"Sure."
He came over to a chair and set himself down. In the fading light of the gray day he did not look so young, and certainly not so happy.
For the first time since I'd known him, I saw him fidget with his long, slender fingers.
"That guy in the black overcoat who came in," he began.
"Yes?" I said. Then I remembered his particularly violent reaction to Stokes-the way he'd gone pale and seemed to lose his composure.
"I saw him one night with Ron Gettig-one night in the Cove. There was something about him…" Tommy shook his head. "I mean, I'm not saying he had something to do with all this but-"
"Kind of a creep, isn't he?" I said.
"Yeah. He scares me. He-I wouldn't put nothin' past him. Nothin'."
I leaned forward on my desk. "Is there something you want to tell me, Tommy?"
"Yeah. Kinda. You remember when Denny broke his leg and I kinda had to chauffeur him around?"
I nodded.
"Well, one day he asked me to drive him out to this place-this mansion, actually-and I saw the guy in the black overcoat there, too."
The word mansion reminded me of the clipping Stokes had handed me. Though it was from a different newspaper than the clipping I had, it detailed the same robbery at Mrs. Bradford Amis's.
He stood up. "I was kind of scared to tell you. The way that guy looked at me this afternoon-"
"You should have told me before, Tommy."
"I didn't think it was important, I guess." He nodded to the door. "Well, I've got a class in a couple hours. Copywriting. I've gotta get ready for it." He stared at me. "You, uh, you aren't mad, are you?"
"No," I said. "No, I'm not, Tommy."
He smiled. Up in heaven, Norman Rockwell would be very pleased. "Good," he said, and pulled his stocking cap on his head.
"Well," he said, "guess I'll take off, then."
"Fine," I said, scarcely aware of him. He went out.
TWENTY
The Devon was a bar in the downstairs of a hotel that had been fashionable thirty years ago. Somehow management had kept the bar in good shape while letting rats and winos roam the upper floors. It was possible, in the dim glow showing racks of liquor bottles, in the brocaded wallpaper that gave the bar a British feel, to hear the echoes of big-band music, and to hear excited men talk about Musial's latest home run while they puffed on Chesterfields.
Cindy waited for me in the shadows near the rear. Tonight she wore a gray tailored suit, with her shining blond hair swept up on the right side. With her glossy lipstick, and the cigarette burning in the ashtray, she seemed to belong in this bar haunted by the forties.
After I'd sat down and ordered a martini, Cindy reached down and picked up the bag next to her. She was right-it did look like a doctor's bag.
"So this is the famous bag," I said.
She shrugged. "Disappointed?"
I smiled. "Sort of. I guess I hoped to find a note inside."
"A note?"
"Yeah. One explaining who killed Denny Harris and Ron Gettig, and what Merle Wickes knows that he isn't telling me about this black bag."
She laughed. "Gee, that would be a long note."
"It could be much longer. It could go on to tell me what a private eye named Stokes knows about your husband, and why somebody planted a piece of rope in Tommy Byrnes's desk this afternoon, trying to make it look like Tommy had strangled Gettig."
She glanced up as the waiter set our drinks down.
When I looked back at her she was staring at her drink as if it were a crystal ball. I didn't need to ask whom she was thinking about.
"They're going to arrest him," she said, obviously referring to her husband. Her voice had gotten raw suddenly, as if she'd just developed a sore throat.
"Maybe they won't," I said.
She stared glumly into her drink. "I feel guilty."
"Why?"
"Because the police seem to be focusing on him. And here I am enjoying myself with a man whom I like a great deal."
I touched her hand. "We don't know for sure that he's the killer."
"Maybe the real killer won't ever be found but the police will blame him anyway." She frowned. "Poor Clay." I leaned over and kissed her cheek.
She turned and our lips touched.
After we went back to our drinks, she said, "What kind of sweaters do you like?"
"Crew necks, I guess, why?"
"Would you mind if I knitted you one?"
"That'd be great."
"I'll start tomorrow."
"Thank you."
"No, thank you, Michael. I enjoy a sense of being needed."
I stared at the bag sitting on the edge of the table. "Speaking of needed, I need to know how this bag fits into everything."
I pulled it over, started inspecting it.
Up close, the bag looked cheap, leatherette instead of leather. The name tag was one of those clear plastic window jobs encased in a leatherette oblong. Except the oblong had been torn in half. What remained of the tag were two lines of writing-or rather two half lines of writing.
07 107th St. 0307
There is a 107th Street in the city, but there are 107th Streets in lots of cities. The big problem is the 0307-the tag was smudged enough that I couldn't tell if those were the last digits of a zip code or a phone number. If it was a phone number, it would take a long time to run down.
"Any brainstorms?" she said.
"This tag looks like a phone number."
"How could we ever find out the first digits?"
"There are four prefixes in the city's phone system."
"Right."
"What if I put them in front of the numbers we have and start dialing. Maybe we'll get lucky."
"That sounds as if it will take a long time."
"They've got two phones in the back. If you take one and I take one, we can cut the time in half."
"When do we start?"
"How about now?”
By six o'clock the snow and the cold had filled the bar with people wanting to get warm and have some laughs and discover the secret of immortality.
We were in our respective phone booths, the ten dollars in dimes we'd bought laid out before us. Thus far I'd had no luck. The formula had gotten me nothing but polite sorrys, impolite and irritated (lots of people seem to be either sleeping or having sex at this time of evening NOs, or courteous old people who want to help me find whoever it is I'm looking for but don't have a clue as to how I should go about it.
I checked with Cindy. She was having no more luck.
About the time a big guy who looked as if he'd recently forsaken his job as a lineman for the Packers and had taken up selling insurance started hovering around the phone booth-about that time something unexpected and wonderful happened.
I added an eight to the formula, heard the female voice say "Beloit Motel." I described the bag. Tensely, the woman on the other end of the phone said, "Mister, maybe you'd better come right out here."
TWENTY-ONE
The Beloit was the kind of motel you expected to find on the edges of an industrial park, a large plastic box that had once been white but that was now, and irrevocably, stained by the elements and the pollution that hung on the air like gauze.
The snow made the place look better than it should have, the cracked windows warmer with light, the filthy sidewalk white.
The office was located on the ground floor right of the building.
As I opened the door, the acrid smell of a greasy, burning dinner lunged at us like a rabid dog. I could see Cindy's features crumble in displeasure. My stomach turned once.
The cooking was being done on a tiny gas stove. I didn't want to know what she was actually cooking-the contrast between the relatively fresh cold air outside and the cloying smell in here was enough.
She turned to us without smile or frown on her face, just a kind of idle stare, as if she were a robot that was voice-activated.