“O.K., we’ll take you to it. You want a barber?”
All I had in my pocket, after giving her the money was silver, but I counted it. There were a couple of dollars of it. “Yeah, send him in.”
He went out, and the cop that was guarding took me down to the washroom. There was a shower there, so I stripped, had a bath, and put on the other clothes. The barber came in and shaved me. I put the evening clothes in the traveling case. They had brought me a hat, and I put that on. Then we went back to the room we had left.
A little after nine I was still pounding on it in my mind, what I could do, and it came to me that one thing I could do was get a lawyer. I remembered Sholto. “I’d like to make a phone call. How about that?”
“You’re allowed one call.”
We went out in the hall, where there was a row of phones against the wall. I looked up Sholto’s number, rang it, and got him on the line. “Oh hello, I was wondering if you’d call. I see you’re in a little trouble.”
“Yeah, and I want you.”
“I’ll be right down.”
In about a half hour he showed up. He listened to me. About all I could tell him, with the cop sitting there, was that I wanted to get out, but that seemed to be all he wanted to know. “It’s probably just a matter of bond.”
“What am I held for? Do you know that?”
“Material witness.”
“Oh, I see.”
“As soon as I can see a bondsman — that is, unless you want to put up cash bond yourself.”
“How much is it?”
“I don’t know. At a guess, I’d say five thousand.”
“Which way is quickest?”
“Oh, money talks.”
He had a blank check, and I wrote out a check for ten thousand. “All right, that ought to cover it. I think we can get action in about an hour.”
Around ten o’clock he was back, and he, and the cop, and I went over to court. It took about five minutes. An assistant district attorney was there, they set bail at twenty-five hundred, and after Sholto put it up, we went out and got in a cab. He passed over the rest of the cash, in hundred-dollar bills. I handed back ten of them. “Retainer.”
“Very well, thanks.”
The first thing I wanted to know was whether they had got her yet. When he said they hadn’t, I grabbed an early afternoon paper a boy shoved in the window, and read it. It was smeared all over the front page, with my picture, and Winston’s picture, but no picture of her. That was one break. As well as I could remember, she hadn’t had any picture taken since she had been in the country. It was something we hadn’t got around to. There was one story giving Winston’s career, another telling about me, and a main story that told what had happened. Everything I had said to the detective was in there, and the big eight-column streamer called her the “Sword-Killer,” and said she was “Sought.” I was still reading when we pulled up at Radio City.
When we got up to his office I began going over what I had told the detective, the illegal entry stuff and all, and why I had said what I had, but pretty soon he stopped me. “Listen, get this straight. Your counsel is not your co-conspirator in deceiving the police. He’s your representative at the bar, to see that you get every right that the law entitles you to, and that your case, or her case, or whatever case he takes, is presented as well as it can be. What you told the detective is none of my affair, and it’s much better, at this time, that I know nothing of it. When the time comes, I’ll ask for information, and you had better tell me the truth. But at the moment, I prefer not to know of any misrepresentation you’ve made. From now on, by the way, an excellent plan, in dealing with the police, would be to say nothing.”
“I get it.”
He kept walking around his office, then he picked up the paper and studied that a while, then walked around some more. “There’s something I want to warn you about.”
“Yeah. What?”
“It seemed to me I got you out very easily.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“If they had wanted to hold you, there were two or three charges, apparently, they could have brought against you. All bailable offenses, but they could have kept you there quite a while. They could have made trouble. Also, the bond was absurdly low.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“They haven’t got her. They may have her, tucked away in some station-house in the Bronx, they may be holding her there and saying nothing for fear of habeas corpus proceedings, but I don’t think so. They haven’t got her, and it’s quite possible they’ve let you out so they can locate her through you.”
“Oh, now I see what you mean.”
“You going back to your apartment?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“... You’ll be watched. There’ll probably be a tail on you day and night. Your phone may be tapped.”
“Can they do that?”
“They can, and they do. There may be a dictaphone in there by now, and they’re pretty good at thinking of places to put it without your finding it, or suspecting it. It’s a big apartment house, and that makes it all the easier for them. I don’t know what her plans are, and apparently you don’t. But it’s a bad case. If they catch her, I’ll do everything I can for her, but I warn you it’s a bad case. It’s much better than she not be located... Be careful.”
“I will.”
“The big danger is that she phone you. Whatever you do, the second she rings up, warn her that she’s being overheard.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“You’re being used as a decoy.”
“I’ll watch my step.”
When I got up to Twenty-second Street a flock of reporters were there, and I stuck with them for about ten minutes. I thought it was better to answer their questions some kind of way, and get rid of them, than have them trying to get to me all day. When I got up to the apartment the phone was ringing, and a newspaper was on the line, offering me five thousand dollars for a signed story of what I knew about it, and about her, and I said no, and hung up. It started to ring again, and I flashed the board and told them not to put through any more incoming calls, or let anybody up. The door buzzer sounded. I answered, and it was Harry and Tony, on hand to tell me what they knew. I peeled off a hundred-dollar bill as they started to talk, handed it over, and then remembered about the dictaphone. We went out in the hall, and they whispered it. She didn’t leave right after it happened. She went to the apartment, packed, and changed her dress, and about five or ten minutes later buzzed twice, like I had told her to. Tony had the car up there all that time, waiting for her, and he opened, pulled her in, and dropped her down to the basement. They went out by the alley, and when they came out on Twenty-third Street he got her a cab, and she left. That was the last he saw of her, and he didn’t tell it to the police. While he was doing that, Harry was on the board in the lobby, and didn’t pay much attention when he saw the fags going out, and neither did the guy from the Immigration Service. How the cops found it out they didn’t know, but they thought the fags must have bumped into one outside, or got scared and thought they better tell it anyway, or something. Tony said the cops were already in Winston’s apartment before she left.
They went down and I went in the apartment again. With the phone cut off it was quiet enough now, but I began looking for the dictaphone. I couldn’t find anything. I looked out the window to see if anybody was watching the building. There wasn’t anybody out there. I began to think Sholto was imagining things.
Around two o’clock I got hungry and went out. The reporters were still down there, and almost mobbed me, but I jumped in a cab and told him to drive to Radio City. As soon as he got to Fourth Avenue I had him cut over to Second again, and come down, and got out at a restaurant around Twenty-third Street. I had something to eat and took down the number of the pay phone. When I got back to the apartment house, I whispered to the boy on the board if a Mr. Kugler called, to put him through. I went upstairs and called the restaurant phone. “Is Mr. Kugler there?”