He dragged a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it clumsily. Simon took it and looked it over.
It was a piece of plain paper on which a cutting had been pasted. The cutting was from Life, and from the heading it appeared to have formed part of a layout reviewing the curtain calls in the careers of certain famous public enemies. This particular picture showed a crumpled figure stretched out on a sidewalk with two policemen standing over it in attitudes faintly reminiscent of big-game hunters posing with their kill, surrounded by the usual crowd of gaping blank-faced spectators. The caption said:
A village policemans gun wrote finis to the career of “Smoke Johnny” Implicato, three times kidnaper and killer, after Freddie Pellman, millionaire playboy, recognised him in a Palm Springs restaurant last Christmas Day and held him in conversation until police arrived.
Underneath it was pencilled in crude capitals:
DID YOU EVER WONDER HOW JOHNNY FELT? WELL YOU'LL SOON FIND OUT. YOU GOT IT COMING MISTER. A FRIEND OF JOHNNY.
Simon felt the paper, turned it over, and handed it back.
“A bit corny,” he observed, “but it must be a thrill for you. How did you get it?”
“It was pushed under the front door during the night. I’ve rented a house here, and that’s where it was. Under the front door. The Filipino boy found it in the morning. The door was locked, of course, but the note had been pushed under.”
When Freddie Pellman thought that anything he had to say was important, which was often, he was never satisfied to say it once. He said it several times over, trying it out in different phrasings, apparently in the belief that his audience was either deaf or imbecile but might accidentally grasp the point of it were presented often enough from a sufficient variety of angles.
“Have you talked to the police about it?” Simon asked.