I winked at her and she winked back, then the door clicked shut behind me.
Chapter Eight
I didn't get to sleep that night. Instead, I laid the contents of the bag out in front of me and sat there smoking one cigarette after another, trying to figure out what it meant. Baby clothes. Some pictures. A battered overnight bag. All of them the redhead's. How long ago? Where? Why?
There was beer in the refrigerator and I finished off bottle after bottle, sipping it slowly, thinking, letting my mind wander back and forth over the facts I had. They were mighty little when you tried to put them all together.
The sun came up over the windowsill chasing the night out, and I remembered to call Mr. Berin. He answered the phone himself and this time the sleep was in my voice. "Mike again."
"Good morning! You're up early."
"I haven't been to bed yet."
"You'll pay for lack of self-discipline in later years, young man."
"Maybe," I said tonelessly, "but tonight you pay. I left my friend a check for five hundred bucks."
"Fine, Mike. I'll take care of it at once. Did you learn anything from your--shall I say, source?"
"Not a damn thing, but I will, I will."
"Then I can consider the money well spent. But please be careful. I don't want you running into any more trouble."
"Trouble's an occupational hazard in this racket, Mr. Berin. I can usually take care of it one way or another. But what I got here won't mean trouble for me. I haven't got the angle lined up yet, but I can see it coming."
"Good! You've got my curiosity aroused now. Is it a secret or can you... ?"
"No secret. I have an overnight bag that had been packed with baby clothes. That and a folder of pictures."
"Baby clothes?"
"They were the redhead's--or her baby's."
He mulled over it a moment and admitted that it presented quite a puzzle, quite a puzzle. I agreed with him.
"What do you intend to do now?" he asked me.
"I don't know. I'm too sleepy to do much, that's for sure."
"Then go to bed by all means. Keep in touch with me whenever you think I can be of use."
I said all right and hung up. My eyes were burning holes in my head and too much beer had me stumbling over things. I took a last drag on the butt and clinched it, then lay back on the couch and let the sleep come, wonderful, blessed sleep that pulled a curtain over all the ugly things and left me with nothing but a nebulous dream that had no meaning or importance.
There was a bell. It kept ringing insistently and I tried to brush it away like a fly and it wouldn't leave. Finally I opened my eyes and came back to the present with the telephone going off behind my head. I squirmed around and picked it up, wanting to throw it against the wall.
Velda said hullo twice and when I didn't answer right away, "Mike... is that you? Mike, answer me!"
"It's me, sugar. What do you want?"
She was mad, but there was relief in her voice. "Where the devil have you been? I've been calling every saloon in town all morning."
"I've been right here."
"I called there four times."
"I've been asleep."
"Oh, out all night again. Who was she?"
"Green eyes, blue hair, purple skin. What do you want, or aren't I the boss any more?"
"Pat called early this morning. Something to do with Feeney Last. He wants you to call him back when you can."
"Well, why didn't you say so!" I sat up quickly, my hand over the cut-off bar. "See you later, Velda. I'll buzz him right away."
I held the bar down, let it up and dialed police headquarters. The guy at the desk said yes, Captain Chambers had been in, but he wasn't now. No, he couldn't say where he was. Official business, and did I want to leave a message. I wanted to swear, but I couldn't very well so I told him never mind and hung up.
It was five minutes to twelve and the day was half-shot. I gathered up the baby clothes and folded them back into the bag, stuffing the photos in the same top pocket, then I went in and took a shower.
Right in the middle of it the phone rang again and I had to wade back into the livingroom. It was Pat, but I didn't lace into him for dragging me out of the tub because I was too anxious to get the news.
He chuckled when I answered and said, "What kind of hours do you keep, pal?"
"If you knew you'd want to change jobs with me. Velda said you have something on Feeney. What gives?"
He got right down to cases. "When I put out feelers on him they all came back negative. This morning I had one in the mail from the Coast, a return feeler from an upstate sheriff. It seems like Feeney Last answers the description of a guy who is wanted for murder. The only catch is that the guy who could identify him is dead and they have to go from the poop he gave them."
"That's something." I thought it over, knowing that a mug like Feeney wouldn't be hard to describe. A greaseball. "What are you going to do about it?"
"I wrote for the finer details. If it fits we'll put out a call for him. I had copies made of his picture on the gun license and forwarded them to the sheriff to see if Feeney could be identified there."
"At least it's handy to have, Pat. He can always be held for suspicion if we need him... and if we can find him."
"O.K., then, I just thought I'd let you know. I have a death on my hands and I have to do the report."
"Anybody we know?" I asked.
"Not unless you hang around the tourist traps. She was a hostess at the Zero Zero Club."
My hand tightened around the receiver. "What did she look like, Pat?"
"Bleached blonde about thirty. Nice looking, but a little on the hard side. The coroner calls it suicide. There was a farewell note in her handbag along with complete identification."
I didn't need to know her name. There might have been a dozen bleached blondes in the Zero Zero, but I was willing to bet anything I had I knew who this one was. I said, "Suicide, Pat?"
He must have liked the flatness of my words. He came back with, "Suicide beyond doubt, Mike. Don't try to steer this one into murder!"
"Was her name Ann Minor?"
"Yes... you... how did... ?"
"Is the body in the morgue?"
"That's right."
"Then meet me there in twenty minutes, hear?"
It took me forty-five minutes to get there and Pat was pacing up and down outside the place. When he saw my face his eyes screwed up and he shook his head disgustedly. "I hope they don't try to keep you here," he said. "I've seen better-looking corpses than you."
He went inside, over to the slab where the body was laid out. Pat pulled back the sheet and waited. "Know her?"
I nodded.
"Anything to do with the Sanford case?"
I nodded again.
"Damn you, Mike. One day the coroner is going to beat your head off. He's positive she was a suicide."
I took the corner of the sheet from his hand and covered her face up again. "She was murdered, too, Pat."
"O.K., pal, let's go some place and talk about it. Maybe over lunch."
"I'm not hungry." I was thinking of how she looked last night. She had wanted to be important to someone. To me. She was important to someone else, too.
Pat tugged at my sleeve. "Well, I'm hungry and murder won't spoil my dinner any. I want to know how a pretty suicide like this can be murder."
There was a spaghetti joint a few blocks away so we walked over to it. Pat ordered a big lunch and I had a bottle of red wine for myself. After the stuff was served I started the ball rolling with, "What's your side of it, Pat?"
"Her name is Ann Minor... which you seemed to know. She worked for Murray Candid as a hostess four years. Before that a dancing career in lesser clubs, and before that a tour with a carnival as a stripper. Home life, nil. She had a furnished apartment uptown and the super said she was a pretty decent sort.