“Sí, sí! I understand. And you wish to know where he lives?”
“That’s right. Or the address of his office.”
Arturo shrugged. “To find the Duke is like putting your finger on quicksilver. But his home is on Columbus Drive at the corner of Thirteenth Street. A red-brick house with a balcony. Perhaps you can find him there.”
Vicki inquired the way to Columbus Drive, and when the waiter told her that it was two streets up, she thanked him and left the cool interior of the restaurant.
Walking along the street, fascinated by the colorful costumes of the people and by the open-air stands where white-capped chefs were serving steaming hot bowls of bean soup to any passer-by that wanted one, Vicki took stock of the situation.
She knew that Mr. Raymond Duke was a regular patron of the Granada Restaurant. But since, on Thursday, she had heard him direct a taxi to take him there, this was not startling news. From the snatches of his various conversations with people in the restaurant that she had overheard, she knew that he had many and varied business connections. But he had told this to Joey, so again she had learned nothing new. Old Mr. Tytell was not playing in the Granada’s orchestra. She had leaped blindly to a conclusion that he was employed there when she had found the marked travel folder on the seat the elderly man had occupied.
What she had expected to discover in Ybor City, Vicki didn’t know. But what she had actually found was absolutely nothing. There really didn’t seem to be much sense in going on to Mr. Duke’s house. But since an impulse had made her inquire about his address, and since she was within a block of the house, there was no reason why she shouldn’t go on.
When she turned the corner into Columbus Drive, she saw that it was no different from any other street in Ybor City. The same curio shops, the same restaurants, the same crowds of festive people, the same sidewalk peddlers. She found the house with no difficulty. A balcony of wrought-iron grillwork overhung the front door.
She stood before the house for several minutes, looking at the intricate, old-fashioned grillwork over the door, peering at the heavily curtained windows. She was about to move on when the door opened and a man stepped out.
It was old Mr. Tytell! He still looked as shabby and harassed as he had on the plane. His sparse gray hair was still as badly in need of trimming. There was the same bewildered, hunted look in his eyes.