“Bellevue?”
“That’s where Manhattan homicides are autopsied. Larry’s body ought to be there by now. I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up and bring you home again.”
She nodded, got to her feet, and walked toward a door at the rear of the room. “I’ll be only a minute,” she said. “I want to put on something a little more appropriate.”
The door closed behind her, and I went over to the telephone table and made arrangements for her trip to Bellevue. Then, while I waited for her to dress, I decided to call Stan Rayder at Larry Yeager’s apartment and see whether there had been any new developments. But I had, I discovered, forgotten to write down Yeager’s phone number. I looked around for a directory, but I couldn’t find one.
I walked over to the door Reba Daniels had closed behind her. “Mrs. Daniels?” I called.
“Yes?”
“I can’t seem to find your phone book.”
“I must have dragged it in here with me again,” she said. “Yes, here it is. Whose number did you want, Mr. Selby? I’ll look it up for you?”
“Larry Yeager’s,” I said.
There was a short silence; then she called out the number, and I went back to the phone and dialed Yeager’s apartment. Stan Rayder answered on the second ring.
“Pete, Stan,” I said. “Anything new happen over there?”
“Nothing important,” he said. “Doris Hagen’s on her way to the slammer, and Yeager’s body was on its way to Bellevue half an hour ago.”
I told him about my talk with Warren Eads and June Courtney.
“Where are you now?” Stan asked.
“Reba Daniels’ apartment. She’s going over to Bellevue to make our ID for us.”
“Good. She give you any dope on Yeager?”
“No. I’ve been drawing blanks ever since I left you.”
“There was a call for you. Barney passed it along from the squad room. Whoever it was that called left his number, but he wouldn’t give his name.” He told me the number and I wrote it down.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll give him a call.” I said so long, depressed the receiver for a moment, and dialed the number he had given me.
“Yeah?” a man’s voice said.
“This is Pete Selby,” I said. “Someone wanted me to call him at that number.”
“It was me. G-Man Gault. Remember me?”
I remembered him, and I ought to have remembered his voice as well. He was a roving bootlegger and part-time stoolie named Donald Gault, but much more widely, and variously, known as G-Man, Creep Eye, and Gin Bag. The last name was due to the fact that he always wore an outsize trench-coat, on the inside of which were sewn several rows of pockets the exact size of pint liquor bottles.
“I remember you, Gault,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”
“I hear you caught the Yeager squeal,” he said. “I think I got something for you on it.”
“Fine. What is it?”
“Chief do you know a cat named Dixie Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that Dixie is a man you should hit right now. I mean suddenly, chief. From what I heard, Dixie had been laying it down that he was going to cut Yeager up real good.”
“Why?”
“All I know is it had something to do with a movie. Dixie runs a stag show once a week regular, you know. So maybe it was one of his he-and-she movies.”
“You know where Dixie’s hanging out these days?”
“Sure. He’s padding down upstairs at the Poor Boy Bar, on West Fourth Street.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll look him up.”
“And listen, chief. If you hit the old jackpot, don’t go forgetting who gave you the combination.”
“I never forget a favor,” I said, and hung up.
I walked over to the door Reba Daniels had closed behind her. “I’ll be leaving now, Mrs. Daniels,” I said. “That car ought to be here any minute. And thanks again for your help.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Good-by, Mr. Selby.”
I let myself out of the apartment and walked down the corridor to the stairway.
G-Man Gault was a reliable stool pigeon. If he said that Dixie Ryan had threatened Larry Yeager’s life, Dixie had very probably done just that.
The big question was why.
V
Dixie Ryan’s room over the Poor Boy Bar contained a neatly-made day bed, a small dresser, a kitchen table with a movie projector on it, about two dozen wooden folding chairs stacked against one wall, and nothing else.
“Those chairs for your stag-show customers, Dixie?” I asked as he closed the door behind me.
“Stag shows?” he said. “Me? You’ve been listening to the wrong birds, Selby.”
Dixie Ryan had once been a pretty fair club fighter, back in the days when there were such things. Now he was a hard-bitten, jack-of-all-crimes character who had been suspected of everything from stealing pennies off newsstands to murder. His ring-ruined features showed nothing, but beneath their tracery of scar tissue, his eyes were as cold and bright as pale blue ice.
“The same birds told me you threatened Larry Yeager,” I said.
“So what if I did?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.”
Dixie stared at me. “No lie?” he said. “And so who’s supposed to have killed him? Me?”
“That might depend on where you were around noon,” I said. “Say, from half-past eleven to half-past twelve.”
“No sweat there,” he said. “I was downstairs in the bar. You don’t believe me, ask them.”
“You can count on it,” I said. “What were you and Yeager having trouble about?”
“Maybe I don’t feel talkative.”
“And maybe a little time in the tank would change all that.”
“On what charge?”
“I could think up half a dozen in about that many seconds,” I said. “But this isn’t a bust, Dixie. I’m not interested in your damn stag show. The only thing that interests me is Larry Yeager.”
He stood there, not moving, studying my face as carefully as a jeweler appraising a diamond necklace.
“Hell,” he said at last. “You’ve leveling, aren’t you?”
“All the way,” I said.
He shrugged. “All right, then. It was over a film. A stag film. I showed it one night, along with a couple or three others. Yeager got in a hell of a sweat to buy it. He was so hotted up about it he was damn near bug-eyed.”
“He say why?”
“No. I asked him, but all he did was start trying to knock me down on my price.”
“And how much was that?”
“A grand.”
“A grand? For a stag film?”
“I didn’t say it was worth any grand. It wasn’t. But when I saw how hot the guy was, naturally I hyped the price up on him. It only cost me a hundred.”
“That’s a pretty stiff markup. What happened?”
“Well, I told him it was a grand or nothing. Then he said, well, how about renting it to him for a week? And I said okay, but it’d cost him a hundred bucks, and if he wasn’t back with it inside a week, I’d come and get it. So he gave me a yard, and I gave him the film, and that was that.”
“But he didn’t bring it back oh time?”
“No. And that’s what the trouble was about. But I was just trying to throw a scare into him.” He paused. “Anyhow, he said if I’d wait just two more days, he’d have the whole thousand for me. I thought he was conning me, naturally. But he wasn’t. Two days later, damn if he doesn’t show up with a grand. I was so surprised I almost forgot to count it while he was still here.”
“Where’d you get the film, Dixie?”
“From Fred Beaumont. You remember Beaumont, don’t you? That old joker the papers made so much over about ten years ago. You know, with what they called that sex club up in the Bronx and all?”