“One more.” I told the old clerk. “Five hundred and sixty-nine Green Street.”
That was the whorehouse. He brought me the papers. The owner was Thomas McGee.
At the hotel there was a message from Western Union. They had the money order. I went down and identified myself and the girl gave me a cheque for a thousand. I had her call the bank, and then I went around and cashed the cheque. That gave me more than five thousand in cash. I felt like getting drunk.
Instead I went to a jewellery store just off Main Street. “Something nice for a lady,” I told the salesman.
“What sort of a present?” he asked. “A bracelet?”
“Sure,” I said.
He pulled out a tray of bracelets and put it on the glass counter. They looked cheap. There was a lot of gold and coloured glass and fake diamonds. “How much?”
“They range from five to twenty-five.”
“Oh, hell! Something fancier than that.”
He brought out another tray. The stuff didn't look much better. The clerk was fat, and sweat ran off his face. It made me hot to look at him. I wiped my face with a handkerchief.
“Now this one is nice,” he said, holding up one with big gold links. “Solid gold.”
In another part of the showcase I saw a honey. It was wide, and it was made of what looked like diamonds and square-cut sapphires. I pointed at it.
“How much?”
“Seventy-five. It's a very fine imitation.”
“Wrap it up.”
I counted out the money. Then I got a card and wrote: “Baby, why be sore at me?”
I took the parcel and went back to the hotel. I gave the parcel to the giggly desk clerk.
“Give this to Ginger.”
“I certainly will, Mr. Craven,” he said. “The very minute she comes in.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN THE LOBBY I found the card on which I'd written the name of Oke Johnson's friend. Carter Jeliff. I looked him up in the phone book. He was a butcher, and he lived at 987 Oak Street. I thought Carter Jeliff was a flossy name for a butcher.
I got a cab and rode out to Oak Street. It was hot outdoors, but big trees shaded the street. There were cool places under the trees. I wondered about Jeliff. Oke Johnson was a sour bastard; he didn't make friends with anybody unless there was something in it for him. I didn't see why he'd be fooling around with a butcher.
^ I told the driver to wait. Mrs. Jeliff came to the door. “He's in the garden,” she said.
Jeliff looked the way all butchers should look. He was big, almost as big as me, but not so tall, and he had a face like a ham. He was a blond. He was watering some tomato vines. I told him my name and said I was a friend of Oke Johnson's. He said he was glad to see me, and wasn't it too bad about poor Oke? I said it was.
He turned off the water and asked me if I'd like a beer. I said sure. We went down in the cellar. It was dark and cool. He got two quart bottles of beer out of a washtub and opened them.
“This is where I spend Sunday,” he said.
There were at least two dozen quarts of beer in the tub, and a cake of ice. I wondered if he drank them all himself. He said Prosit! and we drank, sitting in a couple of wicker chairs.
He didn't look like a guy you could buy information from; he looked honest. I told him I was a private detective. I told him I was interested in Oke Johnson's death. Was there anything he knew about it?
He grinned at me. “Do you think I did it?”
“Hell, no. I just found out he was friendly with you. That's all.”
He said that relieved him. He chuckled a little at his joke. Then he got serious. He said he'd noticed one thing. “Oke was nervous about something.”
“What?”
“He never told me. But I knew. He was afraid of strangers, and one night he said he thought he was being followed.”
“Was he?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he ever tell you what he was doing?”
“No.”
This didn't seem to be going anywhere. We had two more bottles of beer while I tried more questions. I began to feel fine; the beer and the cellar were so cool.
“Look,” I said. “Oke wasn't a very friendly guy.”
“He seemed friendly enough to me.”
“Maybe because he wanted to get something out of you.”
