Obit Delayed by Helen Nielsen Page A

couldn’t help himself. “Anybody I know?” he asked.
    “He mentioned no names. He just shut up and ducked out fast when he saw me at the counter. And since then he’s been scarcer than a tax reduction until a few hours ago.”
    But Mitch was going to have to talk faster than that if he intended to convince the natural born skeptic across the desk from him. He would have to paint the picture in bright colors, scene by scene. The day at Pinky’s, the same night at the Club Serape— Ernie was yawning by that time so he took a quick swing down to Mexicali and that interrupted chat with Rita Royale.
    “Look, Mitch,” Ernie broke in, “maybe they just don’t like you around. Have you heard anything from your best friend lately?”
    “Oh, they like me fine!” Mitch said. “Vince Costro even wants to buy a lot of advertising-space just to let me know how much he likes me. What do you think that’s for if not an effort to pull me off the scent?”
    “Maybe his business is bad.”
    Ernie was grinning when he said that, and it was the grin that tipped Mitch off balance. Maybe some day he’d grow up and get over feeling a twinge of revulsion every time the law winked at lawlessness, but this was the wrong time and the wrong place. The Club Serape wasn’t Ernie’s responsibility, it was far outside the city limits; but Vince Costro had no limits and his operations were common knowledge. It was one thing for the public to shrug off Costro, but Ernie had a badge in his pocket.
    “You don’t believe a word I’ve said, do you?” Mitch challenged.
    “Every word,” Ernie said.
    “But it isn’t important, I suppose! Is that all it takes to be a cop? Just a head like a block of cement and two blind eyes? A tie-in between Virginia Wales’s death and men like Costro and Singer should suggest a few interesting possibilities if nothing else. What if Virginia had been close enough to Dave to pick up something she wasn’t supposed to know? What if somebody got scared she might talk too much?”
    Mitch was too steamed up to notice a little thing like a door opening behind him, and the first he knew they had company in the office was when Ernie’s sleepy eyes brightened and focused on the doorway. He swung around to see what Ernie was looking at and almost rubbed noses with Kendall Hoyt.
    If Hoyt possessed anything but a grim expression, he never wore it while in uniform. “What kind of information?” he demanded.
    “You name it,” Mitch shot back. “Costro has plenty of interests to be sensitive about including a fast trade in marijuana, heroin—”
    “—wine, women, and song,” Ernie finished. “Listen, Mitch, we all know Vince and we all know that Dave Singer is a bad boy, but you can’t get convictions on public opinion. I could name half a dozen capital crimes that probably belong on Costro’s doorstep, but not this one. Now if you have any real evidence to the contrary, I’ll be tickled bright pink to hear it. If not, we’ll just have to postpone this little adventure story until sometime when I’m not quite so busy. Fair enough?”
    Ernie was all through now. It was up to Mitch, who didn’t have a thing at the moment but the tag end of a short temper.
    “And in the meantime you’ll go on chasing after a dead man!” he shouted.
    He hadn’t meant to say that. This was to be a discussion of facts, nothing but facts, with an absolute minimum of conjecture to keep them in line. But it was too late to take anything back. Now Ernie really was interested. Now he was demanding an explanation.
    “All right, figure it out for yourself,” Mitch said. “Frank Wales received a special-delivery letter from his ex-wife that sent him off to Valley City to see her. Something pretty big must have been bothering her to write a letter like that to a man she’d seen only once in three years. Something big—like fear for her life.
    “Now you’re taking Wales’s disappearance as proof of guilt, and I’d go along