“What do you mean?”
I said, “He became anxious to meet this Marilyn Winton. I arranged to take him to the nightclub. We poured four or five drinks down each other. He was trying to find out how much I knew. I was trying to find out what he wanted.”
“Did you make him pay for the drinks?”
“Certainly. I may be dumb on financial matters, but I’m not that dumb.”
“What did you find out?”
“He got to talking with Marilyn Winton about the time she’d heard the shot, whether she was absolutely certain it was two-thirty-two and not three o’clock.”
“Well?”
“She told him that it was two-thirty-two by her wrist watch. So Hale admired the watch and asked her to let him look at it.”
“Well, what’s with that?”
“At the time,” I said, “he was drinking Coca-Cola and gin.”