I Want Out. Tedd Thomey

said, “or I’ll drop over to the squad room and tell the boys how Inspector Lowney tried to ravish a redhead at the 222 Club.”

      His face turned the color of a tomato can label. He was too drunk that night to remember what happened, but actually his conduct had been quite innocent. He had stumbled while rising from his table and his hand struck the back of the scantily-clad girl seated at the next table. She was one of the club strippers and it certainly wasn’t his fault that she had a trick fastener at the back of her strapless bra. The bra popped off like a flapping dove, revealing her in all her rosy-tipped glory. And Inspector Lowney had promptly passed out.

      “Damn you,” he said.

      He stormed out of the office, slammed the door and locked it.

      He didn’t have to do it, but it was his way of getting back at me.

      A minute passed. Another.

      Then another minute passed. I jumped up and tried both doors. Both were locked. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think.

      I stumbled to the window and tried to open it, but it was stuck.

      I picked up the chair, swung it twice and smashed out the upper and lower panes.

      I sat down on the chair in front of the window and let the breeze blow on me.

      Both doors flew open simultaneously.

      Inspector Lowney dashed in through one and the two detectives piled in through the other from the interrogation room.

      They stared at the snaggle-toothed fragments of glass remaining in the window and they also stared at me.

      “You idiot!” Lowney roared. “What’d you do that for?”

      I tilted the chair back. I almost felt fine.

      “You ought to know better than lock me up,” I grinned. “I go stir crazy.”

      “Why you—!” Lowney was so mad he couldn’t talk. “I’ll—”

      “Ah, ah, ah!” I reminded him cheerfully. “Or should I say bra, bra, bra?”

      He remembered. He spun on his heel and glowered at the other two Johns.

      “Don’t stand there like a couple of apes,” he said. “Beat it!”

      They performed orderly about-faces and marched back into the interrogation room.

      Lowney flung a large Manila envelope on the desk.

      “Here’s his stuff,” he said. “Look at it and then leave me in peace!”

      Opening the envelope, I dumped Felix Pia’s effects out onto the desk. It was the usual miscellany of a man’s pockets —sixty-five cents in change, a ring of keys, a pencil stub, a newspaper recipe for Lobster Cantonese, a tan leather billfold, a handkerchief, a business card, a comb with several long oily hairs caught in the plastic teeth, and a second newspaper clipping telling the arrival date of the S. S. Caledonia from Quezon City.

      “Okay,” Lowney said. “You’ve seen it all.”

      He started putting the objects back in the envelope.

      “Hold it,” I said. “I’m not through.”

      I pushed his hand aside and picked up the business card, noticing as I did so that it had fallen atop a green-corroded key which was not connected to the main ring. I glanced at the card face and saw the words: CHARLES HORONDO, Business Opportunities Broker. Flipping the card over, I saw the letter “S” in feminine script on the back and below it a phone number.

      I performed two manipulations. One was mental: I memorized the phone number.

      The second was physical. I stuck the card under Lowney’s pointed nose and asked: “Ever hear of this guy?”

      And at the same time my other hand palmed the key off the desk.

      “Never heard of him,” Lowney said.

      He snatched the card from my fingers and shoved it and the rest of the objects into the envelope. Then he seized my shoulder and propelled me through the door.

      “And stay out!” he said.

      I didn’t mind the bum’s rush. Somehow I felt I had the most important thing—the key.