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He licked his lips and shifted his eyes to the wall behind me. “I told them I had some questions for you. I guess they went overboard. I can get the key.”
“Good to know. But I have some questions for you, too.”
He looked cautious. “Like what?”
“Are you the Detective Mancks who’s investigating Roscoe McAuley’s murder?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So who’s leaning on you not to find anything?”
He looked at me for a full two minutes. I looked back. It wasn’t easy. Mancks had bad skin and bad teeth and couldn’t decide if he should play hostile or dumb.
He finally got up. “I’ll see if I can find that key,” he said, and walked out.
Ninety minutes later a cop in uniform came in, a big, middle-aged guy with a red nose. “There you are!” he bellowed at me. “Nobody knew where you went.”
He unlocked the cuffs and threw them on the table. “You can go,” he said.
I rubbed my wrists and stood. “Anybody feel like telling me what it was all about?”
He gave me a big smile. “You got me, buddy. All I know is, you beat the rap, whatever it is. You can go.”
I walked back to the hotel. If I hurried I could still make it to Nancy’s by six. But as I came up Franklin in front of the hotel, another police cruiser went by. The cop in the passenger seat looked hard at me and turned to speak to his partner.
The car slowed and swung into a gas station at the corner and turned around.
I sighed. I knew what was coming and I knew why, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Before the cops got back to me I ducked into the liquor store attached to the hotel and found a telephone.
“It’s me,” I told Nancy. “I’m having some problems.”
“Really,” she said, sounding unsurprised.
“Nancy, this is out of my hands. I’m about to get hauled off to jail again.”
“My tax dollars at work.”
“Can we make it tomorrow night at six instead?”
There was a long silence on the other end. I could see the two cops swaggering up to the glass door, adjusting their hats and nightsticks. “Please, Nancy. I don’t have much time, but this is important.
“All right, Billy. Tomorrow night at six.” She hung up.
There was a tap on my shoulder. My ride was here.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
This time I was in a h
olding cell. It wasn’t as nice as the interrogation room, but at least I didn’t have cuffs. Life is a series of trade-offs.
They kept me until ten o’clock at night, and then they let me go again, still with no explanation.
I didn’t really need an explanation. I was getting the message loud and clear.
I needed to be able to move around to get Doyle. Doyle was not going to let me move around.
