“So Wizlow brought him in here?”
“Please do not misquote me, Mr. Quinn. I said they were here together, that is all. I presume they came in together though they may have met by chance here in our lobby. I didn’t ask. It was none of my business.” His manner said it was none of Tony Quinn’s, either.
“They went out together?”
“I believe they did. I paid no particular attention, once I’d verified the fact that funds were earmarked to meet that particular check.”
“Have you seen either of them since that time?”
“My dear fellow,” Drummond said peevishly, “I really couldn’t say as to that. I may have. I see so many hundreds of people here every banking day of my life.”
“But not so many who’ve cashed two hundred-thousand-dollar checks.”
“No, that’s true.” Drummond replaced his spectacles firmly on the bridge of his long, thin nose. “As a matter of fact, I suppose I should have remembered Mr. Prosser if I had seen him again, so I think it’s safe to say I haven’t. But Mr. Wizlow — I couldn’t be at all sure about him. He’s in and out all week.”
Tony Quinn stood up, held out his hand. “I’d better transfer my quiz program to Mr. Wizlow’s office. Thanks a lot for your assistance.”
“I hope there’s no disagreeableness involved in this business.” The assistant cashier looked unhappy. “In any event, I’m sure you’ll try to keep the bank’s name out of it, if any unpleasantness should arise.”
Quinn chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to impair the bank’s standing. I’ve got a thousand or so on deposit here, myself.”
But the chuckle was purely mechanical. The fact that Jack-the-Wrecker was mixed up in the affair was nothing to laugh about.
The redoubtable and elusive junk dealer was one of the principal string-pullers down at headquarters, as well as at the precinct houses. Jack-the-Wrecker had never bothered to run for political office, but his hand was in every polling booth and ballot box — though that undeniable fact might have been difficult to establish in a court of law.
He was rich: how rich very few knew. Certainly not the income tax deputies. He was largely unknown, since newspapers and radio stations were cautious about references to free-spending advertisers, but Jack-the-Wrecker was “in” at least one large department store, a couple of haberdashery shops and a number of the city’s late-closing cafes.
On his way back to the prosecutor’s office, Tony wondered about those cafes and cocktail lounges. Were any of them setting Daiquiris and Manhattans out on squares of paper bearing that little jingle? Would Carol be in one of them, chatting with the bartender, right that minute? He regretted having sent her on the search.
His anxiety wasn’t lessened by the receptionist by the telephone switchboard, when he opened the corridor door to his own suite of offices.
“Oh, Mr. Quinn! You’re wanted at Memorial Hospital right away!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know, sir. They didn’t say. All they said was, that you were to come to the Emergency Ward as quickly as possible.”
It took him six minutes. He sweated it out every single second. If anything had happened to Carol—
At the Emergency entrance a starchy nurse eyed him stonily. “Mr. Quinn, you say? Oh, yes. This way.”
Down a cement staircase reeking of iodoform. To a bright-lighted antiseptic ward. In one of the narrow cots, with another nurse and a white-jacketed intern standing by — Butch!
Butch’s eyes were black, green and purple blue. His ear was a clotted mass of gore. One side of his face was caked with blood.
“Jeeze, Boss!” The big man stuck up a bloody-knuckled paw. “I hated like hell to get you over here.”
The doctor said sharply, “Lie till. Keep quiet. How do you think I can get these stitches in your scalp with your head wobbling like a kid on a pogo stick?”
Tony said, “Anything serious. Doc?”
The doctor nodded at the four-inch scalp gash. “Concussion. Two ribs, green fractures. More contusions than I could count. We’ll have to do something about that lacerated ear, too.”
The nurse murmured, “It’s a wonder he’s alive.”
Butch grumbled, “Reason I sent in that hurry call, Boss, I was afraid these hospital creeps would give me that old whifferoo on the op’rating table and I’ll pass out before I could tell you about this Jack-the-Wrecker—”
The doctor cursed fervently. “Damn it, you dumb bastard! You just ripped a stitch loose, shooting off your big mouth. You want me to hook your scalp back on or not?”
Tony Quinn said, “Hold it twenty seconds, Doc, then I’ll guarantee to keep him quiet.”
The nurse muttered. “That’ll be the day!”
Tony bent over the cot. “Did the Wrecker fix you up like this?”
“Hah!” Butch snorted. “That baby won’t fix nobody up no more, you ask me! He’s breakfast food for the buzzards by now. Just lemme tell you—”
Quinn put a palm over the wide mouth. “Go ahead, Doc. If he opens his trap again before you’re finished, you can put a few stitches in his lips.” He scowled down into Butch’s eyes. “I’ll give you an ether pad myself, if you don’t pipe down until they’ve finished patching you up.”
Butch winked one purplish, puffy eyelid.
Chapter V
Butch watched while the doctor plastered the last strip of adhesive across his hairy chest.
“Probably you think because you’re big as a moose and strong as a bull,” the doctor said, “you can get up and start heaving pianos or iron safes in the morning. Let me tell you, fellow, you better park your fundum on a mattress for a few days or you might start to come unstuck. You’ve been hurt!”
“Telling me,” Butch grunted. “Thanks for the darning needle and everything.”
The doctor made a face. “Mind what I say. Keep quiet or you might be on your back a good long time.”
Butch moaned. “Y’mean I can’t talk!”
The nurse answered. “That’s all right, talking. The doctor means you’re not to get excited or anything.”
The doctor added, “We’re checking you out as an ambulatory at Mr. Quinn’s request, but if you don’t take it easy you’ll come back here on a stretcher.”
“If I do,” Butch declared, as he stalked across the ward stiffly, “I’ll have company with me. So long, now.”
In Tony’s car, the big man leaned back against the cushions. He began immediately to talk.
“I better go back to the time I left the office, Boss. When you say we got to get a line on this black Caddy, right away I think of the Melody Club. A lot of them grease monkeys for the garages and used car lots hang around in there. But the joint is practically empty when I get there. There’s only this skinnymarink of a bartender. He’s seen me three, four times but he don’t know me from Adam.
“He puts down his racing paper. ‘Kind a muggy,’ he says. I tell him it’s good weather to be burned in, and that I’m expecting to get patted in the puss with a shovel any time, so would he so kindly pour me a shillelagh, double, Irish and a long beer chaser. So he does, and just making the time pass, he asks what is my trouble. I tell him I ruin the big heap I drive for my employer and I have to have a car in Dallas by Saturday or I’m a dead duck, but I can’t move without a whole new transmission. Course the Caddy dealer could get the parts but it’d take a week, ten days. By then I’m in wrong up to my chops because it’s my fault for not checkin’ the transmission grease job.