As Wade rejoined our table, I excused Fausta and myself. She held my arm with unnecessary tightness as we descended the three steps to the game room.
“That woman, she make eyes at you,” she said in my ear.
I said: “What do you want’ to play?”
“Do not change the subject.”
“What do you want to play?” I repeated.
She cocked her head up at me and pouted. “Nothing. I watch you.”
I am strictly a penny ante gambler. I dropped four dollars in two bets at a dice table, bought four two-bit chips and lost them at roulette, then moved on to the slot machines. Two nickels and two dimes in one-armed bandits, with no results except lemons, discouraged me.
We had started back toward our table when a voice behind us said: “Hey!”
Fausta and I turned together, and there was Gloria Horne.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Looking for you.”
I piloted both women back to the table. Byron Wade and Eleanor had disappeared. I looked out over the crowd, failed to locate them and told the waiter to bring only three drinks.
“How’d you get out here?” I asked Gloria.
“Drove.”
“How’d you make out with Amos?”
She looked at me as though surprised at the question. “All right,” she said casually. “I have his car outside.”
Fausta asked: “Amos know you come here?”
Gloria’s bovine eyes were wandering over the crowd, lingering now and then on the apparently unaccompanied men. Without ceasing her deliberate examination, she said: “What he don’t know won’t hurt him. He doesn’t get home till two.”
The previous afternoon Amos Horne had said: “Look, Moon, my wife is a moron.” I began to sympathize with him.
I looked at my watch, saw it was eleven-thirty and said to Fausta: “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Gloria offered.
The night air had grown still and heavy, presaging rain. Halfway to town it began to drizzle and in a few minutes turned to a steady, light rain. Gloria switched on her windshield wipers.
“Seems funny not to hear that singing sound on a wet road,” she remarked.
Fausta had fallen asleep on my shoulder and I was concentrating on the way tree shadows flittered across her still face. Gloria’s statement failed to register immediately, then its peculiarity gradually sank in.
“What singing sound?” I asked.
“The tires. We used to have skid-proofs and they made a singing sound in the rain. Amos swapped them yesterday.”
I let a full minute go by while adjusting my mind to a flood of new ideas. Finally, forcing my voice to be uninterested, I asked: “Why’d he do that?”
“I don’t know. I thought they were still good, but I guess he got a chance for a deal. I didn’t know he’d traded till I asked for the car keys. He told me then.”
I said suddenly: “Take Fausta home.”
Gloria flashed me a sidewise, interested glance, but made no reply. When we reached El Patio, I gently shook Fausta awake. She yawned like a sleepy kitten, then burrowed her face in my shoulder again. “Hey!” I said. “This is home. You get off here.”
Chapter Seven
Skidproof Alibi
The rain gradually increased in intensity until it became a steady downpour. Gloria’s driving, which was uncertain enough in clear weather, became more and more capricious. She knew only one speed — forty miles an hour — and apparently was incapable of adjusting it either up or down to suit varying highway conditions. Now she began to add to the suspense by continually throwing me side glances.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” I said finally.
Dutifully she fixed her eyes straight ahead and kept them there long enough to swerve abruptly around a truck whose tail gate materialized out of the rain almost in our laps. Then her glance shifted back toward me again.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“To your place.”
She drove in silence for a few moments, most of the time keeping her head turned toward me, but occasionally peering through the windshield as a gesture to indicate she still realized she was driving.
“Suppose Amos comes home?” she said.
“Suppose he does?”
She let time pass again. “He won’t like it.”
I made no answer and we drove the rest of the way in complete silence. Gloria continued to look sidewise at frequent intervals. In the darkness I couldn’t make out her expression, but I guessed it was puzzled.
When we neared her apartment house she swung into the alley, drove headlong through the open garage door and jolted to a stop which nearly put me through the windshield. I pulled down the door for her, latched it and followed her along the dark yard at a dead run in an attempt to cheat the rain. In the lower hall we paused to regain our breaths.
Our coats were dripping wet, but underneath we were relatively dry from our necks to our knees. Below that we were both soaked.
After a short rest we climbed the stairs to apartment C. Gloria pulled the chain of a floor lamp in the living room and immediately disappeared into the bedroom. I carefully hung my coat and hat on a clothes tree near the door, where they wouldn’t drip on the rug, took off my shoes and socks, rung the water from the socks and put them in my pocket, wiped the shoes out with my handkerchief and put them back on.
I was stretched flat on the sofa with my head on a pillow, when Gloria reappeared wearing a flowered housecoat.
“It’s nearly one,” Gloria said. “We haven’t much time.”
“Time for what?”
“Before Amos gets home.”
“Good.”
She stood in the hall doorway, her hands fidgeting with the knot holding her housecoat together and watched me puzzledly.
“I came home with you because I want to see Amos,” I explained.
Her puzzlement turned to a frown, but her brain was too vapid for anger. She looked more disappointed than nettled. For a moment she examined me disapprovingly, then turned and disappeared without even a goodnight. I folded my hands across my chest and went to sleep with the light on.
The rasp of a key drawing the front door bolt brought me awake. I raised my left wrist to the level of my face, saw it was five of two and sat erect in time to see Amos Horne come into the room.
He stopped short when he saw me. “What you doing here?”
“Looking for the tires. Thought you might be able to tell me where to trade skidproofs for new synthetics.”
He hung his sopping coat and hat from a peg next to mine and dug a cigarette from a box on an end table. When he had it drawing properly, he took a seat opposite me. He didn’t say anything.
“Stop me if I’m wrong,” I said. “Yesterday morning you get rid of four perfectly good tires and got four synthetics in trade. You made the switch because you realized the skidproofs left nice identifiable marks where you parked near El Patio.”
He raised one hand to scratch the fuzz over his ear, and tried to seem undisturbed. “Who says I swapped tires?”
“Your intelligent wife. She wasn’t squealing. She just doesn’t know any better. Want to tell me all about things?”
“I got nothing to tell”
I rose. “Stick around while I phone Homicide.” I started toward the hall.
He rose also. “Wait a minute! You can’t arrest me. You’re no cop.”
Gloria appeared in the hallway, still wearing her housecoat.
I said: “I’m not arresting you. I’m phoning Homicide.”
He went over to the clothes tree, lifted his hat and took his coat from under it.
“Where you bound?” I asked.
He shrugged himself into the wet coat. “You can’t even detain me. You got no legal authority.”