the inside.
Degarmo was standing there by the counter talking to the desk sergeant.
He turned his metallic blue eyes on me and said: “How you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Like our jail?”
“I like your jail fine.”
“Captain Webber wants to talk to you.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“Don’t you know any words but fine?”
“Not right now,” I said. “Not in here.”
“You’re limping a little,” he said. “You trip over something?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I tripped over a blackjack. It jumped up and bit me behind the left knee.”
“That’s too bad,” Degarmo said, blank-eyed. “Get your stuff from the property clerk.”
“I’ve got it,” I said. “It wasn’t taken away from me.”
“Well, that’s fine,” he said.
“It sure is,” I said. “It’s fine.”
The desk sergeant lifted his shaggy head and gave us both a long stare. “You ought to see Cooney’s little Irish nose,” he said. “If you want to see something fine. It’s spread over his face like syrup on a waffle.”
Degarmo said absently: “What’s the matter? He get in a fight?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the desk sergeant said. “Maybe it was the same blackjack that jumped up and bit him.”
“For a desk sergeant you talk too damn much,” Degarmo said.
“A desk sergeant always talks too God damn much,” the desk sergeant said. “Maybe that’s why he isn’t a lieutenant on homicide.”
“You see how we are here,” Degarmo said. “Just one great big happy family.”
“With beaming smiles on our faces,” the desk sergeant said, “and our arms spread wide in welcome, and a rock in each hand.”
Degarmo jerked his head at me and we went out.
27
Captain Webber pushed his sharp bent nose across the desk at me and said: “Sit down.”
I sat down in a round-backed wooden armchair and eased my left leg away from the sharp edge of the seat. It was a large neat corner office. Degarmo sat at the end of the desk and crossed his legs and rubbed his ankle thoughtfully, looked out of a window.
Webber went on: “You asked for trouble, and you got it. You were doing fifty-five miles an hour in a residential zone and you attempted to get away from a police car that signaled you to stop with its siren and red spotlight. You were abusive when stopped and you struck an officer in the face.”
I said nothing. Webber picked a match off his desk and broke it in half and threw the pieces over his shoulder.
“Or are they lying—as usual?” he asked.
“I didn’t see their report,” I said. “I was probably doing fifty-five in a residential district, or anyhow within city limits. The police car was parked outside a house I visited. It followed me when I drove away and I didn’t at that time know it was a police car. It had no good reason to follow me and I didn’t like the look of it. I went a little fast, but all I was trying to do was get to a better lighted part of town.”
Degarmo moved his eyes to give me a bleak meaningless stare.
Webber snapped his teeth impatiently.
He said: “After you knew it was a police car you made a half turn in the middle of the block and still tried to get away. Is that right?”
I said: “Yes. It’s going to take a little frank talk to explain that.”
“I’m not afraid of a little frank talk,” Webber said. “I tend to kind of specialize in frank talk.”
I said: “These cops that picked me up were parked in front of the house where George Talley’s wife lives. They were there before I got there. George Talley is the man. who used to be a private detective down here. I wanted to see him. Degarmo knows why I wanted to see him.”
Degarmo picked a match out of his pocket and chewed on the soft end of it quietly. He nodded, without expression. Webber didn’t look at him.
I said: “You are a stupid man, Degarmo. Everything you do is stupid, and done in a stupid way. When you went up against me yesterday in front of Almore’s house you had to get tough when there was nothing to get tough about. You had to make me curious when I had nothing to be curious about. You even had to drop hints which showed me how I could satisfy that curiosity, if it became important. All you had to do to protect your friends was keep your mouth shut until I made a move. I never would have made one, and you would have saved all this.”
Webber said: “What the devil has all this got to do with your being arrested in the twelve hundred block on
