I went down as far as the corner, went into a drugstore, telephoned police headquarters, and asked for Homicide. After a while, a voice said, in a bored monotone, “Yeah, this is Homicide.”
I said, in a rapid voice, “This is a tip-off. I’d be in a jam if anyone knew I was giving it. Don’t ask my name, and don’t try to trace the call.”
The voice at the other end of the line said, “Just a minute, I’ll get a pencil and paper.”
I said, “Nix on that stuff. I told you not to try to trace the call. Get a load of this right now if you want it. If you don’t, hang up. When your dicks were making that investigation down at the Blue Cave, they learned everything except about the big beefy guy with the close-set, grey eyes and the mole on his right cheek. Orders have been passed around to lay off of him. No one talked about him. If you want to solve that case, you’d better give the girls at the Blue Cave a real shakedown. Ask some specific questions and find out why they were instructed not to say anything about this egg to your investigators.”
I slammed up the telephone and walked out. I waited another half-hour, hanging around where I could watch the entrance of the apartment house, smoking cigarettes and thinking. It began to get dark and the street lights were turned on.
I went back to Marian Dunton’s apartment and knocked excitedly on the door.
She opened it and said, “Gee, I’m glad you’re back! I felt — sort of frightened sitting here alone.”
“You should,” I said. “The D.A.’s office pulled a boner.”
“What do you mean?”
“Letting it out about that man whom you described. He’s suddenly become the important figure in the case. They’ve traced him back to the Blue Cave and found that he was friendly with the girl that was killed.”