The cab driver deposited me at the Key West Apartments. I said good-bye to Bertha Cool and walked over to sit with the operative who was watching the front of the apartment house.
He was a man about fifty-five with twinkling blue eyes, a face like a cherub, and a detailed knowledge of underworld graft and corruption that made the ordinary racket sound like a Sunday school picnic. He’d worked with the government for fifteen years, and I listened to him talk until daylight showed in the east. The palm trees in front of the Key West Apartments began to take colour, and a mocking-bird started pouring its song into the dawn.
I’d heard all I wanted of prostitutes, dope fiends, pimps, and gamblers. I said, “If your insides are as cold as mine, you’ll want some hot coffee.”
I could almost see him start to drool at the mention of the coffee.
I said, “You’ll find an all-night restaurant down the street three blocks, to the left two blocks. It’s a little joint, but you can get good coffee there. I’ll sit here and watch. Don’t be in a hurry. This is a slack time. If she’d been skipping, she’d have made a break earlier.”
“That’s damn white of you,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He climbed out of the car and stamped his feet to get circulation in them. I settled back on the cushions and quit thinking about the case, about murders, criminals, politics, frame-ups. I watched the east get brassy, saw the sun come up and send its first rays, turning the white stucco of the apartment house into a golden glow.
After a while the mocking-birds quit singing. I saw people beginning to move around in the apartment house, windows being closed, curtains being pulled.
The operative came back and said, “After I got there, I figured I might as well have breakfast, so you wouldn’t have to relieve me. I hope I wasn’t too long. It took a hell of a while to get what I wanted.”