the remainder of one account that hadn’t been entirely cleared out.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“When I sent you and Miss West on vacation at the same time I contacted the District Attorney who, in turn, brought in the state auditor. They found the shortage and traced it directly to you.”

“That was nice of them,” I said.

“McBride... why did you run?”

I wished I could have answered that. If I could say why there wouldn’t be a problem left to solve. I shrugged unconcernedly. “I blew up, that’s all. I got chicken about it and took a powder. I’m back now and that’s what counts.”

“You came back... to clear yourself?”

“What else?”

He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “That is incredible, simply incredible. I... don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

“That part’s up to you.”

“If... mind you, if you are telling the truth, I certainly want to see you cleared of this matter. Until now I’ve had no doubt about it.” He smiled at me sagely. “But I’ve made mistakes before and I’m always thankful to be corrected in time. McBride, I’ll reserve my judgment until this matter comes to a head one way or another. However, I’m going to put every means at my disposal to work to get the truth. Every indication we have points to your guilt. Can you give us something to start on?”

“Find Vera West,” I said. “She’ll know.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“I’ve heard a few things. First Servo, then a disappearing act.”

“Then you know quite as much as I do.”

“You’ll look for her?”

“I most certainly will. At least the insurance company will and they’ll be notified immediately.”

“When she left here, did she leave anything behind? Letters or anything of that sort?”

“No, she cleaned out her desk completely. She’s never corresponded with us since, either. If she’s working somewhere else she never wrote here for a recommendation.”

I stared at him a second and nodded. I glanced around the room with elaborate casualness, smiling and bobbing my head as if I appreciated the homecoming. I said, “You know, I miss the old place. How about letting me take a look at my old stall?”

He scowled an answer. “I don’t see...”

“Ah, you know how it is after five years. Old things look good.”

He didn’t like the idea a bit. It wasn’t a businesslike thing to do. But he decided to let a whim be a whim and stood up. If the whole thing hadn’t been such a surprise he probably would have tried having me tossed out on my ear. I followed him out the door, down a corridor, through a couple of steel-ribbed gates and into the cashier’s booth that was like any other cashier’s booth in any other bank in any other city in the world.

There was a guy with a permanently curved back hunched on a stool. He glanced around, then went back to his work. Packets of currency were everywhere. Little individual files flanked the guy on the stool hemming him in. Three open ledgers lay on the side tables.

I saw the alarm button under his foot and another alongside his knee. The handle of a gun stuck out of a shelf under his table top. While we watched the guy dropped a dime. He was off the stool in a hurry and went down on his knees until he found it. I guess we made him nervous.

I backed out of the booth grinning and shut the door. Gardiner said, “I don’t understand...”

“Sentiment,” I muttered.

Sentiment hell. I was feeling sorry for Johnny. Even if he had copped a wad it would have been a good enough excuse to get out of that cage. Now it was easy to see why he took to the outdoors. You got dirty, rained on, cursed at and worked to death, but at least you were free. There was plenty of air around you.

Gardiner took me to the door, unlocked it, passed me through the grillwork outside and walked across the hall to the front door beside me. The animals in their cages stopped talking and tried to make like they were very busy. The guard unlocked the front door and held it open. Gardiner said, “You’ll be staying around town, of course.”

I let the grin split my face in two. It was the kind of a grin that said somebody would die before I left if I left at all. “I’ll be around,” I told him.

Lyncastle Business Group, the plaque read. It was made of bronze set in a mahogany frame and recessed into the wall. The office took up the first floor of the building and none of the doors ever seemed to fully close before somebody shot through them again. I picked what looked to be the main entrance and stepped inside.

A guard in a blue uniform gave me what was supposed to be a polite smile and pointed to a row of benches along the side. There were a dozen men and an elderly woman already parked there waiting. Most were fingering brief cases and casting anxious glances at the clock over the receptionist’s desk.

I cast anxious glances at the receptionist.

She was worth looking at. There was no top to the dress. It was cut low across her chest and hugged each breast separately like hands reaching around from behind her. She sat away from the desk so nothing would be in the way of anybody caring for a look at her legs. The dress was black. It had to be black to set off the platinum of her hair. It had to be jersey to stick to her the way it did. Her legs were crossed, but they had to be that way to give somebody in the benches a charge when she uncrossed them.

I walked over to the desk and said, “You ought to move the clock.”

Her face came up from the cards she was filing still creased with the effort of trying to remember the alphabet. “Pardon me?”

“Nobody’s looking at you.”

“Me?”

“The legs. The bosom. They’re the biggest and best in town. Nobody’s looking. They’re all watching the clock.”

Her eyes ran up the wall to the clock then checked with her wrist watch. “The clock’s right,” she said.

“Skip it. I want to see Lenny.” Such a body going to waste under a brain like that.

“Oh. I am sorry, but you’ll have to wait. You... said Lenny?”

“That’s right.”

“A friend of his?”

“I could be. ”

She scowled again, trying to concentrate on the next question. “If it’s business then you’ll...”

“It isn’t business, beautiful.”

“Oh. Then you’re a friend. Well, I’ll tell him you’re here. Name?”

I told her. She picked up the phone, waited until the connection was made, then told somebody a Mr. McBride was outside. Behind me the drone of the voices stopped, waiting to see if I was going to get the busy treatment.

