“I can try,” I assured him. “I suppose you’re going to yell, Police ! Like hell you are! The only squawk you’ve got coming is at your own dumbness in thinking because your squeeze on the woman was tight enough to keep her from having you copped, you didn’t have to worry about anything. I’m playing the same game you played with her and Main—only mine’s better, because you can’t get tough afterward without facing stir. Now shut up!”
“No more jack,” Mickey said. “Nothing but four postage stamps.”
“Take ’em along,” I told him. “That’s practically eight cents. Now we’ll go.”
“Hey, leave us a couple of bucks,” Weel begged.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” I snarled at him, backing to the door, which Mickey was opening.
The hall was empty. Mickey stood in it, holding his gun on Weel and Dahl while I backed out of the room and switched the key from the inside to the outside. Then I slammed the door, twisted the key, pocketed it, and we went downstairs and out of the hotel.
Mickey’s car was around the corner. In it, we transferred our spoils—except the guns—from his pockets to mine. Then he got out and went back to the agency. I turned the car toward the building in which Jeffrey Main had been killed.
Mrs. Main was a tall girl of less than twenty-five, with curled brown hair, heavily-lashed gray-blue eyes, and a warm, full-featured face. Her ample body was dressed in black from throat to feet.
She read my card, nodded at my explanation that Gungen had employed me to look into her husband’s death, and took me into a gray and white living room.