“I’ve been out and back already, Lindsey. Now listen to me. Servo’s girl is loose somewhere. You know her?”
“Yeah, Troy Avalard. Why?”
“She’s on somebody’s kill list, Lindsey. Pick her up. I think she may be the key to this thing. Pass the word around and see what you can do.”
He said something dirty under his breath. “You gave me the answer to that one last night, McBride. Suppose I do give orders. Somebody else’ll change ’em.”
“You’re not scared, are you?” I asked easily.
Lindsey was silent a moment, then I heard another muttered curse. “I’ll look for her,” he said.
“Fine. Call the bank and see if she made any large withdrawal. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
I slapped the phone back, chain-lit another cigarette and went over to the window for a quick look down the street. There was a truck parked behind the Ford and a light green sedan behind that. A postman was sorting letters as he went up the steps to a house across the street. A kid came by on a bicycle. A kid in a sleeveless sweater was ambling along checking the house numbers.
I closed the curtains and went back to the phone. Lindsey had made his check. Troy Avalard hadn’t made any withdrawals at all. The cashier had given him the information and was instructed to call Lindsey back if she appeared.
Venus was taking it all in silently, sitting there in her chair playing with the tassel on her dress. “You’re big trouble, man. Real big. Things are getting ready to blow, aren’t they?”
“Soon. It should have happened five years ago. It would have if a guy named Robert Minnow hadn’t been killed.” I stopped and looked at her. “You’ll be here right along?”
“I’m not going anyplace.”
“If Servo’s boys come back...”
She smiled and reached down behind the cushions. There was a gun in her hand. A long-barreled revolver that wasn’t a woman’s gun at all. You could poke your finger down the hole in the end. “They won’t bother me, man. Not again they won’t, not even Servo himself.”
“Where’d the rod come from?”
“My husband’s. I told you I used to be married to a cop, remember? He taught me how to use it.”
“What happened to him?”
She jerked with a short laugh. “I shot him.”
The gun went back behind the cushions and she took me out to the door. Like I said, it was just the same as the first time. The tassel was dangling there and I pulled it.
Not quite like the last time. It was a different dress. Just the top fell off. She said, “Skin is still skin to you, isn’t it?”
I agreed that it was and closed the door while she was picking her gimmick up from the floor.
The street was empty and I climbed in the Ford. While 1 angled back to town I switched on the radio and picked up the local station. It was right on the half hour and the news commentator was giving a recap of daily events. It was too late to get the details, but in brief, he said that John McBride, alias George Wilson, had not been apprehended and was somewhere at large in the city. All efforts were being made to locate him and an appeal had been made by the City Council and the mayor for the citizenry to join in the search. A description followed that was a good one and changed my mind about breezing through town like I was.
Sometimes a crook is safest standing in front of a cop. Then nobody suspects he’s a crook. Everybody expected me to be in hiding so when I went in the dry goods store nobody bothered looking at me twice. I had left my shirt and jacket in the car, walked in in my T shirt and asked the lady behind the counter for a work shirt, size 16, a size 44 leather jacket and a couple of handkerchiefs. To make it look good I bought a pair of blue jeans and a pair of brogans.
She rang up the sale on the register, smiled and thanked me, then went back to her paper. There was another picture of me on the front page. A little smaller in this edition. I changed clothes in the cubicle in the back, threw my other stuff in the rear of the car and started toward town again.
That’s when I saw Wendy. She was coming out of a beauty parlor, on the next corner with a package under her arm, glancing down the street for a bus. I slammed on the brakes and yelled to her. She came across the street on the run and got in beside me.
“That where you’ve been all day?”
I didn’t mean to make it sound like it did. She looked hurt and shook her head. “I just stopped in to make an appointment. I was on the way home.”
I could have seen that if I had looked first. She was still dark around the roots even if her hair did look custom-tailored. I looked some more and grinned. Wendy was an okay chick. I tapped the package. “For me?”
“For you.” She did that trick with her mouth again and opened the top of it. “Want me to tell you about it or read it off?”
“Tell me.”
“Tucker lives in a big house in the suburbs. He has a bar in the cellar with a game room and a poolroom. There’s a two-car garage behind the house with a new Caddy in one side. He uses the other when he’s working.”
“Nice going on a cop’s salary.”
“He isn’t the only one. Most of the police work a shakedown racket on the side. Tucker does better than most though.”
“He’s in with Servo?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “At one time Tucker was a few grand in the hole to one of the big boys. It’s been said that Servo had the debt canceled. I have statements from seven people who saw him lose thousands in one of the joints in town.”
“Try again. He can always say he won the money on another wheel.”
Wendy fingered through the tops of the papers in the pack. “He hires a man to make out his income tax. The guy talked with a little persuasion. He said that Tucker declares everything.”
“He’s smart. Capone should have thought of it. What else?”
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat. “I went back to see Mrs. Minnow. The last time she didn’t tell us everything. Her husband had Lenny Servo in court several times.”
“I know. It was in the papers.”
“The important part wasn’t. Bob Minnow had evidence that would have broken the racket down... or at least put Servo where he would have talked. Twice, on the night before he went to court, somebody broke into his office and rifled the safe. Each time his evidence disappeared.”
“Tucker,” I said. “Damn it, Tucker would have had the way and the means.” I slammed my fist against the wheel and cursed some more.
Her voice sounded like it came out of a fog. “Not Tucker,” she said.
I stared at her. “Who?”
She leafed out a brand-new poster of me, the kind you see in post offices. She had circled the paragraph that said I was wanted for jobs that involved robbing safes. I was an expert at it.
And not so long ago I had sat across a table from Logan telling him about the safe I had pulled from the dump heap and used to experiment on.
“You,” she said. It was soft, but it cracked like a pistol shot. Her eyes were dark with distrust, yet she sat there waiting for me to explain it away.
I didn’t bother. “That’s a lot of work for one day, kid.” She pulled back as if I had taken a swipe at her. There were sudden tears in her eyes and I wondered what the hell I could have said that would do that to her.
I said, “Oh, quit getting sore at me.” I reached out and pulled her under my arm, burying my face in her hair. She smelled pretty. “I’m just a born lout, Wendy. Always forgetting my manners. I should’ve said thanks.”
My thumb tilted her chin up until her mouth was under mine. I felt her lips quivering, then her hand went around my head and held me there until I finished apologizing.
The lines she had around her eyes when I first met her were all gone. Coming out of the hardness was a new kind of beauty she let me see only briefly before she pulled back in her shell.