“This is the ticket,” Trainor said decisively.
Fredericks skimmed the bait out and a ghost of a breeze carried it a little further away from the cab than before.
He picked it up, scratched the back of his neck. Then he looked all around him, as though wondering how it could have gotten there. He glanced once at the cab, searchingly, but we were flattened back out of sight in the dark interior of it. He evidently took it for an empty one standing waiting for fares, didn’t look a second time.
It took him a good four, five minutes to decide the second half of the bill wasn’t lying around anywhere. What made him desist, chiefly, was an unwelcome offer of help from a second passerby.
“Lose something, bud?”
“Mind ya business!” was the retort.
Fredericks breathed in the direction of my ear: “Trainor’s average man is pugnacious. You mean he won’t kill for the other half of that?”
“That’s just Manhattan manners, not a bad sign at all, shows he’s completely average,” Trainor contradicted.
Our man moved away with what he’d found, receding toward the 7th Avenue corner. Watching through the back window of the cab, we saw him stop at the curb, glance back at where he’d found the unlikely token, as though he still couldn’t get over it. Then he crossed to the Times Building “island,” skirted that, and crossed Broadway.
“There’s one half of our murder team,” Fredericks said. “Whether he turns out to be the murderer or the victim, depends on how aggressive the party of the second part is. All right, Evans, go after him, keep him in sight. Find out his name, where he lives, all about him — only don’t accost him yourself, of course. It may make him leery.”
I opened the cab door, stepped out, and started briskly out after our unsuspecting guinea pig. “Fine thing to turn into,” I thought. “A private detective!”
It was easy to keep him in sight, because of the sparsity of other pedestrians. In the day time he’d have been swallowed up in a minute in this teeming part of town. He kept going straight east along 42nd and made for the 6th Avenue El. When I saw him start up the stairs to the platform I had to close in on him, as a train might have come along and separated us before I could get there.
I passed through the turnstile right behind him, and when the train came in, got in the same car he did. He sat on one of the side seats, giving me the opportunity of keeping him in sight from behind without his being aware of it. At one point, I could tell by the downward tilt of his head that he had taken the severed bill out again and was studying it under the car lights. He evidently couldn’t quite make up his mind whether it was genuine or not. He looked around to see if anyone had been watching, put it away again.
“He’s got a guilt-complex about it, for one thing,” I decided. “That’s not so good from Trainor’s point of view. If he feels guilty about it, he’s liable to kill for it, too, before he’s through.”
He straightened and walked out at the 99th Street station, in the heart of the teeming, jostled Upper West Side district. I left by the opposite end of the car, to avoid being too noticeable about it. I gave him a headstart by pretending to stop and tie a shoe lace, so I wouldn’t be treading on his heels.
He plunged from the stair-shed straight into his favorite bar. So he wasn’t going to any bank to verify its genuineness. He was going to put it up to that Solomon of the lowly, the saloon-keeper. I suppose a professional sleuth would have carefully stayed outside, to attract as little attention to himself as possible. I was no professional, however, and I had no great hankering to hang around on a street corner in that strange neighborhood waiting for him to come out again. I barged right in after him.
It seemed the right move to have made. It was within an hour of closing time, and the two of us were the only customers. It was an empty barn of a place with swell acoustics; you couldn’t whisper if you tried. I was just in time to hear the barman boom out sociably: “Lo, there, Casey, where’ve you been keeping yourself?” So that gave me his name.
I had a beer and regretted it even at six inches away from my nose. I became very interested in the slot machine, to give myself something to do, but timed the noise so it wouldn’t interfere with their husky undertones.
“Where’d you find it, bejazes?” The barman was holding it up to the light, shutting one eye at it. I got that in the machine mirror.
Then after he had been told, and the inevitable question put to him, “I nivver saw them that big before, but it looks rail to me.”
“But waddya suppose it’s cut in two like that for? ’Tis no tear, it’s a clane-cut edge.”
Casey’s bosom friend in the white apron was doing some mental double-crossing. I could read it on his face in the mirror. Or maybe he just thought it would look nice framed on his wall. “I’ll stand ye a drink for it!” he offered with sudden fake heartiness.
I started to get uneasy. I hadn’t bargained on the thing passing from hand-to-hand all over town. And if a saloon-keeper took over, that was piling the odds against Trainor too high for my liking. They aren’t the most unmurderous breed in the world. I made up my mind, “If Casey parts with it, I spill the beans to the two of them right here and now!”
But Casey wasn’t parting with it that easy. The barkeep’s argument that it was unredeemable, no good, not worth a cent as it was, fell on deaf ears. The ante rose to fifty cents, then a dollar, finally a two-dollar bottle of rye. Casey finally stalked out with the parting shot, “I’ll kape it. Who can tell, I might come acrosth the other part of it yet.”
“Ouch!” I said to myself. “You’re going to, before the week’s out. Then what?”
On an impulse, I stayed behind instead of following him. The cagier way to find out everything about him was to remain behind, at this fountainhead of gossip, instead of tracking him home through the deserted streets.
The barman drifted over, brought the subject up himself. I was the only one left in the place to talk to. “That fellow that was just in here, found half a thousand-dollar bill on 42nd Street just now.”
I showed proper astonishment. “Yeah? Who is he?”
“Name of John Casey. He comes in here all the time. Lives right around the corner, the brownstone house, second from corner of 99th. He’s an electrician’s helper.” Not all at once like that, of course. I spaced my questions, making them those of a man obligingly keeping up his end of a conversation in which he has no real interest.
“He’ll take me up on it yet,” he wound up. “As soon as he finds out it’s no good, he’ll be glad to take me up on it.” But there was a glint in his piggy eyes, as though if Casey didn’t, he’d do something about it himself.
I went out of there telling myself, “Brother, if you’re this steamed up about half a bill, what you won’t do when you find out who has the other half!” Trainor’s thousand was as good as gone. There was certainly going to be a murder somewhere within this triangle before the week was out. And no matter who committed it, the barman or Casey or tomorrow night’s unknown finder, Fredericks would be the actual murderer. And Trainor and I the accessories.
If I’d been dealing with a square guy, I might have persuaded him to drop it, after what I told him next day. There would have still been plenty time enough. But I found out how skunkish he was when I put it up to him. Trainor of course was present.
“The bet isn’t with you,” he told me. “If Trainor wants to call it off — because he can’t possibly win — I’ll play ball with him. All he has to do is refund me the thousand dollars, the amount of the bill I sacrificed. Are you ready to do that, Trainor?”