“So?”
“He made the third. It might have been accidental but the chances are it wasn’t.”
“It was. At least he wasn’t murdered. I was chasing him and he ran off the road. He died without talking. Next question.”
Logan took another drag on the butt and nodded. “Same guy was seen in Eddie Packman’s place only a short time before. Then you beat up on Packman while the cops are looking and get tossed in the can. Why?”
“Because said dead man had a grand in new bills on him, that’s why. Eddie paid him off for the job he didn’t do. There must have been trouble about it because the guy came away mad.”
“So that’s why you went after Packman this morning.” He made a nice neat statement out of it.
I shook my head carefully. “That was only half why, friend. About a half hour before that somebody fired a hatful of bullets at me and they weren’t kidding. Whoever it was waited for me to come out of the Ship’n Shore, barreled up and let loose. Nobody got hurt, but I got pretty mad. I checked Eddie’s car and that could’ve been the one.”
“It wasn’t,” Logan said.
“What?”
“Eddie had been at the road stand for a good two hours before you came along. I checked.”
I remembered every curse word I had ever learned and strung them out in a row. When they were out of my system I dragged the butt down to my fingers and tossed it out to the sidewalk. “Logan,” I said, “this whole thing is a screwed-up mess if ever I saw one. Everybody wants me dead but the wrong people. A killer wants me dead. The cops want me dead. Not Servo or Packman, pal. Servo was behind me in the joint when I left and Packman was in the other place. Whoever shot at me this time was the same one who tried it from the roof top the last time, and if it wasn’t Servo or Packman this time it wasn’t Servo or Packman then. No, they don’t want me dead.”
Logan’s face tightened up until it was white. “Who says they don’t?” He kept staring out the windshield.
“Finish it.”
“Packman’s threatening to kill you on sight and Servo’s going to be in a blue funk when he finds out you aren’t where you can be gotten to easily.”
“Like in the clink?”
“Exactly.”
“Where he has men on his pay roll?”
“You got better eyes than I thought you had.”
“Then to whom do I owe the debt of putting up ten grand for my bail?”
Logan dropped his butt on the floor and stepped on it. “This’ll kill you. Your old boss put it up. Havis Gardiner.”
“Fine, but I don’t get it.”
“You will. Your direct-approach system seems to have had its effect. The guy thinks you’re innocent. Or at least your buddy was. His insurance investigators have uncovered a lead on Vera West.”
“Fine,” I said again. This time my voice shook.
“Not fine, kid. They think she’s dead.”
“Oh, hell, when’s it going to end!”
He turned around and glanced at me absently. “When somebody finds out why Robert Minnow died, that’s when.” His foot went down on the starter and churned the engine into life.
“I’ve been looking into that angle. I saw his wife.”
“Yeah?”
“It was a pretty good story.”
“Tell me about it.”
I told him. I gave it to him in detail right down to the last minute Robert Minnow had spent on this earth and all the while I was talking his face kept getting tighter and tighter. His eyes seemed to sink deeper into his head and he didn’t ask any questions. When I finished I let him mull over it for a while, hoping he’d make a break but nothing happened. After he thought about it ten minutes the scowl turned into a puzzled frown and stayed there. Hell, if that’s the way he wanted it, good enough. I wasn’t going to pump it out of him.
I said, “Where to?”
“You’re going to stay with me until I deliver you to Gardiner.”
“Okay, pal, whatever you say. But how about letting me get my car back. I wouldn’t want the friend it belongs to worried about it.”
It didn’t take more than an hour to collect the Ford and park it at a garage where they promised to have it ready before noon. All the slugs had gone through the glass and since I had knocked out what was left of it nobody could tell what happened. Logan let me get finished then hauled us back to the new office where he went in to see about some business.
When he came back I asked “Where to?”
“No place special for a while. I’m still on that murder case.”
“The dame?”
“Yeah. The cops are up a tree too. They’re trying to run down the truckers she was friendly with.”
“What about her roommate?”
“She took a powder when she heard about it. Got skunky drunk right after she identified the body and was last seen climbing into a truck for a necking party outside a joint on the highway.”
“Didn’t show up yet?”
“Naw, probably still on a binge. She’s just the type, according to those who knew her. Right now she’s probably sleeping if off if she isn’t already back at work. I’m going down there now and see what the score is. Look, if you don’t feel like running around I’ll drop you off at my place.”
“Hell, I’m okay.”
So at nine-thirty we pulled into the ABC Diner and I waited in the car while Logan went inside to ask his questions. He didn’t take long. Five minutes later he was back shaking his head. He got back in the car and started to pull out just as a prowl car drove up. Logan grimaced at the driver through the windshield. “You won’t get anyplace either, copper.”
“No soap?” I asked.
“Hell, she’s still missing. At least it isn’t anything new. Her boss said she took off like that a couple times before. Didn’t show for a week.” He reached in his pocket and flipped a snapshot out at me. “There’s what she looks like.”
I said, “Umm,” because she wasn’t bad at all. It was taken at a beach and she was oozing out of a Bikini suit like toothpaste out of a tube. She was some hunk of stuff if you didn’t mind a face that was too much lipstick, too arched eyebrows, too wide eyes and too little sense than to try to wear an up-sweep in a stiff wind. I gave him back the snap and settled down against the cushions. It was his working day, not mine. My head was putting up an argument against staying awake and I didn’t have anything to say about it. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
I kept dreaming about a blonde, a real honey blonde with a soft curving body and a beautiful face that had a wonderful radiance about it. She came close to me, smiling, her eyes telling me she loved me, then when she was only an arm’s length away the hands that had been reaching for my face grew sharp, curved talons and she raked at my eyes viciously. I batted them away and tried to grab her, but she stayed out of reach and laughed at me. I said, “Vera, I’ll kill you when I get you, so help me!”
The elbow that rammed my ribs wasn’t trying to be gentle. Logan gritted, “Wake up, damn it.”
“Where are we?” I came out of it fast, trying to see everything at once. The day had drifted into dusk and the cars coming toward us had their dimmers on. We were nestled against the curb beside a six-foot field-stone fence in a section of town I hadn’t seen before.
Logan let me get the sleep out of my eyes first. “Gardiner’s place. He wants to talk to you.”
“I been asleep all day?”
“You’re not kidding. Come on, snap out of it.”
So I snapped out of it. Logan locked the car then took me for a short walk around the field-stone fence to a wrought-iron gate that might have been swiped from Buckingham Palace. He rang a bell, we waited, then a tall gent in riding breeches did the honors of opening the gate. The guy was the type who could turn politeness on or off and since he had it on right then I gathered that we were expected.