Pud grunted, “Gil Vine, bud. He brought you here. You hadda fight somewhere. You were stinko. Remember?”
Yaker waggled his head dazedly. “No. I wish I could. Why does he want me to go with him?”
I paid Pud off, took Yaker’s arm. “Maybe it’ll come back to you, when you get down there.”
Pud came up to the sidewalk with us. “If he’s in that kind of trouble, I don’t want anybody to say I’ve been hiding him out here.”
“You’re in the clear, Pud. I’ll take the blame.” I pushed Yaker in the cab ahead of me. I sat between him and the Syrian. We got rolling.
Nikky had a queer expression as she watched Yaker. He gazed at her with the same puzzled air he’d used on me.
I asked him a couple of questions about Edie and Ruth Moore, elicited nothing except: “I don’t remember those people — do I know them?” I said he’d had dealings with them, let it go at that.
There are several waiting-rooms outside the grand jury chamber where the DAides present their evidence to the twenty-three good men and true. A cop on the third floor wanted to know who I was looking for. “Mister Hacklin — the Lanerd business.”
“Oh. Yuh. Room three-one-four.”
It could have been the anteroom outside a dentist’s office, minus the old magazines. A dozen hard, straight-backed chairs, half a dozen people, and Charley Schneider. Jeff MacGregory was next to Marge, Keith Walch sat beside Tildy, in the chair pulled close beside Ruth Moore’s was Dr. Elm. Their heads swiveled around like spectators at a tennis match, when I shepherded my two witnesses in.