works as a night watchman for the dye company. Old George Davis. He might be able to tell you about it being a garage. Anything important?”
“Naw, checking a reference. Where's this Davis fellow?”
“When you get to the dye plant keep going a block. You'll see an old brown house that looks like a good wind would carry it away. Can't miss it; same side of the street. Old George lives there. Be working in his garden now. Doesn't hit the sack till noon.”
I said thanks and walked away, knowing the big cluck was staring after me with a puzzled look in his dumb eyes.
The dye plant was one of these one-story efficient-looking buildings, all spick and span. It had glass-brick windows and air conditioning, looked like a big outfit.
The old brown house was exactly that and air- conditioned in a different way. It sat back from the sidewalk with a whitewashed flagpole in the center of a small lawn just starting to look green. I followed a broken walk around the house to a large garden. A plump old gent with a fat nose and a shabby derby on a lot of gray hair was digging up the ground with a pitchfork. He had on a worn flannel shirt and his old work pants were held up by wide fireman's suspenders. He was stinking up the sunshine with a battered pipe.
“Mr. Davis?”
He nodded.
I showed my badge as I told him, “Detective Dave Wintino, 201st Squad. And I've had about all the cracks I want about my looking young. If you can spare a few minutes, I'd like to chat with you.”
“I got plenty of time,” he said and his voice had a kind of whine you find in lots of big old men. “It's a fact you look young. What's this all about?” He leaned on the pitchfork the way a real farmer does—I guess.
“You remember when the dye plant was an empty garage and a vacant lot?”
“Sure do. I was always for raising tomatoes in that lot but between the kids playing ball and the rocky soil I got no place.”
“Were you around when they had the shooting in the lot?”
He patted his crazy hat. “Sure was. I mean I wasn't at the actual shooting or when they found the body, but I was there when the cops were. Now that was way back in nineteen—”
“Nineteen- thirty.”
He nodded. “Yep and times was real bad. Garage had been standing empty maybe two, three years when one day I seen two men working in it. Never knew exactly what they was doing, all very quiet. So didn't surprise me none when it turned out they was bootlegging. Sometimes when I'd be working my tomatoes in the lot on Sundays, or late in the afternoons, I'd see them. The one they killed in prison and the other.”
“The other—what did he look like?”
Davis relit his pipe before he said, “One thing I got to hand you cop fellows, you never give up. Like I told that other detective, it's been a—”
“What other detective?”
“Tall one that was handling the case. Even after they give the fellow the chair and the garage was just an old building with busted windows—them darn kids around here—why, every now and then this dick would still come around and look through the building. Although there wasn't anything to see that I knew of.”
“Was the detective named Owens or Wales?”
“Hard to say, I'm not much on names. Fact is, I'm around here a good deal, always have been. Some men like bars and shows, me—give me a hunk of ground. Even while the trial was going on and then when the one man was waiting to go in the chair, many is the time I'd see this detective just sitting in his car, watching the empty garage. Thought to myself, it don't make sense to...”
I opened the paper to the story on Wales' death, showed him the two pictures. He touched Wales' photo with his pipe. “That's him. He used to talk to me a good deal, at first. Kept asking like you just did, what this other bootlegger looked like, the one they never did catch on with. Like I say, they was pretty quiet about what they was doing, so I only saw him maybe a few times. Slim young fellow with dark hair and a thin mustache. Always wearing sunglasses, even when it was a dull day. Of course I ain't so sure of this now—it was twenty-six years ago.”
“Yeah, too long ago,” I said, trying to think. “How often did Wales come out to look at the garage, or watch it?”
Davis shifted his feet on the pitchfork. “Hard to say. For a time seemed like he Was there every time I turned around. Of course now I had a kind of job, so I couldn't say if he was there during the day or not. After a time, a few years, we didn't talk much, just nod at each other. Sometimes he'd ask if I'd seen anybody around searching the place. I never did. That was right before the war when a kid fell through the rotten floor and got hurt, when they took me on as watchman to keep the brats from—”
“Wait a minute,” I cut in. “Before the war—you mean Wales was still snooping around here in 1941, almost a dozen years after the killing?”
