This hotel wasn’t of the sort where it is safe to make inquiries, so I went down to the street again, and came to rest on the least conspicuous near-by corner.
Twilight came, and the street — and shop-lights were turned on. It got dark. The night traffic of Kearny Street went up and down past me: Filipino boys in their too-dapper clothes, bound for the inevitable blackjack game; gaudy women still heavy-eyed from their day’s sleep; plain-clothes men on their way to headquarters, to report before going off duty; Chinese going to or from Chinatown; sailors in pairs, looking for action of any sort; hungry people making for the Italian and French restaurants; worried people going into the bail-bond broker’s office on the corner to arrange for the release of friends and relatives whom the police had nabbed; Italians on their homeward journeys from work; odds and ends of furtive-looking citizens on various shady errands.
Midnight came, and no John Boyd, and I called it a day, and went home.
Before going to bed, I talked with Dick Foley over the wire. He said that Mrs. Estep had done nothing of any importance all day, and had received neither mail nor phone calls. I told him to stop shadowing her until I solved John Boyd’s game.
I was afraid Boyd might turn his attention to the woman, and I didn’t want him to discover that she was being shadowed. I had already instructed Bob Teal to simply watch Ledwich’s flat — to see when he came in and went out, and with whom — and now I told Dick to do the same with the woman.
My guess on this Boyd person was that he and the woman were working together — that she had him watching Ledwich for her, so that the big man couldn’t double-cross her. But that was only a guess — and I don’t gamble too much on my guesses.
Seven
The next morning I dressed myself up in an army shirt and shoes, an old faded cap, and a suit that wasn’t downright ragged, but was shabby enough not to stand out too noticeably beside John Boyd’s old clothes.
It was a little after nine o’clock when Boyd left his hotel and had breakfast at the grease-joint where he had eaten the night before. Then he went up to Laguna Street, picked himself a corner, and waited for Jacob Ledwich.
He did a lot of waiting. He waited all day, because Ledwich didn’t show until after dark. But the little man was well-stocked with patience — I’ll say that for him. He fidgeted, and stood on one foot and then the other, and even tried sitting on the curb for a while, but he stuck it out.
I took it easy, myself. The furnished apartment Bob Teal had rented to watch Ledwich’s flat from was a ground-floor one, across the street and just a little above the corner where Boyd waited. So we could watch him and the flat with one eye.
Bob and I sat and smoked and talked all day, taking turns watching the fidgeting man on the corner and Ledwich’s door.
Night had just definitely settled when Ledwich came out and started up toward the car line. I slid out into the street, and our parade was under way again — Ledwich leading, Boyd following him, and we following him.
Half a block of this, and I got an idea!
I’m not what you’d call a brilliant thinker — such results as I get are usually the fruits of patience, industry, and unimaginative plugging, helped out now and then, maybe, by a little luck — but I do have my flashes of intelligence. And this was one of them.
Ledwich was about a block ahead of me; Boyd half that distance. Speeding up, I passed Boyd, and caught up with Ledwich. Then I slackened my pace so as to walk beside him, though with no appearance from the rear of having any interest in him.
“Jake,” I said, without turning my head, “there’s a guy following you!”
The big man almost spoiled my little scheme by stopping dead still, but he caught himself in time, and, taking his cue from me, kept walking.
“Who the hell are you?” he growled.
“Don’t get funny!” I snapped back, still looking and walking ahead. “It ain’t my funeral. But I was coming up the street when you came out, and I seen this guy duck behind a pole until you was past, and then follow you up.”
That got him.
“You sure?”
“Sure! All you got to do to prove it is turn the next corner and wait.”
I was two or three steps ahead of him by this time. I turned the corner, and halted, with my back against the brick building front. Ledwich took up the same position at my side.
“Want any help?” I grinned at him—, a reckless sort of grin, unless my acting was poor.
“No.”
His little lumpy mouth was set ugly, and his blue eyes were hard as pebbles.
I flicked the tail of my coat aside to show him the butt of my gun.
“Want to borrow the rod?” I asked.
“No.”
He was trying to figure me out, and small wonder.
“Don’t mind if I stick around to see the fun, do you?” I asked mockingly.
There wasn’t time for him to answer that. Boyd had quickened his steps, and now he came hurrying around the corner, his nose twitching like a tracking dog’s.
Ledwich stepped into the middle of the sidewalk, so suddenly that the little man thudded into him with a grunt. For a moment they stared at each other, and there was recognition between them.
Ledwich shot one big hand out and clamped the other by a shoulder.
“What are you snooping around me for, you rat? Didn’t I tell you to keep away from ’Frisco?”
“Aw, Jake!” Boyd begged. “I didn’t mean no harm. I just thought that—”
Ledwich silenced him with a shake that clicked his mouth shut, and turned to me.
“A friend of mine,” he sneered.
His eyes grew suspicious and hard again and ran up and down me from cap to shoes.
“How’d you know my name?” he demanded.
“A famous man like you?” I asked, in burlesque astonishment.
“Never mind the comedy!” He took a threatening step toward me. “How’d you know my name?”
“None of your damned business,” I snapped.
My attitude seemed to reassure him. His face became less suspicious.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I owe you something for this trick, and — How are you fixed?”
“I have been dirtier.” Dirty is Pacific Coast argot for prosperous.
He looked speculatively from me to Boyd, and back.
“Know The Circle?” he asked me.
I nodded. The underworld calls Wop Healey’s joint The Circle.
“If you’ll meet me there tomorrow night, maybe I can put a piece of change your way.”
“Nothing stirring!” I shook my head with emphasis. “I ain’t circulating that prominent these days.”
A fat chance I’d have of meeting him there! Wop Healey and half his customers knew me as a detective. So there was nothing to do but to try to get the impression over that I was a crook who had reasons for wanting to keep away from the more notorious hang-outs for a while. Apparently it got over. He thought a while, and then gave me his Laguna Street number.
“Drop in this time tomorrow and maybe I’ll have a proposition to make you — if you’ve got the guts.”
“I’ll think it over,” I said noncommittally, and turned as if to go down the street.
“Just a minute,” he called, and I faced him again. “What’s your name?”
“Wisher,” I said. “Shine, if you want a front one.”
“Shine Wisher,” he repeated. “I don’t remember ever hearing it before.”
It would have surprised me if he had — I had made it up only about fifteen minutes before.