He was about twenty-eight, a little thin on top, had a healthy red face, fairly honest eyes, dirty hands and looked as if he wasn’t making much money. He wore a gray whipcord jacket with metal buttons on it, pants that didn’t match.
I said carelessly, in a iow voice: «Your bus outside?»
He sat very still. His mouth got small and tight and he had trouble pulling his eyes away from mine, in the mirror.
«My brother’s,» he said, after a moment.
I said: «Care for a drink? Your brother is an old friend of mine.»
He nodded slowly, gulped, moved his hand slowly, but finally got the bottle and curdled his coffee with it. He drank the whole thing down. Then I watched him dig up a crumpled pack of cigarettes, spear his mouth with one, strike a match on the counter, after missing twice on his thumbnail, and inhale with a lot of very poor nonchalance that he knew wasn’t going over.
I leaned close to him and said evenly: «This doesn’t have to be trouble.»
He said: «Yeah… Wh-what’s the beef?»
The clerk sidled towards us. I asked for more coffee. When I got it I stared at the clerk until he went and stood in front of the display window with his back to me. I laced my second cup of coffee and drank some of it. I looked at the clerk’s back and said: «The guy the car belongs to doesn’t have a brother.»
He held himself tightly, but turned towards me. «You think it’s a hot car?»
«No.»
«You don’t think it’s a hot car?»
I said: «No. I just want the story.»
«You a dick?»
«Uh-huh — but it isn’t a shakedown, if that’s what worries you.»
He drew hard on his cigarette and moved his spoon around in his empty cup.
«I can lose my job over this,» he said slowly. «But I needed a hundred bucks. I’m a hack driver.»
«I guessed that,» I said.
He looked surprised, turned his head and stared at me. «Have another drink and let’s get on with it,» I said. «Car thieves don’t park them on the main drag and then sit around in drugstores.»
The clerk came back from the window and hovered near us, busying himself with rubbing a rag on the coffee urn. A heavy silence fell. The clerk put the rag down, went along to the back of the store, behind the partition, and began to whistle aggressively.
The man beside me took some more of the whiskey and drank it, nodding his head wisely at me. «Listen — I brought a fare out and was supposed to wait for him. A guy and a jane come up alongside me in the Buick and the guy offers me a hundred bucks to let him wear my cap and drive my hack into town. I’m to hang around here an hour, then take his heap to the Hotel Carillon on Towne Boulevard. My cab will be there for me. He gives me the hundred bucks.»
«What was his story?» I asked.
«He said they’d been to a gambling joint and had some luck for a change. They’re afraid of holdups on the way in. They figure there’s always spotters watchin’ the play.»
I took one of his cigarettes and straightened it out in my fingers. «It’s a story I can’t hurt much,» I said. «Could I see your cards?»
He gave them to me. His name was Tom Sneyd and he was a driver for the Green Top Cab Company. I corked my pint, slipped it into my side pocket, and danced a half-dollar on the counter.
The clerk came along and made change. He was almost shaking with curiosity.
«Come on, Tom,» I said in front of him. «Let’s go get that cab. I don’t think you should wait around here any longer.»
We went out, and I let the Buick lead me away from the straggling lights of Las Olindas, through a series of small beach towns with little houses built on sandlots close to the ocean, and bigger ones built on the slopes of the hills behind. A window was lit here and there. The tires sang on the moist concrete and the little amber lights on the Buick’s fenders peeped back at me from the curves.
At West Cimarron we turned inland, chugged on through Canal City, and met the San Angelo Cut. It took us almost an hour to get to 5640 Towne Boulevard, which is the number of the Hotel Carillon. It is a big, rambling slate-roofed building with a basement garage and a forecourt fountain on which they play a pale green light in the evening.
Green Top Cab No. 469 was parked across the street, on the dark side. I couldn’t see where anybody had been shooting into it. Tom Sneyd found his cap in the driver’s compartment, climbed eagerly under the wheel.
«Does that fix me up? Can I go now?» His voice was strident with relief.
I told him it was all right with me, and gave him my card. It was twelve minutes past one as he took the corner. I climbed into the Buick and tooled it down the ramp to the garage and left it with a colored boy who was dusting cars in slow motion. I went around to the lobby.
The clerk was an ascetic-looking young man who was reading a volume of «California Appellate Decisions» under the switchboard light. He said Lou was not in and had not been in since eleven, when he came on duty. After a short argument about the lateness of the hour and the importance of my visit, he rang Lou’s apartment, but there wasn’t any answer.
I went out and sat in my Marmon for a few minutes, smoked a cigarette, imbibed a little from my pint of Canadian Club. Then I went back into the Carillon and shut myself in a pay booth. I dialed the Telegram, asked for the City Desk, got a man named Von Ballin.
He yelped at me when I told him who I was. «You still walking around? That ought to be a story. I thought Manny Tinnen’s friends would have had you laid away in old lavender by this time.»
I said: «Can that and listen to this. Do you know a man named Lou Harger? He’s a gambler. Had a place that was raided and closed up a month ago.»
Von Ballin said he didn’t know Lou personally, but he knew who he was.
«Who around your rag would know him real well?»
He thought a moment. «There’s a lad named Jerry Cross here,» he said, «that’s supposed to be an expert on night life. What did you want to know?»
«Where would he go to celebrate,» I said. Then I told him some of the story, not too much. I left out the part where I got sapped and the part about the taxi. «He hasn’t shown at his hotel,» I ended. «I ought to get a line on him.»
«Well, if you’re a friend of his —»
«Of his — not of his crowd,» I said sharply.
Von Ballin stopped to yell at somebody to take a call, then said to me softly, close to the phone: «Come through, boy. Come through.»
«All right. But I’m talking to you, not to your sheet. I got sapped and lost my gun outside Canales’ joint. Lou and his girl switched his car for a taxi they picked up. Then they dropped out of sight. I don’t like it too well. Lou wasn’t drunk enough to chase around town with that much dough in his pockets. And if he was, the girl wouldn’t let him. She had the practical eye.»
«I’ll see what I can do,» Von Ballin said. «But it don’t sound promising. I’ll give you a buzz.»
I told him I lived at the Merritt Plaza, in case he had forgotten, went out and got into the Marmon again. I drove home and put hot towels on my head for fifteen minutes, then sat around in my pajamas and drank hot whiskey and lemon and called the Carillon every once in a while. At two-thirty Von Ballin called me and said no luck. Lou hadn’t been pinched, he wasn’t in any of the Receiving Hospitals, and he hadn’t shown at any of the clubs Jerry Cross could think of.
At three I called the Carillon for the last time. Then I put my light out and went to sleep.
In the morning it was the same way. I tried to trace the redhaired girl a little. There were twenty-eight people named Glenn in the phone book, and three women among them. One didn’t answer, the other two assured me they didn’t have red hair. One offered to show me.