He didn’t contradict my use of the word friend. Not right away, that is.
“You a finger-man now, Preston? I never figured you for that kind of work.”
“A man does what he can.”
“And hey,” he remembered. “Whaddya mean, my friend Brookman? I never heard of the guy.”
I shook my head.
“I know better. You’ve been seen with him.”
“You’re crazy.”
It isn’t always easy to know when people are lying. But I had an uneasy feeling he could be telling the truth.
“Won’t do. You were seen talking to him out at the track.”
“I don’t get it. This is some kinda frame. Anybody could tell a story like that. I talk to hundreds of people out at the track.”
That was true. I reflected for a moment.
“Have you seen a picture of Brookman?”
“Just the one in the paper yesterday. Didn’t mean a thing to me.”
The one in that paper had been taken down among the rocks where they found the body. Nobody could have identified anybody from that picture.
“How about today’s paper?”
“Didn’t get around to it yet. Honey?”
He looked a question at Pook, and she went out into the kitchen. McCann stared at me in puzzlement, till she came back.
“Here it is, right here,” she pointed.
Today’s picture was the face of the man I’d seen in the morgue, after the morticians had been to work on him. McCann took the folded paper and stared, biting at his lower lip in concentration.
“Wait a minute, this guy.”
He let the paper fall by his side and hung his head thinking. Then he raised his arm again and concentrated on the dead man’s face.
“A horse player? Could he be a horse player?”
“He was,” I confirmed.
“I think I got him. I seem to remember a guy, oh it would be a month back. This guy was into the book for a lotta dough, about three g’s if I remember. Somebody asked me to talk to him about it.”
I knew what that meant. McCann had to show Brook-man his muscles in an attempt to shake some money out of him.
“So you had to lean on him? I’d have expected you to remember a little thing like that.”
“Nah,” he denied. “All I did was tell him these people don’t like guys who don’t pay. It makes them nervous. He had a week to find the dough, or I’d be seeing him for another little talk. That was when I was going to lump him up a little.”
“I see. And the second time you saw him?”
“Wasn’t no second time. He musta found the dough, I guess. Or else maybe somebody else got the job. I only saw him that one time. Yeah, I think this is the guy.”
“Who did he owe money to?”
McCann hesitated.
“I don’t think I’m going to tell you that. It was business. If I told you who it was, you could get to figuring that was the guy had this Brookman knocked off. That would make me kind of a stool-pigeon. This I don’t wanta be.”
It was a fair answer. It fitted the few facts I had, and it fitted what I knew of McCann’s attitude to life. All this time, Shiralee O’Connor was standing with her arms folded, watching us.
“I just had one of those ideas,” I said slowly. “You haven’t been around much lately, Legs. Could be you’re hiding from somebody.”
He squared his shoulders as though he might be about to take a poke at me. I hoped he wouldn’t. I was probably no match for him standing up. Sitting down, I was no match for Mickey Mouse.
“Why would I do that? You know me Preston, anybody has an argument with Legs McCann, I don’t hide in no cellars.”
“Not ordinarily, no,” I agreed. “But this could be different. Suppose now, suppose this bookie got tired of waiting for his money. Suppose he thought he’d just knock off a heavy loser, and call it quits? If he did that, he might get to thinking about anybody who knew Brook-man was in to him for the dough. And that anybody could be you.”
“Nuts,” he said with a laugh. “Everybody in this town knows me. I never hollered copper in my life, and I ain’t about to start. I’m surprised at you, Preston, making up a yarn like that. And I’m not hiding from anybody. Pook and me, we’re having kind of a vacation.”
I looked at the girl for confirmation, and she nodded without smiling.
“A vacation?” I echoed. “With her working half the night?”
“She works nights, I work days mostly. If we was gonna get together one of us’d have to rest up.”
That made sense. Shiralee said.
“That’s right enough, mister. We tossed for it, and this bum won.”
McCann chuckled.
“And she can call me that. That’s what I am, living off a woman.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she scolded. “We tossed for it, and I lost. It was the only fair thing to do.”
I held up a hand. The picture of happy domestic squabbling between this girl who danced the private circuit, and the bookies one-man persuasion squad was more than any stomach could take at that hour of the morning.
“Knock it off,” I begged. “What is this, an audition for a happy family series? What are you birds trying to sell me?”
McCann scowled.
“As for that, peeper, I ain’t about to sell you anything. And that includes information. So why don’t you button your trap and get outa here?”
“Ah,” I said, with satisfaction, “That’s better. That’s more like the old Legs. Now I know who I’m talking to.”
“You’ll know in a minute if you don’t get lost,” he assured me.
From the way he was moving around, easing off his muscles, I had no reason to think he was bluffing. But I didn’t get up. Instead I crossed my legs nonchalantly and leaned back.
“Stop using up all your wind,” I advised. “You ought to be grateful to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. If I wasn’t such an all-right guy, I
