“I don’t know whether we was or not. We got there maybe eleven. About then. Barney give us the high-sign. That there was a sucker down to the end of the bar maybe we could take. We didn’t push right in,” Timmy said virtuously. “We had us a drink and waited. Oh, maybe half an hour or so. There was this three or four people back there together. Talking and kiddin’, you know. One or two dames and a couple guys. You couldn’t tell who was with who, but it didn’t matter to us. Then this little guy comes stumbling out an’ Barney he gives us the office. Nobody’s with him, so we just went on out behind and there he is in the moonlight staggering down the street. We trailed along figurin’ he’d pass out any minute. Ox, he wanted to tap him a little, easy-like, but I said what the hell? Give him a little minute an’ we wouldn’t even hafta.
“So, I’m right. He makes it about a block, going from one side of the road to another, an’ then falls flat on his face. So we lifted his wallet and he never knew it. And Ox took a fancy to a ring he had on, and snatched that. But we never touched a finger to him, I swear it. We figured if we didn’t get it, somebody else would.
“Then he kind of comes to for a minute and gets up an’ staggers on. And there’s a car comin’ real slow, and Ox and me we slips off to the side and hides behind a oleander bush. And we watch while this car comes along slow with him in the headlights, and then he goes off the pavement into the ditch and the car pulls up just beyond him and stops and the lights go off. So we figure it’s a friend of his from back at the Club and they’ll find out he’s been rolled, so we beat it back fast and get in our jalopy and take off. And that’s all to Christ and hell I know about the whole deal, and when Ox comes back to his senses he’ll tell you the same damn thing. We never touched a finger to him, and I swear we didn’t.”
Ox was groaning and trying to sit up again. Shayne stared down at the pair with unconcealed disgust, and told Timmy, “You’ll have a chance to convince the cops that you’re clean on the killing. Before you do that… think hard and straight and tell me one thing: Did you ever know a gambler named George Nourse?”
“Sure.” A crafty look came into Timmy’s eyes. “He was a big-shot here… two-three years ago. He really did have a pair of educated dice. Gawd! I seen him one night take three grand in a game with seven straight rolls.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Nourse? Not for the last year or two. I heard tell he was out on the West Coast… and doing all right, too.”
“You’re positive you didn’t see him at the Sporting Club last night?”
“George Nourse?” Timmy looked honestly surprised. “Is he back in town? I hadn’t heard it around.”
“All right,” Shayne said disgustedly. “Get your muscle-bound friend in shape to take a ride. I’m calling for the meat-wagon.”
He turned to the door and unlocked it, opened it and called out to the proprietor. “Call the cops and tell them I’ve got a couple punks that want free taxi service to police headquarters.”
11
After Timmy and Ox had been bundled off to jail, Shayne took time out to grab some much-needed nourishment, his first of the day. Thus, it was almost an hour after the two muggers had been locked up when he reached headquarters. He found Timothy Rourke closeted with Peter Painter in the latter’s office, and the reporter looked up with an approving grin as the redhead entered.
“From what I hear you must have gone back to the Sporting Club after we got thrown out.”
“Those two punks? Yeh, the bartender finally decided to come clean. How do you like them, Painter?”
“For a cheap little rolling rap, fine,” Painter said condescendingly. “For a big rap, they’re out. We’ve put them through the mill and all we’ve got on them is they followed a drunk out of a bar and snatched his roll.”
“After maybe slipping some sodium amytal in his drink first so he’d be an easier take,” Shayne suggested, pulling up a chair and seating himself without waiting for an invitation.
“Not a chance,” snorted Painter. “While you’ve been chasing all over town after those two-bit punks, I’ve been finding out some things about that redhead widow you were cuddling up this morning.”
“That so?” Shayne lifted ragged, red eyebrows in surprise and busied himself lighting a cigarette.
“It is a truism in police work that the most obvious answer is generally the true one. Your trouble, Shayne, is that you can’t see the woods for the trees. Give me a husband-poisoning and I’ll give you a two-timing wife ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“Linda Fitzgilpin?” Shayne frowned sourly and shook his head. “She seemed a hell of a fine woman. A loving wife and devoted mother. Lucy Hamilton knows her quite well, and that’s her opinion.”
“Maybe I should put Lucy on the payroll as psychological advisor,” said Painter sarcastically. “These loving wives and devoted mothers,” he sneered. “When I see one of them stacked like that widow is stacked… married for years to a meek little man without too much on the ball… I start digging. And if you dig far enough and intelligently enough you generally find paydirt. I’ve only gone back a couple of years this far, and I’ll lay ten to one I’ll find plenty more as I go back further.”
“What have you got so far?”
“Plenty to build a case against her. She had a red-hot affair with a tin-horn gambler about a year and a half ago. Asked her husband for a divorce and he refused to give her one. This isn’t for publication yet, Tim,” he went on to the reporter who was busily taking notes, “though I’ve got all the proof I need. Fitzgilpin went to an attorney at that time for advice, and turned the tables by threatening a suit of his own, naming her lover as co-respondent and demanding custody of the children. I have an affidavit to that effect from the lawyer Fitzgilpin consulted. How do you like that for a loving wife and devoted mother?” he demanded happily of Shayne. “What will the prosecuting attorney do with that in court?”
Shayne shook his head wonderingly and sighed, “You never know, do you? But that was a year and a half ago. They patched it up and went on living together. If her husband was willing to forgive her, why should she suddenly want him dead a year and a half later?”
“Who knows how well they patched it up? How do we know how completely he forgave her? Maybe she carried a torch all this time… or maybe she found another man better in bed than her husband?”
“Who was the other man?” asked Timothy Rourke alertly. “You got any line on him?”
“Name of George Nourse. I’ve got lines out on him. He apparently left town about that time, and rumor says he’s been on the West Coast ever since. But he could have come back to get some more of that redheaded stuff. If I can put him in town last night I’ll have an open and shut case against the two of them,” Painter ended triumphantly.
“Have you talked to her?” Shayne asked curiously.
“Not yet. I want to be ready to really throw the hooks to her when I do. I’ve got you to thank, Shayne, for preventing me from questioning her this morning before I had this stuff to throw in her face,” he added happily.
Shayne said, “Yeh. She had me fooled all right. A gambler named George Nourse, huh? I’ll be asking around.”
“You do that, and I’ll do the same. Right now I’m waiting for a reply from some contacts on the Coast.”
Shayne let his shoulders slump dispiritedly and rose to his feet. “I thought I was pretty smart coming up with Timmy and Ox, but I guess they’re not very important in the light of what you say.”
“You did all right on them, Shayne,” Painter told him magnanimously. “Not that I wouldn’t have gotten around to them myself sooner or later. But, first things first in police work is the way I see it. Sure, I knew he’d been rolled but I figured all along it was just an accidental by-product of him having been poisoned first.”
Shayne hesitated on his way to the door, “You coming, Tim?”