Nancy eased past the garage so the sound of the motor wouldn’t attract the attention of either man. What should she do? She wasn’t sure whether Brownley had seen her.
Grabbing the mike, she called in. After a second, Brownley answered. “Hey, kid, did you just pass here?”
“Sure, on the way to twenty-five-twelve Bennett. Is something wrong with the radio? I called you three times before you answered.”
“Guess I didn’t hear you,” he said. “I was talking to somebody.”
“Oh. Sorry. Want me to call back?”
“No, I’m finished.” Just what Nancy wanted to hear. “Why don’t you knock off early? Call it a night. Come on in when you’ve finished this run. Nothing’s happening tonight.”
“Will do. One-six-one out.”
She drove a couple of blocks farther and parked long enough to put in the money her imaginary fare would have paid. Then she doubled back, edging around the corner onto McConnell again. Reston was standing by a late-model Buick parked on the street just beyond the garage. It was a dead ringer for the car that had tried to run her over the day before.
To kill more time, Nancy ran the cab through the car wash next door, sitting in the vehicle as it glided through the cycles. It seemed to take much too short a time. Reston was still out front, but she couldn’t put off going in any longer.
The Gold Star sign-a brightly lit rectangle above the broad rollup door-spilled its gaudy light into the cab as she drove under it. From the corner of her eye, Nancy saw Reston staring at her with a puzzled expression.
After a moment’s hesitation, he got in the Buick and started the engine. Nancy’s hand shook slightly as she opened the cab door. But Reston was gone. She’d survived her first shift as a Gold Star cabbie.
“Not bad, Nickerson,” Brownley said, counting her money. “Lay off that gum, and you’ll do even better.”
“I’ll think about it.” Nancy removed the cushion she’d brought from the front seat of the cab. “Where can I leave this?”
He nodded toward a bank of lockers just beyond his office. “Snag one for yourself. You have to supply your own lock, though.”
Nancy walked along the row of lockers, hoping for an empty one as close to the back of the garage as possible. The second and third from the end were available.
She crammed the cushion into one and hunted for a pen to scratch “Ellison” off the strip of adhesive tape that served as the name tag on the locker door. After squeezing “Nickerson” on it, she glanced at the names on either side-Eastman, which had a monster combination lock on the door, and Tyler, with no lock at all.
Nancy stared at it. “T. Tyler.” The doorman at Mrs. Harvey’s building had mentioned a Tyler. The same man? she wondered.
“Hey, Nickerson! Find an empty?” Brownley shouted from the office.
“Uh-yes.” Nancy slammed the door closed and ambled toward the front. Perhaps the next night she’d be able to slip away from her locker and see what else was back there in the dark.
One thing she had been able to see. The white van was gone.
“I don’t understand why you wanted me to come with you,” Ann said as the elevator in Crimson Oaks building two rose to the tenth floor.
“According to the doorman in building four, this Mr. Tyler knows your Mrs. Harvey and knows all about the accident. He may be able to convince Mrs. Harvey to talk to us.”
Ann looked doubtful. “As frightened as she sounded on the phone, it would take a subpoena to make her open up.”
“Even that might not work,” Nancy said, smiling at her. “It hasn’t worked with you.”
The elderly man who answered their knock eyed them with curiosity. He had sandy hair and laugh lines that made his face look permanently happy. “Which one of you did I talk to this morning?” he asked.
“That was me,” Nancy said. “Thank you for seeing us. I’m Nancy Nickerson, and this is Ann Granger.”
“Delighted,” he said. “Thomas Tyler at your service.”
Nancy glanced around the neat, comfortable apartment. The top of a corner table was cluttered with framed photographs, probably of his family. She walked over to it and noticed a picture of-Jim Dayton!
What was his photo doing here? She decided she’d work in the question during the course of the conversation.
“Please,” Mr. Tyler said. “Have a seat.” He seemed determined to be the perfect host. Charming and witty, he had them laughing over cups of tea for half an hour before they got around to the subject they had come to discuss.
“Mr. Tyler,” Nancy said, beginning, “did you work for the Gold Star Cab Company?”
“I was their mechanic from the first day they hit the streets until a year and a half ago, when they kicked me out. Said I should retire, and saw that I did.”
“Brownley and Reston?”
“That’s right. First they brought in a new man-to help me, they said-a thug who didn’t know a brake shoe from a bedroom slipper. Then they cut back on my hours, but they still paid me for full-time. The new man didn’t do a thing, which took care of the rolling stock. Everything began to fall apart.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Ann said.
