She knew he had been president of the Purple Pelicans, and I didn’t try to disillusion her about the nature of that group, since she thought of it merely as a teen-age social club. She couldn’t tell me what the odd jobs were which enabled him to have a regular supply of money. It seemed never to have occurred to her that Bart might have been raising money illegally.
After I left her, I visited the club room of the Purple Pelicans. It was staked out by a detective I knew, a guy named Hogan. It was just a basement room about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long, with brick walls, and unfinished ceiling. It was decorated with bright green drapes over the four windows, and pictures of nudes cut from magazines or calendars were placed in dime-store frames. There was a homemade bar painted and trimmed in the same combination as the cement floor and base — battleship grey with a decorative border of red. The place was furnished with second or third hand benches all around the walls, a number of cheap card tables and about twenty folding chairs.
The spot where the body had been found was marked in a chalk outline in front of the bar. When I looked closely, I could see a couple of small spots of dried blood in the center of the outline.
“Where’s that hole where they found the heroin rig?” I asked Hogan.
Hogan went over to the wall and pushed aside a framed drawing of a Petty girl who was, as usual, phoning somebody, in the standard garb of nothing. Behind it one brick had been removed from the wall, leaving a small oblong cavity. It didn’t tell me anything.
“I guess that’s all,” I said to Hogan. “Thanks.”
“See anything the boys missed?” he asked with a touch of indulgence.
“Naturally,” I said. “The killer couldn’t have been Joe Brighton, because he was a short, redheaded man who wore elevator shoes, a checked jacket and an Alpine hat with a feather in it. He’s ambidextrous, has just arrived from Australia on a cattle boat and snores when he sleeps on the left side.”
“Amazing,” Hogan said in simulated awe. “How do you do it?”
“Elementary,” I said negligently.
6
It was getting late, and I had decided to call it a day and get started in the morning until I neared Grand Avenue and realized I was passing within only two blocks of Sara Chesterton’s apartment. Since it was still early in the evening, on the spur of the moment I decided to stop by and see her.
Sara lived in a modern, tan-brick apartment house in a neighborhood which was nice without being exclusive. She had a comfortable, four-room apartment on the second floor.
She came to the door wearing a white terry-cloth housecoat.
“Why, Manny!” she said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“I was going through the neighborhood and suddenly thought of something I wanted to ask you,” I said. “Got a few minutes?”
“Of course. Come on in.”
As she led me into the front room, I saw that it had been redecorated since the last time I was there, which wasn’t surprising since I hadn’t been in the apartment for over five years. She also had some new furniture: a handsome gray living-room suite, a fragile blond cocktail table with a glass top and a twenty-four-inch-screen television set.
“You’ve fixed the joint up,” I said. “Compared to my trap this is luxury.”
“I’m beginning to accumulate a few nice things, more than I can afford, really. But I keep buying things on time, and somehow eventually they get paid off.” She looked around with satisfaction, then turned to me. “What do you drink? Still rye and water?”
“If you’ve got it.”
“I’ve got it. You can get ice cubes out for me while I’m mixing drinks.”
I followed her to the kitchen and by the time I had emptied the ice tray and dumped the cubes into a bowl, she had our drinks all measured out.
“I take soda,” she said, “and I know there isn’t any in the refrigerator. Be a doll and get a bottle from the clutter room, will you?”
What Sara called the “clutter room” was merely a small back hall which was recessed both sides of the door. She used it for storage and it got its name from the fact that it was as cluttered with odds and ends as the average attic.
I found the soda without difficulty, and was preparing to return to the kitchen when I noticed a bamboo spinning rod standing in a corner of the alcove. On the floor next to it was a dust-laden bait box.
No fishing enthusiast can resist peeking into a strange bait box, and fishing has been my favorite sport since I was a kid. I lifted the lid and looked admiringly at an. expensive and complete collection of spinning lures worth at least a hundred dollars. When I didn’t see any with which I was unfamiliar, I closed the lid again.
When I had returned to the kitchen and opened the soda for her, I asked, “You like fishing, Sara?”
She glanced at me in surprise. “A little. I haven’t been for several years. Why?”
“Some Sunday I’ll pick you up and we’ll try the river for a few jack salmon.”
“I’d like that,” she said agreeably.
She suggested we take our drinks into the front room. When we were settled there, Sara on the couch and me in an easy chair, I said, “What I stopped by for was to find out if you knew anything about either a man named Buzz Thurmond or one named Limpy Alfred.”
She looked at me in amused surprise. “You mean there’s actually a real person with a name like Limpy Alfred?”
“Apparently.”
She shook her head. “I’ve certainly never heard of him before. Nor of anyone named Buzz Thurmond. Why do you think I would have?”
“I didn’t have much hope about Limpy, because I don’t know his last name. But I thought Buzz Thurmond might possibly ring a bell. I understand he originally came from the neighborhood, and I thought possibly the family had been on welfare at some time or other.”
“Buzz Thurmond,” Sara repeated thoughtfully. “Thurmond sounds familiar, but the first name doesn’t mean anything to me. It must be a nickname, isn’t it?”
“I imagine,” I said dryly. “I don’t think many parents would be likely to christen a child Buzz.”
“I think I had an Aid to Dependent Children case named Mrs. Thurmond about six years ago,” Sara said. “Tomorrow I’ll have Records look it up for me. Possibly your Buzz Thurmond was one of the children. How old is he?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, except that he’s been connected with an adult criminal gang for at least four years. Doesn’t seem likely he’d have been a child six years ago.”
“No. He would have had to be under sixteen at the time. He may have been an older son not living at home, though. If I can find anything on him in the welfare files, what is it you want to know?”
“Anything you’re able to dig up. I don’t know a thing about him except his name and that he’s a hood.”
“You think he may have had something to do with Bart Meyers’ death?”
I said, “I can’t tell you why I’m interested without violating the confidence of my source. I’m afraid you’ll have to work in the dark.”
“All right,” Sara said agreeably. “I’ll do my best to control my curiosity. Why don’t you phone me at work between one-thirty and two tomorrow? I’ll either have something by then, or the news that I can’t find anything.”
We left it at that. We had one more drink together before I went home and let Sara get back to her case records.
7