"You… all right… Toddy…?"
"Yeah, sure," he said, somehow shamed. "Now, look, I've got to beat it. Alvarado's dead. The cops'll be here any minute. I-"
"They do not know about…"
"They'll find out!" Toddy didn't know why he was arguing. He didn't know why the hell he didn't just beat it. "Anyway, there's plenty without that. I'm wanted in half a dozen-half a dozen-"
Her arm had gone around his neck. Her other arm held his hand against her breast. The beat of her heart was very firm now. Firm and fast.
"I tell you, I've got to-"
Her lips shut off the words. She sank back against the pillows, drawing him with her… Faintly, then louder and louder, a police siren moaned and whined. Toddy didn't hear it.
22
In the early afternoon of his third day in jail, he sat in semi-isolation in a corner of the bullpen, mulling over his situation.
He knew he was being held at the instance of the federal authorities. Which meant that, since a murder charge would take precedence over others, Elaine's death hadn't been discovered. That seemed impossible; Alvarado himself had seen detectives in his and Elaine's hotel room. But the fact remained. He wasn't-couldn't be-wanted for murder. Yet.
He also knew that Milt Vonderheim was the smuggling ring's gold-supplier, and, more than likely, the man who had had Elaine killed. Why the last, he didn't know; but the first was indisputable. It was no wonder that Milt had wanted him disposed of quickly. Since Toddy's original visit to the house of the talking dog, he had held most of the clues to the little jeweler's real identity.
He had presented Milt's card that day and mentioned being sent by a friend. And Alvarado, not knowing what might be in the air, had admitted him. He had discovered almost immediately, of course, that Toddy knew nothing of Milt's illegal activities-that he had simply stumbled onto the house. But Alvarado had been prepared for that eventuality… His eyes were "bad." He hadn't been able to read the card. In other words, Toddy's entry had not been obtained through Milt.
It was a shrewd subterfuge, but it had one great weakness. It could only be explained, if explanation became necessary, on one basis. Milt was the ring's key man: the gold-supplier. Since he was operating in the open and was confined to his shop, he could handle no other end of the racket.
Toddy's fingers strayed absently to the shirt pocket of his jail khakis, and came away empty. No cigarettes. No dough. And he'd hardly been able to touch the jail chow except for the coffee. The lack of comforts, however, troubled him much less than the reason for the lack. He'd never been able to do time. He couldn't now. And he was going to have to do a lot unless-
They'd have his record by now. They'd know where he was wanted and for how much. Sixty days. Ninety. A hundred and ten. Six months. A year and a… And Elaine. Why think about those other raps when they were certain to pin a murder on him?
He tried to accept that fact and salvage what he could from it. He'd killed her, say, but not with premeditation. She'd slugged him with a bottle, and he'd blanked out and killed her. Not intentionally. In a fit of temper. That was manslaughter; second degree manslaughter, if he had the right lawyer. If he was lucky, he'd get off with five years.
He thought about that, those five years. He thought about Dolores, then thrust her firmly out of his mind. Jail was hard enough to take without thinking about her, knowing that she'd come into his life too late, that never again… never again…
All day long an oval of men circled the bullpen, moving around and around in silent restlessness. When one man dropped out, another took his place in the oval. Its composition changed a hundred times, and yet it itself never changed.
"Kent!"
The oval stopped moving. Every eye was on the door.
"Todd Kent! Front and center!"
Toddy got up, dusted off the seat of his trousers, and pushed his way through the other prisoners.
Clint McKinley, bureau chief of investigation for the Treasury Department, was a stocky mild-looking man with thin red hair and a soft, amiable voice. He wasn't a great deal older than Toddy, and, in his first brief sizing up, Toddy decided that he wasn't too sharp a character. He wasn't long in revising that opinion.
McKinley seated him in a chair in front of his desk, tossed him a package of cigarettes, and even held a match for him. Then he folded his hands, leaned his elbows on the desk, stared straight at Toddy and began to talk. About Dolores, or, as he called her, Miss Chavez.
"We have a lot of admiration for her," he said. "She did the right thing at great personal risk and without hope of reward. We're going to do the right thing by her. She's in this country on a student's visa. We're going to pave the way for her to become a citizen. We're going to do everything else that's in our power to do. That can be quite a lot."
Toddy nodded. "I'm glad for her. She's a nice girl."
"Now we come to you," said McKinley. "We've gone into your record pretty thoroughly. We find it remarkable. You've preyed on your fellow citizens with one kind of racket or another ever since you went into circulation. You get a chance in the Army to redeem yourself, and you throw it away. You sell out. You help to tear down the prestige of the flag you swore allegiance to. You've never been any good. You've never done a single unselfish, honest deed in your whole life."
The soft, amiable voice ceased to speak. Toddy pushed himself up from his chair. "Thanks for the sermon," he said. "I don't think I'll stay for the singing."
"Sit down, Kent."
"Huh-uh. You people can't make a charge stick against me. You've had no right to hold me this long."
"We can see that you're held by other authorities."
"Hop to it, then."
"What's the hurry?" said McKinley. "It always gets me to see a man throw himself away. Maybe I said a little too much. If I did, I'll apologize."
Toddy sat back down. He had intended to from the beginning. It had simply seemed bad, psychologically, to let McKinley crack the whip too hard.
"As a matter of fact," McKinley continued, "I think my statement was a little sweeping. If you hadn't tried to help Miss Chavez there in San Diego, you might have escaped. That's something in your favor. Of course, you may have had some selfish motive for staying. But-"
"Try real hard," said Toddy. "You'll think of one."
"Don't coax me." McKinley's eyes glinted. "You want to get along with me or not, Kent? If you don't, just say so. I've got something better to do with my time than argue with two-bit con men."
Toddy swallowed harshly and got a grip on himself. He'd been kidding himself about that psychology business. A little, anyway. He was losing his temper. He was letting a cop get his goat.
"You're trying to do a job," he said, "but you're going about it the wrong way. You're not softening me up. You're getting nowhere fast. Now why don't you drop it and start all over again?"
"Who supplied the gold to this outfit, Kent?"
"I don't know."
"You've got a good idea."
"Maybe."
"Let's have it, then. Come on. Spit it out."