Rainy City by Earl Emerson Page B

but I think he had some unwholesome plans for her.”
    “What stared him off?”
    “I did. I got home at just the right minute and spooked him.”
    “You know who it was?”
    “He wore a ski mask.”
    “How about prints or…”
    “The guy was a pro. Or he acted like one. Dressed all in dark. Cotton work gloves. Didn’t even say anything.”
    “But you have an idea?”
    “Ever hear of a guy named Holder? A big fella? A little on the mean side?”
    “Holder? Holder?” Smithers sipped steaming coffee from a mug and tapped a fingernail against his stubby front teeth. “Holder.” Tap. Tap. Tap. “I know I’ve heard that name.”
    “A tall guy. Black and Mexican mixed, maybe. Or Indian. For some reason, I get the feeling he was foreign-born.”
    “Julius Caesar Holder!” exclaimed Smithers. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Yeah, he had some trouble with the dicks downtown a few months back. I never paid much attention to it. They weren’t happy with him.”
    “Can you find out about him for me?”
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “Also, this license number. Holder was driving the car yesterday. It’s probably registered to him, but I want to make certain. Then there’s this phone call. I need some records from the phone company. Can you get them for me?”
    “Geez, I dunno.”
    “It’s not going to court or anything. A woman I’m tracking made a phone call to Bellingham Tuesday night around nine o’clock. I believe she phoned from Tacoma. I’d like to find out for sure.”
    “Don’t want much, do ya?” chided Smithers.
    “This is serious business,” I said, grinning.
    Smithers slurped coffee and sucked striped candies while he made the calls. It didn’t take long. When cops start running errands for each other, things flow along pretty smoothly.
    The tan sedan Holder had driven Sunday morning was leased by Penworthy Investigations, Incorporated, leased from a local car dealership. Two more calls produced this nugget: Penworthy contracted security work to Taltro Incorporated, the same company Angus Crowell worked for.
    On Tuesday evening, Mary Dawn Crowell’s phone number in Bellingham had indeed received an incoming call from Tacoma. Melissa had phoned collect, otherwise we never would have found out where she had been. She had the loot for a bus ticket but not for a phone call. Somebody on the other end of the line made a computer hookup and told Smithers it had originated at a pay phone on Pacific Avenue. Melissa and her aunt had gabbed a little less than one minute.
    I recognized the address of the pay phone. It was a few blocks from the Greyhound station in Tacoma. Great. A pay phone and a leased car. People were covering things like cats in the garden.
    While he still had them on the phone, I asked Smithers to ask his contact to trace the number in the ad Kathy had showed me. I had called the number earlier in the morning, reached a recorded message and hung up. It turned out to be a phone line in the Taltro complex in Georgetown. Everything was ending up at Taltro.
    On a hunch, Smithers phoned the dicks downtown and inquired about Julius Caesar Holder. Furrows broke across the smooth fatness of his brow and he grew somber, almost gloomy as he listened.
    When he hung up, he swiveled toward me and said, “The guy used to be a boxer. He’s trouble. He killed a guy in the ring. A private eye down in San Diego crossed swords with him a coupla years back and hasn’t been heard from since. No body. No traces. No nothin’. The snooper’s widow stirred some politicians up and accused Holder, but nothing ever came of it. I would stay away from the guy.”
    “Does he always carry a piece?”
    “They didn’t say anything about that.”
    “Get an address on him?”
    “He moves around a lot. He got in an argument with some woman in Chinatown a few months back. Slapped her silly. A coupla of off-duty dicks stepped in and he knocked ‘em both through a plate glass window. The boys were a little on the drunk-and- rowdy