Altogether a good five minutes passed before I was free of the brass anchor I had been carrying around and could hop to the window with the gun in my hand. Below I could see no sign of my recent captor. As I puzzledly studied the moonlit terrain, I heard the car start.
The carport opened on the kitchen side of the cabin, but before I could hop to the kitchen window, steadying myself against the walls and pieces of furniture as I went, the car had backed out and roared away up the dirt lane.
It was small satisfaction to know Al had been forced to drive off wearing only pajamas, for he had left me stranded miles from nowhere. And the cabin had no telephone.
The first thing I did was return to my bedroom, free my artificial leg from the grip of the second handcuff and strap it back on. Then I dressed in slacks, sweat shirt and jacket, packed my tuxedo in the suitcase and set the suitcase on the kitchen table.
Then I went through the clothing Al had left behind.
There was nothing of interest in his suitcase except that all his underwear and socks were silk. But his wallet, which I found in the hip pocket of his trousers, gave at least a limited amount of information about him.
According to a driver’s license in it his legal name was Alberto Toma, he was barely twenty-one instead of the twenty-two I had guessed, his occupation was “salesman” and his home address 1812 Sixth Street. I suspected that might be his actual address, since it was in the heart of the slum area which bred most of our local racketeers.
There was no point in sticking around the cabin any more. Checking the money compartment of the wallet, I discovered it contained slightly over two hundred dollars, mostly in twenties, then thrust the wallet into my pocket. The Woodsman I stuck under my belt beneath the jacket, picked up my suitcase, turned out the lights and left.
It was four o’clock in the morning by the time I had walked as far as the river road, and four-thirty before I reached an all-night service station which had a phone. A taxi from town arrived for me forty-five minutes later, and it was six before I finally reached my apartment.
Setting my alarm for three hours later, I collapsed in bed.
Chapter Sixteen
At ten o’clock the next morning I walked into Warren Day’s office. The inspector examined the circles under my eyes curiously before he spoke.
Then he said, “This is police headquarters, Moon. You get transfusions over at City Hospital.”
“I only had three hours’ sleep,” I announced.
“After-hours’ joints again, eh? If you’d have sense enough to go home when the legitimate bars close...”
I interrupted him by tossing Alberto Toma’s wallet on his desk. “I’d like a receipt for that. Particularly for the two hundred plus bucks in it. According to the driver’s license he’s Alberto Toma and he lives at eighteen twelve Sixth. There’s a chance that’s his real name and address. In case it isn’t, I’d like to look through the wanted file.”
The inspector opened the wallet, shuffled through the papers in it, scowled at me and wrote out a receipt. As I stuffed it into my pocket, he leaned back in his chair, clasped hands over his lean stomach and silently waited for me to get to the point.
Removing the Woodsman from under my belt, I shoved it across to him. “This goes with the wallet. I’m almost sure it won’t be registered, but maybe ballistic tests will tie it in with some unsolved killing or other.”
“Alberto’s that kind of boy, eh?”
“He’s that kind of boy,” I agreed. “When I last saw him he was driving a dark blue Chrysler coupé, license number X-17-304-G, and was dressed only in pajamas. I think the coupé was stolen, and he’s probably ditched it by now. He’s also probably dug himself up some clothes. I’m just giving you this information for what it is worth.”
“Nothing you’ve said so far is worth much,” the inspector said. “Just why would I be interested in this Alberto?”
“Among other things, he’s a kidnaper,” I told him. And briefly I outlined my experience of the night before.
When I finished, Day carefully searched his ash tray for a cigar butt of sufficient length to suit him, blew it free of ashes when he found one and popped it into a corner of his mouth.
After silently chewing the already frayed end for a moment, he said, “Usually you don’t waste my time, Moon, but aren’t you in the wrong office? I’ve got enough worries running Homicide without piddling around with kidnapers.”
“This kidnaping has a bearing on homicide,” I assured him. “Whoever hired Alberto to get me out of the way did it to stop my looking into the Ford murder.”
The inspector looked dissatisfied. “That’s just a guess. Maybe you’ve been stepping on somebody’s toes in some other case.”
“You don’t want to concede the point because it louses up your nice case against Tom Henry,” I said. “If someone is interested enough to resort to kidnaping to prevent my digging any farther into Ford’s murder, it means Henry was framed.”
Passing his hand irritably over his scalp from rear to front in a gesture which would have left his hair a mess if he had possessed any, he said in a weary tone, “All right, Moon. I’ll put out a call for this boy, and we’ll ask him questions about Ford when we net him. Just where was this cabin he took you to?”
When I had described the location as best I could, he lifted his phone, relayed the information to someone and instructed him to chase down the cabin’s ownership. He also read off the Chrysler’s license number to check.
Then he shooed me off to the record room, where after a mere ten minutes of gazing at pictures of men whose descriptions conformed generally to that of my kidnaper, I located my man. It was not a hard search because he had not bothered to change his original name much. It was Alberto Thomaso, and in his short twenty-one years he had managed to accumulate a record of twelve arrests.
Returning to Day’s office, I flipped the card in front of him.
“Lovable child, isn’t he?” he grunted after reading the record.
Lifting his phone, he sent out a pickup call on Alberto Thomaso, alias Alberto Toma.
When I resumed the same chair I had occupied previously and showed no signs of leaving, Day scowled at me inquiringly.
“Now that we’ve decided my client is innocent, how about bringing me up to date on developments?” I suggested.
His scowl deepened. “We’ve decided no such thing, Moon. I’m merely exercising an open mind.”
“Well, how about exercising it some more by letting me know what you’ve uncovered?”
The inspector grumbled a bit, but I think it was just to keep in practice. Despite what I considered a rather unreasonable insistence that his case against Tom Henry remained as strong as ever, I believe the kidnaping convinced him there actually was a probability Henry had been framed, and he was not at all averse to having me do some of the leg work a reinvestigation of the case would involve. An additional man working for him at no expense to the taxpayers was a bargain he had no intention of passing up. And though his attitude was that he was doing me an exceptional favor by bringing me up to date, I suspect that even as he talked to me one part of his mind was secretly considering where he could best use the cop I would release.
A routine check had been made of Walter Ford’s apartment, he told me. The case of twenty-five-caliber automatics had been located there, five of the original dozen still remaining, none of those being initialed. Six of the seven missing ones had been accounted for. In addition to the pistols Ford had given Madeline Strong, Bubbles Duval and Evelyn Karnes, two other female recipients had been located through an address book found in Ford’s apartment. Both women claimed not to have seen Ford in weeks, and both had unshakable alibis for the time of the murder.