“You-all ain’t beating a check?” he asked.
“Twenty bucks says I’m not.”
“This way,” he told me, pocketing the bill.
I followed him past a range out through a narrow, smelly corridor, past the stench of a latrine which said, Employees Only, and out into an alley lined with garbage cans. I said to him, “It’s going to help a lot if you don’t know anything about this afterward.”
“Is you,” he asked, “tellin’ me? ”
I swung around the alley, back to the street, and walked down to the parking place where I’d left the agency car.
Chapter Seven
It was well after midnight when I pulled into Santa Carlotta. The night had turned cold and I stopped in at an all-night restaurant for a cup of hot chocolate. From a telephone in the restaurant I rang Dr. Alftmont’s residence.
The phone rang half a dozen times before a woman’s voice, sounding dopey with sleep, said, “Hello.”
“Dr. Alftmont’s residence?”