“Looks like your play,” I pointed out.
“Ah.”
He slapped at his leg with irritation.
“I never figured you except as a right guy. Trouble is, I’m all mixed up. Back home now, things’d be different. I know everybody, everbody knows me. Back home I’d have that town upside down. You wouldn’t be able to go to the can without I’d know. But here——” he spread his arms——” I’m like some visiting fireman. I ought to be out cracking a few heads, that’s what.”
It was the nearest I was going to get to an apology. But I knew the signs. Preston was off the hook.
“Everybody’s working on it,” I assured him. “And I have a lot of calls to make. Especially now.”
“Now? You mean because of Jake?”
He eyed me beadily, sceptical that I should be particularly worried if somebody shot his brother.
“No, not really because of Jake. Because of me. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Who’s stirring up all this trouble over the Brookman murder? Jake? No, it’s me. I’m the one asking all the questions, poking my nose all over this village. Why would anybody want to kill Jake? Remember, there were two of us outside that joint tonight. Jake’s the one who got shot, but who’s to know which one was aimed at?”
He let out breath in a long low hiss.
“Yeah. Yeah, I hadn’t figured that angle. You could be right, Preston. And you’re the one can prove that Fenton dame was murdered. Nobody else could swear she wasn’t alone up there.” I nodded.
“That’s the way I’ve been stacking it up.”
He pondered for a moment.
“Yeah, but hold it. If that’s true, why didn’t they take care of you when they killed the dame? Don’t make sense, leaving it till later.”
I’d been wondering about that myself, and thought I had an answer.
“Because I wasn’t expected. It’s not easy to kill a full-grown-man in a short time unless you have a gun or a knife. Whoever it was killed the girl went there expecting to have nothing else to do but push her out of a window. It’s a different proposition trying to heave a guy my size up off the floor.”
He thought about it, nodding slowly.
“Yeah, that figures. It was your lucky day the guy wasn’t heeled, huh?”
“I guess so.”
There was another silence, and I decided it was time for home. Unless Charlie had other ideas.
“Well, it’s pretty late,” I said. “If you don’t want me any more——?”
“Eh?—oh, no, no. You blow, Preston. Keep in touch, huh?”
“Will do.”
I didn’t bother about farewells for Hamilton and the others. In my business there’s a time to get, and when that time comes I don’t stand on any ceremony.
Back in the car I wrote down Martello’s telephone number, which I’d taken a peek at while I was with him. It was my last task of the day. Whatever else was to be done would have to wait till morning. I was bushed.
CHAPTER NINE
NEXT MORNING I GOT UP around nine and paddled around making coffee and coughing over my first cigaret. The paper was full of stuff about Flower’s murder and the shooting of Jake Martello. Jake was described as a financier, and I guess that’s as good a word as any. I got a two word mention as “a friend” who was with him at the time, and that was all the publicity I needed for today. There was a lot of filler about Jake, and the club, and Rose Suffolk, and just about everything else the reporter could dream up. They gave him a column and a half, and all it said was Jake got shot and nobody knew who did it. With Flower they had a better deal. They now knew there was a connection between her death and the Brook-man murder and they gave it plenty of treatment. The only disappointment from the paper’s standpoint was the lack of any real evidence that she didn’t fall naturally. Still, there was a rehash of the Brookman story, and plenty of emphasis on the mysterious connection with both cases of “the well-known entrepreneur Hugo Somerset.”
I chuckled as I read that “entrepreneur” again. A word that covered a multitude of activities, not to say sins. Just the same, it was clear Somerset would be getting his fair share of questions from Randall and the others. Not that I was sorry about that. All the time they spent asking other people questions was time they couldn’t spend darkening my door.
On an impulse I telephoned the hospital, and was told Jake Martello was making slow progress. I asked if they’d dug out the slug, and a frosty female voice advised me to ask his relatives. That I was not proposing to do at that hour of the morning. I didn’t want to be around Charlie and his playmates anymore than was absolutely necessary.
I was very sharp today in my new brown mohair suit and knitted tie. Anybody would take me for a lawyer, or one of those respectable people. An architect maybe, I thought as I admired myself in the mirror by the front door. Of course, architects don’t carry .38 Police Specials under their nice mohair jackets, I reflected glumly as I opened the door. Once again I found myself heading for Conquest Street. This is one of the more interesting streets in our fair city. It starts off close to the business section, with a legitimate theater right on the corner. That’s where it starts, how it starts. After that each succeeding group of buildings slides further and further down the social scale, and every other kind of scale. Half a mile along there are the girlie shows, clip-joints, run-down gym, every kind of entertainment you could put a name to, especially that kind. At nights, Conquest is no place to leave a car, but at that hour of the morning I knew most