“No, it doesn’t. Then they closed off the lower level where I was doing the maintenance work.”
Nancy held up a hand. “The street level isn’t the lowest level?”
“No, indeed. There’s a basement. The entrance was at the back on the right. You just drove on down. They put a door in there to close it up, and then they locked it. It cut the amount of our parking spaces in half, because I then had to work on the street level.”
“Why did they do that?” Nancy asked.
“I still don’t know. They fired drivers who’d been with them for years and began taking on part-timers. Then they bought new cabs, but they never used them.”
“It sounds as if they wanted to lose money,” Ann said.
“Well, they didn’t, even though the old cabs began to fall apart. You know riding in a Gold Star cab has become hazardous to your health. I even told my grandson that before he started working there.”
“Your grandson? After all you went through, why would he want to work there?” Nancy asked, now knowing Jim’s connection to Mr. Tyler.
“All Jim would say was that good-paying temp jobs are hard to come by. I know it’s only going to be a few weeks, but I still wish he hadn’t taken it.”
Nancy thought that sounded familiar. Ned was in the same predicament, only he hadn’t found a job.
A sudden suspicion began to grow in Nancy’s mind. “Were you working for Gold Star when Mrs. Harvey was hurt?”
“No, that happened a couple of months after they put me but to pasture. But of course I heard about it. Crimson Oaks is like a small town. And I felt real bad about what happened to Vera. Haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since.”
“Why?” Ann asked.
“That cab’s brakes had failed twice before I left Gold Star. I warned Brownley that they needed work. But they didn’t do a thing, Ms. Granger. Not before I left, and not after, because I saw that cab on the street.”
“You did all you could,” Nancy said.
“No. I could have reported them. If I had, Vera Harvey wouldn’t be walking with a cane today.”
Now Nancy was sure her suspicion was right. “Mr. Tyler, you’re Ann Granger’s source, aren’t you?” she asked.
“What?” Ann asked.
Mr. Tyler turned pink. “Young lady, you’re too smart for your own good. But so am I. You’re that lawyer’s daughter, aren’t you? You were on the news. They said that you’re a detective.”
The reporter stood up. “You mean, she’s right?”
“She’s right. I’m sorry, Ms. Granger. It never occurred to me I’d get you and Mr. Drew in so much trouble. Believe me, I’d never have let them put you in jail. I’d have come forward. Still plan to. You just tell me when.”
Ann leaned over and shook his hand. “Mr. Tyler, it means a great deal to me to hear you say that, but I don’t want you to do it. There’s a principle involved here. I’m protected by the First Amendment, and I intend to stick by my guns.”
“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” he said.
Nancy noticed that Ann didn’t mention that the members of the grand jury weren’t the only people who wanted to know his name.
“As I said, I’m sorry about the trouble I caused,” Mr. Tyler went on. “I just couldn’t sit back and see anyone else hurt, so I called you.”
“But why the newspaper?”
“After Vera’s accident, I went to Brownley and Reston and told them if they didn’t do something about those cabs, I’d report them to the Hacks Bureau. I thought Reston would beat me up, he was so mad, but Brownley cooled him down. Said I was right and they’d take care of things.”
“But they didn’t,” Ann said.
“No, but I didn’t find out until recently. My daughter in New York City had been nagging me to go and live with her. Well, I tried it for almost a year, but that was enough. Too many people on that island. I moved back here and found the same old cabs in the same rotten condition. My grandson told me it’s a miracle one car lasts for an entire shift.”
“When did you move back here, Mr. Tyler?” Nancy asked.
“A couple of months back. I went to the Hacks Bureau, and they sent me over to Public Safety. I explained that I wanted to report Gold Star, and they sent me somewhere else. Took me awhile before I realized I was getting the runaround. Everybody seemed to be covering for Gold Star.”
Nancy thought back to the glowing reports she had gotten about Gold Star cabs from those very same offices, and wondered what she had stumbled onto.
“One thing about business today,” Mr. Tyler was saying, “they can’t operate without insurance. When nobody downtown would listen, I figured that if I told Mid-City about the rotten cabs, they’d either get rid of Gold Star or make them clean up their act, as the young folks say.”
“Only there was no Mid-City,” Nancy said, beginning to understand.
“Right. But I thought it out. Expose Mid-City, and Gold Star would have to get another insurance company. To get one, they’d have to fix up their cabs. So that’s the route I took.”
“So you called me again telling me to talk to Mrs. Harvey,” Ann said.
