Holley had worn when he was shot, and his garters—because the pants had a bullet-hole in them, and the bullet had cut one garter. We fixed a hole in his pajama-leg, unbandaged his leg—I had fixed it as well as I could—and washed away the clotted blood until it began to bleed again. Then I gave the alarm.”
She raised both hands in a gesture of finality and made a clucking sound with her tongue.
“And there you are,” she said.
“You got anything to say?” I asked Holley, who was staring at his bandaged leg.
“To my lawyer,” he said without looking up.
O’Gar spoke to the corporal.
“The wagon, Flynn.”
Ten minutes later we were in the street, helping Holley and the woman into a police car.
Around the corner on the other side of the street came three brown-skinned men, apparently Malay sailors. The one in the middle seemed to be drunk, and the other two were supporting him. One of them had a package that could have held a bottle under his arm.
O’Gar looked from them to me and laughed.
“We wouldn’t be doing a thing to those babies right now if we had fallen for that yarn, would we?” he whispered.
“Shut up, you, you big heap!” I growled back, nodding at Holley, who was in the car by now. “If that bird sees them he’ll identify ’em as his Siamese, and God knows what a jury would make of it!”