I opened the front door and motioned Jack in. He rang up the curtain on his little act, looking coldly at me and opening the rear door.
“I’m going to sit back here,” he said bluntly.
“Not a bad idea,” and I climbed in beside him.
Carey twisted around in his seat and he and Jack stared at each other for a while. I said nothing, did not introduce them. When the swarthy man had finished sizing the youngster up, he looked from the boy’s collar and tie—all of his evening clothes not hidden by his overcoat—to me, grinned, and drawled:
“Your friend’s a waiter, huh?”
I laughed, because the indignation that darkened the boy’s face and popped his mouth open was natural, not part of his acting. I pushed my foot against his. He closed his mouth, said nothing, looked at Tom-Tom Carey and me as if we were specimens of some lower form of animal life.
I grinned back at Carey and asked, “Are we waiting for anything?”
He said we weren’t, left off staring at Jack, and put the machine in motion. He drove us out through the park, down the boulevard. Traffic going our way and the other loomed out of and faded into the fog-thick night. Presently we left the city behind, and ran out of the fog into clear moonlight. I didn’t look at any of the machines running behind us, but I knew that in one of them Dick Foley and Mickey Linehan should be riding.
Tom-Tom Carey swung our car off the boulevard, into a road that was smooth and well made, but not much traveled.
“Wasn’t a man killed down along here somewhere last night?” I asked.