They were disappointed. The blonde nodded solemnly at the phone and hung up. “Mr. Servo will be glad to see you. Immediately, that is.”

“I’d sooner stay here and look at you.”

“But Mr. Servo said.

“I know. He’d see me.” I got another frown, then her face brightened. She finally got the point. It sure was a pity.

I stepped inside the little gate and on in through the door marked Private. There was another receptionist inside too. This one was a big joker who sat with his chair tipped back against the wall chewing on a cigar. His thumbs were hooked under his arms and the handle of a billy stuck out his pocket.

He said, “Go on in,” and pointed to the only other door leading off the room.

I went in.

The room was a good thirty feet with windows on two sides and whoever decorated the place must have had a blank check in his hand. The throne was a big, flat mahogany desk, almost in the center and the king was perched on the end of it.

He was quite a king. These days they made them in chalk-striped suits and a fresh shave. They made them smooth-looking with dark eyebrows and hair starting to silver up at the temples. They made them with two guys parked in leather upholstered chairs to make sure the king stayed safe.

Lenny Servo sat there looking at me with a face that was trying hard not to show any expression. I said, “Hello, sucker,” and grinned at the way his mouth pulled tight and his nose showed white streaks along the side.

The weasel-faced punk in the chair couldn’t seem to believe his eyes. He got up slowly, smoothed the creases out of his green gabardine suit and let his hands dangle at his sides. They were shaking. His eyes were black little slits over his thin lips and he said, “You son of a bitch, you.”

The other guy just sat there and watched, trying to make out what it was all about. That made two of us.

Lenny’s voice was a pleasant, low-pitched snarl. It was velvet, but if you looked under the velvet you saw the teeth. “Sit down, Eddie,” he said. “Mr. McBride came to see me, remember?” He never stopped staring at me with those quizzical eyes of his.

I could feel it in the room, whatever it was. Hate. Or fear maybe. Pure, blind emotion, whatever it was. It had Lenny tight as a bow even if he didn’t show it. The way everybody was watching me you’d think I was a freak. I stuck a butt in my mouth, lit it to give them time to take a good look and when I thought they had enough I hooked a chair over with my toe and lowered myself on the arm of it. I blew out a mouthful of smoke that drifted right into Lenny’s face without ever letting go the grin.

The guy he called Eddie cursed again.

I said, “I’m back, pal. You know why I came back?”

A little muscle moved high up on his cheek. It did something to the comer of his mouth and he started to smile. “Suppose you tell me.”

“Where is she, Lenny?”

The smile went away. “That’s something I’d like to know too,” he said.

He shifted position on the desk. I grinned even bigger. “You’re a slob. I wonder what the hell she ever saw in you.”

The insult didn’t faze him a bit. He didn’t turn red or anything. He just looked at me. But he was the only one it didn’t bother.

The little guy couldn’t stay put any longer. He charged out of it and if Lenny hadn’t swung his foot out he would have come for me. His eyes were big wide things in a face that was all sucked in and he breathed in tight little gasps. “Lemme take him, damn it! Lemme do what I said I’d do to him!”

Lenny shoved him gently with his foot. “In due time, Eddie. Mr. McBride understands that, don’t you, Mr. McBride?”

I took another drag on the butt and looked down at the punk. Just for kicks I reached out, grabbed him by the arms and threw him all the way across the room. He slammed into the chair, knocked it over and took an ash tray along with him.

Nobody said a word. Nobody even breathed. For a minute it was like a tomb in there and when Servo’s face came back to mine it was a nasty dead white. “Tough, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You forget very fast, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

He slid off the edge of the desk, looked at me until he got his voice back. “You should have stayed away. You really should have.”

I played it right up to the hilt. It was a brand-new game and I didn’t know the rules, the players or the score, but I sure was having fun. I said, “I want Vera, Lenny. If you got any idea where she is at all, you better produce her quick. You know what’ll happen if you don’t?”

Lenny didn’t get it. He was the king and nobody spoke to him like that. The other guy with the knife scar on his face got it though. His mouth hung open and he watched the two of us like a farm boy at his first burlesque. Lenny’s breath was hot in my face. “McBride...”

I hit him then. It chopped his words off in the middle and spun him around the corner of the desk. He grabbed, hung on, then slid to the floor. I threw the butt on the top of the desk and walked back out. The gorilla was still there in his chair still chewing on his cigar. He was grinning until he saw me. It was a sure bet he thought I was the one getting pushed around inside.

“You shoulda been there,” I told him. “It was fun.”

He was still thinking about it when I opened the door to the outer office. The benches were empty and the blonde was shrugging her bare shoulders into a bolero jacket that put her in the decency class again. She saw me and smiled. “Finished?”

“For now I am. You going home?”

Her eyes went to the clock. It was an even five. “Uh-huh.”

“Swell. I’ll walk you down.”

“But I have to tell Mr. Servo...”

“Whatever you have to tell him, he won’t want to hear, sugar.”

“Oh, you’re wrong. I always...”

“Mr. Servo is sick,” I said gently.

“Sick? He’s never sick. What’s wrong with him?”

“He just had the crap kicked outa him. Coming?”

Her eyes got a little cloudy, but she didn’t say anything until I took her arm and walked her outside. Going down the stairs she said solemnly, “You’re in an awful lot of trouble, Mr. McBride. You know that?”

