Shane said: “Wait a minute.”
The youth leaned back, put his hand confidentially on Shane’s shoulder. He said: “Tell him to drive around the block. I got something to tell you.”
The driver looked at Shane, Shane nodded. They swung out from the curb.
The youth said: “I seen Mrs. Rigas about a half a block from the place uptown where Rigas was killed, about ten minutes before we found him.”
Shane didn’t say anything. He rubbed the side of his face with one hand, glanced at his watch, nodded.
“I was coming back from the delicatessen on the corner, where I got a bite to eat. She was going the same way, on the other side of the street. I wasn’t sure it was her at first — I only seen her once when she came in to see Mister Eastman — but there was a car coming down the street and its headlights were pretty bright and I was pretty sure it was her.”
Shane said: “Pretty sure.”
“Aw hell — it was her.” The youth took a soggy cigarette out of his pocket, lighted it.
“Where did she go?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. It was raining so damned hard — and the wind was blowing — when I got to our car, that was parked across the street from the Montecito, she’d disappeared.” The youth shook his head slowly. “I told my partner about it. He said I was probably wrong, because if it was her she would have called up the office and found out how to spot us, because she would be wanting us to go in with her. He went on down to the corner to get something to eat, an’ I sat in the car an’ figured that I probably had been wrong, an’ then in a few minutes I heard the shots an’ the telephone operator come running out.”