I hit the starter button. “I’m going into town. You want to come along?”
“No... I have things to do.” She tapped the package.
“What shall I do with this stuff?”
“Leave it in the house. Sure you don’t want to come?”
She shook her head and opened the door. When she was out she stood there holding it open, her eyes going over me curiously. “You’re dressed funny.”
“Disguise.”
“Oh.” She grinned at me. “You’ll be careful?”
“Does it matter?”
She nodded and there were tears in her eyes again. A bus came along and she ran for it, leaving me wondering what it was I said that time.
Chapter Twelve
Philbert’s was bustling with activity. Signs pasted on the windows blared “Anniversary Sale!” in fat red letters with the usual business about how prices had been slashed in half. I got behind a stout woman with a shopping bag under her arm and went in after her. I looked around, but as far as the customers were concerned, I was just another one of the crowd. I bought another work shirt just to have something to carry around, made my way through the aisles while I looked over the hardware, then slipped into one of the phone booths along the wall.
The operator got me my number and I could see the guy in the back answer the call. He had a habitual stoop that made his glasses seem to be ready to fall off his nose and he wasn’t too polite when he barked hello.
I said, “I know how you can pick up a quick hundred, feller.”
They always get polite when you use that approach even if they think it might be a wrong number. There’s always the chance that it isn’t. I watched him look around quickly then muffle the mouthpiece. “Who... you know who this is?” He sounded hopeful.
“Yep. You’re in the printing end at Philbert’s.”
“Why, that’s right!” Now he was surprised. He turned his back to me and I couldn’t see his face any longer.
“Can you get off for a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
“Swell, go outside and start walking south. You got that?”
“Well, yes... but...”
I hung up and watched him. First he stared at the phone licking his lips, then must have decided that nothing could happen to him in the daytime. He waved over a young fellow and went in the back. He came out with a coat over his arm and threaded through the mob.
I stayed right behind him.
Outside, he took a look around, shrugged and started walking south. Slowly. When he was directly opposite the Ford I touched his arm and said, “In the car.”
The guy twitched, shot me a look over his shoulder, then let his mouth fall apart. I said, “In the car,” again and he opened the door without a sound and shimmied over against the other side. He was popeyed with fright and couldn’t swallow his own spit.
It was about time somebody recognized me.
I was getting better at the game. I stuck a cigarette in the comer of my mouth, lit it and leered at him. “You can make that hundred if you feel like it, friend. You can start yapping and just make it rough on yourself. What do you think?”
He got his spit swallowed, but he still couldn’t speak. His head made a jerky nod and nothing else. “Five years ago. Do you remember that long?”
Another swallow and another nod.
“Bob Minnow was the D. A. then. Before he was killed he went to your place and left something there. Remember that?”
“I... wasn’t there,” he managed to say. “Lee... he mentioned it. I remember... now.”
“What did he leave?”
This time he shook his head nervously “I... dunno. He left something. Lee gave him... a ticket. Maybe it’s still in the files.”
“Can you find it?”
“Not... without the ticket. I already... looked.”
The cigarette almost fell out of my hand. I could feel my eyes turning into nasty little slits that blurred everything I looked at. “Who told you to look?”
He was flat against the door, his eyes wide, showing white all around. “Just the other day... Logan, that reporter. He came in and... asked me the same thing.”
So Logan had figured it out first. He remembered before I did that Philbert’s did photograph and photostat work. Nice going, Logan.
I said, “Why can’t you find it?”
“Hell, mister... we handle thousands of jobs like that. All the companies, they take us their work. Maybe I can find it. I’ll look if you want. It’ll take a couple of weeks, but...”
“Damn it, I haven’t got that long!”
“Golly, without a ticket...”
“Shut up.”
I pulled in on the butt and flicked it out the window. It landed on a guy’s foot and he was going to say something nasty when he saw my face. He kept on walking.
When I reached for my wallet the guy followed my hand every inch of the way and he relaxed when he saw it wasn’t a gun. My pile was going down. I slipped out a crisp hundred and passed it to him. “Mac, keep something in mind. Every cop in town is looking for me, so it’s no secret that I’m around. You mention one word to anybody that I’ve seen you and I guarantee that for the rest of your life you’ll be afraid to walk home alone at night. You understand that?”
He got all white. His hands shook so bad he almost lost the bill.
“How late do you stay open?”
“Until t-twelve.”
“Good. You stay there until you hear from me.”
A frantic nod said he would and he almost broke his neck getting out the door. I was back in traffic before he reached the store, cut down a side street and turned north.
Fifteen minutes later I was driving past the white house with the fence around it. Mrs. Minnow was on the porch in a rocker with her head going up and down the street every few seconds. She rocked too fast. Mrs. Minnow was nervous.
There were two of them, one on each end of the street. New sedans with a man behind the wheel. They were young men, not smoking or reading. Not doing anything. If there were more I didn’t see them and wasn’t about to go looking. I kept on going until I found a soda store that served snacks, went into a booth and ordered a sandwich and coffee. When I finished I ordered the same thing again, bought a magazine and dawdled over it until it was dark. The owner of the joint was coughing and looking over my way trying to let me know he wanted to close up, so I paid my bill. An extra buck made him smile again. For luck I tried Logan’s office. He still hadn’t showed up.
I hung around the street for a while smoking the last of my butts. I picked up another pack in a delicatessen and started on that. Overhead, a rumble of thunder rolled across the city and the sky lit up in the west. I took my time drifting back to the car and made it just as the rain started.
It wasn’t too bad, sitting there watching it roll down the windows. It kept time with everything I was thinking, a nice background to dream against. In a way I hoped it would keep up. Later, perhaps, I would sit someplace listening to it slam against the roof while I put all the pieces where they belonged.
My watch read nine-twenty. I kicked the engine over and turned around at the corner.
Smart. I had to be smart. The boys with the badges were thinking along the same lines I was and expected me back at the Minnow house. Or else they were bodyguarding the old lady in case the Johnny McBride they wanted had further ideas of revenge.
This time I parked on the street behind the house. I left the key in the lock in case I had to get away fast, rolled up the windows against the rain and pulled on my jacket. I went back a few houses until I found a driveway, turned in and walked back to the fence line that separated the yards.