PROLOGUE
IT WAS A HOT night. Oven−heat that baked the sweat out of the body and played hell with the dogs. It had been hot all day, and now the sun had gone down the streets still held the stifling heat.
Phillips of the St. Louis Banner sat in a remote corner of the Press Club getting good and drunk. He was a long, thin bird, with melancholy eyes and lank, unruly hair. Franklin, a visiting reporter, thought he looked like a bum poet.
Phillips dragged down his tie and undid his collar. The long highball slopped a little as he groped to put it on the table. He said, “What a night! What’s the time, Franky?”
Franklin, his face white with exhaustion and his eyes heavy and red−lidded, peered at the face of his watch. “Just after twelve,” he said, letting his head fall back with a thud on the leather padding of his chair.
“After twelve, huh?” Phillips shifted uneasily. “That’s bad. That’s dug my grave good and deep. Know what I should be doin’ right now?”
Franklin had to make an effort to shake his head.
“I gotta date to meet a dame tonight,” Phillips told him, blotting his face and neck with his handkerchief.
“Right now that babe is waiting for me. Is she goin’ to be mad?”
Franklin groaned.