“Yes. I found out Brownley and Reston had paid Vera’s bills themselves. If they did that, it meant they’d gone to Mid-City earlier to take care of the bills and found out it was phony then and there. But they’ve paid everybody’s bills and have never said a word to anybody. They’re as crooked as the Mid-City guys.”
“So there have been other accidents?” Nancy asked to be certain.
“Minor ones, mainly with Crimson Oaks people. But Gold Star’s got to be put out of business. And I’d like to be there when it happens. I’d give anything to know what they’re doing in that basement.”
Nancy frowned. “I thought you said it was empty.”
“No, I said they closed it off,” Mr. Tyler corrected her. “Before I left shipments of sealed boxes started coming in. Brownley stashed them downstairs. And he signed for the delivery of a brand-new air compressor. The garage had needed one for months. But where’d it go? Down to the lower level, and that was the last I saw of it.”
“Interesting,” Nancy said.
“I just hope they don’t discover that Jim Dayton is my grandson. They’re crooks and they’re hurting people, Ms. Granger. I was trying to stop them, that’s all.”
“I know you were,” answered Ann, smiling at him. “And we’re grateful for your help. May we call you again if we have any more questions?”
“Sure thing.”
“He’s a nice man,” Ann said as they went back to the parking lot. “He had no idea what he was getting into.”
Nancy wondered what she had gotten into and what was on the lower level of that garage that she’d have to investigate.
“Nancy Nickerson” made even more money her second night on the job because she turned in her cab at twelve. To her surprise, another man was sitting in for Brownley. “He had some business,” the stranger told her.
Perfect, Nancy thought. She went back to her locker to get her other jacket before deciding what to do next. When she got there, she ran into Jim Dayton.
“Hi, remember me?” Nancy said.
“How could I forget?” he said, obviously happy to see her. “Just getting off?”
“Yes, how about you?”
“Yep. I worked late tonight, and boy, am I beat,” he said. “Don’t have to keep it up for much longer, though. Only two more weeks.”
“Well, I hope you make it,” Nancy said as she closed her locker door. And she meant it-in more ways than one. She wondered what would happen to him if the Gold Star management discovered that he was Tom Tyler’s grandson.
“Good night now,” she said.
“So long,” he said.
Nancy returned to her car to wait until she was sure the cabs on the midnight shift had all left.
She sat in the car for forty-five minutes. Then, rather than walk all the way around the block to Gold Star, she cut through the dark alley separating it from the car wash.
Back on the street she saw that the rollup door was down. The office was empty, and the inside parking area appeared to be dimly lit. The midnight shift had hit the streets.
As Nancy sneaked into the building, she heard voices in the back of the parking area. Brownley’s was one of them. The other brought goose pimples: Reston! She’d never forget his voice. Scurrying between two parked cabs, Nancy got as close to the two men as she could and peeked over the cars’ hoods. She could also see someone hiding in the shadows.
It was Jim Dayton!
Reston was opening the rear door of a cab whose engine was running. “A beautiful sight, isn’t it?” he said, pointing to something in the back. Nancy tried, but she couldn’t see inside the cab.
Brownley grinned. “I’m just glad you didn’t have any trouble. From here on, we’re in clover. Which reminds me, Chicago’s been holding a big shipment for us, waiting for us to clear up this mess. Okay if I tell them to send it?”
“Might as well. After Granger talks-and I promise, she will-our troubles will be over.”
Nancy smiled grimly. If they thought Ann would tell who her source was, they were in for a surprise.
“We can get back on schedule,” Reston was saying. “Open the door. The sooner I get downstairs, the better.”
Brownley removed a ring of keys from his belt as Reston got back into the cab. “What about the Drew kid?” the dispatcher asked.
“What about her? We don’t need to worry about her. She hasn’t found out anything yet, and she never will. We’re too smart for her.”
Nancy wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted.
“Call me when you’re ready to bring the cab up again,” Brownley said. “Oh, Mac may show up while you’re down there, but he always comes the back way.”
Nancy heard the jingle of keys, then watched as a section of the side wall at the rear slid open silently. A peculiar odor started wafting through the garage, but Nancy was too busy plotting her next step to identify it. There was a back way to the lower level! She had to find it!
She saw Jim slip outside, and as soon as the cab disappeared through the doorway, she made her move. Hurrying back outside and slipping around the side of the building, she cut through the alley again.
She patted the concrete wall as she moved toward the rear of the garage. The other door must be at the back. She took another step and walked smack into Jim Dayton.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“I could ask you the same thing.” Suddenly Nancy froze. There was someone directly behind her! Were they both going to be caught?