They stopped me so fast my head jerked. One of them grabbed one shoulder. The other grabbed the other shoulder. The clerk in the lobby looked at me curiously. A couple of loungers got up and moved away. The investigator from the D.A.’s office said, “Okay, boys, let’s go.”
They gave me the bum’s rush out to the automobile, cut loose with the siren, and got out to the airport in nothing flat. A cabin plane was there with the motors all warmed, and they pushed me inside. The man from the D.A.’s office said, “Since you’re asking for it the hard way, buddy, I’ll just see that you don’t get any funny ideas while the plane’s up in the air and try to start anything.” He slipped a handcuff around my wrist and handcuffed the other loop to the arm of the chair.
“Fasten your seat belts,” the pilot said.
The deputy fastened my seat belt. “It would have been a lot better if you’d done it the easy way,” he said.
I didn’t say. anything.
“Now, when we get down there, you’re not going to make a kick about going to the hotel where this clerk can take a look at you, are you?”
I said, “Brother, you’re the one that’s doing it the hard way. I told you I’d go down tomorrow morning, walk into the hotel or any place you wanted, and let the fellow take a look at me. You got hard — I’m not going to any hotel. If you take me down, you put me in jail, and I tell my story to the newspaper boys. If you want anybody to identify me, you put me in a line-up, and have the identification made that way.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”
“It’s like that.”
“Now, I’m damn sure you’re the one who went in the hotel.”