“The only kind of influence I care about comes in quart bottles,” Bascombe said, but he laughed, almost good-naturedly, and went back into his own office.
It was nearly noon when he came out again with Dr. Morrow. Morrow left immediately, looking, D’arcy noticed, pretty grim.
Bascombe was smiling all over his face. “A very nice case. The lady disappeared with all the money she could get her hands on, wearing one of her maid’s coats. A reversible coat. Get it?”
“No, sir.”
“Plaid on one side, beige on another. She can switch them around and make it harder for us to find her. Inference, she’s not coming back and she doesn’t want to be found. So just for the hell of it we’ll find her. Get your notebook.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right. The usual checkups first, hospital and morgue and her bank — Bloor and Ossington Branch of the Bank of Toronto. I think you’ll draw blanks there. Morrow’s going to send over a couple of studio portraits by messenger. Meanwhile, start calling beauty parlors.”
“All of the beauty parlors?” D’arcy said faintly.
“Use your noddle and you won’t have to. If the woman is really in earnest about disappearing, she’ll probably try to disguise her most distinctive feature, her hair, and then grab a train or bus for out-of-town.”
“And the bus terminals and stations being mostly in the south and west I’m to try those sections first?”
“Amazing,” Bascombe said. “Beauty and brains you have, D’arcy. I’m going out to lunch. Be back later.” When he had gone D’arcy did a little checking-up on his own and discovered that the bottle of Scotch was missing from the file.
“Poor Bascombe,” he said sadly. “I’ll have to report him. It’s my duty.”
He didn’t want to report Bascombe, who was a fine figure of a man, really.
He sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone directory. D’arcy was at his best on a telephone, he could forget how small he was and how the other policemen didn’t like him and kept shunting him back and forth from one department to another.
While he was working Kirby came in. He was a big loose-jointed young man who spent half his time around the morgue and the hospitals.
“It’s about time someone appeared,” D’arcy said. “I haven’t had my lunch. I’m hungry.”
“Too bad.” Kirby took off his hat and stretched and yawned. “Where’s Bascombe?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. He doesn’t confide in me.”
“He owes me five bucks on the Macgregor girl. I found her this morning. She’s in a ward at Western with a nice case. Says she got it in a washroom.”
“People,” D’arcy said primly, “should behave themselves.”
Pointedly, he returned to the telephone. He worked nearly all afternoon with one eye on the door, waiting for Bascombe to come back.
At four-thirty he became quite excited by a telephone conversation he had with Miss Flack, who owned and operated the Sally Ann hairdressing parlor in Sunnyside. He tried to get Bascombe’s apartment on the wire. Nobody answered.
“I’ll report him,” D’arcy whispered. “I really will. It’s high time.”
He went up to Sands’ office.
The Allen Hotel is on a little street off College. A redbrick building, caked with soot, it has passed through many phases in its long life. It has been, in turn, a private hospital, a barracks, an apartment house, and a four-bit flophouse. The Liquor Act was passed just in time to save it from the wreckers. A few licks of paint, extra chairs and tables, a new neon sign and a license to sell beer and wine transformed the old building into the Allen Hotel, a fairly prosperous tavern with a dubious clientele. The clientele was kept under control by a large tough bartender and a number of printed prohibitions which were strictly enforced: No checks cashed. No credit. No spitting.
There were other prohibitions also, but these were not printed on signs. The bartender attended to them himself. He would sidle up behind a customer and say gently, “No pimps,” or sometimes, “No fairies.”
Not that he gave a damn about them but he was afraid of the health and liquor inspectors that came around. He didn’t want the place to close up. With his salary and the rakeoff he got from the beer salesmen he was buying a house out in the east end for his family.
Through his efforts the Allen Hotel got quite a good name with the various inspectors. They didn’t bother much about it any more. The word was passed around, and a number of people who didn’t want to come in contact with the law began to use the rooms upstairs. It was ironical, but in one way it wasn’t so bad. The bartender soaked up information like a blotter. Some of it he sold, some of it he gave away to his friend Sands. From Sands, in return, he got the pleasant feeling that he was on the good side of the law, and that if a time came when he wasn’t, there was at least one honest policeman in the world.
He took personal pride in Sands and followed all his cases in the newspapers. Whenever Sands came in for a drink or some information the bartender’s face would take on a sly, conspiratorial smile because here were all these bums drinking side by side with a real detective and not knowing it. Sometimes he was so pleased he had to go into the can and roar with laughter.
Today he wasn’t so pleased. He leaned across the counter and spoke out of the side of his mouth.
“Mr. Sands.”
“Hello, Bill,” Sands said, sitting on the bar stool.
“Mr. Sands, there’s a friend of yours in the back booth. Been here nearly all day. I would sure like to lose him.”
“Bascombe?”
The bartender nodded. “This is no kind of place for a policeman to get drunk in. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Mr. Bascombe.” He grinned suddenly. “Not unless it was fatal.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Sands said. “Bring me a small ale.”
He got off the bar stool, a thin tired-looking middle-aged man with features that fitted each other so perfectly that few people could remember what he looked like. His clothes blended in with the rest of him, they were gray and rather battered and limp. He moved unobtrusively to the back of the room.
Bascombe was sitting alone in the booth with his head in his hands.
“Bascombe.”
No answer.
“Bascombe.” Sands knocked away Bascombe’s elbows. Bascombe’s head lolled and then righted itself. His eyes didn’t open.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Bascombe said huskily. “Make it double.”
Sands sat down on the other side of the booth and sipped his ale patiently. Pretty soon Bascombe blinked his eyes open and looked across the table at him.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “it’s you. Go away, Sands, go away, my boy. You have this elfin habit of appearing suddenly. I don’t like it. It’s upsetting.”
“D’arcy’s been looking for you,” Sands said.
“Trouble with D’arcy is his brassiere’s too tight.”
“You’d better come to and listen. D’arcy’s got his knife in you.”
“Sure, I know,” Bascombe said. “I got sick of him following me around and maybe I talked a little rough to him.”
“He reported you for drinking on duty.”
Bascombe blinked again. “Who to?”
“To me.”
“As long as it was to you.”
“Maybe next time it won’t be,” Sands said. “How many times is this that Ellen’s left you?”
“Five,” Bascombe said, his face twisting. “Yeah. Five. In three years.”
“I suppose it’s no use my pointing out that Ellen is a little tramp?” Sands said dryly. “She isn’t housebroken. You can’t do anything with that kind but leave them. Get a divorce. Bascombe.” Bascombe didn’t answer. “If it’ll make it easier for you, I could have you transferred to another department. That’s D’arcy’s suggestion.”