She gazed at me wide eyed. “You’re a professional bodyguard?”
“Mostly. I don’t restrict my cases to that, but that’s mostly what I get.”
“How much do you charge?”
“Twenty-five a day, plus expenses, if any.”
Delving in her purse, she produced a slim roll of bills, peeled off a twenty and a five and laid them on the bar. “Now will you kindly take me home?”
I eyed the bills dubiously. “I thought you were broke.”
“I told you Henry England is a dear friend. He is also generous.”
Shrugging, I picked up the money. “You’ve got me for twenty-four hours. Let’s see if your friend is still waiting outside.”
He was. We found him leaning against the building ten feet from the glass, entrance door. His smoky eyes watched us unwinkingly as I escorted Nina over to him.
I said, “My name is Manville Moon and I’m a private detective.”
“So?” he asked.
“So the lady thinks you’re bent on kidnapping her and dragging her back to her husband. She just hired me to guard her body, and I’d like either to verify or dissolve her fears.”
His dark circled eyes flicked at Nina with something like amused contempt. “When a dame runs out on Jerry Patton, he just crooks his finger and a dozen more come running. Jerry wouldn’t take you back if you came crawling. I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Then go ahead and talk to her,” I suggested.
He looked me over deliberately, then said in a quiet voice, “Sure. You know what I’m after, Nina. Just tell me and step aside.”
“Then nobody’s going to bother you any more.”
“You mean about Henry England?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Nina said. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since he dropped me at my hotel five days ago. I suppose he went back to Chicago.”
He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “Okay, if you want to play games, Nina. But don’t cry when you get burnt.”
I said, “Listen, buster, I know you’re a tough Chicago hood and probably scare hell out of people in Chicago, but if that’s meant as a threat to my client, back off of it fast.”
He stared at me until a tic began to develop in his cheek. Finally, in a tone suggesting he was resisting mayhem only by supreme effort, he said, “I never buy trouble unless it’s going to get me something. Tangling with you wouldn’t get me anything but busted knuckles. I don’t think you have to worry about Nina being in any physical danger.”
“Good,” I said agreeably. “Then I probably won’t have to kill anyone.”
For a bare instant his mask slipped and allowed him to look startled. But it soon settled over his face again. He smiled with bleak amusement, turned without saying goodbye, and entered the Sheridan Lounge.
Nina said, “I guessed right about Henry’s danger. Gerald has sent Jet to kill him.”
“But you don’t seem to be in much danger,” I said. “Want your money back?” She grabbed my arm. “Don’t you dare leave me! I won’t feel safe until Jet leaves town.”
My Plymouth was parked in the Sheridan Hotel’s parking lot. As we pulled from the lot I had to brake for a passing car, and Nina glanced down at my feet with a startled expression when I used only one foot for both pedals. Since my right leg is made of cork and aluminum below the knee, when I brake I turn my left foot sidewise, the heel hitting the brake and the toe the clutch.
Catching her expression, I explained it all to her.
“Oh,” she said, and looked embarrassed.
Why, I don’t know. People accept false teeth, wigs, and even glass eyes as a matter of course, but a false limb seems to throw them.
I told her I wasn’t sensitive, and she needn’t worry about my infirmity lessening my efficiency as a bodyguard, as I customarily squeezed a trigger with my fingers rather than my toes.
“I was just surprised because I hadn’t noticed any limp,” she said.
Nina decided I should have a room next to hers at the Sennett, the second class hotel where she stayed. We drove to my flat first, where I packed a small bag and strapped on a shoulder holster containing my P-38.
Then we started toward the hotel, but changed our course after we heard a news announcement over the car radio. A newscaster reported that a man registered at the Sennett Hotel under the name of Howard Smith, but whose papers indicated he was actually a Henry England of Chicago, had been found dead under suspicious circumstances in his room about noon that day. The body had been moved to the city morgue, but the police had issued no statement concerning the case so far.
I cocked an eyebrow at Nina. “Be quite a coincidence if this guy was the same Henry England. You know he was staying at your hotel?”
“Of course not.” She had turned pale and looked quite frightened. “Jet must have killed him.”
“And then forgot he did it?” I asked. “Fifteen minutes ago he was still looking for Henry.”
Changing direction, I drove to police headquarters. We found Inspector Warren Day in his office giving his chief satellite, Lieutenant Hannegan, hell about something or other.
The chief of homicide lowered his skinny, bald head to peer at us over thick glasses. He scowled at me and blinked rapidly when he looked at Nina. Hannegan gave both of us a grateful look and scuttled from the room.
“I must not have heard your knock, Moon,” Day said sarcastically.
“The door was open,” I said, and introduced Nina.
Ordinarily Day would have pursued the subject of knocking on doors until he ran it into the ground, but, as always, the presence of a beautiful woman left him momentarily speechless. The inspector isn’t exactly afraid of beautiful women. He just doesn’t know where to look or what to do with his hands when one is around.
I said, “We heard over the radio you’ve got a corpse named Henry England. Nina knows a man by that name, so I brought her down to tell about it.”
Nina said quickly, “I don’t know him well, Inspector. I don’t even know what his business was. He was a customer at a club I worked at in Chicago, and I used to sit at his table occasionally.”
“You knew him well enough to hitch a ride here from Chicago with him,” I suggested helpfully.
“Well, that,” she said with a dismissing gesture. “That was nearly a week ago, and I thought he’d returned to Chicago.”
Warren Day rose from his chair. “Before we go any farther, let’s make sure this is the same guy.”
So we took a trip to the morgue and viewed the body of a middle-aged, fat man with gray hair. An ugly knife wound was high on the left side of his chest.
“That’s Henry,” Nina said without visible emotion. “Didn’t he have any clothes on when you found him?”
“The morgue attendants remove them,” the inspector explained. “Though as a matter of fact, he was only wearing undershorts.”
When we got back to Warren Day’s office, Nina repeated the tale of her flight from her husband with Henry England’s aid, and her suspicion that Jet Chard had been sent by her husband to drag her back by force. Parenthetically she added that her husband, Gerald Patton, was some kind of racketeer, but she didn’t know just what his racket was.
“Probably every racket, if he was tied in with this Henry England,” the inspector growled. “We phoned Chicago about Henry, and he’s got a record covering everything from extortion to narcotic peddling.”
Nina looked surprised. “Henry? He seemed such a gentleman.”
Day asked, “Did your husband know it was England you ran off with?”
“He probably guessed. He knew we were friendly, and I never talked much to other men at the club because Gerald was so jealous. He didn’t seem to mind Henry, because Henry was older and never made passes at me.”