He went back inside the shop and we hung around there waiting by the corner. This was about half-past four. At half-past six it was all dark, and we were still waiting there. Scanlon kept wanting to give up and go home. “All right, no one’s keeping you here,” I told him. “You go home, I’m staying until that guy shows up, I don’t care if it takes all night. You can’t expect a civillion to show as much forty-tude as a police officer.”
“You’re not a police officer,” he grumbled.
“My father is, so that makes me practic’ly as good as one.” I had him there, so he shut up and stuck around.
The thing was, I had to go home for supper sooner or later, I couldn’t just stay out and keep watch, or I’d get the tar bawled out of me. And I knew he had to, too.
“Look,” I said, “you stay here and keep watching for Sammy’s signal. I’ll beat it back and get my mother to feed me fast. Then I’ll come back here again and relieve you, and you can go back to your house and eat. That way we’ll be sure of not missing him if he shows up.”
“Will they let you out at nights during school?” he asked.
“No, but I’ll slip out without them knowing it. If the man calls for his suit before I get back, follow him wherever he goes, and then come back and meet me here and tell me where it is.”
I ran all the way back to our house and I told Ma I had to eat right away. She said, “What’s your hurry?”
I explained, “Well, we got an awful important exam coming up tomorrow and I gotta study hard tonight.”
She looked at me kind of suspicious and even felt my forehead to see if I was running a temperature. “You’re actually worried about an exam?” she said. “Well, you may as well eat now. Your poor father’s way out at the ends of the earth; he won’t be home until all hours.”
I could hardly wait until I got through but then I always eat fast so she didn’t notice much difference. Then I grabbed up my books for a bluff and said, “I’m going to study upstairs in my room, it’s quieter.”
As soon as I got up there I locked the door and then I opened the window and got down to the ground easy by way of that old tree. I’d done it plenty of times before. I ran all the way back to where Scan was waiting.
“He didn’t come yet,” he said.
“All right, now it’s your turn,” I told him. Parents are an awful handicap when you’re working on a case. I mean, a detective shouldn’t have to run home to meals right in the middle of something important. “Come back as soon as you get through,” I warned him, “if you want to be in on this with me.”
But he didn’t. I found out later he got caught trying to sneak out.
Well, I waited and I waited and I waited, until it was almost ten o’clock. It looked like he wasn’t coming for that suit any more tonight, but as long as there was still a light showing in Sammy’s father’s shop I wasn’t going to give up. Once a cop came strolling by and looked me over, like he wondered what a kid my age was doing standing so still by himself on a corner, and I just about curled up and died, but all he said was, “Whaddye say, son?” and went on his way.
While I was standing there hoping the cop wouldn’t come back, Sammy, the tailor’s kid, suddenly came up to me in the dark when I least expected it. “What’s the metter with you, didn’t you see me culling you with my hend?” he said. “That guy just come in for his sut.”
I saw someone come up the steps out of the shop just then, with a folded suit slung over his arm; he turned and went up the street the other way.
“That’s him. Now gimme the marbles you said.”
I spilled them into his hand with my eyes on the guy’s back. Even from the back he didn’t look like a guy to monkey around with. “Did your old man say anything to him about the eye that popped out of his cuff?” I asked Sammy.
“Did he ask us? So why should we tell him? In my fodder’s business anything that ain’t missed, we don’t know nothing about.”
“Then I guess I’ll just keep that old glass eye.”
“Oi! Mine fodder forget he esk me for it.”
The guy was pretty far down the street by now, so I started after him without waiting to hear any more. I was kind of scared, because now there was a grown-up in it, not just kids any more. I was wishing Scan had come back, so I’d have him along with me. But then I thought maybe it was better he hadn’t. The man might notice two kids following him quicker than he would just one.
He kept on going, until we were clear over in a part of town I’d never been in before. He was hard to keep up with, he walked fast and he had longer legs than me. Sometimes I’d think I’d lost him, but the suit over his arm always helped me pick him up again. I think without it I would have lost him sure.
Some of the streets had only about one light on them every two blocks, and between lights they were as black as the dickens. I didn’t like the kind of people that seemed to live around here either. One time I passed a lady with yellow hair, with a cigarette in her mouth and swinging her purse around like a lasso. Another time I nearly bumped into a funny thin man hugging a doorway and wiping his hand under his nose like he had a cold.
I couldn’t figure out why, if he lived this far away from Sammy’s father’s shop, the man with the suit had to come all this way over just to leave it to be cleaned. There must have been other tailors that were nearer. I guess he did it so he’d be sure the tailor wouldn’t know who he was or where he lived. That looked like he had something to be careful about, didn’t it?
Finally the lights got a little better again, and it was a good thing they did; by that time I was all winded, and my left shoe was starting to develop a bad squeak. I could tell ahead of time he was going to look back, by the way he slowed up a little and his shoulders started to turn around. I ducked down quick behind an ash can standing on the sidewalk. A grown-up couldn’t have hidden behind it, but it hid me all over.
I counted ten and then I peeked around it. He was on his way again, so I stood up and kept going myself. He must have stopped and looked back like that because he was getting close to where he lived and he wanted to make sure no one was after him. But, just the same, I wasn’t ready for him when he suddenly turned into a doorway and disappeared. I was nearly a block behind him, and I ran like anything to get down there on time, because I couldn’t tell from where I’d been just which one of them it was, there were three or four of them that were alike.
The entrances had inside doors, and whichever one he’d just opened had finished closing already, and I couldn’t sneak in the hall and listen to hear if the stairs were creaking under him or not. There were names under the letter boxes, but I didn’t have any matches and there were no lights outside the doors, so I couldn’t tell what they were.
Another thing, if he went that far out of his way to have a suit cleaned, he wouldn’t give his right name on that little scrap of paper that was pinned to the sleeve.
Suddenly I got a bright idea. If he lived in the back of the house it wouldn’t work, but maybe he had a room in the front. I backed up all the way across to the other side of the street and stood watching to see if any window would light up. Sure enough one did a minute or two later, a dinky one way up on the top floor of the middle house. I knew that must be his because no one else had gone in there just now.
Right while I was standing there he came to the window and looked down, and caught me staring square up at him with my head way back. This was one time I couldn’t move quick enough to get out of sight. He stared down at me hard, without moving. I got the funniest creepy feeling, like I was looking at a snake or something and couldn’t move. Finally I turned my head away as if I hadn’t been doing anything, and stuck my hands in my pockets, and shuffled off whistling, as if I didn’t know what to do with myself.