Quade bought the paper in the Bronx and read it as Boston tooled the car down to Manhattan. “Methinks Mr. Demetros is going to be rather hard to find from now on,” he said.
“That dumb dick!” snorted Boston. “What’ll we do now? Head back for Westfield?”
“No, drive down to Twelfth Street. Everyone seems to have forgotten Felix Renfrew. He was, after all, Peters’ best friend.”
Renfrew lived on the top floor of a five-story brownstone walk-up. He occupied a dingy room containing a studio couch, a couple of chairs, a rickety table and a gas plate. And a typewriter and stacks of paper.
Renfrew was home, but not overjoyed to see Quade and Boston.
“You knew that Peters was Bill Demetros’s brother?” Quade asked.
Renfrew shook his head. “I met Bill a couple of times through Wes several years ago, but Wes never told me Bill was his brother. Said he was just a friend. I knew Wes was a Greek though, but he was touchy about it and I never asked him his real name. After all, my own isn’t Felix Renfrew.”
“What is it?”
Renfrew reddened. “Obediah Kraushaar, but can you imagine a playwright putting that on a play?”
“Renfrew hadn’t brought you any big contracts.”
“No, but playwriting is a tough racket. I may quit it and go back to Hamburg, Wisconsin. With Wes gone the landlady may chuck me out any day.”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Do you suppose Wes got his money from his brother Bill?”
Renfrew shrugged. “I don’t know, but I imagine so, now that you tell me Bill was his brother. Come to think of it, it was right after Bill went to jail that Peters began getting his money.”
Quade looked thoughtfully at Renfrew for a moment. Then he said, almost casually, “Would it surprise you to know that Wesley Peters got his money from Jessie Lanyard by blackmailing her? Threatening to tell Bill Demetros her whereabouts.”
Renfrew’s mouth fell open and his eyes bulged. If he had known those facts about Wes before, he was a good actor, Quade thought. “Lord!” gasped Renfrew. “I never dreamed that about Wes. But come to think of it, that’s why he was always running out to Westfield. He pretended to me he had some pals out there.”
“And that is why you went out there? To learn who his friends were?”
Renfrew’s mouth clamped tightly shut. And his bulging eyes suddenly narrowed to slits. “What are you trying to do? Spring something on me?”
“I’m trying to get information, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Well, get to hell out of here!” snarled Renfrew. “I’ve said the last word to you. Beat it!”
“Don’t get tough, fella!” cut in Charlie Boston. “I used to eat a couple of poets and playwrights for breakfast every morning.”
Renfrew backed away from Boston. But Quade held out a hand toward his pal. “We’ll let him alone, Charlie, for a while. Let’s go.”
Outside Quade said to Boston. “I got Peters’ address. He used to live near here, on Christopher Street. Let’s take a look at his place.”
They didn’t get into Peters’ apartment, however, for the very good reason that a hard-boiled policeman, who was parked in it, wouldn’t listen to reason or financial coercion. Christopher Buck had sold the New York Police on Bill Demetros.
Quade and Charlie climbed into the flivver, started off. As the traffic light turned red at the corner, a squat, dark-complected man stepped out of a doorway, crossed the sidewalk and stepped on the running-board of the flivver.
“All right, boys,” he said. “Drive around the corner and park the buggy.”
“Ah,” said Quade, “you’re Bill Demetros?”
“Yep. I been following you around since you left Renfrew’s joint. I knew you’d get around there and to my brother’s place sooner or later.”
The lights turned green. Demetros rode around the corner with Quade and Boston. The latter, his nostrils flaring, looked inquiringly at Quade. Quade shook his head.
They climbed out of the car. “You came to town looking for me, didn’t you?” asked Demetros, as they walked together up the street. The gangster kept his right hand in his coat pocket, a fact that Quade had noted from the moment Demetros appeared.
“Yes,” replied Quade. “And I guess we had better luck than the cops.”
Demetros raised his eyebrows. “Luck? All right, in here.” He pointed to a short flight of stairs which led to a saloon just below the level of the sidewalk.
There were two customers and a bartender in the saloon. The three looked at Demetros and his “guests” and went on with their conversation.
Demetros and Boston sat down. The gangster scowled at Quade. “Look, fella,” he said, “none of this business had really concerned you, so why do you have to butt in on it?”
“What about the lad in the Westfield jail who tried to stick a shiv into me?”
“You got out of that, so why don’t you take the hint and stay out of it today? You know, I never liked buttinskys. I know of a few out in the ocean with concrete on their feet.”
Quade grimaced. “As a purely hypothetical question, what’s your own interest in this thing?”
“I just finished a five-year stretch in Atlanta,” Demetros said. “I didn’t like it there and I don’t want to go back. Or worse.”
Quade considered that. It sounded reasonable enough, but still, just how much did Bill Demetros know? Quade cautiously ventured to find out. “You know that Wesley Peters was your brother?”
“Of course,” snapped Demetros. “The louse! How the hell do you suppose I got into this?”
“I see,” said Quade. “Well, I think I’ll be going now.”
Demetros slammed to his feet. “You ain’t going nowhere.”
It was a swell fight while it lasted. Charlie Boston was a howling terror. And Quade was no slouch himself. But the addition of the bartender and the two customers, who turned out to be pals of Bill Demetros, was too much. They and the weapons they brought into the fight, to wit: a couple of blackjacks, a bungstarter and a chair or two.
Regaining consciousness with a splitting headache, Quade groaned and sat up. For a moment he thought he was blinded but then he realized that he was in a dark room. He groped in his pockets and found matches. Striking one, he saw that he was in a dingy room, littered with old furniture, junk and kitchenware. From the rough beams overhead he guessed that it was the basement of the saloon in which they’d met their Waterloo.
Charlie Boston lay supine upon the floor near Quade. He was twitching and mumbling, although still unconscious.
Quade saw a cord dangling from an electric light bulb and pulled on it. To his satisfaction it sprang into light. He rose and stood for a moment, shaking his head to clear away the cobwebs. He ached in almost every muscle of his body. And his blue suit was now ripped in a dozen places.
There was a dirty sink at one side of the room, beside an old coal range. Quade went to it and ran water. He laved his hands and face, then caught a peek of himself in a cracked mirror over the sink. He grimaced when he saw the mouse under his right eye.
Charlie Boston was mumbling louder and Quade sloshed water on Boston’s face. The big fellow shuddered and sat up.
“What the hell!” he gasped as he looked around.
Quade grinned through split lips. “I thought you were a good fighter, Charlie.”
Boston swore. “Fists against fists I’d have licked all four of ’em by myself. But those blackjacks and that chair the bartender conked me with!”
“Pipe down,” Quade warned.
The thugs had neglected to search them, probably figuring on doing that later. Quade still had his wrist-watch. It showed one fifteen. “We’ve been out over an hour,” he said.