“Yeah,” I answered, “yeah, I guess I am at that.”

There was a bar right across the street from the building and it didn’t take much persuasion to steer her in and onto a stool set at right angles to the street. Her name was Carol Shay, she was twenty-six years old, had an apartment downtown someplace, a yearning to try her luck in the movies and a yen for one Manhattan after another.

After a half dozen of the things she got giggly and tugged on my sleeve until I turned around. “You’re not talking to me, Mr. McBride.”

“I was watching the office across the street. Thought maybe I’d have a chance to see my pals come out. It would’ve made good watching.”

She giggled again and sipped her Manhattan. “Oh, forget them. They’ll go down the back way.”

My ears picked up at that. “Why?”

“Keeps the car down there. All his private appointments come up that way.”

“Then what’s he got you for?”

She squealed into her glass and raked her nails across the back of my hand. “He likes to look at me. Besides, I’m dumb.” Her eyes came up and laughed into mine. “I really am,” she insisted.

I grinned back at her. Platinum head was dumb all right. Like a fox. For a hundred bucks a week she could afford to be as dumb as they come.

She said, “Why’d you hit Lenny? Did you really do like you said?”

“Uh-huh. A little guy too. His name was Eddie.”

“You did!” Her eyebrows were perfect parentheses, nearly reaching her hair. “That’s Eddie Packman.” Her voice went down to a lower register. “He’s worse than Lenny.”

“Swell. It’ll be more fun when we meet up again.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Nope, just mad. How long was Lenny in his office today?”

“All day.”

“Sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. He was in his office with the others since nine this morning. They even had their lunches sent up. Why?”

“Oh, nothing special. Somebody tried to bump me this morning and I was wondering if it could have been our boy.” I got another incredulous stare before she turned back to the bar. “He could have gone down that back way you mention,” I said.

“No. He was there. I had to call in for him often enough.”

I hooked my finger under her chin and pulled her head around. “Not that often. I bet there was at least an hour there when he never was near his phone. Right?”

“I... I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” I said, “all I want is enough to make it look like it could have been him. That’s enough reason for taking him apart.”

“I need a drink,” she said. “I hope to hell nobody sees me sitting here with you.”

So I got her another drink, watched her drink it and bought one more to keep it company. “What’s the score up there, Carol?”

I could see her fingers freeze around the glass. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Is that place the headquarters for everything that happens in this town?”

She took a long time before nodding her head.

“Like what?”

Her smile wasn’t so bright this time. It seemed a little sad and a little lost. “Look, feller, I’m dumb. I’m beautiful but dumb. If you want to play any games, keep them between you and Mr. Servo or Eddie Packman. I don’t know anything at all and I’m glad I don’t because if I did you’re just the kind of a guy who could put on an act I’d go for and make me put myself in a jam.”

“Like me?”

“You’re nice.”

“Say it better.”

She propped her chin in her hand and looked at me sleepily. “I like big guys. I like the ones who can come out on top and who don’t give a damn for anything. I like them smart and beefed up so they don’t have to wear any padding in their suits. I like mean faces and short haircuts. I could go for a guy who could slap Lenny Servo around and get away with it. The only trouble is they never live long enough for me to enjoy.”

“You tried it already?”

“That’s telling.”

“Your boss isn’t a good guy to kick the crap outa, huh?”

“Nope.”

I lit a butt and threw a shaft of smoke around the glass in front of me. “I hear he’s a ladies man.”

“Nuts. He’s a male nympho, whatever that is.”

“A saytr. Who’s his current?”

“Some hot number from upstate who knows that the best way to his heart isn’t through his stomach. He keeps her in nylons in his apartment.”

“Look,” I said, “what do you think will happen to me?”

A frown flitted across her face. “I... don’t know, really. Somebody...”

“Go on.”

“Things just happen, that’s all. Don’t ask me questions like that. If I were you I’d take the first train out of here.” Her fingers closed over mine. “Do me a favor... leave.”

“I like it here.”

The glass sat on the edge of her lip a moment, then tipped sharply as she drained it. The bartender came over and made her another one without asking. It was on the house. “You would,” she said, then knocked that drink off too. When she turned around her mouth was pulled down wryly. “Damn all big guys. Come on, take me home.”

When she got off the stool she almost went on her nose. I got her outside, whistled down a cab and shoved her in. By the time we reached her apartment she was all giggles and insisted on me seeing her to the door.

The only trouble was, she fell asleep in the elevator and I had to carry her from door to door looking for Shay on a nameplate until I found it, then fish out a key from the bottom of her handbag to get in.

It was a tricky little three-room apartment with the bedroom opening off one corner of the living room. I kicked the door open, dumped her on the bed and tossed her bag on the dresser.

I started to leave when she said plaintively, “You forgot to undress me.”

And there she was grinning at me, her eyes swimming through the blur of the Manhattans, but still very much awake.

“The zipper runs all the way down the back,” she said.

“I know. And there’s only one hook on the gimmick and your stockings are held up by adhesive tape.”

She giggled again and raised one leg up slowly. Her dress fell back as far as it could ever get until she was all nice bare skin and sheer nylon that sent fingers crawling up the back of my neck. “You’re so right,” she said. “Now unzip me.”

I stuck two cigarettes in my mouth, lit them and tossed one on the bed beside her. “Some other time.”

