There was a long, painful silence and Summers’ beefy face grew dark. “Oh, so he just barks now,” he repeated, then seeing Clancy hesitate, he snapped. “Get after him all the same. I want to know if an injured dog’s been picked up recently.”
Clancy went out.
“I’m sorry Summers,” I said. “This sounds phoney, but he did talk yesterday. I swear he did.”
“So the dog doesn’t talk any more and maybe the woman’s given up floating,” Siunmers said, his eyes glinted with anger. “If I didn’t know you, Millan, you might be in for a bad time. I might even get some of the boys to give you a shellacking.”
I shifted restlessly. “Give me a chance to prove it,” I said suddenly. I remembered that Summers used to stake all his pay on a single cut of the cards. I’ve even seen him gamble with his next month’s salary. He was far more likely to play along if I appealed to his sporting instinct. “Look, Summers, if I bring these two girls to this office and let you see them, will that convince you?”
“How would you do that?” he asked, but the glint went out of his eyes.
“Give me a couple of weeks. I’ve got to find them first and that’ll take some digging around. But I’ll find them all right if you call off your bloodhounds and give me a free hand.”
“What do you think the newspapers’ll say if I don’t get action in the next day or so?” he asked, pulling at his short thick nose and looking at me old fashioned. “You’re in the business. You know what a ride I’ll get.”
“I’ve been in the game long enough to know that if you want to stall the newspapers you can do it,” I returned, feeling that I had the thin end in the crack and it only needed one good smack to drive it home. “There’s something much bigger than murder behind all this. It’s going to be a whale of a story and it’ll do you a hell of a lot of good to be tied up in it on the right side. I tell you, if you grab Myra Shumway and try to pin the murder on her, you’ll be passing up something that someone on top is trying to cover up. Let me handle it for a couple of weeks and I’ll give it to you on a plate.”
“What someone on top?” he asked, interested.