“Pretty,” I said. “Real pretty. They set up a dope-drop in a dance hall. It’s all quiet and furtive in there anyway. They pick special girls who know enough not to shoot their faces off. They use stooges for delivery and pick-ups. A girl has two-three transactions a night. They pick twenty girls and they’re doing a minimum gross business of four thousand bucks a night, which is approximately twenty-five thousand bucks a week. Given a little luck — once the thing shapes up — it runs a year. That’s over a million dollars worth of business, just in one year. Could be much more than that. Could run much more than a year. Could use more than twenty girls, could use fifty. Could step up the amount of transactions a night to five or six. Those figures could run up fast to real heavy millions. Fantastic, out of one lousy little dance hall in New York. And the guys who set it up would be in the clear. There’d be layers and layers of in-between nobodies who would take the rap once the thing busted. How about Steve Pedi? Did he talk to you about this?”
“No.”
“Did he know what was going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you talk to him about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was afraid to. They warned me what would happen if I discussed it. I wasn’t going out of my way looking for trouble.”
“And the racket’s been working? Going on right now?”
“Yes, I think so. Since they talked to me, I’ve kind of been watching. It’s hardly noticeable, no one would notice unless they were actually watching hard for it, but I’m pretty sure it’s been going on.”
“Okay,” I said, “thanks. Now get up. Let’s get out of here.” I started putting out the lights.
She stood up and wriggled into the black velvet short-coat.
“My letters...?” she said.
“But of course. Your letters.” I chuckled. “What’s a murder case without letters? It’s like a spy case without The Plans, or The Papers, or The Formula.” I took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go try for The Letters.”
6
The cab dropped us at 11 Charles Street. I paid the cabbie, waited until he tilted his clock, then added two dollars to the fee. “Please wait,” I said. “You’ll have another customer in a few minutes.”
I pushed the Phillips’ button — five short pushes, a pause, and then one long push.
The clicker clicked back. Upstairs, after his peek-hole routine, Gordon Phelps opened the door for us. He was wearing expensive slacks and a white silk sport shirt. He was very pale. He kept chewing on his red lower lip as though he were trying to pry loose a piece of stuck cigarette paper.
“I bring you a guest,” I said.
“Ah, the sulphuric Sophia,” he said. “Welcome.” But he kept chewing on the red lower lip. “Any news?” he said.
“Plenty,” I said. “Sophia, would you please go into the bedroom, and close the door behind you?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“It’s just that I’ve got some very personal stuff to talk to Gordon about.”
“The hell with both of you,” she said, but she went into the bedroom, though she slammed the door viciously.
“Any news?” Gordon Phelps said. “I’ve been dying here.”
“The cops are very anxious for you,” I said.
“As Sophia would say — the hell with them.”
“They’ve got reason to be anxious. Special reason.”
“Special? Why—”
“Vivian Frayne was murdered with bullets shot out of a gun that belongs to you. That’s definite. On the line.”
“My gun?”
“Your gun, Mr. Phelps. You the guy that used it?”
“Stop that.”
“Want to explain the gun?”
“That’s easy, man. I gave Vivian Frayne a gun that belonged to me, even gave her cartridges for it.” He shifted. He was now biting on the upper lip. “Gave it to her, as a matter of fact, because of that girl in there, because of Sophia Sierra. Vivian was very frightened of her for a time, wanted some sort of protection. I gave her my gun at that time.”
“That your story?” I said.
“It’s no story. That’s exactly what happened.”
“Okay, get your jacket on, and start getting out of here.”
“What’s the matter with you? What are you talking about?”
“I think it’s time for you to change your hideaway,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling that cops are getting close to this place.”
“No,” he said, but now he was chewing on both lips.
“Yes,” I said. “Here’s my idea. Slip into a jacket and go over to my place.” I gave him my address and apartment number, and my keys. “Nobody’ll be looking for you there. Except me. I’ll stay here for a short while. When I go, I’ll lock up.”
He closed the collar of his sport shirt, went to a closet, unhooked a suburban coat, and shrugged into it. He was as pale as the belly of a shark. He shoved a hand into his trousers’ pocket. “Here are my keys,” he said.
“I don’t need your keys.”
“Then how’ll you lock up here?”
“I have Vivian Frayne’s keys.”
I took them out and jingled them. He looked as though he were going to faint.
“Where’d you get those keys?” he said.
“From the cops. One of those keys fits here, as you know.”
“I know,” he said. “What the hell goes? Have you been trading information with them?”
“No, sir. Else they’d be here already.”
That seemed logical to him. He nodded, seemed to want to ask another question, changed his mind, and went back to eating his lips as he buttoned the coat.
“Either I or Sophia, one of us, or both, will be back at my apartment pretty soon,” I said. “We’ll use the same system. Five short rings, a pause, then one long one. You get that, open up. Otherwise, don’t open up, just stay put.”
He started for the door.
“There’s a taxi waiting downstairs,” I said.
He turned. “You think of everything, don’t you?” He said it almost sardonically.
“I’ve been paid five thousand dollars to try to think of everything,” I said.
When he was gone I brought Sophia Sierra out of the bedroom. I said, “Take off the coat, kid. Make yourself comfortable.”
She took off the coat and made herself comfortable.
“According to you,” I said, “she didn’t have a bank vault, and according to me she couldn’t have had your letters in her apartment. On the other hand, she had a key to this place, and she was free to come here even while Phelps was away — according to him. So, throwing all those accordings together — this would be the spot where she’d hide something out, provided she had something to hide out. I don’t think she even trusted Phelps on that deal. If she had, Phelps would have told me. He’d have produced those letters. The guy’s trying his best to get out from under: told me about threats he heard from Pedi, told me about her fear of you, told me that Vivian was convinced that you had a deep hate going for her. Now, if Phelps knew where those letters were, he would have produced them for me: it would prove up that hate you were supposed to have for her.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, breathlessly.
I continued to ramble. “So if they’re here, they’re somewhere where Phelps wouldn’t be likely to fall over them. That excludes all the usual places. What does it include? Well, I’ve been in the business of looking for things for a long time, and people just don’t have any special imagination when it comes to hiding things. They’re influenced by movies and television, and they do the usual ordinary thing, and, somehow, they think they’re doing something unusual.”