“I see. One more thing. Why did she break with Servo?”
Jack looked a little pained. “You ask the damnedest questions.”
“You know?”
“I got a good memory and a good imagination. I put two and two together, see? If you’re going out and mess around with Servo and my name gets mentioned, me and Lyncastle will have to part company and I like it here.”
“Nuts,” I said, “you won’t get involved in anything.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you what I think. It ain’t what I know, remember that. Lenny Servo’s got a way with the broads. He treats ‘em nice so long as they treat him nice, but he don’t like any one of ’em around too long. Now I know a couple others he brushed off and they didn’t like it. Life was too nice while Lenny paid for it so they put the squeeze on him. Hell, they musta seen it coming and worked up a little insurance. Anyway, they don’t know what Lenny won’t squeeze. He gives them the business the hard way and they scram. No fooling around. Not if they want to keep their own teeth and noses. You get the idea?”
“Yeah, I get it. So where would somebody like Vera go... working the houses?”
His shoulders shrugged unconcernedly. “That’s as likely as anything else. She’s a tramp, she stops giving it away and starts selling it.”
“Servo got anything to do with those houses?”
“Naw, this is Lyncastle, not New York. They’re on their own, pay off the cops regular and let it go at that. Hell, with all the free stuff coming through here who’s going to play around in those bug mills? Me, I got some fancy women working. I catch the legitimate traveling trade, but the houses don’t get anything but the low-down stuff.”
“Do I need an introduction to get into ’em?”
Jack grinned, finished his coffee and set the cup down. “Go to 107 Elm Street. Tell the bag in charge I sent you. You’ll get in.” He grinned again. “You oughta let me fix you up instead.”
“I’ll fix myself up,” I said.
“You’ll do that all right, down in those joints.”
I fished a buck out of my pocket and started to get up. Jack picked the bills off the table and I waved at them with my thumb. “Keep whatever’s left over.”
“Sure, thanks. If you need me again, look me up. I’ll see what I can do finding the broad for you. Maybe the dames know something.”
“Swell.” I paid for the coffee, let Jack have a few minutes start while I picked up some butts, then got back in the car. This was the day I was going to dig up my life history. Or Johnny’s rather.
It didn’t take long. In a way it was fun. Here I was practically a celebrity and nobody knew who I was. Five years sure go a long way with the public when it comes to remembering. I started off with the records in City Hall, found out I had been born December 9, 1917, lost my parents while I was in high school and was legally adopted by a bachelor uncle who died while I was overseas. I checked the registration rolls of my family, found out where we had lived, went back to the library and dug around in the papers and got a partial history of my service record. Along with several hundred others I had enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, taken basic training down South, then was assigned to O.C.S. and sent overseas.
I went over all the details until I had them set in my mind and if anybody asked there wasn’t much I couldn’t tell them. When I left the library I didn’t stop to light a cigarette on the steps. I used the side door, ducked down the back alley to the car and hopped up to the main drag for a quick lunch.
At a quarter after two I called Logan. There was something funny about his voice when he told me to meet him in the parking lot outside a bowling alley on the west side of town.
I found the place without any trouble, drove up to the fence and killed the engine. A couple minutes later I saw his car turn in the drive and I waved him up next to me. He got out, opened the door next to me and sat down.
“Any news?” I asked him.
“Plenty.” He glanced at me queerly.
“You found out who the boys were?”
“No... I found out who you were.” He reached in his side pocket for an envelope. I waited while he drew out some clippings and a folded printed circular. “Take a look,” he said.
I spread it out and took a look. I took a good look because it was a police circular with a picture of me on it that said my name was George Wilson and I was wanted for armed robbery, burglary and murder, and the description it gave fitted me to the screwy color of my eyes and the tone of my voice.
Chapter Seven
All I could say was, “Where’d you get it?”
“Our little hick paper has a big city morgue. Read the rest of it.”
I did that, too. They were accounts of the crimes I was suspected of committing. They were all dated and the date of the last one was about three weeks before I forgot who I was. I stuffed them back in the envelope and handed them to Logan. I felt like something that should be crawling instead of walking. “What’re you going to do about it?”
He started out the window. “I don’t know,” he said, “I honestly don’t know. You’re wanted, you know.”
“I could get away with it.”
“Yeah, your fingerprints. You might get away with it if they can’t bring them out. You might get away with it if you throw everything on the real Johnny McBride. He’s dead. He wouldn’t mind.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Say something else.”
“Okay, I will. I went further than just digging this stuff out of the files. I checked back on your story. Everything you told me was corroborated by the outfit you worked for. Maybe you were a lot of things before the accident, but those things aren’t what you are now. It’s quite possible that you are a completely different personality from what you were and there’s no need making you stand trial for something another self did.”
I turned my head and grinned at him. It felt like it was plastered on: “Thanks, pal. What happens if I get my memory back?”
“Let’s wait until it happens.”
“You think I’ll tell you about it?”
“No.”
“You’re not kidding. If I have a conscience it won’t bother me so much that I’ll go and make a public confession of murder and do a jig at the end of a rope. Not me, pal.”
“Nuts, you’re taking that chance right now.” Logan snorted derisively. “Although it would be funny if you hung for Minnow’s murder and not the right one.”
“Oh, that would be great all right.” I tapped the bulge in his pocket. “Does Lindsey know about all this?”
Logan shook his head. “He’s much too interested in you as Johnny McBride. You’ll be safer if you let him keep thinking you are.”
“Someplace you come in, Logan. You’re still a reporter and if you’re the right kind nothing’s going to make you squelch a good story.”
He nodded abruptly. “Nothing except the possibility that a better one might come out of waiting,” he said. He turned slowly and stared at me. “I’m destroying this stuff. It can be duplicated, but it wouldn’t do to have it on file where it might get picked up accidentally. I’m going to wait, Johnny. I’m enough of a reporter to know when a story is brewing and I think one is coming up. Don’t pull anything fast on me, understand?”
“Perfectly. Now how about Vera West?”
“Not a trace. She disappeared completely. I even checked through Washington with a friend of mine in the Social Security office. If she’s employed nothing is being paid into her account.”
“And my friends who tried to knock me off?”
“They’re tagged, but that’s as far as it goes. If they were working for somebody here in Lyncastle they didn’t leave any evidence of it.”