“Logan here?”
“He’s here. You the guy he’s waiting for?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on in. He’s in the back.”
He slammed the door shut and pointed to a door at the end of the bar and went back to swabbing down the floor. The door took me through a narrow hall with the washrooms opening off it and led to a square hall with a bandstand and dance floor. Tables were scattered around liberally and for the people who wanted a little privacy there were booths in an alcove that jutted out from one wall.
That’s where I found Logan.
He sure as hell didn’t look like any reporter. One ear was cauliflowered, his nose was flat and scar tissue showed over both eyes. He was bunched over a paper doing the crossword puzzle and looked like his shoulders were going to pop right out of his coat.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and came along the wall without him hearing me until I crowded the booth where he was sitting. I wasn’t even taking a little bit of a chance. The guy could be a pug, but if he was he wouldn’t be making any passes from a sitting-down position.
“Logan?”
His face wrinkled up at the edges. It went flat in surprise and wrinkled up all over again showing short, squared-off teeth under lips that were a thin red line.
“I’ll be damned. I’ll be good and goddamned!”
“Maybe. You got a driver’s license or something?”
He didn’t get it right away. He crinkled his eyes thinking about it then threw his wallet on the table. It opened to a flap that showed his license and a card certifying that he was a member of the Newspaperman’s Guild.
So I sat down.
He was another guy I fascinated. He couldn’t take his eyes off me a second. He stared until words came to him and squeezed out in amazement. “Johnny McBride. I’ll be damned.”
“You already said that.”
“When I heard about it I couldn’t believe it. I thought Lindsey was out of his head. I was sure of it when I found out what happened up there in Headquarters.” His fingers were hanging on to the edge of the table like he was trying to break off a piece.
“Nobody seems very glad to see me,” I said.
Those lips went back and I saw the teeth again. “No, they wouldn’t be.”
I could make faces too. I made him a good one. “Somebody tried to knock me off a little while ago. Right in front of the library.”
“That the story you wanted to tell me?”
I shrugged. “That was just a gimmick to get you here. First you’re going to tell me something, then if I like it I’ll tell you.”
You’d think I’d smacked him right between those narrow eyes of his. “You son of a bitch, it’s too bad they missed!” he rasped.
I grinned at him. “You don’t like me either, right?”
“Right.”
“For a guy who doesn’t like me you did a nice job of going easy on me in that column of yours. Everybody else crucified me.”
“You know damn well why I went easy. I’d just as soon see you swing as look at you. The next time I’ll take you apart piece by piece.” He half stood behind the table and sneered at me.
“Sit down and shut up,” I said. “I’m getting tired of all the crap I’ve been handed since I got here. Nobody’s taking me apart especially you. Tucker tried it and Lindsey tried it. They didn’t do so good.”
Logan started to smile, a loose nasty smile and he sat down. His hands weren’t hanging onto the table any longer. They were there in front of him and everything in his eyes said he was getting ready to take me as soon as he found out what it was all about.
I said, “Tell me about myself, Logan. Make like you didn’t know me and was telling somebody all about it. Tell me about the bank job and how Bob Minnow was killed.”
“Then what will you tell me, Johnny?”
“Something you won’t expect to hear.”
Logan was going to say something and changed his mind. He gave me a studied glance and shook his head slightly. “It’s going over my head, way over. I’ve heard some screwy things before, but this takes the cake.”
“Don’t worry about it, just tell me.”
His hand went out absently for a cigarette and he stuck it in his mouth. “Okay, you’re Johnny McBride. You were born in Lyncastle, went to school here and started working in the bank after two years away at college. You went into the army, saw a lot of action and came home a big hero. At least all your medals said you were a big hero.”
I stopped him there. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re the only one who knows the answer to that. Maybe you were a big hero overseas. If you were then something happened that changed you plenty. So you came home and went to work in the bank.” His fingers curled around the cigarette and bent it. “And you found yourself a girl. It didn’t make any difference whose girl she was. You played up that hero stuff and she went for it.”
“Who?”
Logan’s eyes were a pale, watery blue watching me steadily; eyes hazy with a venom that had never ceased being deadly. “Vera West. A lovely, wonderful girl with hair like new honey. A girl too damn good for somebody like you.”
I laughed insolently, a laugh that cut him right in half. “I took her right out of your arms, didn’t I?”
“Goddamn you!” He was getting ready and I didn’t move. His teeth came together in a crazy attempt to control himself and he had to hiss to speak. “Yeah, Vera went for you. She went overboard like an idiot and let you ruin her life. She was so much in love that even after you used her like a dirty rag she stayed that way. That’s why I went easy on you. I didn’t want her hurt any worse!”
“I’m a bad boy. What else?”
“You’re going to be a dead boy, Johnny.”
“What else? How’d I use her?”
He had to push himself back on the bench. “You know, I figured that out before the cops did. Because Vera was Havis Gardiner’s secretary she had access to a lot of private stuff you as a teller couldn’t reach. You did real well making her hand over those books without arousing her suspicions. You did a beautiful job of juggling those accounts, too. It’s too bad you were on vacation at the time the state auditor dropped in. They caught you up in a hurry then, didn’t they? It went into Minnow’s lap and he started a search for you and never found you because you found him first. You were so jerky that you blamed it on him and put a bullet in him!”
“And Vera?” I asked him.
“That’s something I want to hear from you, Johnny. I want to know why a girl as lovely as Vera went to the dogs with herself until she wound up slutting around with a heel like Lenny Servo. I want to know why she became nothing but a beautiful drunken bum who could make Servo look good even at her worst.”
“Where’s she now, Logan?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. She disappeared three years ago.” Logan’s mouth twisted in a snarl. “That’s what you did to her, you stinking yellow bastard. That’s what our hero, Johnny McBride, did to her.”
He started to reach for me across the table. Slow. His left out further than the other so I couldn’t get away before he grabbed me.
I said, “Johnny McBride’s dead.”
Those hands came to a dead stop as though they ran into an invisible wall. He looked at me like I was crazy or something, trying hard not to believe me but having to because I sat there smoking without getting excited about an ex-pug who wanted to murder me with his hands. He barely whispered, “What?”
“McBride’s dead. He fell off a bridge scaffolding into the river and all that was ever found of him were a few pieces and some torn clothes. He was battered to bits in the rapids and what was left I saw buried not two weeks ago.”