“Now what the hell am I going to do? I haven’t any clothes or any money! I can’t get in Walch’s room if he’s not in town! I can’t go back home without any luggage!”
I told him the first thing he needed was to get cleaned up, sobered up. I knew the place, if he’d agree to stay there until I decided it was okay.
He had some friends in town, plenty more in Philly, but he didn’t want to let any of them know about his fix, for fear it would get back to his wife. So he agreed.
In five minutes we were at Pud Hoffman’s Finnish Baths. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to farm out a jitter case to Pud; we had a routine established. Take away every stitch of the patient’s clothing. Stick him in the steam room until he was so weak he couldn’t get away without crutches. Let him sleep.
While Yaker was undressing I inquired about the wax spots on his spread. Either he was completely in the dark about them or else he was a more cagey customer than I rated him.
I told him what I thought the wax had been used for; to cover fingerprints so a murderer couldn’t be traced. That threw him. He hadn’t known about any murder. Hadn’t ever been in 21MM at all. Knew Tildy Millett by sight and by name, but had never met her.
Just before Pud shoved him in the steam room I mentioned Lanerd’s death. Yaker got so sick to his stomach I thought he was having convulsions. Pud thought he’d wilt if that heat hit him then; we put him in bed. He fell into a heavy sleep of nervous exhaustion without a twitch.
It’s easy to fake a faint. Something else again to artificially induce an abdominal reaction like that. If the big lunk lying so limply on Pud’s cot had sliced one man and blown another’s brains out, Snow White was Baby Face Nelson in disguise.
I called Tim. He was in shape for a strait jacket, trying to hold the wheel in my absence. If I would just hike back in a hurry, probably it could all be smoothed over with the front office. The lab boys had definitely determined Lanerd had suicided. The flare test showed powder traces on his right hand. His prints were on the laundry hamper too. And had I heard, that coat, the cream-colored dilly with the chocolate checks?
“Whose was it? Reidy’s?”