Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

The time elapsed since Al Gage’s first call and his second was no more than twenty minutes. This time the Zenith operative said: “I’m at the Carleton Arms Hotel. Tommy came straight here, looked over the lobby like he was expecting somebody but didn’t get his expectations and went into the dining room and ordered. He’ll be set here till he wraps around a steak. Step over.”

“Five minutes,” Slabbe said.

“How will I know you?” Gage asked.

“I look like a mucker,” Slabbe said. “Wearing gray tropical worsteds, green sports shirt and white Panama hat.”

He finished his beer with a gulp that wouldn’t have dropped the Pacific ocean more than an inch, tossed a handful of chiclets into his mouth and used ten minutes to walk over to the Carleton Arms Hotel. Barney McPhail, the head houseman, spotted him coming into the luxurious lobby and looked less happy. “Now what?” he said.

Slabbe murmured: “The guy must be good if you didn’t spot him.”

“Who?” McPhail sighed.

“A Zenith op,” Slabbe explained. “He’s waiting for me here somewheres.”

McPhail bristled and scanned the lobby. “Don’t tell me I can’t spot a dick.”

Slabbe felt a touch on his arm, turned and saw an inconspicuous man at his elbow. “Gage?” he said, and when the man nodded briefly, Slabbe said to McPhail: “That’s right, Barney, you can’t spot a dick. Let us be, now, and you won’t have any headaches.”

He followed Gage to adjoining chairs which commanded a view of the dining room entrance. Gage passed over his wallet. Slabbe looked at a card in a celluloid protector that informed whoever it concerned that Albert Gage was an operative of the Zenith Detective Agency. The description on the back of the card fit the man in the chair: five feet eight, one hundred sixty-five pounds, brown hair, green eyes, pale complexion, no distinguishing blemishes, age 44. It did not mention the fatigue that deepened the crow’s feet around Al Gage’s eyes and the tired lines beside his mouth.

“Boy, am I pooped,” Gage groaned. “In case I fall asleep while I’m talking, Tommy Rex is a husky good-looking blond guy about six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds. Blue eyes, small tight mouth, small ears close to his head, wearing a tan gabardine sport jacket and brown slacks and brown and white shoes. He’s still in the mess hall. He isn’t walking so chipper. He just got out of a Philly hospital this A.M.”

“That where you picked him up?” Slabbe asked.

“Uh-huh.” Gage closed his eyes wearily for a few seconds, rubbing his forehead, then smacking ft with the heel of his hand to zip up the circulation.

“Keep your eyes closed if it’ll rest ’em a little,” Slabbe said sympathetically.

“Thanks. I was doing some stuff upstate the last couple days and nights and just got back to Philly this morning and heard Tommy was being discharged from the hospital, and got right on him. He and Happy Lado and Silk Flaim knocked off a jewelry store last month in Philly and picked up eighty thousand in unset stones. You know that. What you maybe don’t know is that since Pola Velie, Tommy’s lady friend, dropped out of sight along with Happy and Silk, she was in on it. How we figure it is that she was outside of the jewelry store and they passed her the stuff on the way out. She’d be supposed to meet them later for the split.”

“So close to Philly as here?” Slabbe objected. “It’s only an hour on the train.”

“Well, they might’ve changed plans some on account of Tommy going to the hospital for a month,” Gage explained. “See, he cracked up in the getaway car. That was how we got onto him in the first place. The job went smooth: Tommy and his buddies slugged the clerks in the jewelry store from behind just when they were ready to close the vault for the day. No pedestrians outside the store noticed nothing fishy, and nobody could identify nobody. Tommy and his pals would have been away clean except they cracked up. We knew right away when they cracked up in the neighborhood five minutes after the heist that it was them that done it, but Happy and Silk got clear anyhow. Tommy was pinned behind the wheel but he didn’t have no evidence on him, not even a rod, and even the car wasn’t stolen but borrowed from a guy dumb enough, or maybe smart enough, to lend his car to a guy like Tommy.”

Slabbe nodded. “So Tommy went to the hospital and you waited for him to get out and tailed him.”

“Right.”

“And the change in their plans might be that since it’s a month old and Tommy might be weak and not in shape to travel a long ways, they’d come back this way and meet him here?”

Gage shrugged tiredly. “It depends on how good of guessers we are on Wednesdays. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Tommy’s here for another reason and the others are out in Frisco. Did you check any place to see if Happy or Silk or the babe showed up here?”

“The cops say no,” Slabe said. “I’m contacting another guy who might know.”

“Stoolie?”

Slabbe nodded. “He’ll be sliding into my office any time, now. Would Tommy meet Happy and Silk right out in the open, like here?”