He dropped off the running board and bolted off down the street. I hadn’t time to go after him. I wanted to, but the need to get away from 274 was more pressing. Already I could hear the distant sound of a police siren. I sent the car shooting towards Beach Road.
I had never heard of Coral Row, but it would be somewhere in Coral Gables. I headed that way because I was curious. Right at this moment I had a lot on my mind. I was wondering if the old waiter would remember me, and if he had noticed the number of my car. I was particularly anxious not to get tied up with Mifflin at this time. He could work out the problem of Gracie’s murder without my help. I had other more pressing things to do. But if he began asking questions and got around to the waiter, he might get a description of me. I knew he wouldn’t be pleased I had left before he arrived.
At the bottom of Beach Road I turned left on to the waterfront, and parked in a vacant space hedged in on either side by coils of rope and oil drums.
Coral Gables is no place to wander around in unless you have an escort or carry a gun. Even the cops go around in pairs and scarcely a month passes without someone is found up an alley with a knife in his back.
As I got out of the Buick and looked up and down the long harbour, crammed with small boats and fishing trawlers, I was aware that I was being stared at by groups of men who lounged in the sun, picturesque enough in their soiled canvas trousers and various coloured sweat-shirts, their shifty, dark eyes weighing me up.
I picked on one who was on his own, aimlessly whittling a piece of wood into the shape of a boat.
‘Can you put me on to Coral Row?’
He eyed me over, leaned away from me to spit into the oily water of the harbour and jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the coffee-shops, the sea-food stalls and the like that faced the waterfront.
‘Behind Yate’s Bar,’ he said curtly.
Yate’s Bar is a two-storey wooden building where, if you aren’t fussy who you eat with, you can get a good clam-chowder and a ten-year-old ale that sneaks up on you if you don’t watch out. I had been in there once or twice with Kerman. It’s the kind of place where anything can happen, and very often does.