Bender pitched his gun on the bed and sat down and looked at the men. Then he picked up the stiletto and held it up. The taxi driver came over and Bender said: “They was fixing to park that in my back.”
The taxi driver nodded. Bender squinted his eyes and stared at him. He wrapped his left fingers around his right arm just below the shoulder and squeezed hard to try to stop some of the pain.
“Say,” he said; “what the hell is your name?”
“Rusty Minton,” the driver said. “Why?”
Bender winced as a surge of pain rolled down his arm.
“Nothing,” he said; “only I thought it was about time you and I got acquainted.”
Chapter VI
The noon whistles blew and Rondora paused for lunch but the Grand Jury did not adjourn because they were looking at records and listening to a Ranger captain tell them plain facts about organized crime and boom towns.
Tom Bender sat there in a long room of dim coolness, his right arm bandaged from shoulder to elbow where a .38 bullet had plowed through a muscle, and explained how the keys he had found in Botchey Miller's pocket fit a safety deposit vault that had contained the records now before them.
Those records made the Grand Jury gasp. They revealed how Lovell, the former chief of police, who now lay in the morgue, had been taking money from Miller and also how lesser officials were involved. Bender told them he had looked for these lesser officials but couldn't find them and it was his guess they had blown for good...