“That’s okay, honey-” I started to say, but Masters interrupted with “Ah, you’re here, are you? We thought we’d come visit you and that Viennese doctor Jill admires so much a little later, but you’ve saved us a trip.” He looked at my gun, which I’d pulled out, and smiled offensively. “I would put that away if I were you. Tony here is pretty trigger-happy and I know you’d hate to watch anything happen to Jill.”
Tony Bronsky had come into the room behind Masters. With him was Earl. Ralph was shaking his head, like a man trying to wake up from a dream. I put the gun back into my pocket.
“Don’t blame the girl,” Masters said to me. “But you really shouldn’t have gotten her involved, you know. As soon as Margaret Thayer told me she had come back home, I tried finding a way of talking to her without anyone in the house knowing about it. Sheer luck, really, that she walked down Sheridan just at that time. But we got her to explain quite a bit, didn’t we, Jill?”
I could see now that there was an ugly bruise on the side of her face. “Cute, Masters,” I said. “You’re at your best when you’re beating up little girls. I’d like to see you with a grandmother.” He was right: I’d been stupid to bring her down to Lotty’s and get her involved in things that Masters and Smeissen didn’t want anyone to know about. I’d save my self-reproach for later, though-I didn’t have time for it now.
“Want me to put her away?” Tony breathed, his eyes glistening with happiness, his Z-shaped scar vivid as a wound.
“Not yet, Tony,” Masters said. “We want to find out how much she knows and who she’s told it to… You, too, Ralph. It’s really a shame you got this Polish gal over here-we weren’t going to shoot you unless it was absolutely necessary, but now I’m afraid we’ll have to.” He turned to Smeissen. “Earl, you’ve had more experience at this kind of thing than I have. What’s the best way to set them up?”
“Get the Warchoski broad’s gun away from her,” Earl said in his squeaky voice. “Then have her and the guy sit together on the couch so that Tony can cover them both.”
“You heard him,” Masters said. He started toward me.
.“No,” Earl squeaked. “Don’t go close to her. Make her drop it. Tony, cover the kid.”
Tony pointed his Browning at Jill. I dropped the S &W on the floor. Earl came and kicked it into the corner. Jill’s little face was white and pinched.
“Over to the couch,” Masters said. Tony continued to cover Jill. I went and sat down. The couch was firm, one good thing-one didn’t sink into it. I kept my weight distributed forward onto my legs and feet. “Move,” Earl squeaked at Ralph. Ralph was looking dazed. Little drops of sweat covered his face. He stumbled a bit on the thick carpet as he came to sit next to me.
“You know, Masters, this cesspool you’ve built is stinking so high you’re going to have to kill everyone in Chicago to cover it up,” I said.
“You think so, do you? Who knows about it besides you?” He was still smiling unpleasantly. My hand itched to break his lower jaw.
“Oh, the Star has a pretty good idea. My attorney. A few others. Even little Earl over here isn’t going to be able to buy off the cops if you shoot down an entire newspaper crew.”
“Is this true, Yardley?” Ralph asked. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper and he cleared his throat. “I don’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe Vic when she tried to tell me. You didn’t shoot Peter, did you?”
Masters gave a superior little laugh. “Of course not. Tony here shot him. I had to go along, though, just as I did tonight-to get Tony into the building. And Earl came along as an accessory. Earl doesn’t usually get involved, do you, Earl? But we don’t want any blackmail after this.”
“That’s good, Masters,” I praised him. “The reason Earl’s ass is so fat is because he’s been protecting it all these years.”
Earl turned red. “You two-cent bitch, just for that, I’m going to let Tony work you over again before he shoots you!” he squeaked.
“Attaboy, Earl.” I looked at Masters. “Earl never beats anyone up himself,” I explained. “I used to think it was because he didn’t have any balls, but last week I found out that wasn’t true, right, Earl?”
Earl started for me, as I hoped he would, but Masters held him back. “Calm down, Earl, she’s just trying to ride you. You can do whatever you want to her-after I find out how much she knows and where Anita McGraw is.”
“I don’t know, Yardley,” I said brightly.
“Don’t give me that,” he said, leaning forward to hit me on the mouth. “You disappeared early this morning. That heap of shit Smeissen had watching the back alley went to sleep and you got away. But we questioned some of the girls you talked to at the UWU meeting last night and Tony here-persuaded-one of them to tell him where Anita had gone. But when we got to Hartford, Wisconsin, at noon, she’d disappeared. And the woman at the restaurant described you pretty well. An older sister, she thought, who’d come to take Jody Hill away with her. Now where is she?”
I uttered a silent prayer of thanks for the urge that had prompted Anita to want to leave Hartford. “There’s got to be more to this racket than just those twenty-three names on the original deed of trust Jill found,” I said. Even at two hundred fifty dollars a week apiece, that isn’t paying for the services of a guy like Smeissen. Round-the-clock surveillance on me? That must have cost you a bundle, Masters.”
“Tony,” Masters said conversationally, “hit the girl. Hard.”
Jill gave a gasp, a scream held back. Good girl. Lots of guts. “You kill the girl, Masters, you got nothing to stop me,” I said. “You’re in a little ol’ jam. The minute Tony takes that gun off her, she’s going to roll on the floor and get behind that big chair, and I’m going to jump Tony and break his neck. And if he kills her, the same thing will happen. So sure, I don’t want to watch you rough up Jill, but you’re using up your weapon doing it.”
“Go ahead and kill Warchoski,” Earl squeaked. “You’re going to sooner or later anyway.”
Masters shook his head. “Not until we know where the McGraw girl is.”
“Tell you what, Yardley,” I offered. “I’ll trade you Jill for Anita. You send the kid outside, let her go home, and I’ll tell you where Anita is.”
Masters actually wasted a minute thinking about it. “You do think I’m dumb, don’t you? If I let her go, all she’ll do is call the police.”
“Of course I think you’re dumb. As Dick Tracy once put it so well, all crooks are dumb. How many fake claimants do you have pulling indemnity payments into that dummy account? ”
He laughed, his fake-hearty laugh again. “Oh, close to three hundred now, set up in different parts of the country. That deed of trust is quite outdated, and I see John never bothered to go back and check the original to see how it was growing.”
“What was his cut for overseeing the account?”
“I really didn’t come here to answer a smart-mouthed broad’s questions,” Yardley said, still good-natured, still in control. “I want to know how much you know.”
“Oh, I know quite a bit,” I said. “I know that you called McGraw and got Earl’s name from him when Peter Thayer came to you with those incriminating files. I know you didn’t tell McGraw who you were having put away, and when he found out, he panicked. You’ve got him in a cleft stick, haven’t you: he knows you’re gunning for his kid, but he can’t turn state’s evidence, or he hasn’t got the guts to, anyway, because then he’ll be an accessory before the fact, sending a professional killer to you. Let’s see. I also know that you talked Thayer out of continuing the investigation into his son’s death by telling him he’d been a party to the crime for which Peter died. And that if he pushed the investigation, the Thayer name would be mud and he’d lose his position at the bank. And I know he wrestled with that grim news for two days, then decided he couldn’t live with himself and called you and told you he wouldn’t be a party to his son’s death. So you got cute little Tony here to gun him down the next morning before he could get to the state’s attorney.” I turned to Tony. “You aren’t as good as you used to be, Tony, my boy: someone saw you waiting outside the Thayer place. That witness is on ice now-you didn’t get him when you had the opportunity.”