Kerman made an angry gesture.
“I’m going now. If we wait it may be too late.”
“Oh, shut up!” I said. “Get a drink. You’re staying right here.”
He hesitated, then went into the kitchen. After a while he came back with a bottle of Scotch, two glasses and a jug of ice-water. He made drinks, gave me one and sat down.
“There’s not a damn thing we can do if they’ve decided to knock her on the head,” I said.
“Even if they haven’t done it now, they’d do it the moment they saw us coming. We’ll go out there when it’s dark, and not before.”
Kerman didn’t say anything. He sat down, took a long pull at his drink and squeezed his hands together.
We sat there, staring at the floor, not thinking, not moving: just waiting. We had four hours, probably a little more before we could go into action.
At half-past six we were still sitting there. The Scotch bottle was about half full. Cigarette butts mounted in the ashtrays. We were fit to walk up the wall.
Then the telephone rang: a shrill sound that sounded sinister in the silent little apartment.
“I’ll get it,” I said, and walked stiff legged across the room and picked up the receiver.
“Malloy?” A man’s voice.
“Yes.”
“This is Sherrill.”
I didn’t say anything, but waited, looking across at Kerman.
“I have your girl on board, Malloy,” Sherrill said. His voice was gentle; it whispered in my ear.
“I know,” I said.
“You better come out and fetch her,” Sherrill said. “Say around nine o’clock. Don’t come before. I’ll have a boat at the pier to bring you out. Come alone, and keep this close. If you bring the police or anyone with you, she’ll be rapped on the head and dropped overboard. Understand?”
I said I understood.
“See you at nine o’clock then,” he said, and hung up.
IV
Lieutenant Bradley of the Missing People’s Bureau was a thickset, middle-aged, disillusioned Police Officer who sat for long hours behind a shabby desk in a small office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters and tried to answer unanswerable questions. All day long and part of the night people came to him or called him on the telephone to report missing relatives, and expected him to find them.
Not an easy job when, in most cases, the man or woman who had disappeared had gone away because they were sick of their homes or their wives or their husbands and were taking good care not to be found again. A job I wouldn’t have had for twenty times the pay Bradley got, and a job I couldn’t have handled anyway.
A light still burned behind the frosted panel of his office door when I knocked. His bland voice, automatically cordial, invited me to come in.
There he was, sitting behind his desk, a pipe in his mouth, a weary expression in his deep-set, shrewd brown eyes. A big man: going bald, with a pouch and bags under his eyes. A man who did a good job, had no credit nor publicity for it, and who didn’t want any.
The placid brow came down in a frown when he saw me.
“Go away,” he said without hope. “I’m busy. I don’t have the time to listen to your troubles; I have troubles of my own.”
I closed the door and leaned my back against it. I wasn’t in the mood for a Police Lieutenant’s pleasantries and I was in a hurry.
“I want service, Bradley,” I said, “and I want it fast. Do I get it from you or do I go to Brandon?”
The pale brown eyes looked startled.
“You don’t have to talk to me like that, Malloy,” he said. “What’s biting you?”
“Plenty, but I haven’t time to go into details.” I crossed the small space between the door and his desk, put my fists on his blotter and stared at him. “I want all you’ve got on Anona Freedlander. Remember her? She was one of Dr. Salzer’s nurses up at the Sanatorium on Foothill Boulevard. She disappeared on May 15th, 1947.”
“I know,” Bradley said, and his bush eyebrows climbed an inch. “You’re the second nuisance who’s asked to see her file in the past four hours. Funny how these things come in pairs. I’ve noticed it before.”
“Who was it?”
Bradley dug his thumb into the bell-push on his desk.
“That’s not your business,” he said. “Sit down and don’t crowd me.”
As I pulled up a chair a police clerk came in and stood waiting.
“Let’s have Freedlander’s file again,” Bradley said to him. “Make it snappy. This gent’s in a hurry.”
The clerk gave me a stony stare and went away like a centenarian climbing a steep flight of stairs.
Bradley lit his pipe and stared down at his ink-stained fingers. He breathed gently.
“Still sticking your nose into the Crosbys’ affairs?” he asked, without looking at me.
“Still doing it,” I said shortly.
He shook his head.
“You young and ambitious guys never learn, do you? I heard MacGraw and Hartsell called on you the other night.”
“They did. Maureen Crosby showed up and rescued me. How do you like that?”
He gave a little grin.
“I’d’ve liked to have been there. Was she the one who hit MacGraw?”
“Yeah.”
“Quite a girl.”
“I hear there was a shindig up at Salzer’s place,” I said, watching him. “Looks as if your Sports fund’s going to suffer.”
“I’d cry about that. I don’t have to worry about sport at my age.”
We brooded over each other for a minute or so, then I said, “Anyone report a girl named Gurney missing? She was another of Salzer’s nurses.”
He pulled at his thick nose, shook his head.
“Nope. Another of Salzer’s nurses, did you say?”
“Yeah. Nice girl: got a good body, but maybe you’re a mite old to bother about bodies.”
Bradley said he was a little old for that kind of thing, but he was staring thoughtfully at me now.
“She wouldn’t be any good to you, anyway; she’s dead,” I said.
“Are you trying to tell me something or are you just being tricky?” he asked, an acid note in his voice.
“I heard Mrs. Salzer tried to kidnap her from her apartment. The girl fell down the fire escape and broke her neck. Mrs. S. planted her somewhere in the desert, probably near the sanatorium.”
“Who told you?”
“An old lady fooling around with a crystal ball.”
He scratched the side of his jaw with the end of his pipe and stared blankly at me.
“Better tell Brandon. That’s a Homicide job.”
“This is a tip, brother, not evidence. Brandon likes facts, and I mightn’t be ready to give them to him. I’m telling you because you may or may not steer the information into the proper channels and leave me out of it.”
Bradley sighed, realized his pipe had gone out and groped for matches.
“You young fellas are too tricky,” he said. “All right, I’ll give it to my carrier pigeon. How much of it is true?”
“All of it. Why do you think Mrs. S. took poison?”
The clerk came in and laid the folder on the desk. He went away still at the slow deliberate pace. Probably his brain worked as fast as his legs.
Bradley untied the tapes and opened the file. We both stared at a half a dozen folded sheets of blank paper
