“A cuter,” he said. “That what you wanted?”
“Come around to the P-R on your day off,” I told him. “Bring your girl. Bring your family. You can have anything you want except the dinner check.”
Chapter twenty-six:
Blubbering woman
My aching skull was a booming reminder that the person who’d tried to eliminate me only a few hours before would probably try again.
The sunlight was bright on the Broadway corner where I waited for a bus. The Sunday afternoon strollers were out in force. It seemed an unlikely spot for an attack. Still, I watched every solitary male who passed.
If it was Gowriss who’d trailed me from Manhasset, shot up my car in Brooklyn, and left me in a West Side apartment en route to the mortuary, probably I couldn’t do much more to put him out of circulation than the badges were supposed to be doing. Still, what possible motive could the narcotic addict have had for wanting me dead? It couldn’t be because of fear Tildy’d told me about him; presumably he already knew she’d told the DAides.
I couldn’t rub Gowriss off the slate completely. He was a known killer. He had shot Johnny the Grocer. But those paid droppers seldom use knives, and when they do it’s a six-inch spring blade, not a steak knife. And no cold-blooded ambusher would have left me lying there in Ruth Moore’s hallway without making sure I was finished.
Maxie claimed to have seen a man who looked like Gowriss, in the hotel. No one else had. Tim didn’t believe him. The guy Tildy’d described wasn’t remotely like the thin, sallow-skinned dope-user described in the circular. Tildy might be in danger from Gowriss; I didn’t think I was.
The only tangible signs pointed in Yaker’s direction. Tildy’s description. The wax on the spread. His oddly timed appearance at Lanerd’s suite, while I was there.