I got the number of Raines’ real estate office from the telephone book and took a cab and went down and looked it over. I didn’t go in. Then I told the driver to take me to the Selwyn Apartments on Beverly Boulevard. That was the place the telephone book had listed as Raines’ residence.
It took a half-hour of jabbering about spark plugs with the Bohunk in the Selwyn garage to find out that Mister Raines had gone out about ten o’clock with another gentleman, and what Mister Raines looked like and what kind of a car he drove. The gentleman who had been with him was tailor maybe he was short. Or maybe it had been a lady. The Bohunk wasn’t sure.
I jockeyed the cab around to a good spot in the cross street and went into the drug-store on the opposite corner and drank Coca-Colas. Along about the fifth Coca-Cola the car I was looking for pulled up in front of the Selwyn. A medium-sized middle-aged man who I figured to be the brother got out of the driver’s seat and went into the apartment house. The other man in the car moved over into the driver’s seat and started west on Beverly. By that time I was back in the cab and after him.
Of course I couldn’t he sure it was Raines. It looked like a little man. I had to take that chance.
We followed the car out Beverly to Western, up Western. I wondered what had become of the blue Chrysler. Then we drew up close behind Raines’ car at an intersection and I nearly fell out the window. The man in the car ahead turned around and looked back; we looked smack at one another for five seconds.
I’d seen him before! I’d seen him the night before in Miss Mackay’s room at the Pine Hotel in Caliente! He’d been one of the raft of people who’d busted in with the Sheriff and stood around ah-ing and oh-ing. The man had guts. He’d come in while Healey and the girl were still warm to see what a neat job he’d done.
The traffic bell rang and I knew he’d recognized me, too. He went across that intersection like a bat out of hell, up Western to Fountain.
He lost us on Fountain. I talked to my driver like a father. I got down on my knees and begged him to keep that car in sight. I called him all the Portuguese pet-names I could think of and made up a few new ones, but Raines ran away from us on Fountain.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the Hollywood Branch of the Automobile Club and had a friend of mine look up the license number of the car. Of course it was the brother’s car, in the brother’s name. That didn’t get me anywhere. I was pretty sure Raines wouldn’t go back to his brother’s place now that he knew I’d spotted him; and it was a cinch he wouldn’t use that car very long.
He didn’t know what I wanted. He might figure me for a dick and scram out of L A — out of the country. I sat in my room at the hotel and thought soft thoughts about what a chump I’d been not to go to him directly when he’d stopped with his brother in front of the Selwyn, and the speed of taxi-cabs as compared to automobiles — things like that. It looked like the Healey case was all washed up as far as I was concerned.