“Thanks, Mrs. Cowles, but—”
“Make it Wynne. We’re partners, aren’t we? Or M.C., that’s what they call me at the ranch. Short for Mountain Cat.”
“All right. But about being partners... I’m not sure—”
“Why not? You were yesterday.”
“Well — anyhow, it would have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For this to be — my sister. I couldn’t discuss anything now — or start anything—”
“You’re a softie, Clara. It will do you good to be doing something. Don’t worry about your sister, we’ll take care of her. She’s a nice kid. Saw her yesterday. You ought to snap out of it; you look and talk as if someone had blackjacked you. Let’s go over to my suite at the Fowler and have a cocktail and some lunch and get your mind started working. Or out to the ranch — it only takes forty minutes—”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. Not today. I’m going home. Later I’m coming back here and see Delia.”
“Then I’ll go home with you. Let me go home with you?”
When they had settled for that, Dillon accompanied them to where Wynne Cowles’s long low convertible was parked before he headed for his office on Mountain Street. He hadn’t known that those two were acquainted and certainly not that they were partners.
Chapter 7
At The Haven gambling parlors in the old Sammis Building on Halley Street, which, in a halfhearted sort of way, opened for business before noon, the awning was left down until the sun’s angle had passed beyond the perpendicular of the building line. Around three o’clock an employee in shirt sleeves emerged from the door with a crank in his hand. Before applying the crank and winding up the awning, he directed a look of appraisal at a man who stood near the door, in a niche between two stone pilasters. There was nothing extraordinary about the man — middle-aged, shoulders a little stooped — though he differed from the normal by having two strips of adhesive tape extending down his right cheekbone from under the brim of his hat, and by possessing a mustache of a quite unusual color, almost a fawn. The employee, having finished his task, glanced sharply at the man again and then disappeared inside.
In a few minutes the door opened again and the assistant manager of The Haven stepped out. With his habitual deadpan for a face, he went directly to the man in the niche and inquired, “You taking a census, brother?”
The man grunted and said, “I’m looking for a friend.”
“You must be pretty short on friends, with all the looking you’ve done. You were here when I came, nearly four hours ago, and you’re still here. Why don’t you try some other spot a while?”
“I’m doing no harm. The sidewalk is public property.”
“So it is. What does your friend look like?”
The man with the mustache shook his head. The assistant manager eyed him a moment, then turned and strolled down the sidewalk some thirty paces until he met a policeman in uniform. They exchanged nods and the assistant manager asked, “Have you seen that bird with the handlebars taking root in front of my place?”
“Sure I’ve seen him. All day. He says he’s looking for a friend.”
“How about advising him to go look somewhere else?”
“I suppose I could.” The cop grinned. “What’s the matter, you afraid he’s a G-man with a line on that two bits somebody lost?”
The deadpan didn’t respond to the grin. “I just don’t like it how patient he is. With Jackson murdered upstairs last night, the place has had enough of the wrong kind of advertising. One reason I asked, I thought maybe he was a gumshoe working on the murder.”
The cop shook his head. “Not a member of this club. He don’t look ferocious. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
The assistant manager, accepting that assurance, retraced his steps, re-entered The Haven and resumed his duties in the service of society. The cop sauntered after him, keeping close to the buildings for shade, approached the man in the niche and inquired casually, “Your friend show up yet?”
“Not yet. Thanks.”
The cop sauntered on.
Thirty minutes later, when the little disturbance occurred, the cop was across the street listening to a man cussing at a flat tire and therefore missed the preamble of the brief climax to the man’s long vigil. It was all over in no time at all. The man with the mustache suddenly and abruptly left his niche, moving to intercept a husky-looking young man, rather shabbily dressed, who, coming along the sidewalk from the north, had altered his course with the evident intention of entering The Haven.
The man with the mustache, blocking the young man’s path, said urgently, “I want a talk with you, young fellow. There’ll be a reward in it. Now don’t start—”
The young man shied back, ready, it appeared, to bolt. The man with the mustache sprang and seized his arm, getting a good grip. The young man’s right fist swung and landed square on the other’s jaw. The man with the mustache dropped to the concrete, rolling, and his assailant leaped back, wheeled and scooted like a deer down the sidewalk, nearly knocking a woman over, swerving to disappear into a narrow alley forty feet away.
Passersby collected and one of them stooped to give the fallen man a hand. Disregarding it, he scrambled to his feet, looked around with glassy eyes, and demanded, “Where is he? Which way did he go?”
A dozen voices answered him at once. The cop, having trotted across the street, took him by the elbow and observed sarcastically, “A swell friend that was you were looking for. Come along with me.”
“He got away! I’ve got to catch him!”
“We’ll catch one at a time, starting with you. Come along.”
“You damned fool!” The man grimaced, worked his jaw, and grimaced again. “You know me! I’m Quinby Pellett!”
“Yeah? Where’d you get the lip grass?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” The man took hold of his mustache and gave it a jerk, and it was gone. “Which way did he go, damn it? I have to find him!”
“He’s out in the sagebrush by now.” The cop had released the elbow, but he looked neither sympathetic nor amused. “What’s the idea of the handmade tassel? — Hey, wait a minute, where you going?”
“None of your business! Turn loose of me! I’m going to see Frank Phelan.”
“Okay. Come on, folks, let us by, open up there! I think I’d better go along, Mr. Pellett. If you happened to run across any more friends of yours on the way, you might not make it.”
Quinby Pellett offered no objection as the policeman climbed in beside him on the seat of his dilapidated coupé, parked around the corner on Garfield Street. He got into the channel of the traffic stream and drove with the apparent assumption that he was an ambulance.
“You know, I could give you a ticket anyway, sitting right here,” the cop observed.
Pellett stopped working his jaw long enough to grunt.
They went to the police station, and were informed that the chief was out and might be at the courthouse. Upon Pellett’s refusal to converse with the lieutenant in charge, a phone call to the courthouse got the information that Phelan was there in the sheriff’s office, so they returned to the coupé and drove to the courthouse, missing fenders by inches on the way. They tramped down the dim basement corridor. The man in the anteroom told them the chief and the sheriff were busy and they would have to wait; then, obviously impressed by Pellett’s violent reaction, used the phone, nodded toward the rear, and told them to go on in.
Bill Tuttle was seated at his desk. Two men who looked like detectives, which was what they were, stood at the opposite side of the desk. Phelan, in a chair not far from Tuttle, frowning at the newcomers as they entered, spoke: