I knew, then, why she hadn’t dared go back to the apartment the night before, but said nothing.
“Frank had been one of a gang,” she said. “I’d been a pal of his. I never thought very much about how he made his living. Probably you’re not interested in my story?”
I nodded.
“Go on,” I said.
“Frank was arrested. He got a jolt and came out. He left me enough money to carry on. I carried on and waited for him.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“I didn’t want him to go back to it,” she told me. “I’d had a chance to think things over while he’d been away. Frank was young and attractive. I wanted him to make something of himself.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then the gang started to bring pressure to bear on him. They had some jobs they wanted him to do. He wouldn’t. He was looking for work.”
“Did you have any trouble persuading Frank to go straight?” I asked her.
She lowered her eyes for a moment.
“At first I did,” she said. “He didn’t want to go back on his pals, and they made him feel that he was running out on them. For a couple of months I wasn’t certain, and then . . .”
She ceased speaking for a moment, then suddenly raised her eyes and stared directly into mine.
“Go on,” I told her.
“It was the day he told Howard Cove that he was finished, definitely, finally, once and for all. Two days later the Vivian Loring gems were stolen. Frank didn’t know anything about it. He was with me at the time. We had a car—a Ford Eight. It had been parked in front of our apartment. Frank went down to get it to drive around to the gas station for some gas and oil. We were going to the movies. He came back to the apartment with a funny look on his face and told me the car had been moved, the motor was hot, and someone had put in gasoline. I went down with him to look at the car. There was a bullet hole in the back, and a place where another bullet had struck one of the headlights. Just then the officers came along. They arrested Frank. I told them he’d been with me. They were going to arrest me for a while. Finally they told me to beat it, and took Frank.
“You know how much chance Frank stands of beating that rap—a man with a criminal record, his car used in the stick-up; the only alibi he has that I would testify he was with me. I can just hear the District Attorney commenting to the jury on the weight they should give to my testimony—an unwed wife.”
There was bitterness and anguish in her tone. I looked for tears to come, but her eyes were dry, bright and steady.
She saw my look.
“I can take it,” she said, “don’t worry about that. When the time comes I’ll stand up and take it on the chin, but it won’t do any good. What I wanted was to do something that would do Frank some good. I wanted to get the gems. The insurance company has offered Frank probation if he’ll turn in the stones.”
I smoked for a while in silence.
“What’s the insurance company?” I asked.
“I’m not certain of the name, but I think it’s the Inter-Indemnity Exchange.”
“Where can I get a list of the jewels that were taken?” I asked.
“I’ve got it,” she said, “in a newspaper clipping in my coat pocket.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to pick up Cove and get those jewels. Then the insurance company will see that Frank gets a light sentence. It’s the only thing to do. We can’t beat the rap—not with his record. We’ve got a little money. I’ve got it in American Express checks; not much; a little over a thousand dollars. You can have it all.”
“All?” I asked. “Even if they give Frank a light sentence,” I said, “he’ll be where he can’t work for a while.”
She nodded again.
“If you give me all your money,” I asked, “what are you going to do?”
She stared at me steadily.
“I’ll find something,” she said quietly.
There was nothing helpless or beseeching in her eyes; merely a calm, steady determination that I liked.
I got up and put on my hat.
“Promise me,” I said, “that you will wait here and make no attempt to leave the apartment until you hear from me.”
She nodded.
Perhaps it was the expression in her eyes, as I turned away, and she didn’t see that I was watching her, or it might have been intuition, but I knew then that she had more to contend with than even she had told me.
“
Willie The Weeper” made a business of selling and re-selling information in exchange for dope or for money, but he preferred dope.
He knew me as Bob Sabin, the private detective.
I shoved the two cubes of morphine across the dirty, sticky table towards him. He grabbed them with a claw that trembled. His eyelids fluttered as he looked up at me. Tears came to his eyes and trickled down his pallid skin.
“Gawd, Bob,” he said, “you’re good to me! If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know how I’d get by. You’re one of the real friends that I’ve got in the world. You always think of me.
“Some of these other guys only come in here when they want to buy some information. You come in every once in a while and pay me a friendly visit. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve your friendship.”
His shoulders shook with sobs. Tears followed one another in trickling procession down his cheeks.
I didn’t say anything. It was all part of the game with Willie. It was easier for him to cry than not to cry. It made a good line.
After a while he brushed the tears away with the sleeve of a ragged coat and pulled a blackened tablespoon from a drawer in the table.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
I watched him and said nothing.
“Willie The Weeper” had been on the hop too long to quit. Take it away from him now, and he’d die. Even the authorities knew that. They didn’t bother “Willie The Weeper.” He made it up to them by pedling bits of underworld gossip.
Where he got his information, I never knew. It was encyclopaedic, and, for the most part, accurate. He was a veritable clearing-house of everything that happened in the underworld.
After the shot he felt better. There was a sparkle to his eyes; almost a trace of color in his skin. He looked at me and nodded his head sagely.
“What you working on now, Bob?” he asked.
“That Loring gem robbery,” I told him.
“They got the man that did that, didn’t they?” he said, and I thought there was a knowing leer about his face.
“They got the man,” I said, “but they didn’t get the stones. I’m after the gems.”
“Oh,” he said, “representing the insurance company?”
“Yes,” I told him, “the Inter-Indemnity Exchange.”
“They tell me,” he said, “that you pulled the old line on Frank Jamie about giving him a light jolt in return for the stuff, and Jamie fell for it.”
“Not so we got the stones,” I said.
I lit a cigarette and was conscious of the man’s bright eyes staring at me in glittering fascination through the haze of the first smoke exhalation.
“There’s something funny about that case,” I said.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m not so certain that Jamie did it at all.”
He laughed; a harsh, cackling laugh, but said nothing.
“Jamie doesn’t seem to know the inside dope,” I said.
The cackling laugh had faded into a smile. Now the smile faded from his lips, and his eyes were hungry for information. Information was the thing that kept “Willie The Weeper” going.
“What do you mean,” he asked, “the inside?”
“He doesn’t know what was taken,” I said.