“Well, we waft and see.” Slabbe shrugged. “Suppose I jingle my office and see if my boy checked in yet?”
“How good is he?” Gage asked.
“Whitey gets around,” Slabbe assured the tired man. “Tell you in a second.”
He started for the phone booths across the lobby, fishing a nickel from his wrinkled gray trousers and juggling it on a palm that made it look like a pinpoint.
A Hiss said: “Hey, Slabbe!”
Nothing altered in Slabbed face as he saw a wisp of a man dart from behind one of the lobby’s huge marble columns and flit into the men’s room. He plodded after the man, found him inside and handed him the nickel.
“I was going to use it to call you, anyhow, Whitey,” he explained. “How’d you know I was here?”
Whitey Fite, adequately nicknamed because he was an albino, whined: “How do I ever know anything, huh? What you want?”
Slabbe held up a hand and ticked off three names. “Silk Flaim, Happy Lado, Pola Velie,” he said. “How about it?”
Whitey’s knowing eyes were no more furtive than a gopher sizing up the situation outside its hole. He used a finger with a thick black half-moon of dirt under the nail to dig at an itch on his white hair thoughtfully. “How much?” he said.
Slabbe chewed gum easily, deciding to handle it by needling the shabby little man. He sneered: “How much? What do you mean? For what you got or for what you think you can get?”
Whitey took the bait. “For what I got!” he bristled.
Slabbe put a fatherly arm over Whitey’s skimpy shoulders, ruffled the white hair fondly. “You wouldn’t hold up an old pal, would you? It ain’t worth nothing, really, ’cause I could find out myself by making a call here and there. You’re only saving me a half hour’s work. Say a finif, huh?”
“Go to hell!” Whitey responded promptly.
“Ten.”
“Fifteen!”
“Ten!” Slabbe repeated sternly.
“Fifteen!”
Slabbe sighed. “You’re a tough cookie.” He got out his wallet, leafed off three five-dollar bills. Whitey’s grimy hand flicked out, enveloped them.
“I dunno where Happy and Silk are now, but you can get to them mebbe through the dame.”
“Did you see them?” Slabbe asked quickly.
“Yeah. They blew in this morning around ten on a rattler from St. Louie.”
“How’d you spot ’em?”
Whitey leered. “I’m giving you fifteen bucks worth, not how I work. The dame is at 5502 Emerald Avenue in an apartment where a girl named Nikki Evans lives. That’s your money’s worth, ain’t it?”
“For now,” Slabbe said thoughtfully. “5502 Emerald, hey? Be seeing you, kid.”
He left the men’s room and made his original destination, the phone booths. He rang a number. A quiet, unexcited man’s voice said: “Hullo.”
“Abe, it’s me,” Slabbe said. “Took a chance on catching you at home. Got a job in your neighborhood there: 5502 Emerald Avenue, apartment under the name of Nikki Evans, only she’s not your party. Who you want is Pola Velie, girl friend of Tommy Rex who pulled a jewel heist in Philly a month back. She’s tall, black eyes and hair, built, white skin, smooth dresser. Take a plant on the place. If you can find out if Pola is inside, call me here at the Carleton Arms. But don’t be cute. Happy Lado and Silk Flaim might be in and out — they play rough.”
“Check.”
“If Pola leaves, it might be to meet Tommy down here. If she’s alone, stick along. If she’s with somebody else and seems to be heading here to the hotel, but they split up before she gets here, stick with whoever she’s with.”
“Check.”
“Don’t be cute, remember.”
“Check.”
Slabbe clicked off, then phoned another boy who took his money on occasion, Charlie Somers. He told Charlie to come to the Carleton Arms, fast. He hung up and returned to Al Gage. The Zenith op hadn’t moved a muscle, he was so tired. Slabbe flopped beside him, saying: “Tabbed the girl. 5502 Emerald Avenue. Told a boy of mine to take a plant on the place and call me back if she’s there. Got another boy coming here to take over in case the girl’s up there and we want to go calling.”
“You don’t do bad.” Gage sat straighter, green eyes speculative. “Yeah, I’d say we should go there if she’s in. Tommy don’t have the stuff, and that’s for sure, but she might, and getting it back is my bread and butter.”
“There he comes,” Slabbe murmured.
“I see him,” Gage said, though his eyes did not seem to be anywhere near the tall, blond man who had come out of the dining room and was trotting down the stairs to the lobby proper.
Slabbe noted that Tommy Rex was quite at ease, not hurried at all. He looked more like a young man about town looking for his date than a heist artist. He selected a chair and sat down leisurely.
“He’s still going to wait,” Slabbe said. “I’ll drift over and pick up my phone call if it comes. If I go out then, and a little fat-forty guy comes in, it’ll be Charlie Somers and he’ll take care of Tommy. You meet me outside and we’ll meet the lady.”
Silence gave Gage’s consent. Slabbe went over to the registery counter and talked to McPhail, the house man, about inflation until the switchboard girl murmured: “Mr. Slabbe? Call for you, sir.” Slabbe took it.
Abe Morse’s quiet voice said: “I’m in a drugstore across the street from where I’m supposed to be. Nobody in or out since I got here. Radio playing loud, though, and people moving around inside. Heard a man’s voice.”
“Be right there,” Slabbe said.
“Check.”
Slabbe went out a side entrance, waited till Charlie Somers got out of a cab, described Tommy Rex to him, then got in the cab himself and waited till Al Gage trudged out of the hotel, yawning.
“Fifty-five hundred block on Emerald Avenue,” Slabbe ordered the hacker. They rolled.
It was a wide, tree-lined residential section, quiet as they came into it and then, a moment later, full of kids racing home from school.
“Drive around the block till these kids scram,” Slabbe told the driver.
Al Gage sat up. “Hey! What—”
“My plant said he heard a man’s voice inside the apartment,” Slabbe explained. “You can’t tell how things will go when there’s eighty grand worth of stuff involved.”
Gage groaned wrily and wiped his palms on his knees. “I thought there’d only be the girl to go up against.”
“Happy and Silk wouldn’t let her get too far away if she’s got the stuff,” Slabbe reminded.
Gage grunted, spying a slender, blue-serge-suited man loafing along the sidewalk. “Is that your boy?”
“That’s Abe,” Slabbe admitted, letting his head swivel in a slow arc as the cab passed Abe Morse, then an apartment house which bore the number 5502. “Suppose I drop off at the alley and go in through the back,” Slabbe suggested. “You and Abe can—” He stopped. “Hold it!” he called to the driver. “Slow-w-.” He nudged Gage. “They your people?” he asked, nodding through the back window at two men who had left the apartment house, one tall, one stocky.
Gage’s green eyes glittered. “That’s the pair, Happy Lado and Silk Flaim. They ain’t got a car handy. They’re gonna walk a little and pick up a cab. We should—”
“Stop!” Slabbe yelled at the driver. “Dam’ Abe!” he swore. “I told him not to get cute!” His hand caught the door lever, which fortunately worked easily, or it would have been ripped away. He crowded out of the cab, Gage’s curses hard behind him. Abe Morse had stopped the pair who had come from the apartment house. He’d apparently asked for a match, having spotted Slabbe and Gage passing, trying to detain Happy and Silk for a second till Slabbe’s driver could turn around to keep the pair in sight, but at once Happy and Silk had deployed on either side of Abe and were now hustling him along. There were school kids in front of them and behind them, and romping on the street and lawns around them.