“Maybe, but I won’t,” I told him. “Tell me more.”
“Well, Ernest Doane is an off-shoot of this family. He’s honest. He married his first wife years ago and they had a daughter. His first wife was the kind who played, I guess. Anyway he kicked her out and there was a divorce. Then he married again — Lila’s mother, who died soon after Lila was born. Far as I know this tendency toward mayhem and assorted evils hasn’t been passed on to Lila.”
“The first wife and daughter,” I mused. “Now would there be anything in it for them if the Doane family was cursed or something?”
“Might be. I wouldn’t know. The only other member of the family is Kate Bradford, a beagle-eyed, hatchet-faced spinster who is a head nurse at Community Hospital. I understand the nurses regard her with affection — the same kind they have for rattlesnakes.”
I put down my empty glass. “Thanks, anyway. I’m going to see Freddie Ogden. I owe him an explanation for the set-up in front of the night club anyway.”
“Keep out of Westover’s way,” Sedley warned. “If you. get tied up with with Cooney kill, I’ll alibi you. You were doing some work for me tonight.”
That was the kind of guy Sedley was. They came better, but way up in the sky, not here on earth. I walked to the bus stand and rode back to town. There I transferred to the subway and rattled my way down to where Freddie Ogden lived.
The kid had one room in a modest hotel. He put on a bigger front than he should, but that was his business. Mine was murder and he could help me — I hoped.
Freddie wasn’t in, so I hung around the lobby and got myself spotted by the hotel dick in about three minutes. He kept his eyes on me and just about the time Freddie sauntered in, the hotel dick was ready to run me off the premises. All he’d have had to do was whisper it and I’d have taken a powder. Guys on parole don’t fight — not even with a hotel snoop.
I went to Freddie’s room with him and had some more drinks. Freddie listened while I explained. He began shaking his head from side to side before I was through.
“Honest, Rick, I don’t get it. In the first place you seem to think you embarrassed Lila and me. That isn’t true. Neither of us gives a hang what others think. I’m an ex-con on a bum rap maybe — but still I wore numbers and I don’t give a damn who knows it. Lila feels the same way.”
“But there has to be something,” I said. “After all, a man was murdered tonight. The only reason was because he knew too much. About what? That’s what I want to know.”
“I can’t help you,” Freddie said. “But I’m getting scared. Why should anybody be trying to upset me?”
“Talk about the rap that drew you a prison term,” I suggested. “Might be something there.”
“Couldn’t be, Rick. Lila and I had been attending a dinner dance at a golf club. I got myself nice and plastered, as I usually did in those days. Lila and I had a fight about it and I went off in a huff, driving my own car. Last I could recall, the booze was getting me good. I kept falling over the wheel. When I woke up, there were half a dozen state troopers around me. Seems I hit a man walking alongside the road, kept going and then passed out.”
“There was no question about what happened?”
“Not so far as I’m concerned. I recall weaving the car. If I hit anything, I didn’t know it. There are vague recollections of pulling up because I was afraid of getting killed — and then the cops.”
“Nice and pat,” I said without much assurance. “The kind of an accident that can be rigged best. I’m not saying it was rigged, but it could have been. Freddie, are you in the chips?”
“I can scrape up a hundred if you need it,” he told me.
“No, no. I don’t mean that. I’m working and everything is fine. What I refer to is motive. If there is no reason to put you on a spot, then what I was hired to do was aimed at Lila and her family.”
“But why?” Freddie wanted to know.
So did I and I told him so. I also asked him about Lila’s half sister. Her name, according to Freddie, was June. She worked in a night club. Her mother was a nurse and lived on her income from that and what old man Doane sent her. At least he stuck by one of his marriage vows. She was never in want.
I put the bottle down. “We’re getting nowhere, Freddie. And I can’t make a move. If I go to see Doane’s first wife, or her daughter, one or both is apt to call the cops and that’ll put me right back where both of us want to stay away from. Incidentally, you were in a cafe tonight. How come?”
“I’m not on parole,” Freddie grinned. “I served my maximum. Got into a mess with a con named Hazy and I slugged him. That was just before my name was coming up for parole and it didn’t come up.”
“Believe me,” I said, “serving the rest of your time was worth it. A guy on parole has both legs cut off and both hands in a vise. Freddie, I’ve got to talk to Lila and her father.”
“O.K., Rick. We’ll both go to the house tomorrow night.”
“Two ex-cons? The old boy might accept one when his daughter shoves him down his throat, but two mugs...”
“Forget it, Rick. Ernest Doane is like Lila. He doesn’t give a hoot what a man has been. If I say you’re a friend of mine, that’s it. See you about eight?”
I nodded and got up. “I’m going to my office where it’s quiet and I can think. Some private eye — me. I have to do my work by sitting and thinking about it.”
“Office?” Freddie asked. “But I thought you weren’t allowed to practice...”
“The office,” I said, “is in Bryant Park. The last bench in the direction of Sixth Avenue. For a secretary I’ve got a speckled pigeon by day; at night there’s usually a few neckers around. That’s my office. Drop in any time and don’t bother to phone ahead.”
I knew where June Doane worked and I sauntered to that neighborhood first. I wanted a look at her. The cafe was one of those side street joints where the food is bad, the liquor worse, and the check depends on how much like a sucker you look. In the lobby were some half nudes of June. I hung around until she came out. She wasn’t bad — even with clothes on.
June looked a lot like Lila. They had the same father and that resulted in a similarity of chins, eyes and manner. There the resemblance stopped because June saw me eying her and in the dark she didn’t know whether or not I looked like money. She gave me an open high sign and said something I couldn’t hear when I turned away.
One A.M. is no time for an ex-con to be prowling around a public park so I changed my mind and went to the rat trap where I lived. They called it a hotel, but Sing Sing was a lot cleaner and had more service. When you yelled, a guard came — with a club in his mitt perhaps, but he came. In this fleabag you could scream your ears off for a maid to give you fresh sheets and you’d be as alone as if you were in the middle of the Gobi Desert.
The desk clerk was a pal of mine. He was off somewhere so I had no warning. When I unlocked my room door, Lieutenant Westover was sitting there and I didn’t like the kind of a grin he was wearing.
Westover was taller than my six feet and he was built like a truck. Beefy, with jowls, a double chin and a nasty disposition. He was on easy ground with me. A parolee isn’t supposed to argue with anybody, let alone a detective lieutenant.
“This place,” I said, “crawls with bugs. Big ones, and the biggest look copper to me. What’s on your mind besides busting me, Westover?”
I started removing my coat and Westover waved his hand. “Keep it on, Rick. You’re taking a ride with me.”
“For what, I’d like to know?” I demanded.
“For panhandling, that’s what. Even if the guy you panhandled is a stir-bug the same as you. Ex-cons are supposed to make their own way, not beg.”