She sure knew how to pout. She let her leg fall and picked up the butt from the spread. “You’re mean.”

“Yeah, a real killer.” I grinned again and walked out.

She let me get as far as the front door. “If you want, you can come back here and hide from Lenny. Forever.”

Nice kid. Obliging.

“Maybe I will,” I called back. I stepped outside, tried the door to make sure it was locked and got in the elevator.

I was all the way down on the street when I remembered that I’d wanted to ask her if that peroxide didn’t sting like hell.

I expected an ultra-modern apartment house with a doorman. I got a six-story affair with self-service elevator. I expected a bronze doorknocker shaped like a roulette wheel. I got a brass push button. I expected a name embossed in gold and got a plain printed card in a metal frame.

I expected anybody to open the door but a sleepy-eyed vixen with flaming red hair who offered me a drink out of her glass before she said hello. I took the drink because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

When I finished half of it I handed it back. “You always answer the door like that?”

“I like to be naked,” she purred.

“Doesn’t anybody ever complain?”

She grinned at me as if I’d made a joke and finished the rest of the drink.

“You selling anything?”

“No, are you?”

“It’s sold,” she said. “You want Lenny, don’t you?”

“That’s right,” I lied.

“He isn’t here but you can come in and wait.”

She held the door open and closed it behind me. Now it was just what I had expected. Plush, Real plush. There was a room with books, a room with a bar, rooms with all the fineries of life and a special room with an oversized bed that was ready for use.

I looked at everything there was to see, but I had to quit sometime, and there she was, curled up in an overstuffed easy chair, naked as hell, watching me over the rim of a fresh drink. You don’t describe naked women when you walk right in and find them like that. They’re just naked, that’s all. They’re kind of white and soft and everything seems to be in motion all at once. Watch ’em for just a little while and all of a sudden you’re used to them and it’s over with. Then you can talk.

I said, “How long have you been around, Sis?”

“Oh, a long time. For years and years. Are you a cop?” Before I could answer she shook her head, making her hair ripple down her back. “No, you wouldn’t be a cop. A cop would never have come in. A friend?” Her head shook again. “That couldn’t be it either. A friend would know better than to come in. A reporter maybe? Nope, not a reporter or I should have been raped.” She giggled and sipped her drink, making a pretense of being serious. “You must be an enemy. That’s the answer.”

I lit a cigarette and waited until she put the drink down. She had to uncurl to reach the coffee table and did it with a lazy snaky motion. She leaned back in the chair and stretched, her breast taut, then pulled her stomach in and relaxed. “Do you know what Lenny’ll do to you if he finds you here?”

“No, tell me about it.”

Another insane giggle. “That would spoil the fun. No, I’ll wait. You can talk and look at me while we wait. All you want to.” She reached for the glass again, struggled to claw out an ice cube and held it while she sucked on it. “Now talk,” she said.

“Ever know a girl named Vera West?”

The ice cube dropped in her lap. She got it back after a frenzied search and frowned at me. “Lenny isn’t going to like you.”

“I don’t expect him to. What about it?”

“I heard of her.”

“Where is she?”

“Oh, she gone and I’m taking care of Lenny now. Who cares?”

“I care, Sis. Where is she?”

She tossed her head impatiently. “How would I know. She’s been gone so long nobody knows. One time she was here, then she was gone. Just like that. Besides, I don’t like her.”

“Why?”

“Lenny talks about her, that’s why. He gets drunk sometimes and calls me by her name and sometimes I hear him swearing at her in his sleep. As long as he’s swearing I don’t care, but I don’t like him calling me with her name.”

“What would happen if Lenny found her?”

“I know what would happen if I found her.”

She plopped the ice cube in her mouth, washed it around until it was melted then swallowed it. It must have made a cold track going down because she got gooseflesh all over. There was a lot of her to get gooseflesh. She shivered as if she liked it and reached out for another. This time she really stretched out for my benefit, making sure I didn’t miss anything. I think she was starting to get mad.

I said, “What would happen?”

Her tongue toyed with the ice cube. “I’d fix her so no man would ever want to look at her again. I’d fix her good. Someday I’ll find her. I think I know how, too.”

“You do? How?”

Something happened in her eyes. They started to match her hair. “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

“What do you want?”

“That’s a silly question.”

There was no doubt about her eyes. They were simmering coals waiting to be blown into life. They were half shielded by her lids so they looked lazy, but they weren’t. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen eyes like hers either.

I said. “Lenny’s nuts about you, isn’t he?”

“Certainly.” She dragged the word out. “Lenny’s oversexed too.”

I pushed up out of the chair. “Excuse me. Be right back.” She didn’t say anything so I walked through the room. It only took a couple minutes to find out what I wanted to find out. On the dresser in the bedroom was a small fortune in diamonds and a slightly smaller fortune in pearls was strung over the tap in the bathroom sink. Her pocketbook was on the telephone stand and there were C notes stuffed in it with a few fins like poor relations guarding the roll.

No place in the house was there even so much as a pair of lace panties.

Lenny was so nuts about his little chipmunk that he wasn’t taking any chances on her leaving the nest. The only way he could keep his nymph at home was to garnishee her clothes and I couldn’t think of a better way if I tried.

