9The next morning was bright, clear and sunny. I woke up with a motorman’s glove in my mouth, drank two cups of coffee and went through the morning papers. I didn’t find any reference to Mr Arthur Gwynn Geiger in either of them. I was shaking the wrinkles out of my damp suit when the phone rang. It was Bernie Ohls, the D.A.’s chief investigator, who had given me the lead to General Sternwood.
‘Well, how’s the boy?’ he began. He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn’t owe too much money.
‘I’ve got a hangover,’ I said.
‘Tsk, tsk.’ He laughed absently and then his voice became a shade too casual, a cagey cop voice. ‘Seen General Sternwood yet?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Done anything for him?’
‘Too much rain,’ I answered, if that was an answer.
‘They seem to be a family things happen to. A b
