“Can’t, huh?” the captain said. “Well, I can hold him twenty-four hours without laying charges, and I’ll do that, but I’ll have to spring him then unless you can dig up something.”
“Suppose you turn him loose now,” I suggested after thinking through my cigarette for a few minutes. “He’s got himself all alibied up, so there’s no reason why he should hide out on us. We’ll let him alone all day—give him time to make sure he isn’t being tailed—and then we’ll get behind him tonight and stay behind him. Any dope on Big Flora?”
“No. That kid that was killed in Green Street was Bernie Bernheimer, alias the Motsa Kid. I guess he was a dip—he ran with dips—but he wasn’t very—”
The buzz of the phone interrupted him. He said, “Hello, yes,” and “Just a minute,” into the instrument, and slid it across the desk to me.
A feminine voice: “This is Grace Cardigan. I called your agency and they told me where to get you. I’ve got to see you. Can you meet me now?”
“Where are you?”
“In the telephone station on Powell Street.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.
Calling the agency, I got hold of Dick Foley and asked him to meet me at Ellis and Market right away. Then I gave the captain back his phone, said “See you later,” and went uptown to keep my dates.
Dick Foley was on his corner when I got there. He was a swarthy little Canadian who stood nearly five feet in his high-heeled shoes, weighed a hundred pounds minus, talked like a Scotchman’s telegram, and could have shadowed a drop of salt water from the Golden Gate to Hong Kong without ever losing sight of it.