“That’s an idea,” he rumbled, almost smiling again. “Well, so long, son. See you in jail.”
When he was gone, I nipped at the soda bottle and lit another cigarette. I sat on the bed for a long time, trying to think and, as usual, getting nowhere with it. What little daylight there had been in the air shaft disappeared completely. The rise and fall of voices, the radios, the smell of grease and badly cooked foods, the fights, the snores, the whispers, the clatter and the characters wrestling silently, like me, all went on. I gave it up, finally, tucked the thirty-two into my belt, kicked my suitcases under the bed and went out to eat.
It was the quiet time of evening, when dinners have not yet been finished, when only the floaters move in the streets like shadows, before the beginning of the rush to neighborhood movies and the scramble to grab a stool in the corner saloon. I drifted along Fountain to Vermont. There was a food sign to the north, in the middle of the block. A drugstore, cater-cornered across the intersection, had an outside book rack. I was over there, standing in front of the books, when a Chronicle truck dumped off the late edition.
My name jumped at me from the headlines.
I snaked the top paper out of the bundle and scuttled back across the street. In the dimmest booth the hash joint had, I gobbled up the details.
The police had my gun. They didn’t know how it, accompanied by my name and address typed on a plain white card, had gotten to the homicide bureau at headquarters, but a man had been detailed to find out. The rest of the force was combing the town for me.
The news photo did not look like me. It was poorly printed and showed solid, well-fed jowls. It had been taken when I first entered the detective business, a long time ago. That didn’t make me feel any better, because there were dicks, and even harness bulls, in town who knew me by sight.
There was still no mention of Gail Tremaine, no hint that Costain had met his death outside of a disguised and secluded gambling casino in the valley, no suspicion that he might have been the victim of some of the mobsters he defended — or doublecrossed — in court. I seemed to be the only new development. A slug from the mystery gun had been checked against the one they had taken from the corpse. The slugs matched. So the killer was a thick-skulled private investigator with a bad set of nerves named John Aloysius Dillon. The heat was on.
A buck-toothed waitress hovered over me. I snapped the paper shut. She gave me the peeved eye, as if I had as much as accused her of picking my pocket. I didn’t see a badge on her anywhere. I breathed again and ordered the deluxe dinner. She flounced away.
None of the customers on the counter stools looked like cops. No eyes peered through the front window at me. It took all the will power I had not to sneak a glance under the table.
I got out a cigarette and started tapping down the tobacco in it. On the third tap, I missed the edge of the table with it and it slipped through my fingers and fell on the floor. I got out another one and finally lit it without tamping it down.
There was a phone on the wall, just behind the booth I was in. I pulled my hat down over my face and hunched out of the booth. I pawed through the book, feeling fairly certain that the Blue Valley Inn would not be listed. It wasn’t, so I looked for Duke Mazonik’s home number, found it, dialed it, and, for a wonder, he was in.
“Hi, John,” he yawned. “What time is it?”
“Going on seven,” I breathed. I had a hand around the mouthpiece and spoke with my lips close to the hand. “Read the papers?”
“About Costain?” His tone sharpened. “Yeah, this morning, before I went to bed. Geez, what a mess. Tony is scared stiff. Me, too.”
“What do you mean, Tony is scared stiff?” I hissed.
“Quite a story,” he said. “Tell you when I see you.”
“Tonight’s papers say the cops know who did it,” I said.
“I’m damned,” he grunted. “Was it the D.A. or the Mayor?”
“It isn’t funny,” I growled. “They think I did it.”
“You?” His voice exploded against my eardrum. “No.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what it says in tonight’s papers.”
Silence. Then: “Where are you, John? In the clink?”
“Cut the kidding,” I snarled. “It’s not a damn bit funny.”
“I ain’t kidding, boy. You didn’t really do it, did you?”
“Hell, no. Have you got any friends downtown you can trust?”
“Geez, I dunno, boy. There’s some as figure I kind of let the department down when I quit. Why?”
“I’m in a jam. I need help. The smart thing would be to turn myself in. I’d do it, if I wasn’t afraid of being railroaded to death. You know yourself what they do to guys in my racket, whenever they get a chance.”
“Uh-huh. Geez, I dunno. You ain’t in jail yet, then, huh?”
“No.”
“Where?”
I bit a knuckle of the hand I had cupped around the phone and looked along the sides of my eyes. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to me. The buck-toothed waitress was at the cash register, up near the front window, making change for a tall stoop-shouldered guy in greasy overalls. The cook was lifting a basket of french fried potatoes out of the hot grease vat with one hand and mopping sweat off his face with the other. The rest of the customers were chin deep in food. I read the white painted letters on the front window: EFAC ETILE.
“Elite Cafe,” I said, into the phone. “Vermont just north of Fountain, west side of the street. Meet you here?”
“Well, I just woke up,” he said, hesitantly. “I gotta be to work in a couple of hours. I... well, hell, sure, I’ll be there in half an hour. O.K.?”
“I just ordered dinner,” I said. “Look under the back table.”
“Sure, John. Don’t create no disturbance. Just sit tight.”
“Like I was part of the decorations,” I agreed. “See you.”
I hung up and slid back into the booth and in a minute the waitress came with some pinkish water with grease globs floating on it. She set the bowl in front of me and said: “Drink?”
“Now and then,” I grunted. “I mean, coffee. Got beer?”
“Listen, mister,” she said. “You ain’t stewed are you?”
“Who, me? No,” I said.
“No drunks in here, see?”
“Sure not. I’m O.K.”
“You got a breath on you.”
“Wine. Doctor’s orders.”
She sniffed sourly and went away.
I chased the lone piece of tomato around in the greasy pink water and captured it and ate it. It went down all right and stayed down, but I pushed the bowl away from me.
The dinner came and coffee with it.
I fooled with the food and ate a little of it and smoked while I ate. After the fourth of fifth mouthful, my stomach began to feel as if it was full of bird shot. I pushed the plate away and smoked and finished the coffee.
I had the Costain murder story pretty well memorized and was on the ninth or tenth cigarette when the table creaked and Duke Mazonik squeezed into the other side of the booth. He wasn’t smiling.
“I got a paper on the way,” he said. “Boy, are you in a jam.”
“I’ve been in jams before,” I said. “There must be some smart move I could make, but I just can’t think of it.”
He shook his head, from side to side, slowly, without taking his eyes off mine. He pulled a newspaper out of his side coat pocket and laid it on the table and squirmed uncomfortably, as if the booth was too tight a fit for him. I felt the same way.
“What’s your story?” he asked heavily.
I gave it to him. I told it as briefly as I could, without leaving out any of the details. In the middle of it, Buck Tooth spotted him and came over. He ordered black coffee. She brought the coffee and went away. I went on talking. He massaged his jaw with a big hand while he listened, rubbed his nose with the back of it when I had finished, squinted at me and scratched his left ear.