“How old is your Freddie?”

“Fred Tucker, he says his name is. Pretty old. Forty, I guess maybe. Tall an’ thin an’ sort of stooped. And all the time scared of his own shadow. Honest-to-God, Mike, I just shiver when I think of him wanderin’ around Miami with nobody to look after him atall.”

“And with all that money loose in his pockets,” Shayne suggested.

“Yeh. That, too. How loose in his pockets it is, though, I wouldn’t know. He keeps talkin’ big about having a lot stashed away.”

“Maybe he’s on the lam,” suggested Shayne. “Pulled some sort of caper.”

“Freddie?” She laughed scornfully. “Not him. Not ever him. That’s what scares me, like I say. Not only the women, but tough hoods, too, that might get onto his trail. Like them two at the Club the other night…” She cut herself off suddenly, sucking her lower lip in between her teeth and looking absurdly naive and innocent.

“What about them?”

“Well, I thought first maybe they was detectives that his wife had sicked after him. They looked like I figured Private Eyes would look, but that was before I met you an’ now I don’t know. But there was these two that come in the Club an’ they had a pitcher that looked somethin’ like Freddie before he’d growed that mustache. An’ they showed it to the bartender there an’ slipped him a fin, I reckon, an’ he told ’em to talk to me. And so they did. But I didn’t like their looks, and I swore up and down that I never saw nobody in the Club looked like the pitcher they showed. One was big an’ tough and mean-lookin’ and the other was thin an’ sorta sad… dressed up in a black suit like a preacher. But they got no change outta me.

“So that’s why I’m scared for Freddie an’ want you should find him before they do. They asked all sortsa questions about this man I claimed I didn’t know, an’ knew all the time was Freddie. Like did he spend much money an’ had he ever flashed a big roll. An’ what fancy hotel he stayed at and all like that. Fancy hotels!” she added scornfully. “Not Freddie. That’s another reason why I think he’s duckin’ his wife maybe. He stays in cheap motels, and never very long in the same one. So, would you find him for me quick, Mike, an’ tell him not to come back to the Club to see me on account those goons might be back watchin’ for him?”