“Yep, he was around up till the time they tore it down. Not so often, I'd see him one day and maybe not again for a month or more. He'd step inside and tell me to go out and look at my plants. But sometimes I'd watch him through a busted window—he'd be standing in the center of the garage and stare at the walls for a long time. Only looking. After a while he'd go to one wall or corner, start hunting. Was nothing in there, the police took out all the machinery when they made the arrest. Building was torn down in 1946 but tm account of the shortage of building materials they couldn't start building again till... oh... I'd say it was 1949, when they put up the dye plant. Took me on as watchman again, fine people to work for too.”
“Wales say anything when they took the old garage down?”
“No, sir, he'd given up by then.”
“Can you recall when he gave up?”
“Just about. It was early in '46, say around April. I remember because I told him about the building coming down and he slipped me a few bucks, says I should go to the movies, take the day off. He said he'd be there all day. I didn't go to no movie, I went home and went to bed. Like I said, he wasn't the kind of man to talk much. Around six in the evening I come back and he says, 'Now they can knock this wreck down. I'm done.' I says to him, “You find what you been looking for?' And he give me a blank look and asks, 'Who says I was looking for anything?' One thing, he wasn't carrying a package or anything when he left.”
“He could have put a bag in his car while you were in the sack.”
“Nope, he didn't have his car that day. Remember because it was raining hard and I watched him walking all the way over to Eastland Avenue to catch a trolley. Tell you the truth, youngster, I kind of poked around myself at times, thought maybe it was money these bootleggers might have hidden. But I gave it up after a couple looks. Like I said, wasn't nothing but four rotten walls. Didn't see the paper today, what's this Wales done now?”
“He was shot to death. Pops, did you ever see the other man, this Owens, poking around here? He was a detective too.”
“No, just Wales. Don't recall the other face. 'Course at the time of the shooting, whole block was full of detectives. Trampling all over my tomato plants. Why did Wales shoot hisself?”
“He didn't, he was murdered,” I said, jotting down the dates in my notebook.
“Murdered? All you read about these days. I say these teenagers should be given a taste of the strap and then—”
“I want you to do me a favor, don't talk about this. Don't even tell anybody you remember Wales. You see what you've just told me can be nothing, then again it might help us solve Wales' murder.”
“I won't say a mumbling word. Don't want to get mixed up in nothing. Not me. Say I sure got to read the morning paper now.”
I wanted to tell him to keep his trap shut even if that beat cop happened to ask what I wanted, but that might make the old boy suspicious of me. I wrote my name and the squad phone on a notebook page, gave it to him. “If you think of anything else, even if it doesn't seem important, but anything you haven't told me—anything— give me a ring. If I'm not there, leave a number where I can reach you. Got a phone?”
“I only room here, with my grandson, but they got a phone. And you can call me at the dye plant all during the night. I'll think about it, maybe I can recall something. But it was a long time ago.”
“Anybody eke around here who might remember the killing?”
He shook his head, almost proudly. “Nope, I'm about the last of the old-timers here. That's because I drink two full glasses of buttermilk every morning before I—”
“Well, thanks for your time. And not a word, not even to your grandson or son.”
“My boy was killed in the war. I live with my daughter's boy. Now don't you give it no worry, not a word out of me. And I'll phone you quick if I think of anything. Ain't had nobody to phone in years.”
On the subway ride back to the apartment I felt swell I had a lot of pieces that would fit into one picture damn soon. And then Landon and Reed and the rest of the squad would know who was a snotnosed kid.
I thought about getting off and taking a look at Wales' room. But downtown would certainly have covered that, and then the way I was dressed—a sweatshirt.
I got home before noon and had some eggs and went over my notes, still thinking of seeing Wales' room.
The gun had never been found in the Brenner killing. Was that what Wales was looking for? But why keep looking for it sixteen years after the shooting? And when he did find it, what? There had been nothing in the arrest record about finding the gun. Did he think the rod might convict Kahn's missing partner, this Bird? Or was Al Wales hunting because he felt Kahn was innocent? But
