The waitress came over. “Yes, sir? May I help you?”
I glanced up. “Oh. Coffee, please. And one of those rolls.”
“Yes, sir.” She drew the coffee and placed it in front of me, and put the sweet roll on a plate. I took a sip of the coffee, pushed it to one side, and opened the letter, and as I did so I glanced casually around the place. The girl at the counter was a dishwater blonde. There were two girls in one of the booths, and a girl and a man in another, but nobody was anywhere near the description Red had given me. I unclipped the fountain pen and started making some notes on the bottom of the letter. The two girls I’d seen leaving the Comet office came in. Five or ten minutes went by, and the place was filling up. I ate some of the roll, sweated out the coffee as long as I could, and ordered some more.
They came in by twos and threes, mostly girls talking and laughing. From where I was sitting I could watch the door without appearing to. I glanced at my watch. It was ten-thirty-five. The whole thing was a pipe dream, I thought. The screen door opened again. I glanced up, and I was looking right at her.
There was no doubt of it at all. And no doubt that Red really had an eye. She was with two other girls that nobody would ever see unless they took their clothes off or dyed themselves purple. They sat down at a booth near the door and ordered coffee. I went on making notes on the back of the letter, carefully concealing my excitement.
In a moment I shot another glance at her. She was sitting alone on one side of the booth with the other two facing her and was in left profile. There was no ring on her hand. She had on a brown tailored suit, white blouse, nylons, and high-heeled alligator shoes, and carried a very large alligator purse. The hair was midnight black, turned under on the ends and bouncing off her shoulders. She was about five-five or five-six, not over twenty-five years old, and built like a dream. The skin was slightly olive and the lips full and red with a stunning shade of lipstick. She turned then, glancing around the place, and her eyes swept over me.
She’d caught me looking at her, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that would ever strike her as unusual would be discovering a man who wasn’t looking at her. The eyes were dark brown, and you could see the smoldering Latin fire in them. She paid no attention to me. I returned to my scribbling on the back of the letter and didn’t look at her again. In about ten minutes they paid their checks and went out.
I put the papers back in the briefcase, lighted a cigarette, and sauntered out. They had turned to the left, and were about half a block away, going up the sidewalk on this side. They were already past the entrance to the plumbing supply company. They stopped at the corner, waited for the light to change, and crossed Denton. I walked slowly up to the corner. They crossed the intersecting street. In the middle of the next block they turned in. It was the entrance to the Shiloh Machine Tool Company.
Lathes and Milling Machines, the sign said. The plant was enclosed by a steel mesh fence and took up most of the block. There was an office building in front, at the entrance, and in back of it a larger building of dark red brick. I went on up the street on this side. Two blocks away I found a beer joint that had a phone booth and called Suzy.
“I found her,” I said excitedly. “She works for that Shiloh outfit.”
“Good,” she replied. “Can I come and pick you up?”
“No. The next step is to find out where she lives. I’m going to try to follow her home tonight.”
“It’s only eleven now. You’ll have six hours to kill.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’ll be safe in a movie.”
I caught a bus and rode to the downtown area. I didn’t feel so naked and exposed in the large crowds of shoppers. Half a dozen times I passed uniformed policemen, and after awhile I stopped cringing inside my clothes when I saw one. The motion picture theaters were open now. I picked one showing a double feature and went inside.
At four-thirty I went out, bought an afternoon paper, and boarded a bus that would take me back to Denton Street. I unfolded the paper, SEAMAN SOUGHT IN POLICE MURDER STILL AT LARGE, a front-page headline said. A Lt. Brannan of Homicide was quoted as saying it was obvious by now that somebody was hiding me.
“Any person knowing Foley’s whereabouts and withholding the information is a guilty of harboring a fugitive,” he went on. “This is a serious offense.”
At the next stop a man sat down beside me. I kept my attention on the paper, conscious that he was looking at it too. “Some bunch of cops,” he said. “Whole police force can’t find one dumb sailor.”
“Maybe he’s left town,” I said.
“Naah. Probably walkin’ around on the street right now. Whatta you suppose they’d do if they ever run up against a real smart cookie like Willie Sutton or somebody?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. I wished he’d shut up. I turned to the comics and let him read them. Apparently he never had looked at me. I got off the bus at the Comet Boat Company and crossed to the other side of Denton. It was five minutes of five.
There was a parking lot inside the fence at the Shiloh Tool Company, and I could see about thirty cars in it. Since we hadn’t seen her get off a bus this morning there was a possibility she drove to work. If she did, I’d be out of luck. But at least I could spot the car, and tomorrow Suzy might be able to follow it. At five a whistle blew, and men came pouring out of the Shiloh plant, but none of the office staff emerged.
They came out at five-thirty. Some of them headed for their cars around at the side. In a moment I saw. her. She came on out to the sidewalk. She had on a lightweight cloth coat and was carrying the large alligator bag. When she reached the corner, she stopped, waited for the light, and came over on this side. She was going to catch the bus at the stop in front of the coffee shop.
I walked down that way behind her. There were five or six other people waiting, and a bus was coming now. It was already well loaded, but it pulled to the curb and the doors opened. She got on. I was last in line, and for an instant I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it. Then the driver yelled for everybody to move back, and I got aboard.
She was just beyond me, standing in the aisle and holding onto the bar. I could see more room at the rear, and squeezed past her, through the other standees. She didn’t even look around. I went all the way back. I could see the dark head without any difficulty.
The bus went through the downtown section, and she almost caught me by surprise when she got off. I stepped down just as the doors were closing and picked her up again in the throngs hurrying along the sidewalk.
She went in the Second Avenue entrance of Waldman’s, the city’s largest department store. It was nearly six p.m. now, and the street lights were on. I picked her up again inside and stayed close behind her in the crowd. It occurred to me a professional would probably wince at the crude tailing I was doing, but she never once looked around, so it was all right. She went up an escalator to the second floor and stopped at the hosiery counter. I moved over to another aisle, staying behind her, and pretended interest in perfume while she bought a pair of nylons. She gave the clerk a charge-a-plate. The clerk stamped it on the slip, returned it. and put the stockings in a small bag.
She crossed to the other end of the floor and went into the women’s lounge. I moved back to where I could watch the doorway without being conspicuous, and found a chair and an ashtray. I lighted a cigarette. Some ten minutes went by. I began to worry. There might be another exit; maybe she’d spotted me, and had gone in there to give me the slip. Then, when I’d almost given up hope, she came out. She took the escalator back to the ground floor and went out the Butler Street entrance. It was six-thirty now, and darkness had fallen, but the streets were still crowded.