“I thought maybe you were the man. You don’t deny owning the Silver Dollar, do you?”
Westfall laughed. “Of course not! I’m the man higher-up that the Reform Committee is always trying to get something on. Yet I’ve never denied ownership of any property they said I owned. Why should I?”
I thought about the set-up with the local cops and said I didn’t see any real reason why he should. None of Westfall’s gambling places had been running for a day, and apparently he had resigned himself to keeping them that way for several months. I thought the Reform Committee was a little late in filing its complaints with Keever’s office — I’d been sent to Midtown to lock the stable door after the horse had been stolen.
“This thing has really got me upset,” Westfall conceded. “I don’t like the kind of publicity it makes. I don’t force people to come into the Silver Dollar or any place like it. And I don’t like to see people who can’t afford to lose. This Ditson was strictly a fool. What’s worse, he’s a welsher. It isn’t him I care about — that Brown girl was a swell little kid. She used to come into the Silver Dollar and drop a little dough — quite a little dough, in fact. But she had more of it than she knew what to do with. Yes, Corbett, she was all right in every way.”
“It was all so unnecessary. I can’t understand why a smart operator like you wouldn’t have taken care of Ditson before he dived. It doesn’t make sense.”
Westfall’s face hardened.
“I sent two of my boys with thirty grand to the Maramoor not forty-five minutes before Ditson jumped. I haven’t seen either of them since.”
“You’re not kidding?” He just looked at me, and I didn’t repeat the question. “All right, I believe you. So the guys went south with your dough. So you should give me their names and description so I can find them.”
Westfall laughed. “Oh, I’ll find them, all right.” He laughed again, but I didn’t. His two muggs wouldn’t have laughed either, if they had seen the look in Westfall’s eyes.
“Of course Westfall’s lying,” Keever said over the long-distance phone. “I’m amazed at you, Ben. You should know better than to believe a crook like Westfall. He never sent any thirty thousand over to the Maramoor or even five. He’s taking you for a ride.”
I didn’t argue. Keever always knew all the answers. He had all of his knowledge of human nature summed up in a few rules of thumb. It was so much easier than admitting that no two human beings are completely alike, and that none of them is completely predictable.
Westfall was a racketeer in Keever’s eyes, and that meant nothing he said could be believed. There was no use arguing, so I didn’t.
“Well, what do you want me to do? You sent me up here to bust up the gambling in Midtown, and now that I’m here, it’s already busted up. You want me to come back to Capital City?”
Keever’s inner explosion sounded over the phone.
“What am I paying you for? Don’t you knew Westfall and all those other rats will open up again unless you nail somebody to the cross? I want some indictments! Get the chief of police! Get the sheriff! Get the district attorney! They’ve all had their hands out, and I want them all indicted!”
“Do you mind if I have dinner first, or do you want all that done before eight o’clock?”
Keever hung up. I hung up. I thought it would be a good idea to drink dinner instead of eating it. I’d just considered a half-dozen pros and a few cons when there was a rap on my door. My door bore the number 1231. You guessed it. I’d checked in at the Maramoor a couple of doors down from Ditson’s room, 1229. I had a nice view of the asphalt, and I couldn’t look at it without thinking of Ditson. Other people seemed to have remembered, too. There weren’t any parked cars in the reserved space down there.
“Are you sure,” I asked the girl in my doorway, “that you haven’t made some mistake? You can’t want to see me because you don’t know me. I don’t even know who gave you my name.”
“But I do know you, Mr. Corbett, at least by reputation. You see, I’m Mary Ditson.”
“Oh.” I remembered reading that Ditson had had a daughter. Her picture hadn’t been in the papers, so I made her open up her handbag and shell out sufficient identification.
“I’d have gotten around to you sooner or later,” I told her, stepping aside to let her in. “You’re stopping here at the Maramoor?”
She gave me lifted eyebrows. “But how could I? I can’t pay five dollars a day for a room. No, I’m staying in a little hotel on the edge of the business section, the Broadhurst.”
“Short on cash, huh?”
“Very much so. I have a little money saved up, but it won’t last if I have to stay here much longer. They won’t release my father’s body.”
“Oh.” I thought about how quick Hinchman had been to let go of Sheila Brown. It couldn’t serve any purpose to keep Ditson in the cooler. Doc Barrett had found out everything he possibly could, even if they sealed the body in a time capsule. But red tape only gets tangled around people without the influence to cut it.
“That’s why I wanted to see you, Mr. Corbett. You’re not connected with these local authorities, and I thought maybe you could do something about the body.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, I wanted to tell you how much I wanted you to get the man who robbed my father. I suppose you know who it was — Spain Westfall.”
“Sure. I just talked to him. He admitted your father dropped the thirty thousand at the Silver Dollar, that is, he did by implication. He says, too, that he’d sent a couple of men with that much money to pay him off.”
Mary Ditson’s eyes widened. “But that’s a lie! Dad never got the money! If he had, he wouldn’t have jumped.”
“Sounds logical. Westfall thinks his boys took a powder with the thirty grand. After all, that’s booty in any man’s language.”
“I don’t believe he did! He wouldn’t give that much money back!”
“Well, I don’t know. But I do know how you can collect the thirty thousand.”
This time her eyes got even wider.
“How?”
“The easiest way would be to ask for it. Westfall realizes the heat’s on. He can’t stand having his victim’s daughter in Midtown crying her eyes out and telling her troubles to the papers. He can’t possibly shush this thing up until he’s squared your beef. And he knows you can collect legally, for you’re the only next of kin.”
This time she eyed me a little suspiciously.
“You know that to be true? Are you a lawyer?”
“I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve had to associate with lawyers so long that I’ve picked up a little law. You’ve got a legal claim, but before you give half of it away in attorney fees, you’d better try on your own hook. Suppose you call up Westfall and make an appointment. He’ll do you no harm. He wouldn’t dare disturb a hair on your lovely head.”
She actually blushed. I went over to the phone and had the operator try to get me Westfall. She couldn’t. Nobody seemed to know where Westfall was.
“Well, you can get him tomorrow morning. Do that.”
“All right, I will. But I never thought I could bring myself to look at him.”
“You could afford to ogle the Devil himself for thirty grand. My guess is Westfall will hand it to you on a silver platter.”
“Well, I’m glad I came to see you.”
“Who told you you’d find me here?”
“Captain Hinchman. I think he wanted to get rid of me.”
“Then he was nuts. Suppose I pick you up for dinner at eight?”
She blushed again and said she thought that would be all right. I hoped I’d make it. It was six-thirty then. I found Carl Bronson’s name in the phone book and got a call in to his house.