“One other thing, did you give him cash or a check? If it was a check we’ll know something when we find out where it clears from. He couldn’t have cashed a check that size late Saturday night or on a Sunday.”
“It was cash. I’d closed out my bank account, had quite a bit of cash, cashier’s check for the rest. Still got enough I won’t have to use that cashier’s check till I’m ready to buy another truck farm.”
He stood up to go and we both walked to the door with him. Uncle Am asked something I should have thought of. “Mr. Nielson, if he still is in Chicago and we find him, what do we tell him? Just to get in touch with you at the Ideal Hotel?”
“You can make it stronger’n that. Tell him to get in touch with me or else. I never made a will, see, so being my only living blood relative, he’s still my heir. But it don’t have to stay that way. I can make a will in California and cut him off. Cost him a lot more than eight hundred dollars, someday.”
He reached for the doorknob but Uncle Am’s question and its answer had made me think of something. I said, “Just a minute, Mr. Nielson. Has this possibility occurred to you? That he did blow town while he had that eight hundred as a stake, rather than pay it to a bookie just to stay here, but that he intends to write to you as soon as he’s got another job somewhere and can start paying off what he owes you?”
“Yep, that’s possible. Sure I thought of it.”
“This is not my business, Mr. Nielson, but if that does happen, would you still make a will to disinherit him?”
“Make up my mind if and when it happens. Maybe according to what he says when he writes, and if he really does start paying back. Right now I’m mad at him if that’s what happened—if he did that without letting me know so I wouldn’t waste time and money trying to find him here. But I could get over my mad, I guess.”
“If you don’t know just where you’re going in California, how are you having your mail forwarded?”
“Fellow bought from me’s going to hold it for me till I write him. But no letter’s come yet could be from Albee. I phoned last night to make sure. Just a couple bills and circulars. No personal letters like could be from Albee even if he changed his name. I thought of that, son. May be a farmer, but I ain’t dumb.”
“That I see,” I said. “And you’ll probably phone Kenosha once more the last thing before you start driving west?”
“Right, except for the driving. Sold my pickup truck with the farm. Buy another in California. Be a hell of a long drive, rather go by train.”
“Do you want written reports?” I asked him.
“Don’t see what good they’d do. Just phone me at the hotel what you find out. If I see any more movies before I go, I’ll do it by day, stay there evenings so you can call me. Or Albee can, if you find him.”
That seemed to cover everything anybody could think of so we let him leave. Uncle Am strolled into his inner office and I strolled after him.
“What do you think, Uncle Am?” I asked.
He shrugged. “That Albee took a powder. I think his papa thinks so too, but if he wants to let us spend a couple of days making a final try, more power to him. He’s a stubborn old coot.”
“Uh-huh” I said. “Well, I guess it’s my turn to work on it. You put in four days’ work last week and I got in only two. This’ll even it up.”
“Okay, kid. Going to take the car?”
I shook my head. “Most of the places are pretty near here. I’ll do it faster on foot or an occasional taxi hop than having to find places to park.”
He yawned and took a deck of cards out of his desk to play some solitaire. “Okay. I’ll be here till five. Think you’ll work this evening, or call it half a day today?”
“I might as well work through,” I said. “So don’t figure on dinner with me and look for me when you see me.”
I went back to my desk and took the paper I’d taken the notes on during my conversation with Chudakoff. And said so long to Uncle Am and left.
I decided to go to the bookstore first. It might close at five, and the other addresses I had were personal ones and I’d probably stand a better chance of finding the people I wanted to talk to by evening than by day.
It was the Prentice Bookstore on Michigan Avenue. I’d never been inside it, but I knew where it was. It took me about twenty minutes to walk there.
There weren’t any customers at the moment. A clerk up front, a girl, told me Mr. Heiden, the proprietor, was in his office at the back. I went back, found him studying some publishers’ catalogs, introduced myself and showed him identification.
“You let Albee Nielson go on Friday, the fifth?”
“Yes. And haven’t seen him. I told everything I knew to the detective—the city detective—that came here last week. Who you working for? The man he owed money to?”
“For Albee’s father,” I said. “He’s worried about his son’s disappearance. For his sake, do you mind answering a few more questions?”
He gave me a grudging “What are they?” and put down the catalog he’d been looking at.
“Why did you fire Albee?”
“I’m afraid that that’s one I won’t answer.”
“Had you given him notice?”
“No.”
“Then doesn’t that pretty well answer the other question? You must have found that he was dipping in the till, or knocking down some way or other. But decided not to prosecute, and now it’d be too late, and it’d be slander if you said that about him.”
He give me a smile, but a pretty thin one. “That wasn’t a question, Mr. Hunter. I can’t control what conclusions you may choose to draw.”
“Would you give him a recommendation for another job?”
“No, I wouldn’t. But I would refuse to give my reasons for not giving one.”
“That would be your privilege,” I admitted. And since I wasn’t getting anywhere on that tract, I tried another. “Do you know anything about Albee’s life outside the job? Names of any of his friends, anything at all about him personally?”
“Not a thing, I’m afraid. Except his home address and telephone number, and of course you already have those. Before he started here I checked a couple of references he gave me, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten now what they were except that they checked out all right. That was almost five years ago.”
“Do you remember what kind of jobs they were?”
“One was taking want-ads for a newspaper, but I forget which newspaper. The other was clerking in a hardware store—but I don’t remember now even in what part of town it was. And as for friends of his, no. He must have, or have had, some, but none of them ever came here to see him. Almost as though he told them not to, as though he deliberately wanted to keep his business life and his social life completely separated. I’ve never known even what kind of friends he had. And he never talked about himself.”
He was being friendly now and cooperating, once we’d skirted the subject of why he’d fired Albee. But his very refusal to answer that question, I thought, pretty well did answer it.
So I did the only thing I could do, gave him a business card and asked him to call us if he did happen to think of anything at all that might be the slightest help in our finding Albee for his father. He promised to do that, and maybe he even meant it.
On my way out, I saw the girl clerk was still or again free and asked her if she’d known Albee Nielson. The name registered, but only from seeing it on sales slips and employment records. She’d worked there only a week and had been taken on because Nielson, as she thought, had quit the job.