When I went back inside she wasn’t in the chair. She was stretched out on the couch with a cigarette in each hand daring me to come over and have a smoke. I took the dare. I reached for the cigarette but I wasn’t watching close enough. She twisted it and touched the hot tip to my hand and laughed when my mouth went tight.

To her it was fun. A very nice little chipmunk. She and Lenny must have had some great times together.

“You mentioned something about finding Vera West,” I reminded her.

“Vera? Oh... I did, didn’t I.”

I said, “Maybe I better ask Lenny like I came here to. When will he be back?”

She twisted on the couch, doing things that were supposed to make me forget what I came for. “Oh, not for hours and hours,” she grinned.

Those kind of games I could play too. It was an awful waste, but she was too naked to be exciting. She should have used a curtain or something. Anything. I flipped the lit butt and it landed right on her belly. Her eyes popped open wide and she doubled up with a curse. It was funnier than with the ice cube.

I laughed once and started off to the door. I looked back in case she was getting ready to throw something. A dame like that can go off the handle pretty hard.

Hell, she wasn’t even mad. She was grinning and her eyes were brighter than her hair. “I have some mean things I’m going to do to you for that,” she said. The pause between her words slowed me down. “When you come back,” she added softly.

I pushed the button and waited for the elevator to come back up. My reflection was grinning at me in the black glass window of the door. Nice having a couple of red hots throw themselves at you in the same half hour. Some town, this Lyncastle.

The super had his apartment in the back of the building. He was short, bald and toothless, but the thousands of ash barrels he had hefted gave him arms like kegs. Before I said anything I held up a ten-spot and let him look at it.

He liked it.

He showed me his gums and picked it out of my fingers. “Come on in.”

When he picked a couple of dirty undershirts off the chairs in the living room he nodded for me to sit down. He squatted across the room from me still playing with the bill. “So you’re nosing for news. Who of? Servo? The whores on the top floor?”

“You catch on quick, don’t you?”

“Nah. Them’s the only two in the place anybody’d pay for news of.”

“Who else has been asking?”

“You a cop?”

“Nope.”

“Reporter?”

“Nobody that counts. I just want information”

“Okay. The whores pay off to the cops. They send people around to ask how business is. It’s good, they pay steeper, you know?”

“And Servo?”

He let out a gummy chuckle. “Ever hear of honest cops? We got some here. Guy by the name of Lindsey.”

“I know him,” I said.

“So he keeps after Servo. Likes to know who his contacts is, you know?”

“Yeah, Who are they?”

“For ten bucks I should stick my neck out? Mister, for a hunnert I don’t even know nuthin’. For five maybe I could scare up something.”

“If you’re dead you can’t spend five hundred any better than ten.”

His eyes glittered at me. “No, but with five I could clear outa this trap. Me fer the country, see? Can’t make no dough around here.”

“Got anything worth five hundred?”

The glitter disappeared and he shook his head. “Well, I ain’t even got anythin’ worth ten. I’m only kidding myself. It’s a long time since I seen any company and I felt like talking, you know?”

I leaned back in the chair and stretched out my legs. Time wasn’t that important. Talk, that was what I wanted. Small talk. Big talk. After five years talk was all you had to go by anyway. I said, “How long has Servo been here?”

The guy seemed to relax somewhere. Maybe he felt the way I felt and knew how interesting the subject was. “Oh, he been here almost ever since he came. Spent a fortune getting his place redecorated. You oughta see the chippy he got up there.”

“I did.”

I saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. He leaned forward in his chair tensely. “Yeah... how was she?”

“Bare. She wanted to play. I didn’t.”

He swallowed again. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Cripes, what a dame! I go up there to fix a tap and she don’t have nothin’ on. You know what she did? I start uncorking the nut and alla time she’s talking to me sexy so my hands can hardly hold that damn wrench, then when I’m not looking she grabs a ball-peen hammer outo my kit and...”

“What about his other women?”

His eyes lost their glaze. He stared at me, blinked and sat back, chewing on his lip. “He always got good lookers.”

“Remember any of ’em?”

“Sure. Remember ’em all. This one is best.”

I shook out another butt and lit it, thinking through the smoke. “A long time ago he had one named Vera West. Remember her?” When he didn’t answer right away I said, “Well?”

He was flexing the muscles in his arms, his face tight. “Mac,” he told me slowly, “I don’t know you from nobody, but she’s one dame I don’t talk about.”

I didn’t waste time offering him another bill. I just kept it friendly and said, “Don’t blame you. She was okay. I don’t want that kind of dope about her.”

“Yer damn right she was okay. So she was always plenty high. She was one of them party girls or something, but even a looker gotta live. She was still okay and knocked Servo off’n his high horse plenty. Hell, I heard him plenty of times tryin’ to get her to shack up there. She gives him the business. Lenny, he likes the treatment so he keeps her around. Maybe he gets tired of the easy stuff. But like I said, she was okay. Time I got clipped by the car she gimme a transfusion. Hardly knew me at all, but she gimme blood.”

“She’s disappeared.”

“So I hear,” he said sourly. “I hope she had sense to get a roll together and blow this dump. That’s what she did, I think.”

I let another trailer of smoke drift toward the ceiling. “Servo didn’t like that, huh?”

“He was pretty burned about it. Hell, he got another one in fast enough. They last awhile then he kicks ’em out. That redhead upstairs must be pretty good. She’s sticking around. She got a temper, that one. Oughta hear her work Lenny over. She makes him jump.”

