“So long as you're chief of police, you can.”
He thought this over.
“Somebody's going to try to bump off McGee,” I said.
“The lawyer?”
“Either tonight, or some night soon.” I told him about the library, and how McGee worked in it late at night. I told him that I'd overheard a couple of men talking about it while I was in the can at Jazzland. I figured I was overworking the gag about hearing things in the can, but I couldn't think of a better story. I said I didn't know who the men were, and that I didn't hear why they wanted to kill him.
“We'll have to warn McGee,” the chief said.
“I wouldn't.”
“Why?”
“McGee'll give it away. Then you'd never catch the guys. Look, here's the best way. Put a couple of good men in the yard. Then, when they try for McGee, you can grab 'em red-handed.”
The idea appealed to him, but he still thought he'd better warn McGee. He hadn't any right to take a chance with him that way, he said. Better to let the killers go than have McGee in danger.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You got a friend named Carmel?”
He nodded before he thought.
“You mean to say,” I said, “you had a friend.”
“Why? What's...?”
“Day before yesterday Pug Banta said he wanted to see her, didn't he?”
The chief began to look scared. “You know a hell of a lot, don't you?”
“Pug had you call her,” I went on. “Then he met her for you.”
I paused. The chief didn't say anything.
“They buried her this morning,” I said.
“My God, no!”
I kept letting him have it. “Her body was found outside a town called Valley. She'd been beaten to death.”
All the colour had gone out of his face. The veins on his jowls looked green. His eyes were half closed.
I said: “One more thing about McGee.”
He looked at me.
“Pug Banta's going to kill him.” I got out of the chair. “And if anyone's interested in getting rid of Pug, the place to do it would be McGee's back yard.”
He sat at the desk, watched me walk to the door. At the last second he jumped up and trotted after me. He caught my sleeve. “Was she really beaten?”
“Her jaw was shattered, both arms were broken...”
“Oh, God! The poor kid!” He tugged my sleeve again. “Say! How do you know this?”
“Her brother called me,” I said. “We're old friends. He had to have some dough to bury her.”
“Oh, God!” he said.
“Well, so long, chief.”
He didn't answer. When I reached the stairs I looked back. He was still standing in the door. I went out of the station into the street. I felt good. Now I had things moving.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NEWSBOYS SELLING an extra in the street outside the hotel woke me up the next morning. I looked at my watch. It was nine o'clock. I telephoned down for breakfast and a bottle of rye.
“Send along one of those extras, too,” I told the clerk.
Charles, the Negro, brought the stuff up. I took a shower, drank half a glass of whisky neat and then looked at the extra. Brother, did I get a rear! The headline said: THOMAS McGEE MURDERED. And a subhead said Pug Banta was being held for the job. I sat down on the bed and read the story.
It seemed, the story said, one of Chief Piper's squads had noticed a man lurking around McGee's house. The squad had followed the man (Pug Banta) around to the back, but before they could grab him he shot and killed McGee through one of the french windows in McGee's library. McGee never knew what hit him. The cops then jumped Banta before he had time to move and dragged him off to the station. So far he had refused to say why he'd done the job.
I poured and drank another half glass of whisky. My plan had sort of back-fired, but I didn't know. Maybe it was just as good this way. At least McGee and Pug were out of the road. I lifted the napkin oil the breakfast tray and then I got the phone.
“Goddam it,” I told the clerk; “I ordered six double lamb chops, not those lousy single ones.”
He said he would send up six more right away.
About one o'clock a telegram came. It said:
