“Name the place.”
“I’ll be at the corner of Tenth and Central in fifteen minutes. How’ll that be?”
“Okay. Now listen. If I’m being tailed when I leave here, I’ll try and ditch the shadow. If I can’t do it, I’ll take him for a run-round and be back in half an hour. If I don’t meet you at Tenth and Central in fifteen minutes, you ring me here in exactly thirty minutes. Got that?”
“Got it,” she said, and hung up.
I nodded to Bertha Cool.
Bertha said, “Watch your step, lover. You’re in the clear now. After what she said, she can’t ever back up on her testimony, and it wouldn’t do them much good to have the clerk identify you now. The woman who was standing in the door couldn’t see straight up without her glasses. I’ll bet she couldn’t identify me twenty feet away.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Tell that blonde to go jump in the lake. If she’s sucker enough to put all the cards in your hands, go ahead and play them.”
“That’s not the way I play, Bertha.”
“I know it isn’t. You’re too damn soft and sentimental — I don’t mean you should give her the go-by entirely. Get Ashbury to slip her a little piece of change, but don’t go sticking your neck out.”