“You got his number?” Paula asked, fluttering through the stack of cards in her hands.
“Checking it now,” I said. “Give me Lieutenant Mifflin,” I went on when an unenthusiastic voice announced Police Headquarters. There was a plop on the line, and Mifflin’s gritty voice asked, “Hello?”
Tim Mifflin was a good tough cop, and we had worked together off and on for some time. Whenever I could I helped him, and whenever he could he helped me. He had a great respect for my hunches when playing the horses, and, by following my tips, he had had the luck to make himself a little folding money.
“Malloy here,” I said. “How are you, Tim?”
“What do you care?” he snapped. “You’ve never been interested in my health and you never will be. What do you want this time?”
“Who owns an olive-green Dodge; licence number, O.R.3345?”
“The way you use Headquarters for financial gain slaughters me,” Mifflin said. “If Brandon ever finds out what I do for you he’ll screw me.”
“Well, I won’t tell him, so it’s up to you,” I said, and grinned, “and another thing, talking about financial gain, if you want to make yourself a piece of change, put your shirt on Crab Apple for a win. Tomorrow; four-thirty.”
“You really mean my shirt?”
“I’ll say I do. Sell up your home; hock your wife; break into Brandon’s safe. As good as that. Two gets you six. The only thing that’ll stop that horse is for someone to shoot it.”