Fenner said: “Fine. How much does she want?”
Kells hesitated a bare moment. “Fifteen grand.”
Fenner whistled. “It must be good,” he said. “Send her out to my hotel. Send her out tonight — I’ll throw a party for her.”
“She’ll go for that. A lush.” Kells smiled and went out the door and closed it behind him.
He went into the Police Station, into the Reporters’ Room to the right of the entrance. Shep Beery looked up over his paper and said: “My God! What happened to your face?”
They were alone in the room. Kells looked with interest at the smudged pencil drawings on the walls, sat down. “I got it caught in a revolving door,” he said. “Does anyone around here want to talk to me?”
“I do, for one.” Beery put the paper down and leaned across the desk. He was a stoop-shouldered gangling man with a sharp sad face, a shock of colorless hair. “What’s the inside on all this, Gerry?”
“All what?”
Beery spread the paper, pointed to headlines: PERRY INDICTED FOR HAARDT MURDER; WIFE CONFESSES. Beery’s finger moved across the page: GAMBLING BARGE BURNS; 200 NARROWLY ESCAPE DEATH WHEN JOANNA D SINKS.
Kells laughed. “Probably just newspaper stories.”