“You may have some friends on the force,” I said, “but you’re not dealing with the force now. Do you know any good judges?”
I saw him wince at that.
“Of course,” I said, “a good friend who is a judge might help you. This isn’t the police. I’m private, and I’m tough.”
“Aw, what are you picking on me for? Give a guy a break, can’t you?”
“What difference does it make to you?” I asked him. “Did somebody give you money?”
“Of course not.”
“Perhaps trying a little blackmail?”
“Aw, have a heart, mister. Gee, I was going to play it on the square and then I realized I couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“Because I was in trouble down in Los Angeles. I skipped parole. I ain’t supposed to be selling papers. I’m supposed to be reporting to a probation officer every thirty days and all that stuff. I didn’t like it and I came up here and been going straight.”
“Why didn’t you report the hit-and-run?”
“How could I? I thought I was going to be smart. I took down the guy’s number and figured I’d make a grandstand with the cops, and then I suddenly realized what it would mean. The D.A. would call me as a witness and the smart guy who was defending the fellow would start ripping me up the back and down the front and show that I had skipped out on parole, the jury wouldn’t believe me, and I’d get sent back to L.A. as a parole violator.”
“Pretty smart for a kid, aren’t you?”
“I ain’t a kid.”
I looked down into the prematurely wise little face with the sharp eyes sizing me up, studying me for a weak point where he could take advantage of me, felt the bony little shoulder under my hand, and said, “Okay, kid. You play square with me and I’ll play square with you. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“How are you getting along up here?”
“I’m doing good. I’m keeping on the straight and narrow. The trouble down in L.A. I had too many friends. I’d get out with the gang and they’d start calling me sissy if I didn’t ride along.”
“What were they doing?”
“Believe me, mister, they were getting so they were doing damn near everything. It started out with kid stuff, then when Butch got to be head of the outfit he said the only fellows who could run with the gang were the ones who had guts enough to be regular guys. I mean he’s tough.”
“Why didn’t you go to the probation officer and tell him all that?”
“Think I was going to rat?”
“Why didn’t you just stay home and mind your own business?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“So you took a powder and came up here?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re going straight?”
“Like a string.”
“Give me the license number and I’ll try to keep you out of it.”
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket that had been torn from the edge of a newspaper. On it was scribbled a number, written with a hard pencil so that it was all but illegible.
I studied it carefully.
He went on in an eager, whining voice. “That’s the car that hit the guy. The driver came tearing down the hill and almost hit me. That’s when I got so mad I started to take his number. He was a fat, middle-aged guy with a little blonde plastered up against him. She started to kiss him just as they got to the corner, or he was kissing her, or they were kissing each other, I don’t know which.”
“What did you do?”
“I jumped out of the way and thought the guy was going to crash into the curb. I took his number — that is, I got out the pencil and was writing it down on the edge of the paper when he smacked right into this guy.”
“Then what?”
“Then he slowed down for a minute and I thought he was stopping; then the wren said something to him and changed his mind. He stepped on it.”
“No one after him?”
“Sure. A guy tried to nail him just as some goof swung out from the curb. They smashed up and littered the street with broken glass. By that time people were running around giving help to the old man, and all of a sudden I realized that I was in a spot; that if I told the police who the fellow was I’d be a gone coon.”
“Who was he?”
“I tell you I don’t know. All I know is he was driving a dark sedan, he was going like hell, and he and this babe were pitching woo right up to the time they hit the street intersection.”
“Drunk?”
“How do I know? He was busy doing other things besides driving the automobile. Now I’ve given you a break, mister. Let me go.”
I handed him five dollars. “Go buy yourself a Coca- Cola, buddy, and quit worrying about it.”
He looked at the five for a moment, then swiftly crumpled it and shoved it down into his pocket. “That all?” he asked.
I said, “Would you know this gent if you saw him again, the one who was driving the car?”
He looked at me with eyes that were suddenly hard and shrewd. “No,” he said.
“Couldn’t recognize him if you saw him in a line-up?”
“No.”
I left the newsboy and looked up the registration of the number he had given me.
It was Harvey B. Ludlow and he lived in an apartment way out on the beach. The car was a Cadillac sedan.
Chapter Nine
I slept until noon Sunday, in my south-of-Market dump. Breakfast at a nearby restaurant consisted of stale eggs fried in near-rancid grease, muddy coffee, and cold, soggy toast.
I got the Sunday papers, and went back to my stuffy room with its threadbare carpet, hard chair, and stale stench.
Gabby Garvanza had made news of a sort.
He’d discharged himself from the hospital, and his departure had given every indication that he was a worried, apprehensive man.
He had, in fact, simply vanished into thin air.
His nurses and physician insisted they knew nothing about it.
Garvanza was recuperating nicely and had been able to travel under his own power. Attired in pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe, he had announced his intention of walking down the hall to the solarium.
When his special nurse went to the solarium a few minutes later she drew a blank. A frantic search of the hospital yielded no clues and no Gabby Garvanza.
Theories ranged from the fact that the gambler had taken a run-out powder to abduction by the enemies who had tried to rub him out.
The mobster had left behind clothes which had been taken to him by Maurine Auburn on the day following the shooting.
The three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit of clothes, the silk shirt, and the twenty-five-dollar hand-painted tie which he had been wearing on the night he was shot, had been impounded as evidence. The bullet holes in the bloodstained garments were expected to yield perhaps some clue on spectrographic analysis as to the composition of the slugs which had penetrated Garvanza’s body.
The day after the shooting Maurine Auburn had brought a suitcase containing another three-hundred-andfifty- dollar tailor-made suit, a pair of seventy-five-dollar made-to-order shoes, another twenty-five-dollar handpainted necktie, and an assortment of silk shirts, socks, and handkerchiefs.
All of these had been left behind. When he vanished the gambler had been wearing only bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers.
The hospital staff insisted that a man so clothed could not possibly leave the hospital by any of the exits, and pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for him to get a cab while clad in that attire.
Police retorted that whether or not it had been possible, Gabby had disappeared, and that he hadn’t needed a cab.
There was some criticism of the police for not posting a guard, but the police countered that criticism with the fact that Gabby Garvanza had been the target. He had not done any shooting and had, in fact, been unarmed at the time he was shot. Police had other and more important duties than to assign a bodyguard for a notorious gambler who seemed to be having troubles with competition that wished to muscle in on what the press referred to as “a lucrative racket” — despite the fact that the police insisted the town was closed up tight and there was no gambling worthy of the name.