Guild nodded. “Sure. Well, who asked you to O.K. Laura Porter?”
“Seven months ago?” Kearny scoffed. “A swell chance I got of remembering! Maybe I didn’t even hear her name then.”
“Maybe you did. Try to remember.”
“No good,” Kearny insisted. “I tried when Elsa first told me about you wanting to see me.”
Guild said: “The other name she gave was Wynant’s. Does that help?”
“No. I don’t know him, don’t know anybody that knows him.”
“Charley Fremont knows him.”
Kearny moved his wide shoulders carelessly. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
The waiter came, gave the proprietor a dark quart bottle, put glasses of cracked ice on the table, and began to open bottles of ginger ale.
Elsa Fremont said: “I told you I didn’t think Frank knew anything about any of them.”
“You did,” the dark man said, “and now he’s told me.” He made his face solemnly thoughtful. “I’m glad he didn’t contradict you.”
Elsa stared at him while Kearny put whisky and the waiter ginger ale into the glasses.
The proprietor, patting the stopper into the bottle again, asked: “Is it your idea this fellow Wynant’s still hanging around San Francisco?”
Elsa said in a low, hoarse voice: “I’m scared! He tried to shoot Charley before. Where” – she put a hand on the dark man’s wrist – “where is Charley?”
Before Guild could reply Kearny was saying to her: “It might help if you’d do some singing now and then for all that dough you’re getting.” He watched her walk out on the dance-floor and said to Guild: “The kid’s worried. Think anything happened to Charley? Or did he have reasons to scrarn?”
“You people should ask me things,” Guild said and drank.
The proprietor picked up his glass. “People can waste a lot of time,” he said reflectively, “once they get the idea that people that don’t know anything do.” He tilted his glass abruptly, emptying most of its contents into his throat, set the glass down, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You sent a friend of mine over a couple of months ago – Deep Ying.”
“I remember,” Guild said. “He was the fattest of the three boo how day who tried to spread their tong war out to include sticking up a Japanese bank.”
“There was likely a tong angle to it, guns stashed there or something.”
The dark man said, “Maybe,” indifferently and drank again.
Kearny said: “His brother’s here now.”
Some of Guild’s indifference went away. “Was he in on the job too?”
The proprietor laughed. “No,” he said, “but you never can tell how close brothers are and I thought you’d like to know.”
The dark man seemed to weigh this statement carefully. Then he said: “In that case maybe you ought to point him out to me.”
“Sure.” Kearny stood up grinning, raised a hand, and sat down.
Elsa Fremont was singing Kitty From Kansas City.
A plump Chinese with a round, smooth, merry face came between tables to their table. He was perhaps forty years old, of less than medium stature, and though his gray suit was of good quality it did not fit him. He halted beside Kearny and said: “How you do, Frank.”
The proprietor said: “Mr. Guild, I want you to meet a friend of mine, Deep Kee.”
“I’m your friend, you bet you.” The Chinese, smiling broadly, ducked his head vigorously at both men.
Guild said: “Kearny tells me you’re Deep Ying’s brother.”
“You bet you.” Deep Kee’s eyes twinkled merrily. “I hear about you, Mr. Guild. Number-one detective. You catch ‘em my brother. You play trick on ‘em. You bet you.”
Guild nodded and said solemnly: “No play trick on ‘em, no catch ‘em. You bet you.”
The Chinese laughed heartily.
Kearny said: “Sit down and have a drink.”
Deep Kee sat down beaming on Guild, who was lighting a cigarette, while the proprietor brought his bottle from beneath the table.
A woman at the next table, behind Guild, was saying oratorically: “I can always tell when I’m getting swacked because the skin gets tight across my forehead, but it don’t ever do me any good because by that time I’m too swacked to care whether I’m getting swacked or not.”
Elsa Fremont was finishing her song.
Guild asked Deep Kee: “You know Wynant?”
“Please, no.”
“A thin man, tall, used to have whiskers before he cut them off,” Guild went on. “Killed a woman up at Hell Bend.”
The Chinese, smiling, shook his head from side to side.
“Ever been in Hell Bend?”
The smiling Chinese head continued to move from side to side.
Kearny said humorously: “He’s a high-class murderer, Guild. He wouldn’t take a job in the country.”
Deep Kee laughed delightedly.
Elsa Fremont came to the table and sat down. She seemed tired and drank thirstily from her glass.
The Chinese, smiling, bowing, leaving his drink barely tasted, went away. Kearny, looking after him, told Guild: “That’s a good guy to have liking you.”
“Tong gunman?”
“I don’t know. I know him pretty well, but I don’t know that. You know how they are.”
“I don’t know,” Guild said.
A quarrel had started in the other end of the room. Two men were standing cursing each other over a table. Kearny screwed himself around in his chair to stare at them for a moment. Then, grumbling, “Where do these bums think they are?” he got up and went over to them.
Elsa Fremont stared moodily at her glass. Guild watched Kearny go to the table where the two men were cursing, quiet them, and sit down with them.
The woman who had talked about the skin tightening on her forehead was now saying in the same tone: “Character actress – that’s the old stall. She’s just exactly the same kind of character actress I was. She’s doing bits – when she can get them.”
Elsa Fremont, still staring at her glass, whispered: “I’m scared.”
“Of what?” Guild asked as if only moderately interested.
“Of Wynant, of what he might – “ She raised her eyes, dark and harried. “Has he done anything to Charley, Mr. Guild?”
“I don’t know.”
She put a tight fist on the table and cried angrily: “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you find Wynant? Why don’t you find Charley? Haven’t you got any blood, any heart, any guts? Can’t you do anything but sit there like a -“ She broke off with a sob. Anger went out of her face and the fingers that had been clenched opened in appeal. “I – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – But, oh, Mr. Guild, I’m so -“ She put her head down and bit her lower lip.
Guild, impassive, said: “That’s all right.”
A man rose drunkenly from a nearby table and came up behind Elsa’s chair. He put a fat hand on her shoulder and said: “There, there, darling.” He said to Guild: “You cannot annoy this girl in this way. You cannot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a man of your complexion.” He leaned forward sharply, peering into Guild’s face. “By Jesus, I believe you’re a mulatto. I really do.”
Elsa, squirming from under the fat drunken hand, flung a “Let me alone” up at the man. Guild said nothing. The fat man looked uncertainly from one to the other of them until a hardly less drunken man, mumbling unintelligible apologies, came and led him away.
Elsa looked humbly at the dark man. “I’m going to tell Frank I’m going,” she said in a small tired voice. “Will you take me home?”