“Your stock wouldn’t sell so good.”
“That’s quite right, Mr. Kirk. The accountants figured out that this clerk has taken about eighteen thousand. That’s not enough to hurt us — not enough to lower the market value of the stock — but the publicity would hurt.”
“So you wanted to buy Warren off?”
“Don’t put it that way. We wanted to pay our man’s losses, and protect our situation until after the stock sale.”
“Is that honest?”
“Our lawyers claim it is. We have the right to prosecute or not as we see fit. I sent your brother out on a night we were certain the clerk would be there. That was last night. He carried twenty-five thousand. He was to pay Warren off and bring back the I.O.U. Total expense to the company around forty thousand.”
“You sent an amateur like Bob into that den of wolves with twenty-five thousand cash?”
“Why... uh... yes. What else could we do?”
I sighed. I always wonder how some of our business men ever managed to cleave their way through that rugged eighth grade. Probably influence. “Where’s the happy clerk?”
“He didn’t come in this morning.”
“So you’re out forty G’s plus a clerk, plus a good employee. But you got Warren off your tail”
“Have we?” he asked so eagerly that I wanted to cuff him.
“Certainly. Warren won’t put the bee on you now. It might backfire right in his face. It might cost him heavy money to keep the police from adding two and two if you told why Bob was sent out there.”
“What’s the clerk’s name?”
“Morris Nolan. He lives on Western Avenue. A rooming house. Number eight sixteen.”
I got up and almost thanked him automatically. Then I remembered that it was his planning that fixed Bob. I walked around the desk. He spun as far away from me as his swivel chair would permit. I spat heartily into his wastebasket and walked out. At the door I turned and said, “We better keep all this to ourselves, Tilburg.” He nodded agreement and I left.
The eight hundred block of Western is where one of the truck routes converges into the tourist and local traffic. It is wide, busy and dirty. The front hall of eight sixteen smelled like elderly cabbage and defective plumbing. A beetle-shaped landlady told me that Nolan was in his room. First door to the left of the stairs on number three.
I pounded on the door, looking at my watch. Eleven o’clock. I heard springs creak and then the door opened a crack. I opened it the rest of the way — firmly. I stepped in just as the seat of Nolan’s pants hit the floor.
He stared up at me, a dusty-looking blond with sideburns a half inch too long, and said, “That’s a hell of a way to come into a room.”
The room stank of cheap liquor. He fumbled to his feet and wavered over to the bed. His bottle was on the bedside table. I picked it up, sniffed of it and took a healthy swig. It burnt my throat. Nolan’s eyes were shut. I sat him up on the edge of the bed. I held his shirt with my left hand and slapped his face with my right. At the fourth slap he wiggled and said, “Hey! Cut it out,” feebly.
I found a battered sink and a glass. I tossed two glasses of water in his face. He sputtered and waved his arms. I stood him up and slapped him onto the bed, yanked him up and did it again. The third time he stayed on his feet and took a wild looping swing at me. I caught his fist and forced him into a straight chair. He began to look almost intelligent.
“You were at the Mill House last night?”
“Who are you?”
I reached over and slapped him out of the chair. When he stood up I shoved him into the chair and asked again, “Were you at the Mill House last night?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Bob Kirk?”
He shook his head hard, to clear it, and looked at me with exaggerated cunning.
“Yeah. He was there.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he do?”
“He brought out a big wad of dough and lost it on the crap table. Then he went out.”
“Get your hat and coat on.”
“Why?”
“We’re going out to the Mill House.”
“The hell you say! Who are you?”
He put up a bitter battle. He bit me on the leg once before I could convince him to trot along with me like a little man. His face was all swollen on the left side where I had whacked him.
The noon traffic was heavy. I stood holding him by the arm, waiting for a cruising cab. Suddenly he yanked himself loose and headed out into the street. The truck got him before he went twenty feet. I heard a woman scream behind me. The truck stopped and traffic piled up.
I ran out. Nolan was in good shape except that the rear duals had gone over his head. It was about a quarter-inch thick, a foot wide and two or three feet long. It was grey and red. A pert matron ran up, took one look and was suddenly and spectacularly ill. I pushed my way out of the crowd and went back up to his room. Ten minutes convinced me that there was nothing there for me. I left in a hurry. The ambulance was clanging away in the distance. Traffic had started again. Two cops were talking to people on the sidewalk. A bunch of kids were lined up on the curb staring bug-eyed at the stain on the asphalt...
There is a citizen in town called Second-shot Peroni. His visible means of support is a meat market. Somehow he has kept it stocked with triple-A beef and butter in spite of the talk about shortages. Consequently he has made a good piece of change. His expenses are nil because he lives over his own market. But he hasn’t got a dime. He is the inventor of a roulette system which he believes in with all the fervor that an Indian medicine man believes in bat wings. He claims his system is perfect and will win for him. But he can’t think fast enough to place his bets between spins of the wheel. His favorite scream of rage is, “I woulda been on that number if you give me another second!” This has been going on for years. Hence, Second-shot Peroni. I had to take a chance on his being out at the Mill House the night before. I went to see him.
He’s a big man with a thick mat of black curly hair, and enough hair on his heavy arms to make him a fire hazard.
The market was empty. He saw me and boomed. “Hallo, Rich! How’s it goin’?”
“Not so good, Peroni. Not so good. I’m handling a bad one. How did you do last night?”
His face sagged and he said, “I did tine out at the Mill House, but I run out of money. Didn’t have enough with me to give the system a chance to work.”
“That’s tough. Did you hang around after you ran out?”
“For a while. Watch those dopes that don’t use no system.”
“Remember a smallish guy, name of Nolan? Blond. Wears his hair too long?”
He fingered his thick chin and said, “Yeah. I think so. He plays the table. Big loser. No system.”
“You knew Bob, didn’t you? My brother.”
“Sure. Sorry about that, Rich. Slippery road. I seen him out there before it happened.”
I was excited but I didn’t want to show it. Peroni is the type of person who tries to tell you what you want to hear. It’s a common enough trait. He wouldn’t mean any harm by it, but he would let imagination take over from fact and I wouldn’t know where I stood. It was more luck than I had any right to expert.
“The cops say he was tight and gambled all his bucks away.”
“I didn’t see him do any gambling but I wasn’t look at him all the time.”