funeral this afternoon. Now it looks as if I’m not going.”
Bannock was silent. “Hello?” I said, jiggling the receiver.
“I’m still here. Just thinking. Look, I’m leaving around noon to pick up Daisy. We planned to eat and then go to the funeral. Suppose I tell her to eat at home and I’ll come by for her later. That okay?”
“Fine.”
“Where’ll I find you?”
I hesitated. “You know Perucci’s?”
“You mean that spaghetti joint way down near the Union Station?”
“That’s the one.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve got to drive all the way down there.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “It’s pretty tough on you, I know that. Me, all I have to worry about is how to dodge the police and a couple of strong-arm artists and a murderer.”
“All right, I’m sorry. I’ll be there. Twelve?”
“Good. Reason I picked it is nobody ever comes there at noon. And they’ve got a back room.”
“Fine. Mark, I’m awfully upset about getting you into such a mess.”
“Don’t be. If you want to help, here’s what you do. Try to get a line on Estrellita Juarez for me.”
“But I thought the cops—”
“Sure, they looked for her. Probably called Central Casting, stuff like that. You know a few people. Get on the phone this morning and ask around. Make it sound as if you had a part lined up, or she has a check coming for back work. Say anything. Do what you can for me. I think it’s important.”
“You do? You mean you’ve found something out?”
“Tell you when I see you.”
And I did.
He met me at Perucci’s and we ate spaghetti. That is, he ate spaghetti and I talked. While he was busy unraveling the stuff, I was busy unraveling the saga of the past two days, including, of course, my reasons for trying to locate Miss Juarez.
He shook his head. “No dice, pal. I tried. Called everybody in town. Nobody knows where she disappeared to. I even contacted Central Casting, just for the gag of it. They said her name had been dropped from the rolls. How do you like that?”
“I don’t. We need her, Harry.”
“If you say so, sweetheart.”
I stabbed my fork at him. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Matter? Nothing’s the matter. Why?”
“I don’t know. Anytime anybody makes with that ‘sweetheart’ stuff I get suspicious. Level with me, Harry. Has your wife been talking to you?”
He moved his head up and down between mouthfuls.
“Wants you to drop this investigation, is that it?”
Another movement.
“How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed his plate back. “I’ve been doing some thinking, Mark. About this whole setup. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we made a mistake stirring up trouble when we didn’t have to. Just suppose I hadn’t gotten this idea of trying to clear Ryan’s name. So I wouldn’t sell the series to See-More for a while. What of it? In another five or six months or so, everybody’d have forgotten. I could sell it to them then, or someone else. But no. I had to play eager beaver. I had to get smart, call you in. And now where are we? With all these killings, Ryan’s name has fresh mud all over it.”
I tugged my mustache. “Is this you talking, Harry, or is it Daisy?”
“Oh, she gave me hell all right. But not about the business deal. It’s the murders that worry her. Ever since I got this call telling me to lay off she’s been frightened about it. Last night she told me about seeing you, made me promise to quit.”
“Did you promise?”
“Well—”
“Do you want to fire me?”
“Mark, what the hell are we going to do? I don’t want to get bumped off, and I don’t want to see you get bumped off, either. If Kolmar or anybody else finds out I’m responsible for you re-opening the case, my goose is cooked all over town. Look at the trouble he’s caused you already. You can’t expect to dodge the cops forever.”
“I don’t,” I said. “Just give me another twenty-four hours.”
“You really think you’re that close?”
“Just a hunch,” I answered. “If I could only talk to one or two people.”
“But couldn’t the police do it? If you went to them?”
“I can’t go to them. Kolmar’s fixed that. They’ll put me on ice so fast there won’t be a chance to get a word in edgewise. By the time they listen to me anything can happen. And you know what I mean by anything, Harry.”
“I know.”
“Besides, if I went to them, I’d have to go clean. Tell them the works, all about you hiring me and why. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Twenty-four hours, that’s all I ask. I’ve come this far. Maybe we can still save this deal for you. That’s worth a gamble, isn’t it?”
“If Daisy knew—”
“Don’t tell her, then. No sense of her worrying any more. Leave it to me, Harry. I’ll get word to you before tomorrow night. Either way.”
“Where you going now?”
“It’s best that you don’t know,” I said. “Give me a hundred on account, though. Hiding out costs money.”
He gave me two hundred.
“Thanks. Now run along and pick up Daisy and go to your funeral. Tell her I called you and you fired me over the phone because the cops are after me. Tell her anything that’ll make her happy. And just wait until you hear from me.”
Bannock scratched his head. “The way you act, anybody’d think you had some kind of personal interest in this case.”
I smiled at him. “Maybe you’ve got something there. After a guy gets his apartment broken into, his life threatened, his brains knocked out, and his liberty jeopardized by the police, he’s inclined to take a rather personal interest in such matters.”
Harry Bannock glanced around the back room, then pulled me over into the corner. “I almost forgot,” he murmured. “Can you use this?” His hand disappeared inside his coat, emerged again. I caught the glint of metal on a gun barrel.
“Where’d it come from?” I asked.
“It’s mine. I’ve been carrying it, ever since I got that call. But something tells me you’ll probably need it more than I will.”
“Something tells me you’re right,” I said.
I slipped the gun into my pocket.
“Careful, it’s loaded.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
Then he went out and climbed into his big car, and I went out and climbed into the nearest drugstore.
They didn’t have what I was looking for, so I went to another, and another. Finally I hit a dingy little place which carried the product I was looking for. It was the City Directory.
Nothing so remarkable about that. You want to look somebody’s address up, that’s the first thing you go for. Even the cops use it.