“What she’s got anybody’d jump for,” I said.

“Not that kind of jump, pally. She’s boss up there. Like a wife, you know?”

“Happens after awhile,” I said. I got up, stretched and stubbed my butt out in an ash tray. “Maybe I’ll drop in again sometime. If you think you have anything worth five hundred bucks, keep it under your hat until I see you.”

“Sure.” He walked me as far as the door and opened it. “There was a fight up there last night,” he said.

I stopped and looked down at him. “The dame?”

“No. Him and some other guy. They tried to keep it quiet, but I heard ’em. I was up on the roof.”

“What went on?”

“Beats me. He got air-conditioning and all the windows stays closed. I heard ’em yelling at each other, but I couldn’t catch none of it. They was plenty sore.”

“Know who it was?”

“Just know one was Servo. He did most of the yelling.”

“Oh.” I thought it over, tacked it down in the facts-to-be-remembered department and thanked the guy. He gave me another gummy grin and let me out.

For a while I stood outside the building looking at the long slanting shadows on the street. I finished a cigarette and had another, but they didn’t do much good. I tried to think, to figure angles, to put things together, but nothing clicked in place.

Try walking in a town sometime. Try picking up pieces that are five years old. Try finding a girl named Vera West without tipping your hand to the whole population, I thought.

So far it had been great. I got beat up, shot at, slapped a hood around and almost seduced. It hadn’t been a bad beginning. At least I knew how important I was.

Or the real Johnny.

He was so damned important he either had to be run out of town or killed quick. But why? Damn it, why run him out of town, if he could have been bumped to start with? That much was clear. It was better to have him run for it than dead. But why, damn it, why?

Did he run from Minnow’s murder or the two hundred grand? Either one was a good excuse, but which one.

I threw the butt in the gutter and walked down the street. Maybe it would have been better if I had stayed with old gummy. At least the guy had wanted to talk. If I had talked it out maybe I could have thought of something.

I turned in at a drugstore and went back to the phone booth. I tried to call Logan and couldn’t get him. The next nickel got me the bus station and Nick. He got all jumpy again when I told him it was me.

He said, “What’re you doing? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m trying to think. You got any time to spare?”

“Sure, plenty. Nothing’s due in for an hour. You had me pretty worried, boy. Wendy called and said you wouldn’t stay at her place.”

“How is blondie?”

“Fine. She sure was sore at you.”

“Too bad.” Then I thought of it. I said, “I’m coming down to the station. How about calling her for me. Think she’d come?”

“Yeah...” he slowed up a bit and added, “sure, she won’t be leaving for Louie’s for a while.”

Now I had something to do. It was something I could chew on while a cab hauled me down to the station. I could pass it around in my mind and it made better sense each time. Nick and Blondie. They were right there on the end of the receiving line when I came to town. The very front end. They said hello and patted me on the back. They played it sweet and low and not long after somebody was pumping a slug in my direction.

The cabbie skidded his wheels in the gravel outside the station, marked something on a report sheet and held his hand out. I put a buck in it and climbed out.

Both of them were inside the office. The window was closed, the little radio was blaring away and there was a steaming container of coffee on the table. Nick shut the door behind me, locked it and pumped my hand.

And over by the wall there was Wendy. Blondie. Beautiful blonde Wendy with the lovely legs and round hillocks that tried to peek out of the dress. She was a good-looking twist if you didn’t get too close. She was smiling and shrugging out of a light trench coat and the motion shoved her breasts out for inspection. It didn’t take a second look to see that if she had anything on under the white blouse it must have been painted on with a brush. The skirt part of the ensemble was too tight around the hips, but it was designed that way. There was the suggestion of a rumba in every motion she made and for good measure a slit ran up the side seam to let the flash of nylon show through, and if you looked hard enough the slippery sheen of skin above where the nylon ended.

She threw the coat over the back of a chair and sat down. Nick did too.

Not me.

I stood there with my back against the door looking at the two of them and my face must have made a picture of everything that went on in my mind. Wendy’s lips moved as if to say something, but Nick cut her off. He frowned at me: “What’s wrong with you? I...”

My mouth pulled tight in the corners. “Did I ever tell you what was going to happen to three people?” They looked at each other wonderingly, then back to me. “One’s going to die,” I said. “One’s going to get his arms broken. The other one is going to get the hell kicked out of her.”

Wendy’s fingers locked on the arms of the chair. She was half up and her eyes were a nasty blaze. Like a fast fuse. “Say it,” she snapped out.

“I got shot at.”

Pop let out a startled grunt. “Johnny...”

“Shut up. I’ll get to you.”

Wendy was a sharp little cooky. She caught wise in a hurry. So she had nice legs and a nicer bosom, but she wasn’t drawing any admiration from my side of the room at all. I looked at her and looked at her, trying to decide if a sweet dish like her could bump a guy and decided she could. I said, “Where you been all day?”

“Why?”

“Answer me.”

The eyes got brighter if anything. “Don’t be so damned domineering. I don’t like tough guys... if you’re a tough guy.”

“I’m tough enough. You can find that out if you want to. Some other people already did.”

The corners of her mouth looked strained. “So now you think one of us shot at you?”

