“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not sure. It was a feeling I got at the time. Circles within circles. Peralta himself was most uncommunicative. Didn’t want the servants interviewed, and insisted I get all my information from Painter. You know how Painter is when he takes over a case personally.”
“Yeh, I know.”
“Of course,” Rourke admitted judicially, “Peralta may have good reasons for not wanting reporters digging in too deep. There was that matter of the cyanide and the two Boxers.”
“What was that?”
“Happened about a week before the bracelet was snatched. All I could get was hints and evasive answers, and it wasn’t even officially reported to the police, so far as I could learn. Well, hell, they were his dogs and his kids.”
“You mean the kids poisoned the dogs?” Shayne asked incredulously.
“That’s the way I pieced it together. I tell you they’re precocious.”
“You think the death of the dogs had any bearing on the robbery?”
“Well, it did set things up pretty nice for the ladder job. The dogs did run loose at night.”
“You think that’s why Peralta clammed up? Because he suspects the kids engineered the snatch?”
“Hell, Mike. They’re only about ten years old. But I don’t know, at that. They’re a couple of enterprising youngsters.”
“You think Petey has any such suspicions?”
“Who knows what Petey suspects? Frankly, I doubt that he even knows the dogs were poisoned. I told you it wasn’t even reported when it happened. I ran onto it by accident.”
“Give me a run-down on Julio Peralta. Seems to me his name turns up in the papers frequently.”
“Yeah, and he doesn’t like it. He’s one of those rich Cubans who got out with their cash before Castro came in. He was educated in this country. Harvard, I think, and had a sort of reputation as an international playboy some years ago. Married New York money and settled down in Cuba a dozen years ago… all cozy with Batista. That’s where the twins came from. His wife died giving birth, and about five years ago he married the present Mrs. Peralta. Laura’s quite a lush dish.”