I laughed with her while I tried to keep my head above the gin I had guzzled.
“Who else would it nail?” I asked.
“The whole damned lot of them.” She waved a hand. “Max, Lew Yard, Pete, Noonan, and Elihu Willsson–the whole damned lot of them.”
“Did Max Thaler know what you were doing?”
“Of course not–nobody but Donald Willsson.”
“Sure of that?”
“Sure I’m sure. You don’t think I was going around bragging about it ahead of time, do you?”
“Who do you think knows about it now?”
“I don’t care,” she said. “It was only a joke on him. He couldn’t have used the stuff.”
“Do you think the birds whose secrets you sold will see anything funny in it? Noonan’s trying to hang the killing on you and Thaler. That means he found the stuff in Donald Willsson’s pocket. They all thought old Elihu was using his son to break them, didn’t they?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, “and I’m one who thinks the same thing.”
“You’re probably wrong, but that doesn’t matter. If Noonan found the things you sold Donald Willsson in his pocket, and learned you had sold them to him, why shouldn’t he add that up to mean that you and your friend Thaler had gone over to old Elihu’s side?”
“He can see that old Elihu would be hurt as much as anybody else.”
“What was this junk you sold him?”
“They built a new City Hall three years ago,” she said, “and none of them lost any money on it. If Noonan got the papers he’ll pretty soon find out that they tied as much on old Elihu, or more, than on anybody else.”
“That doesn’t make any difference. He’ll take it for granted that the old man had found an out for himself. Take my word for it, sister, Noonan and his friends think you and Thaler and Elihu are double-crossing them.”
“I don’t give a damn what they think,” she said obstinately. “It was only a joke. That’s all I meant it for. That’s all it was.”
“That’s good,” I growled. “You can go to the gallows with a clear conscience. Have you seen Thaler since the murder?”
“No, but Max didn’t kill him, if that’s what you think, even if he was around.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. First place, Max wouldn’t have done it himself. He’d have had somebody else do it, and he’d have been way off with an alibi nobody could shake. Second place, Max carries a.38, and anybody he sent to do the job would have had that much gun or more. What kind of a gunman would use a.3 2?”
“Then who did it?”
“I’ve told you all I know,” she said. “I’ve told you too much.”
I stood up and said:
“No, you’ve told me just exactly enough.”
“You mean you think you know who killed him?”
“Yeah, though there’s a couple of things I’ll have to cover before I make the pinch.”
“Who? Who?” She stood up, suddenly almost sober, tugging at my lapels. “Tell me who did it.”
“Not now.”
“Be a good guy.”
“Not now.”
She let go my lapels, put her hands behind her, and laughed in my face.
“All right. Keep it to yourself–and try to figure out which part of what I told you is the truth.”
I said:
“Thanks for the part that is, anyhow, and for the gin. And if Max Thaler means anything to you, you ought to pass him the word that Noonan’s trying to rib him.”
V. Old Elihu Talks Sense
It was close to two-thirty in the morning when I reached the hotel. With my key the night clerk gave me a memorandum that asked me to call Poplar 605. I knew the number. It was Elihu Willsson’s.
“When did this come?” I asked the clerk.
“A little after one.”
That sounded urgent. I went back to a booth and put in the call. The old man’s secretary answered, asking me to come out at once. I promised to hurry, asked the clerk to get me a taxi, and went up to my room for a shot of Scotch.
I would rather have been cold sober, but I wasn’t. If the night held more work for me I didn’t want to go to it with alcohol dying in me. The snifter revived me a lot. I poured more of the King George into a flask, pocketed it, and went down to the taxi.