“Maybe, sugar, maybe. It’s pretty simple when you think of it. Who else knew I was in town? I can rattle them off on my hand if you want. Nick here. You. Lindsey. Tucker. Maybe I should throw in the bellboys at the hotel and the taxi driver.” My eyes closed down on themselves and I watched her face. “It even gets simpler. Lindsey or Tucker wouldn’t have missed.

Nick couldn’t see that far. The bellboys and hack jockey weren’t important enough to try a stunt like that. That leaves you. Funny, isn’t it?”

I smiled at her.

She didn’t smile back. The white lines at each end of her mouth faded. For the first time it grew soft and pretty and if I didn’t know better I would have thought she was feeling sorry for me.

She said, “At a quarter to nine the mailman awakened me. I had to sign for a registered letter. You can check on that. About twenty minutes later the milkman got me up again and I paid my bill. His name is Jerry Wyndot and you can reach him at Lyncastle Dairy. Before he left Louie drove by with my new costume and stayed until noon. He had a friend with him from ASCAP. Then at...”

“That’s enough,” I said. I felt a little foolish. I went over to the table and reached for the coffee. When I took a good pull I set it down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Nick was shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, kid. I never make little mistakes, only big ones.”

Her eyes came up to mine and the fire was out of them. “That’s all right, Johnny, I understand.” The little smile she gave me said she meant it, too.

I laugh when I feel good. Hell, I felt good! When do you meet a dame that lets you throw an attempted murder in her teeth and then understands why without being sore about it for a week?

I laughed, Nick thought I was nuts, but Wendy, she laughed too. In a way it was a pretty good joke. I parked on Nick’s window stool and passed the butts around. “I get in trouble a lot that way,” I told them.

Nick agreed readily. “You’ll get in too much to get out of if you do that to the wrong people. Maybe now you’re ready to say what you came to say.”

“I didn’t come to say, Nick. Ask is the word. I’m stuck. What do I do now?”

Wendy pulled on her cigarette.“Stuck for what?”

“Ideas. Information. I can’t go to the cops and nobody else knows anything. Lindsey has a murder charge written out with my name on it and he can’t serve it. Someday he’s going to find a way to do it, but before then I have to get clear of the thing. Unless I do I can’t make a play without sticking my neck out.”

Nick slid his chair closer to the table and propped his elbows on it. “You tell us, Johnny. Shucks, I know plenty of people I can go to. What’s it you need?”

Things I never even thought about before started popping in my head. “I don’t like the way Minnow died. He was sitting there and bang, just like that he caught it. Neat. Clean. No fuss. And there I was with a beautiful tailor-made motive for bumping him.”

“The gun,” Wendy said quickly. Her eyes sprayed me with a cool glance. Nick looked at my hands automatically and waited to hear what I had to say about it.

“Yeah, the gun,” I repeated. The big question. Lindsey asked it. Wendy asked it. Inside, I was asking it myself. “I wonder what Minnow was doing there that night.”

“The papers said he was working,” Nick muttered. “It was his office.”

“It was pretty late, too.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Back to what I said first. I didn’t like the way he died. He should have been out of his chair on the floor or something. If he was surprised in the office by the killer, especially me, he would have tried to make one move, at least.”

Nick pulled at his whiskers. “You got medals for shooting quick and fast in the army, Johnny.” There wasn’t any hedging about him at all.

“Not that fast,” I said. “I like it better to think that the killer was there all the time. Maybe Minnow even went there to meet him. What about that?”

They said it together. “Maybe.” They meant me. It was getting rougher.

“How can I find out?”

Wendy crossed one leg over the other. White, slippery white above nylon showed through the slit in the skirt. “Minnow left a widow. She might know.”

“Know where she lives?”

“I can find out.”

I got down off the stool. “Come on, then. Let’s find out.”

She lived in a white frame house in the suburbs. It was a quiet neighborhood and all the houses had plenty of lawn space around them. There were swings out in the back and kids playing on the lawns and people gathered in hammocks on open porches. The house we wanted had a fence around it, a bird house on a pole and a rustic sign that said “Minnow.”

I opened the gate and let Wendy go in ahead of me. She went up on the porch, rang the bell and smiled at me while we waited. The door opened and a woman in her fifties said, “Hello, can I do something for you?”

“Mrs. Minnow?”

She nodded at Wendy. “That’s right.”

It was hard trying to find the right words. I stepped forward and said, “If you have a few minutes, we’d like to talk to you. It’s pretty important.”

She held the door open wide. “Certainly, come right in. Make yourselves at home.” We stepped inside and followed her into the living room. It was a nice room that told you that whoever lived there liked things orderly and in good taste. Wendy and I sat together on the couch while the woman settled herself. She smiled again and waited.

“It’s about your... husband,” I started.

At one time it might have startled her. Not now. She sat there relaxed, but there was a question in her face.

“My name is Johnny McBride.”

“I know.”

Wendy and I stared at her.

“I couldn’t very well forget your face, could I?”

“You don’t seem very excited about it.”

“Should I be?”

“I was supposed to have killed your husband.”

“Did you?” Cripes! She was more like my mother waiting to hear why I got a low grade at school.

I said, “No.”

“Then why should I be excited?”

The pitch was too fast for me. I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

“I never thought you shot my husband either,” she said.

Wendy’s fingernails made a sharp click in the silence. She was staring at the woman, shot me a glance out of the corner of her eyes and went back to picking at her nails.

