The driver shook his head. “I don’t know. It was there a minute ago an’ then I looked up an’ it was gone.”
Kells got into the cab, stared through the open door at Beery. His face was hard and white. “We were going to an auto-rental joint over on Los Angeles Street and hire a car and driver to take us down to San Bernardino. But she didn’t know the address — they couldn’t have gone over there.”
Beery said: “Maybe they were in a ‘no parking’ zone and had to go around the block.”
A short gray-haired man came out on the steps of the Police Station and called across to Beery: “Telephone, Shep — says it’s important.”
Beery ran across the street and Kells got out of the cab and followed as fast as he could. That wasn’t very fast; his leg was hurting pretty badly. When he went into the Reporters’ Room, Beery was standing at a telephone, jiggling the hook up and down savagely, yelling at the operator to trace the call. Then he said: “All right — hurry it — this is the Police Station,” hung up and looked at Kells.
The man who had called Beery to the phone glanced at them and then got up and went out into the hall.
They looked at one another silently for a moment and Beery sat down on one of the little desks. He said: “They’ve got her.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know — Crotti and MacAlmon I guess. You’re supposed to do business with MacAlmon...”
“What do you mean, business?” Kells was standing by one of the windows, his mouth curved in a hard and mirthless grin.