I said, “You think Sandy got herself off to the airport?”
He shook his head. “No, she’s headed to St. Joe.”
“What?”
Flipping a palm, he said, “She told me she got a real good look at that money in Steve’s, or Carl’s, luggage. She said he’s from St. Joe.”
“Keep thinking of him as Steve for now,” I advised. “How did Sandy figure that?”
“Saw it in his hatband.”
So much for me being a great detective.
“I put her with another cabbie I know,” Hagan said, after a gulp of beer, “who said he was willing to make a meter-off trip out of town, if the two of ’em could come to terms. She has that grand from Steve, y’know. I wonder what terms Sandy and him will come to.”
“I don’t.”
Finally Steve/Carl rolled in, a cigarette drooping from his cupid’s bow mouth. He looked sloppy, the houndstooth jacket rumpled. His baggy brown slacks bore dirt stains. What had he been up to?
But his manner was upbeat and his eyes had more life than I’d seen before. He came over, grinning, and gestured with open arms like a ringmaster. “Gents, you are looking at an idiot!”
Tell me something I don’t know, I thought.
“I was sitting at the bar across the street,” Steve said, still grinning, jerking a thumb in that direction, “at Angelo’s. Waiting for you fellas! Thought that was the Pink House! They both got a red roof, y’know? Anyway, I was grousing to the bartender, a gal, about people who can’t keep their appointments on time, and then I went outa there to go back to the motel and, bingo, I see this place across the street! What a dummy!”
His words were flying.
“Johnny boy!” he said. “Man, you really look sharp. That a Hickey-Freeman suit?”
“Yup.”
Steve laughed twice. “We’re gonna both of us buy a whole closet of new clothes. Two closets, each! Nate here already knows how to dress, but you and me, Johnny Boy, we gotta spruce up our style!”
Bennies.
“You guys want sandwiches? I could eat. I’ll get us sandwiches. Burgers okay? Cheeseburgers with everything, onions too? French fries?”
“Sure,” I said, and Hagan nodded.
Steve got up and went to the bar, fast.
“He’s sure in a good mood,” Hagan observed.
“He’s high as a fucking kite. You see his pupils? They look like black polka dots.”
Steve came back, informed us we’d be having chips not fries because “this fine establishment doesn’t seem to have a frier,” and leaned in, settling a hand on Hagan’s shoulder. I was starting to suspect this guy’s gate swung both ways. He was an ex-con, after all, and being inside could expand a man’s horizons.
“You got that I.D. for me?” Steve asked the cabbie, thinking he was whispering but wasn’t. Booze and bennies are a tricky combo.
Hagan said he did and got from his suitcoat pocket an Army discharge photostat, a Social Security card and a medical record, all in the name John Byrne of Kirkwood, Missouri.
“Man, you did fine!” Steve said, looking the things over, then slapping Hagan on the back and sitting back down. “You find me new digs?”
“Yeah. Two-room suite at the Town House in the Central West End. Apartment annex of the Congress Hotel.”
“Nice?”
“Oh, yeah. Living room with a couple of couches, bath, kitchen, bedroom, whatchamacallit French doors out to a balcony. Class all the way.”
“Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Who needs more beer? I need more beer.”
He got us more beer.
“You know who I miss?” Steve was drinking Schlitz. All three of us were. It made Milwaukee famous, after all. Of course we were in St. Louis.
“You know who I miss?” Steve repeated. “Sandy. What a great gal.”
Yeah, they’d really hit it off.
The cheeseburgers arrived with a basket of greasy potato chips, delivered by the bartender, who looked irritated about it. The burger was almost as thin as the slice of cheap cheese on it, but I started eating the thing anyway — my stomach had been empty since I puked earlier.
Steve took a bite of the burger, chewed, swallowed, then said, “So did she get away all right? To the airport? Sandy?”
“She got in a cab with a guy I know,” Hagan said. “Another Ace driver. Dependable. She’ll be fine.”
That was a fairly skillful lie — Sandy had gotten in a cab with another cabbie, all right; but wasn’t going to the airport unless it was the one in St. Joseph, Missouri.
“I miss her,” Steve said again. “I was too tired last night to do right by her, but I could use some, you know, companionship of the female variety. You think you could fix me up with another girl tonight, Johnny? I don’t wanna spend the night by myself. I get lonesome. Or is the Town House too high class for that?”
“I can find somebody,” Hagan said. “I know some girls who work the big hotels. Wised-up broads who know their way around.”
“Good. I like nice girls, remember.”
I knew all about that. I’d met Bonnie.
I ate about half of my burger, and Hagan wolfed his down, although Steve took only that one bite. He finished the second beer before saying, “If I’m gonna have myself a big date tonight, I can’t be looking like a bum when a guy like you all spiffed up is making the introductions. You know anyplace around here I can get some decent things myself?”
The cabbie shrugged. “There’s a Famous-Barr department store in Clayton.”
“Where’s Clayton?”
“Just another suburb, not far.”
In the small parking lot, dusk now, the green two-tone Plymouth waited; mud was on its tires and fender.
Where had Carl/Steve been this afternoon?
He told Hagan to drive — “I don’t have a license, why take chances?” — and I got in the back. Propped against the seat next to me was a shovel. The hair on the back of my neck prickled again.
Steve got in front and Hagan started up the car.
I said, “What’s the shovel for, Steve?”
“Oh, sorry. I was gonna bury something and changed my mind. No room in the trunk. My metal suitcases are still in there. Hey! Get a load of that.”
He had spotted my loaner Caddy in the lot nearby. He’d not seen me driving it — did he recognize it from the ransom drop two nights ago?
If he did, he made no mention of it. Instead he said, “Johnny boy, we’ll all be swimmin’ in Cadillacs before long. Drivin’ ’em right down the middle of Easy Street.”
I said, “That’s my ride.”
He turned and looked at me in the back sitting next to the shovel. “You Outfit guys travel right.”
“Well, we don’t go Second Class.”
The Famous-Barr was closed, but a pedestrian directed us to a Boyd’s branch close by. Hagan parked out front and Steve led the way, playing the big shot, striding into the men’s department and telling the first salesman he came to, “I need a new suit.”
The slender, pomaded salesman, with a superior attitude from home and expensive suit provided at work, said, “I’m afraid we have a considerable backlog of alterations. It will be several days, I’m afraid, before anything can be ready for you.”
Steve was already thumbing through hanging Hickey-Freeman suits like they were wallpaper samples. “Are you a gambler?”
“Sir?”
“I will bet you ten dollars you can have a suit ready for me by tomorrow.”
And Steve yanked a wad of cash from his dirt-smudged pants and fanned out twenty-dollar bills like he was dealing cards. “Price tag says one-hundred and-twenty-two dollars,” he said. “That’s one-hundred-and-thirty right there. Put the rest against any alteration charge. That assumes, of course...”