I came out of it. “Let’s do it over again, Mrs. Minnow. I’m still in the fog. If you thought I didn’t do it then why not go to the police?”

“Mr. McBride, by the time I came to that conclusion the police had already made their decision. In all fairness to Captain Lindsey, let me say that I did tell him what I thought but he didn’t consider it reasonable. Since I spoke to him I’ve gone over the matter carefully enough to be sure I’m right. I’ve been waiting.”

“For what?”

“You. A man never stays away from murder. Not if he didn’t do it.”

“Thanks. Or do I remind you about the fingerprints on the gun?”

Her smile was a tight knowing thing. “That’s something for you to figure out, young man.”

“Great. With a detail like that in the picture how’d you figure me innocent?”

She leaned back in her chair with something like a sigh. “Bob and I were married a long time. Did you know he was a police officer in New York before he took up law? Well, he was. A good one too. A better one after he was made District Attorney. Bob never put too much store in details. He was more interested in motive.” Her eyes passed over mine. “The motive behind his death wasn’t revenge.”

“What was it then?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

“The night he died... why’d he go to his office?”

“I’ll have to go back a way to explain that. He told me that one day a girl came to his office. She was frightened and left a letter with him that wasn’t to be opened unless she died. That may seem unusual, but it isn’t. He had several requests like that every year. However, he forgot to put it in his office safe and brought it home with him. That night he put it in his safe upstairs and forgot about it.

“Several months later he came home quite worried and asked me about the letter. I reminded him where he had put it and he seemed satisfied. That evening when I brought his tea to his room upstairs he was sitting in front of the safe quite preoccupied and I saw him take the letter out of one of the compartments, stare at it a moment, then put it back.

“Two nights later he had a call from New York. It seemed to excite him and I heard him mention the word ‘verification’ several times. He went upstairs and I heard him open that safe. When he came back down he put on his hat and coat, left the house for a good two hours, came back, went to his safe again and stayed in his room working on some papers. A few minutes later he had a call from his office, told me he had to leave and went out. I never saw him again. He was killed that night.”

“Who called him?”

“An officer named Tucker.”

My hands knotted into fists. “Why?”

“A special delivery letter came for Bob. He wanted to know if he should hold it or deliver it to him at the house here. Bob told him he’d come down and get it.”

Damn, damn, damn. I was all ready to catch the big bite and it had to turn out simple. Tucker, the bastard! I said, “Lindsey checked on all this?”

“Oh, yes indeed.”

She was waiting for me to ask the next question. It was right there ready to be asked so I did. “What happened to the letter?”

“I don’t know. When I went over his effects the safe was open and I noticed that it wasn’t where I had seen it before. Captain Lindsey showed me all that were in Bob’s office, but since it was nothing but a plain white envelope I couldn’t help out.”

“You think he died because of that letter?”

“Among other things. It was fortunate for a lot of people that he died.”

“Servo?”

She nodded.

“Me?”

She smiled and nodded again.

“A whole crooked setup in a whole crooked town?”

The smile also got a little crooked, but she nodded.

I said, “The motive could have been a lot of things then?”

“Anything except sudden revenge. That was too easy.”

“I thought so too,” I told her. She raised her eyebrows a trifle and her mouth made a funny arc. Something made her face look a little bit happy when it wasn’t the time and place to be happy. She looked at me like a mother who knew her kid was telling a lie but waiting for him to say so first.

It made me uncomfortable as hell so I stood up and nudged Wendy. “Thanks, Mrs. Minnow. It’s been a help.”

“I’m glad. If there’s anything else, you let me know. I’m in the phone book.”

She took us to the door and said good-by. I could feel her watch us all the way down the walk to Wendy’s car and even after we headed back to town. For a few minutes I didn’t say anything. I just let it go through my head and find a place to settle down. When it was put where I’d never forget it I said, “What do you think?”

“Strange woman.” She kept her eyes on the road. “I wonder how I’d feel if I were she.”

“She isn’t stupid.”

“No, she seems quite convinced.”

“What about you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not particularly.”

She stopped for a red light, tapped her fingers against the wheel until it changed and eased back in gear again. “I’m not so sure,” she said.

I let it go at that. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to me what anybody thought about what as long as they didn’t try to stop me. I sat back and folded my arms, still thinking about the letter. The street we were on intersected the main drag and down a half a mile or so Lyncastle was making the night look like an oversize pinball machine.

The car swung into the curb and stopped. Wendy said, “I’ll let you out here. I have to pick up my clothes and get out to Louie’s.”

“Can’t you take me downtown?”

“I’m in an awful hurry, Johnny.”

I grinned at her. “Okay, working girl. Thanks for the lift.” I opened the door and shoved my legs out.

Her hand hooked under my arm and she stopped me. When I looked at her she had that same expression the Minnow woman had. “Johnny... in your own way you’re a nice guy. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do.”

“And, Johnny... I’m... pretty sure.” She wrinkled her nose like a little kid and a laugh parted her lips.

I leaned over. I let her have plenty of time to see what she was getting. Only this time I didn’t have to pull her across the seat. She met me halfway and her mouth had a tingling warmth to it as it tasted mine.

She pouted when I stopped and threw me a kiss when I waved so long. I watched her drive out of sight, hopped a cab for town and got off in the middle of what the cab driver said was the hottest spot in the good old U. S. A.