A few hours alone with my thoughts brought questions.
At some point we’d exhausted all talk, and Lizzie had passed out in her clothes on top of the covers. I sat on the bed next to her, a pencil and scrap of paper in my hand, writing them all down by moonlight, ideas beginning to coalesce into answers.
*
When the clock reached eight the next morning, I ran to the motel payphone and called Trip Newland.
‘You gotta be walking tall this morning,’ he said.
I gripped the receiver tighter. ‘What?’
‘Ben Siegel got whacked last night. It’s all over the wires. Turn the radio on.’
‘Yeah—’ I breathed again. ‘Yeah, I heard it.’
‘You don’t sound so happy.’
‘I need to know something. Who gave you the tip that Siegel was back in LA?’
‘I don’t—Why’s it matter?’
‘Humour me.’
‘I don’t remember, it was just talk—’
‘You told me before no one was talking to you.’
‘It was a figure of speech.’
‘Hold on, the last time you got hold of one of my sources he didn’t last five minutes.’
‘Whitey Lufkins,’ I said. ‘That’s who told you, isn’t it?’ The same man who’d sold me out to Siegel, and a natural first stop for a legman finding his feet in a new town.
‘How did you—’
‘Get hold of him and set up a meeting.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Midday. Don’t breathe a word about this call, if he hears my name he won’t show. Front up whatever cash it takes to make it happen.’
‘What the hell is going on? You sound like a crazy man.’
‘Something else: I need to know where Henry Booker called you from when he gave you Diana Desjardins’ name.’
‘No clue.’
‘I don’t believe you. You were holding something back when we first met and I know what it was.’
‘He called me, he gave me his home number, we talked one more time before you got him killed.’
‘It wasn’t me got him killed, but I have an idea who did. He gave you his home number but that’s not where he called you from, was it?’
He went quiet.
‘Trip, an anonymous source calls you with a tip like that, the first thing you’d have done is called the operator and get a fix on where the call originated.’
Still silent.
‘He called you from the house phone at the Flamingo, right?’
All the colour had drained from his voice. ‘I’m not saying another word until you tell me what’s going on.’
‘Make the meeting. I’ll call you back in two hours for a location.’