“So between eight and eight-thirty last night you must have been pretty empty.”
“We wasn’t turning them away in droves,” the counterman said.
“Then you ought to remember this guy Crocker. He claims to have been here last night at that time. Says he had a sandwich and a cup of coffee and left at eight-thirty.”
“Oh him? Yeah. There was a guy here about that time. Had him a hamburger with nothing on. And coffee. But I don’t know his name.”
Reardon’s previous elation disappeared. He took a deep breath. “What did he look like?”
“What do you want him for?”
“What difference does it make?”
The counterman considered the question judiciously and came to the conclusion the red-headed cop lieutenant was right. It wasn’t any skin off his butt and it would be stupid to make it any skin off his butt.
“Don’t make no difference,” he said. “I was just curious.”
“Well, he was in an accident,” Reardon said evenly. Dondero sat listening, stirring his untouched coffee idly, watching the oily surface break up in little swirls.
“Get hurt bad?” The counterman sounded more polite than interested.
“No.”
“Well, if it was the same guy, he’s been in a couple of times before. Tall, skinny guy your age maybe. Maybe a couple years older. I don’t remember what he had on in the way of clothes.”
“Did you see his car?”
“Yeah. It was parked outside, right in front. Big, black job, hundred years old.” The counterman finished his coffee, studied his toothpick critically and decided he had earned a new one. He picked one from the holder on the counter and put it in place.
Reardon sighed, drumming his fingers on the formica counter-top, trying to think of some useful questions to ask, but none seemed to come. At last he looked up, filling in more than anything else, waiting for a better idea to come.
“It’s odd you didn’t know his name. He claims you were friends.”
“Friends?” The counterman shook his head slowly in negation. “He was just a guy comes in for a sandwich and a coffee.”
“He says he liked to talk to you.”
“I can’t say.”
Reardon frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, I can’t say. He always did the talking. Sometimes I listened, sometimes I didn’t.” The tiny flash of humor returned momentarily. “When I didn’t I don’t think I missed much.”
“Why? What did he talk about?”
“That what I’m saying. He didn’t talk about anything.”
Something had been bothering Dondero and he finally recognized what it was. He couldn’t see what it advanced the lieutenant’s case any — he couldn’t see where anything could or would — but it bothered him and he wanted to get it off his chest. He cleared his throat introductorily and cut into the conversation.
“You say he always parked that big car of his outside. Well, he only had it for a week.”
The counterman shrugged. “So he never come in before a week ago.”
Reardon looked up, alert. “You mean, the couple of times before he was here were all in the last week?”
“That’s what I mean.”
The feeling of elation, of discovery, was beginning to return; cautious and wary now, but none the less on the move. Reardon kept his voice the same. “What else can you tell us about the man?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything at all.”
The counterman considered a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “the first time he comes in, I remember he says, “Where’s the clock?’”
“Where’s the clock?” Reardon looked around the bare walls. “Where is the clock?”
“There ain’t. Oh, we had one but it got busted,” the counterman explained, “and the boss sent it out to be fixed. Or anyway, he says he sent it out to be fixed. I’m betting dough he’s a goddamn liar; he’s too cheap to pay for fixing it. But I couldn’t care less; who needs it? Once the second-shift lunch break at the factories ends, I shut the joint down. I even leave the dirty dishes. Guy on days does them before he opens up.”
Reardon was feeling that old, familiar feeling of being onto something.
“Go ahead about the clock.”
“That’s all there is. He says, ‘Where’s the clock?’ and I says, ‘We ain’t got one,’ and he says, ‘Oh,’ and that’s it.” He shrugged. “Don’t know what he was griping about; he had a wristwatch.”
Reardon felt a strong hunch. “Let me ask you something else. Did he ever ask about a television?”
Dondero frowned at him as if he were crazy, but the counterman grinned.
“Cops must be getting smarter than in my day. How you knew I don’t know, but he sure did. Second time he was in here — last Friday, I think. Yeah, it couldn’t have been Saturday because they got different hours, Saturday, at the plants.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, he asks do we have a TV and I says to him, I says, ‘Look around, does it look like we got a TV? We don’t keep it in the safe, you know, because we also ain’t got a safe.’” His tiny eyes twinkled with the memory. “Then he asks if we got a radio, and I told him the tight bastard owns the joint figures a radio takes a guy’s mind off his work. What the boss means is radios cost dough, and damned if I’ll bring in my own. So I says to this guy, I says, ‘No, we ain’t got a radio. Entertainment, you go over on Broadway. Here, we just feed people.’”
Reardon smiled in response to the thin man’s grin. “And what time did he leave last night?”
The grin disappeared, replaced with a look of disgust.
“Well,” the counterman said, and expertly shifted the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, “he says to me, I got to run, it’s getting late, eight-thirty on the button.’ And he pays his tab and hits the road. Well, eight-thirty I got to start putting up fresh coffee for that gang due in in a couple minutes; I’m late even. Which is mighty unusual, because I always get a feeling when it’s time to put the coffee up, if you know what I mean—” He looked at Reardon expectantly.
“I know what you mean,” Reardon said softly.
“Yeah. Christ, I ought to be able to tell, I been doing it long enough. Anyways, so I rush around like a goddamn maniac boiling the water, making up the pot, seeing to it there’s fresh milk in the pitchers—” Dondero made a slight sound but the counterman disregarded it. “—and then, goddamn it, I sit on my butt for half hour before the first guy from the factory shows. So I says to him — his name’s Ken something — I says, ‘What’s with the shifts tonight you’re late, Ken?’ And Ken says to me, he says, ‘No, they’re on time, you got to be early,’ and he laughs.” The counterman sniffed in disgust. “That character should talk about how we ain’t got a clock! He ought to get his own watch fixed.”
Reardon kept his voice conversational. He was moving his empty cup in aimless circles around the stained formica top, his eyes following his hands, watching the damp trails, not watching the counterman at all.
“So you figure he actually left here about eight-fifteen?”
“If then,” the counterman said and looked at Dondero. “Ain’t you going to drink your coffee?” The look on Dondero’s face gave him his answer. “It’s from the guy on days,” he said defensively and took the three mugs, shoving them under the counter.
Reardon came to his feet, pulling out his wallet.
“That’s twenty cents,” the counterman said. “You don’t have to pay for me. Come the day I pay for coffee in this joint!”
Reardon extracted a ten-dollar bill and handed it over.
“Keep the change. And thanks for the information.” He smiled. “Take the dough and go someplace and buy yourself a good meal.”
The counterman took the bill, looked at it a moment, and then folded it and tucked it neatly into his watch pocket. He smiled back, faintly as if the muscles in his face were unaccustomed to form themselves into smiles for cops.