“Who is it, then?” Chief Dyer demanded hoarsely.
“If I knew that, I’d know the rest of the story. I suppose you checked the other angles Towne gave us this morning?”
“Sure. And they all proved out just like he said. He withdrew ten thousand dollars from his bank Tuesday in hundred-dollar bills. He specified old bills without consecutive serial numbers. A bus leaves for Frisco at six P.M. and the ticket seller vaguely remembers a man like Towne buying a ticket a short time before departure, and the driver remembers him hanging around until the bus pulled out. He couldn’t positively identify a picture of Jack Barton as a passenger, but thinks he was probably aboard.”
“Were you able to get anything more out of Towne on his reason for paying blackmail?”
“Not a damned thing. He insists that’s his own business, and there’s no law to compel him to tell.” Chief Dyer spread out his hands morosely. “There you are. The whole damned thing blown up in our faces. Towne’s in the clear. He admits having an altercation with the boy and beating him up some, but hell, we can’t hang a charge on that.”
“So you released him?”
“What else could we do? The Barton story blows Riley’s accusation sky-high.” Dyer’s voice trembled with indignation. “Riley backed down completely when confronted with the facts. He admitted the man he saw Towne attack might have been dressed in khaki prospecting clothes instead of a uniform as he supposed, and that he wasn’t actually close enough to positively identify any features. Damn witnesses who tell one story and then crawl out of it,” he ended angrily.
Shayne settled back, lit a cigarette, and puffed thoughtfully. “No more dope on any other missing soldiers or any of those angles?”
“Not a single damned thing.” Dyer thumped his desk with an exasperated fist. “We’re right back where we started. I don’t see that the body in the river has anything to do with the other thing.”
“No identification yet?”
“None at all. We got a set of prints and sent them in to Washington after checking with our files. A thousand people have looked at him in the morgue this afternoon, and none of them ever saw him before. There is one thing, though,” he added grudgingly.
Shayne tugged at his left earlobe and waited.
“It isn’t much. Probably nothing. We’ve been tailing that Mexican girl, you know?”
“Marquita Morales?”
“Yes. And by the way, her mother seems to be a very decent sort. Thinks her daughter is a good girl going to school in Juarez. Doesn’t suspect her extracurricular activities.”
Shayne nodded gravely. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“She made another pick-up this afternoon. Couple of young privates from Bliss with a three-day pass. She took them into a secondhand clothing store about an hour ago, and came out with two young fellows in civilian clothes.”
“Larimer’s shop?” Shayne asked sharply.
“No. Another one of the same type about two blocks away. My man had his instructions this time and didn’t ball things up by pulling a pinch. We notified Army Intelligence and they put a watch on the shop.”
“And the girl?”
“She went over to Juarez on a streetcar with her pick-ups.”
“How do they get away with it?” Shayne demanded. “Don’t persons crossing the border have to produce some sort of identification in wartime?”
“Sure they do. And they had it. My man was on the car with them. The two soldiers had registration cards all in order. 4-Fs, both of them.”
Shayne nodded slowly. His eyes were alight now. “It begins to look like a well-planned business. Renting civvies and fake identification cards to soldiers who want to cross the border.”
“Looks like it,” Dyer agreed unemotionally. “Not too much harm in that, though. The boys have to blow off steam somehow.”
“If that’s all it amounts to,” Shayne agreed. “Is your tail still on Marquita and her two escorts?”
“That’s out of our jurisdiction. But he did turn her over to a Mexican detective on the other side. They’re keeping watch on her tonight — and on the two soldiers.”
“The Juarez police sound more cooperative than they used to be,” Shayne commented wryly.
“There’s a new municipal set-up over there. They’ve helped us all they could.”
Shayne asked, “How about putting me in touch with the right people on that side?”
“What for?”
“I’ve got a hankering to take a look at the seamier side of Juarez, and I imagine following Marquita around would be a good way to see it all.”
Dyer studied him suspiciously for a moment, but Shayne’s wide-mouthed grin gave no indication of the detective’s real thoughts. He lifted his telephone and gave a Juarez number. He talked to a Captain Rodriquiz for a time, and then hung up and nodded to Shayne.
“They’ve got a man on her. See Captain Rodriquiz at headquarters and he’ll arrange a contact. And I,” he added violently, “am going to buy a bottle of aspirin and a quart of whisky and go home to bed.”
Shayne’s grin widened, and he warned him, “Don’t hit either of them too hard. An inner voice tells me that things are ready to start popping again.” He went out with a blithe wave of his hand.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Captain Rodriquiz of the Juarez police force was a slim, elegantly clad young Mexican with flashing white teeth and a thin black mustache. He spoke impeccable English and looked intelligent. He greeted Shayne warmly at police headquarters, assured him it was an honor to be associated with the famous American detective on a case, and offered his services as a guide for the evening.
“That won’t be necessary,” Shayne demurred. “If you’ll just put me in touch with the man who is tailing the girl and the two soldiers-”
“But I wish to accompany you,” Rodriquiz insisted. “You think it is important — this girl and the soldiers?” He put on a small black hat with a tiny red feather in the band and led Shayne out of the police building.
“I don’t know,” Shayne admitted. “It’s likely to be a blind alley, and I’m afraid you’ll be bored.”
“Please, Mr. Shayne. It will be a pleasure. We will walk, if you like. At present the girl and her escorts are at El Gato Pobre. It is but a short distance.”
“I’ve eaten there,” Shayne told him. “Best food in Juarez since the Mint closed. But it’s hardly the place I’d expect Marquita to hang out unless it’s changed a lot in ten years.”
“Oh, no. It is the same. It is early, and they go there for dinner and drinks. Later, Marquita will take her soldiers to the other places.”
“Still running wide open?”
Captain Rodriquiz shrugged elaborately, a broad smile exhibiting his white teeth. ‘It is what you Americans expect when you cross the border for a night out. We would be sorry to disappoint you by closing them.”
“Marijuana and the pipe joints — and all the rest?” Shayne persisted.
“I think you will find in El Paso or any other American city the same,” his guide protested somewhat stiffly. “In Juarez we do not turn our backs and pretend it is not so.”
Shayne admitted the justice of the rejoinder. They strolled along the 16th of September Street to Juarez Avenue, turned to the right, and then off onto a side street and into El Gato Pobre Cafe.
There was a long bar just off the entrance, a check room at the left. Half a dozen prosperous-appearing Mexicans were drinking at the bar. Rodriquiz said, “I think we will have a drink,” and wandered to the end of the bar. Shayne ordered a double shot of aguardiente, and the captain took tequila with a slice of lemon.
The bartender nodded to Rodriquiz while taking their orders, and lingered to wipe off the bar after setting the drinks before them. Rodriquiz murmured a few words of Mexican Spanish into his ear, and he nodded again. He went back through an inner door leading into the cafe, and was gone a couple of minutes. He went on serving drinks
