“We’ll go to Charley’s, where we can talk,” I said, guiding her down past Dick Foley.
Not a murmur did I get out of her until we were seated cross-table in the restaurant booth, and the waiter had gone off with our orders. Then she spread the newspaper out on the table with shaking hands.
“Is this on the level?” she demanded.
I looked at the story her shaking finger tapped—an account of the Fillmore and Army Street findings, but a cagey account. A glance showed that no names had been given, that the police had censored the story quite a bit. While I pretended to read I wondered whether it would be to my advantage to tell the girl the story was a fake. But I couldn’t see any clear profit in that, so I saved my soul a lie.
“Practically straight,” I admitted.
“You were there?”
She had pushed the paper aside to the floor and was leaning over the table.
“With the police.”
“Was—?” Her voice broke huskily. Her white fingers wadded the tablecloth in two little bunches halfway between us. She cleared her throat. “Who was—?” was as far as she got this time.
A pause. I waited. Her eyes went down, but not before I had seen water dulling the fire in them. During the pause the waiter came in, put our food down, went away.
“You know what I want to ask,” she said presently, her voice low, choked. “Was he? Was he? For God’s sake tell me!”
I weighed them—truth against lie, lie against truth. Once more truth triumphed.
“Paddy the Mex was shot—killed—in the Fillmore Street house,” I said.
The pupils of her eyes shrank to pinpoints—spread again until they almost covered the green irises. She made no sound. Her face was empty. She picked up a fork and lifted a forkful of salad to her mouth—another. Reaching across the table, I took the fork out of her hand.
“You’re only spilling it on your clothes,” I growled. “You can’t eat without opening your mouth to put the food in.”
She put her hands across the table, reaching for mine, trembling, holding my hand with fingers that twitched so that the nails scratched me.
“You’re not lying to me?” she half sobbed, half chattered. “You’re on the square! You were white to me that time in Philly! Paddy always said you were one white dick! You’re not tricking me?”
“Straight up,” I assured her. “Paddy meant a lot to you?”
She nodded dully, pulling herself together, sinking back in a sort of stupor.
“The way’s open to even up for him,” I suggested.
“You mean—?”
“Talk.”
She stared at me blankly for a long while, as if she was trying to get some meaning out of what I had said. I read the answer in her eyes before she put it in words.
“I wish to God I could! But I’m Paper-box-John Cardigan’s daughter. It isn’t in me to turn anybody up. You’re on the wrong side. I can’t go over. I wish I could. But there’s too much Cardigan in me. I’ll be hoping every minute that you nail them, and nail them dead right, but—”
“Your sentiments are noble, or words to that effect,” I sneered at her. “Who do you think you are—Joan of Arc? Would your brother Frank be in stir now if his partner, Johnny the Plumber, hadn’t put the finger on him for the Great Falls bulls? Come to life, dearie! You’re a thief among thieves, and those who don’t double-cross get crossed. Who rubbed your Paddy the Mex out? Pals! But you mustn’t slap back at ’em because it wouldn’t be clubby. My God!”
My speech only thickened the sullenness in her face.
“I’m going to slap back,” she said, “but I can’t, can’t split. I can’t, I tell you. If you were a gun, I’d—Anyway, what help I get will be on my side of the game. Let it go at that, won’t you? I know how you feel about it, but—Will you tell me who besides—who else was—was found in those houses?”
“Oh, sure!” I snarled. “I’ll tell you everything. I’ll let you pump me dry. But you mustn’t give me any hints, because it might not be in keeping with the ethics of your highly honorable profession!”
Being a woman, she ignored all this, repeating, “Who else?”
“Nothing stirring. But I will do this—I’ll tell you a couple who weren’t there—Big Flora and Red O’Leary.”
Her dopiness was gone. She studied my face with green eyes that were dark and savage.
“Was Bluepoint Vance?” she demanded.
“What do you guess?” I replied.
She studied my face for a moment longer and then stood up.
“Thanks for what you’ve told me,” she said, “and for meeting me like this. I do hope you win.”
She went out to be shadowed by Dick Foley. I ate my lunch.
VIII
At four o’clock that afternoon Jack Counihan and I brought our hired automobile to rest within sight of the front door of the Stockton Street hotel.
“He cleared himself with the police, so there’s no reason why he should have moved, maybe,” I told Jack, “and I’d rather not monkey with the hotel people, not knowing them. If he doesn’t show by late we’ll have to go up against them then.”
We settled down to cigarettes, guesses on who’d be the next heavyweight champion and when, the possibilities of Prohibition being either abolished or practiced, where to get good gin and what to do with it, the injustice of the new agency ruling that for purposes of expense accounts Oakland was not to be considered out of town, and similar exciting topics, which carried us from four o’clock to ten minutes past nine.
At 9:10 Red O’Leary came out of the hotel.
“God is good,” said Jack as he jumped out of the machine to do the footwork while
