“You got nothin’ on him?”
“No, Loop, and I don’t expect to. I want him to get something for me.”
“All right. Where d’you want him?”
“Send him up to my joint. I’ll wait there for him.”
“If he’ll come,” Loop promised and hung up.
I left word with Fiske to have the Old Man call me up when he came in, and then I went up to my rooms to wait for my informant.
He came in a little after ten—a short, stocky, pasty-faced man of forty or so, with mouse-colored hair streaked with yellow-white.
“Loop says y’got sumpin’ f’r me.”
“Yes,” I said, waving him to a chair, and closing the door. “I’m buying news.”
He fumbled with his hat, started to spit on the floor, changed his mind, licked his lips, and looked up at me.
“What kind o’ news? I don’t know nothin’.”
I was puzzled. The Dummy’s yellowish eyes should have showed the pinpoint pupils of the heroin addict. They didn’t. The pupils were normal. That didn’t mean he was off the stuff—he had put cocaine into them to distend them to normal. The puzzle was—why? He wasn’t usually particular enough about his appearance to go to that trouble.
“Did you hear about the Chinese killings down the shore last week?” I asked him.
“No.”