eaten the night before. Then he went up to Laguna Street, picked himself a corner, and waited for Jacob Ledwich.
He did a lot of waiting. He waited all day, because Ledwich didn’t show until after dark. But the little man was well-stocked with patienc e- I’ll say that for him. He fidgeted, and stood on one foot and then the other, and even tried sitting on the curb for a while, but he stuck it out.
I took it easy, myself. The furnished apartment Bob Teal had rented to watch Ledwich’s flat from was a ground-floor one, across the street and just a little above the corner where Boyd waited. So we could watch him and the flat with one eye.
Bob and I sat and smoked and talked all day, taking turns watching the fidgeting man on the corner and Ledwich’s door.
Night had just definitely settled when Ledwich came out and started up toward the car line. I slid out into the street, and our parade was under way again – Ledwich leading, Boyd following him, and we following him.
Haif a block of this, and I got an idea!
I’m not what you’d call a brilliant thinker – such results as I get are usually the fruits of patience, industry, and unimaginative plugging, helped out now and then, maybe, by a little luck – but I do have my flashes of intelligence. And this was one of them.
Ledwich was about a block ahead of me; Boyd half that distance. Speeding up, I passed Boyd, and caught up with Ledwich. Then I slackened my pace so as to walk beside him, though with no appearance from the rear of having any interest in him.
“Jake,” I said, without turning my head, “there’s a guy following you!”
The big man almost spoiled my little scheme by stopping dead still, but he caught himself in time, and, taking his cue from me, kept walking.
“Who the hell are you?” he growled.
“Don’t get funny!” I snapped back, still looking and walking ahead. “It ain’t my funeral. But I was coming up the street when you came out, and I seen this guy duck behind a pole until you was past, and then follow you up.”
That got him.
“You sure?”
“Sure! All you got to do to prove it is turn the next corner and wait.”
I was two or three steps ahead of him by this time. I turned the corner, and halted, with my back against the brick building front. Ledwich took up the same position at my side.
“Want any help?” I grinned at him -, a reckless sort of grin, unless my acting was poor.
“No.”
His little lumpy mouth was set ugly, and his blue eyes were hard as pebbles.
I flicked the tail of my coat aside to show him the butt of my gun.
“Want to borrow the rod?” I asked.
“No.”
He was trying to figure me out, and small wonder.
“Don’t mind if I stick around to see the fun, do you?” I asked mockingly.
There wasn’t time for him to answer that. Boyd had quickened his steps, and now he came hurrying around the corner, his nose twitching like a tracking dog’s.
Ledwich stepped into the middle of the sidewalk, so suddenly that the little man thudded into him with a grunt. For a moment they stared at each other, and there was recognition between them.
Ledwich shot one big hand out and clamped the other by a shoulder.
“What are you snooping around me for, you rat? Didn’t I tell you to keep away from ‘Frisco?”
“Aw, Jake!” Boyd begged. “I didn’t mean no harm. I just thought that -“
Ledwich silenced him with a shake that clicked his mouth shut, and turned to me.
“A friend of mine,” he sneered.
His eyes grew suspicious and hard again and ran up and down me from cap to shoes.
“How’d you know my name?” he demanded.
“A famous man like you?” I asked, in burlesque astonishment.
“Never mind the comedy!” He took a threatening step toward me. “How’d you know my name?”
“None of your damned business,” I snapped.
My attitude seemed to reassure him. His face became less suspicious.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I owe you something for this trick, and – How are you fixed?”
“I have been dirtier.” Dirty is Pacific Coast argot for prosperous.
He looked speculatively from me to Boyd, and back.
“Know The Circle?” he asked me.
I nodded. The underworld calls Wop Healey’s joint The Circle.
“If you’ll meet me there tomorrow night, maybe I can put a piece of change your way.”
“Nothing stirring!” I shook my head with emphasis. “I ain’t circulating that prominent these days.”
A fat chance I’d have of meeting him there! Wop Healey and half his customers knew me as a detective. So there was nothing to do but to try to get the impression over that I was a crook who had reasons for wanting to keep away from the more notorious hang-outs for a while. Apparently it got over. He thought a while, and then gave me his Laguna Street number.
“Drop in this time tomorrow and maybe I’ll have a proposition to make you – if you’ve got the guts.”
“I’ll think it over,” I said noncommittally, and turned as if to go down the street.
“Just a minute,” he called, and I faced him again. “What’s your name?”
“Wisher,” I said. “Shine, if you want a front one.”
“Shine Wisher,” he repeated. “I don’t remember ever hearing it before.”
It would have surprised me if he had – I had made it up only about fifteen minutes before.
“You needn’t yell it,” I said sourly, “so that everybody in the burg will remember hearing it.”
And with that I left him, not at all dissatisfied with myself. By tipping him off to Boyd, I had put him under obligations to me, and had led him to accept me, at least tentatively, as a fellow crook. And by making no apparent effort to gain his good graces, I had strengthened my hand that much more.
I had a date with him for the next day, when I was to be given a chance to earn – illegally, no doubt – ‘a piece of change.’
There was a chance that this proposition he had in view for me had nothing to do with the Estep affair, but then again it might; and whether it did or not, I had my entering wedge at least a little way into Jake Ledwich’s business.
I strolled around for about half an hour, and then went back to Bob Teal’s apartment.
“Ledwich come back?”
“Yes,” Bob said, “with that little guy of yours. They went in about half an hour ago.”
“Good! Haven’t seen a woman go in?”
“No.”
I expected to see the first Mrs. Estep arrive sometime during the evening, but she didn’t. Bob and I sat around and talked and watched Ledwich’s doorway, and the hours passed.
At one o’clock Ledwich came out alone.
“I’m going to tail him, just for luck,” Bob said, and caught up his cap.
Ledwich vanished around a corner, and then Bob passed out of sight behind him.
Five minutes later Bob was with me again.
“He’s getting his machine out of the garage.”
I jumped for the telephone and put in a rush order for a fast touring car.
Bob, at the window, called out, “Here he is!”
I joined Bob in time to see Ledwich going into his vestibule. His car stood in front of the house. A very few minutes, and Boyd and Ledwich came out together. Boyd was leaning heavily on Ledwich, who was supporting the little man with an arm across his back. We couldn’t see their faces in the dark, but the little man was plainly either sick, drunk, or drugged!
Ledwich helped his companion into the touring car. The red tail-light laughed back at us for a few blocks, and
