He'd stopped crying. “Who?”
“First you do some talking.”
“All right.”
The Finn came with the bottle of rye. I poured a good slug in the punk's glass. “Drink.” He gulped it down.
“How'd you find she was in Valley?” I asked. He shook his head, and I asked: “Do you want me to turn you in?”
“I don't care.”
“Attempted murder's a tough rap. Come on. Who told you?”
“Ginger,” he said. “She called me up. Yesterday afternoon. I wouldn't believe her. But she said to go to Valley. 'Just go,' she said. So I did.”
“Did Ginger mention me?”
“No.” He shook his head, thinking. “But when I told them at the house they said it must have been you.”
“They would say that. But why did you think I'd killed Carmel?”
“I don't know.”
“Did Ginger say how she knew where she was?”
“No.”
I poured us both some rye. I drank mine and filled the glass again. “At the house,” I said, “they told me she'd gone with Chief Piper.”
“So that's...” the kid began.
“Wait a second. Ginger's a friend of Pug Banta's. And so's the chief. But Ginger isn't a friend of the chief. Can you add that up?”
“No.”
“It's not so tough.” I took a drink of the rye. “Pug thought Carmel had spilled some dope to me. And he knew she wouldn't come out to meet him.”
He nodded his head. “That's right.”
“So he got Chief Piper to call her. And when she came, Pug took her.”
“Yeah?” He was a little doubtful.
“Sure. And after he killed her, he gave it away to Ginger. Maybe by accident. And she called you, being sorry for your sister.”
I took a shower while he thought this over. The sweat from the steam room had begun to get sticky. I decided to forget the rub down. I wanted to go where I could do some heavy thinking. It seemed to me things were a little out of control. The poor goddam whore! At that, maybe she was better off dead. When I came out, the punk was putting on his clothes.
“Where're you going?”
“To find Pug.”
“That's no good. Pug's too tough. Besides, we don't know for sure if he did it.”
“I know.”
“Just a little while ago you thought it was me.”
That stopped him.
“Have you claimed her yet?”
“No.”
“Do that first. Give me some time to look around. I'll work out something. Where do you want to have her buried?”
“At home, I guess.”
“Where's that?”
“Temple.”
Temple was another little town about a hundred miles the other way from Valley. “You got the dough?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
“Here.” I got a couple of hundreds out of my wallet. “This will help. Let me know what you do.”
“Well, thanks....”
“Forget it,” I said.
I took a cab down to the red-brick County Building and went up to the second floor where the records were kept. Half drawn blue blinds made the record room gloomy. An old clerk with thin white hair and the palsy got me the records I wanted. It looked as though McGee had told me the truth. Tony's was owned by Thomas McGee. So was the Arkady Hotel. And the Silver Grove, a dance hall. And the Ship, Paulton's only cabaret.
