Kells sat down and took his clothes from Borg, one piece at a time, put them on. The phone rang.
Kells picked it up, said: “Hello... Shep — we’re shoving off. Woodward’s just been shot — through the window, from the roof of the place next door... Uh hum. Maybe some of Crotti’s boys tailed Fenner — your guess is as good as mine... Call me in a half-hour at the Ambassador. If I’m not there I’ll be in jail — or on a slab... Hell! No. Let ’em find him... ’Bye.”
He hung up, finished dressing rapidly, got up and limped to one side of the big window and pulled the cord that closed the drapes. Woodward’s hand was clenched on the bottom of one of the drapes and it moved a little as the drape closed. The paper had fallen, lay a little way from his other hand.
Kells stood looking down at Woodward a minute, then went to the table and picked up the two thin stacks of money, put them in his pocket.
Borg had gone back into the bedroom. He came into the doorway and he had put on his shirt and coat, he went to a mirror near the outer door and carefully put on his hat. Granquist picked up the crutches. Kells shook his head, said: “My leg feels swell.” They went out into the corridor.
There was a man standing near the elevators but he paid no attention to them, entered one of the elevators while they were still halfway down the hall.
They waited a minute or so, got into the same elevator when it came back up. It was automatic — Kells pushed the sub-basement button. He said: “Maybe...?”
Borg watched the sixth floor go by through the little wire-glass window. “The basement is as good a hunch as any,” he said. “There’s a garage with a driveway out onto Cherokee. Maybe we can promote a car — or if we can get down to Highland, to the cab stand...”
“Why didn’t you call a cab?” Granquist was leaning back in a corner of the elevator.
Kells looked at her vacantly, as if he had not heard. “Maybe this is a lot of hooey,” he said — “maybe we’re a cinch. But if that was Crotti” — he gestured with his head up toward the apartment — “he’ll have a dozen beads on the place.” The elevator stopped and they went into a dark corridor, down to a door to the garage. There was a tall man with a very small mustache asleep in a big car near the archway that led out into Cherokee. He woke up when Borg stepped on the running board.