The little Canadian op had been watching me curiously while I talked. Now he started to say something, changed his mind, grunted, “Righto,” and departed.
I went out to look for Reno Starkey. After an hour of searching I located him, by telephone, in a Ronney Street rooming house.
“By yourself?” he asked when I had said I wanted to see him.
“Yeah.”
He said I could come out, and told me how to get there. I took a taxi. It was a dingy two-story house near the edge of town.
A couple of men loitered in front of a grocer’s on the corner above. Another pair sat on the low wooden steps of the house down at the next corner. None of the four was conspicuously refined in appearance.
When I rang the bell two men opened the door. They weren’t so mild looking either.
I was taken upstairs to a front room where Reno, collarless and in shirt-sleeves and vest, sat tilted back in a chair with his feet on the window sill.
He nodded his sallow horse face and said:
“Pull a chair over.”
The men who had brought me up went away, closing the door. I sat down and said:
“I want an alibi. Dinah Brand was killed last night after I left her. There’s no chance of my being copped for it, but with Noonan dead I don’t know how I’m hitched up with the department. I don’t want to give them any openings to even try to hang anything on me. If I’ve got to I can prove where I was last night, but you can save me a lot of trouble if you will.”
Reno looked at me with dull eyes and asked:
“Why pick on me?”
“You phoned me there last night. You’re the only person who knows I was there the first part of the night. I’d have to fix it with you even if I got the alibi somewhere else, wouldn’t I?”
He asked:
“You didn’t croak her, did you?”
I said, “No,” casually.
He stared out the window a little while before he spoke. He asked:
“What made you think I’d give you the lift? Do I owe you anything for what you done to me at Willsson’s last night?”
I said:
“I didn’t hurt you any. The news was half-out anyhow. Whisper knew enough to guess the rest. I only gave you a show-down. What do you care? You can take care of yourself.”
“I aim to try,” lie agreed. “All right. You was at the Tanner House in Tanner. That’s a little burg twenty-thirty miles up the hill. You went up there after you left Willsson’s and stayed till morning. A guy named Ricker that hangs around Murry’s with a hire heap drove you up and back. You ought to know what you was doing up there. Give me your sig and I’ll have it put on the register.”
“Thanks,” I said as I unscrewed my fountain pen.
“Don’t say them. I’m doing this because I need all the friends I can get. When the time comes that you sit in with me and Whisper and Pete, I don’t expect the sour end of it.”
“You won’t get it,” I promised. “Who’s going to be chief of police?”
“McGraw’s acting chief. He’ll likely cinch it.”
“How’ll he play?”
“With the Finn. Rough stuff will hurt his shop just like it does Pete’s. It’ll have to be hurt some. I’d be a swell mutt to sit still while a ‘guy like Whisper is on the loose. It’s me or him. Think he croaked the broad?”
“He had reason enough,” I said as I gave him the slip of paper on which I had written my name. “She double-crossed him, sold him out, plenty.”
“You and her was kind of thick, wasn’t you?” he asked.
I let the question alone, lighting a cigarette. Reno waited a while and then said:
“You better hunt up Ricker and let him get a look at you so’s he’ll know how to describe you if he’s asked.”
A long-legged youngster of twenty-two or so with a thin freckled face around reckless eyes opened the door and came into the room. Reno introduced him to me as Hank O’Marra. I stood up to shake his hand, :and then asked Reno: