“It was poison, was it?” I asked.
“The medic hazards a guess at potassium cyanide, though he can’t say for sure until after an autopsy. He thinks he got a faint whiff of bitter almonds, though rum and Coke is a pretty good cover for the smell. The taste too, for that matter. The symptoms are hard to tell from an ordinary heart attack: instant death, cyanosis. If we hadn’t rolled in looking for murder, it probably would have passed as a heart attack.” He scratched his long nose and burst out irritably, “The stuff is too easy to buy. Farmers use tons of it to kill pests. Sign your name and you can get enough in any drugstore to kill a regiment.
Sign a fake name, and unless the druggist recalls your description, you’re a successful murderer. Half my men will be tied up the next week checking drugstores.”
Fausta’s narrow escape had not increased my present regard for the inspector. I said without sympathy, “For a week they’ll be earning their salaries anyway.”
Day glared at me.
“What’s the bartender say?” I asked. “Maybe he remembers who ordered Fausta’s rum Coke.”
It developed Day had not yet questioned the bartender. Or anyone else either. He had been in the place only about twenty minutes before I arrived, and only a minute or two before I walked in had gotten the medical examiner’s opinion that it might be a cyanide death.
He called Hannegan over from the other side of the room and told him to bring over the bartender.
The barkeep was a sad-faced man in his late fifties who had looked across the bar at so much human idiocy during his lifetime, nothing could upset him very much, including murder. He had no idea who had ordered the rum and Coke. Vaguely he recalled mixing one a short time before the waiter’s death, but being alone behind the bar, and with over a dozen customers plus two waiters to take care of, he could not remember to whom he gave it.
“I never look at their faces anyway unless they make conversation,” he said sadly. “I think it was one of the customers instead of a waiter, but I’m not even sure of that.”
The dead waiter’s name was Harold Rosenthal, he was forty-four years old and a bachelor, the bartender informed us. As far as he knew, the man had no living relatives.
The surviving waiter knew even less. In fact he knew nothing at all.
Nor did any of the approximately one dozen remaining customers who had not been smart enough to scoot off before the police arrived. No one at all recalled even seeing the bartender mix a rum and Coke, let alone remembering who had received it.
The head waiter was a little help. The phone call from “Mr. Moon” had come to the bar phone, and he had taken it. The voice had not impressed him as particularly distinctive, either high or low, soft or harsh, but he felt he could identify it if he heard it again. Why he felt he could, he did not say, and the inspector did not press him. My own opinion was it gave him a feeling of importance to be a witness, and he could no more identify the voice if he heard it again than he could do a hula on a tightrope.
I suggested to Day that since the murderer had appeared on the scene almost immediately after the phone call, he had probably called from one of the pay phones in the lobby of the hotel. He agreed with me, but this put us no closer to a solution.
On the basis of what confused information was available, we came to the conclusion the killer had probably watched the lounge from the lobby entrance, and as soon as he saw Fausta seat herself, had approached the bar and ordered the rum Coke as though intending to drink it himself. Then he must have slipped in the cyanide, handed the glass to the waiter and told him it was for Fausta with the compliments of Mr. Moon. By the time the drink was delivered, he could have disappeared again through the lobby entrance.
“The invisible man!” the inspector grated disgustedly. “Commits a murder in front of thirty people and nobody even sees him!”
“We know one thing about him anyway,” I offered.
He stared at me. “What?”
“He was well enough acquainted with Fausta to know her favorite drink is rum and Coke, but not well enough to know she never drinks in the morning.”
Day’s expression turned disgusted. “That narrows it down to the fifty thousand people who have stopped at El Patio sometime or other and may have seen her order a drink at the bar.”
“I was thinking of Barney Seldon,” I said. “The only time he ever sees her is in the evening.”
Fausta said, “Barney Seldon is a love in my life. He would not hurt a hair of my head.”
“He’d rub you out without batting an eye if he thought you were a witness against him,” I said brutally. “Get it in your head your pretty boy friend is a hood.”
“A jerk too,” Mouldy offered brightly. “Hey, Fausta?”
Fausta did not even look at him.
“There must have been some reason the Sheridan was picked,” I said thoughtfully. “The killer would want to make the meeting place somewhere plausible so that Fausta wouldn’t question it, and she might have if a bar had been picked neither of us ever went to. We know the killer was here last night when we were, because he killed Knight. Possibly he saw us then, and assumed it was a regular hangout of ours.”
“Your friend Isobel Jones was here last night,” Fausta put in. “Also she sat next to me at the bar and saw I drank rum and Coke.”
I looked at her. “This was a man. Isobel could hardly pass herself off as somebody named Mr. Moon. Anyway, she’s in jail.”
“Maybe she has an accomplice.”
“If she has, she couldn’t have passed along the information that you like rum Coke,” I said. “She’s been in jail ever since last night.”
“Go ahead,” Fausta said unreasonably. “Defend her just because you have the mistaken idea she is beautiful.”
I changed the subject by telling Warren Day about the blue sedan and my heavy-set, flat-faced abductor.
“So that’s where you were,” he commented. “Riding in the park while I rushed to the rescue of your girl friend.”
I forbore reminding him Fausta’s drinking habits had saved her, and not the inspector’s rushing, as he would have been about ten minutes late had she accepted the drink. “I don’t pretend to understand it,” I said. “But the news about Fausta being in a killer’s trap changed the guy’s mind about me entirely. All of a sudden he just seemed to lose interest and took off for the Sheridan.”
“Nobody with a flat face turned up here,” the inspector said. He looked at Mouldy Greene. “Nobody I didn’t know, anyway.”
Fausta said, “I do not know anyone of that description.”
“Me neither,” Mouldy injected. “A guy as ugly as you describe, you’d be bound to remember him.”
Beyond taking down the names of the remaining customers and questioning hotel employees in the lobby in an effort to discover if anyone had noticed a man hanging around the entrance to the cocktail lounge — which none did — there was nothing more Day could do at the moment. I went off with Fausta and Mouldy, leaving the inspector staring dourly at the sheet-covered corpse.
It was not until we were nearly to my Plymouth that I remembered my parking ticket. Mouldy held open the car door for Fausta, but instead of climbing in the driver’s side, I slipped the ticket from under the windshield wiper, said I would be right back and returned to the Sheridan Lounge.
Thrusting the pink card at Warren Day, I said, “I got this when my gun-happy abductor forced me over to the curb into a loading zone.”
Day regarded it without interest. “I’m not in the Traffic Division, Moon.”
“I was on Homicide business at the time.”
“Not officially, you weren’t. It’s not my responsibility if you go tearing after killers on your own.”
“All right,” I said, withdrawing the ticket. “But I’m not going in to pay the fine. I’ll go to police court and explain right out loud why I parked in the zone. Because I was in a hurry to prevent Inspector Warren Day’s killer trap from snapping on the wrong person. The
papers love little human-interest stories like that.”
He was so tired from being up all night, he didn’t even bother to scowl at me. “Give me the damn thing,” he said wearily.
Even though my car was parked across the side street edging the hotel, a full quarter block from the lounge entrance, the moment I stepped out on the sidewalk I spotted another pink ticket under the windshield wiper. My hat nearly rose off my head in rage, and I literally ran to the loading zone.
It was not until I had reached across the hood and jerked loose the pink slip that I realized it was paper instead of cardboard. Examining it, I discovered it was not a parking ticket at all; it was only an out-of-date bus transfer.
I glanced through the windshield at Fausta and Mouldy. Fausta’s face was perfectly expressionless, but Mouldy was slapping his leg in a convulsion of glee.
16
I did not run Fausta and Mouldy back to El Patio immediately. It was noon when we got away from the Sheridan, and the three of us stopped for lunch at a Johnson’s restaurant a few blocks beyond the Sheridan.
During lunch I firmly instructed Fausta concerning her immediate future.
“You’re not playing hostess at El Patio until this killer is laid by the heels,” I told her. “Wandering around among two hundred diners every night, any one of which might be the killer, would be sticking your head on the block. You’ve got two choices. You may go to jail for protection, or have me move in as a bodyguard.”
“Move in?” she asked interestedly. “In my apartment?”
“Strictly as a business arrangement. The day bed in your front room will suit fine. But I want you to understand ahead of time, it’s going to be up to you to arrange your life to suit mine. I’m on this case and I can’t drop it in order to follow you around. You’re going to have to follow me. Every day, all day long, until I tuck you in at night. You’ll have to forget managing El Patio.”
“I can run the joint,” Mouldy said.
Fausta looked at him. “It will run itself for a few days,” she said firmly. “You just stick to your regular job.”
“Then you agree to those terms?” I asked.
“It will be interesting to have you around twenty-four hours a day like an unemployed husband. Maybe I will become bored with you and begin to appreciate Barney Seldon more.”
After lunch I drove over to my apartment, packed a weekend bag and strapped my P-38 under my arm.
Then the three of us rode out to El Patio and I moved into my new home.
As soon as we arrived Fausta had to make a tour of the place to inform her various employees they would be on their own for the immediate future. Mouldy took over my job of bodyguarding to conduct her on the tour while I unpacked my small bag, found some sheets in Fausta’s linen cabinet and made up the day bed in the front room.
I had just finished when Fausta came in alone. She looked at the made-up day bed in surprise.
“This is not going to be very comfortable,” she said, poking at it tentatively.
“It’ll do. I probably won’t spend much time in it anyway.”
“No?” she asked, elevating her brows. “Work to do,” I explained. “Can’t spend all my time in bed.”
She frowned at me. “You are an exasperating person, Manny Moon. With any man but you in the front room, I would move a chaperone into my bedroom. But with you I know I am safe.”
Walking into her own room, she slammed the door. Almost immediately it opened again and she said distinctly, “I would not let you in my bedroom if you begged on hands and knees, but you do not have to make a girl feel so Goddamned safe!”
The door slammed again. It was the first time I had ever heard Fausta swear.
I waited a few minutes, then knocked on the door. When nothing happened, I opened it and peered in. Fausta was seated on the bed smoking a cigarette.
“The following starts now,” I said. “I’m off to headquarters, so stop sulking and come along.”
“I do not think I want to follow you around.”
“You don’t have any choice,” I told her. “Either follow willingly, or I’ll haul you down and have Day slap you in protective custody as a material witness.”
Her eyes glittered at me, but she made no move.
Walking over to the bed, I took the cigarette from her hand, crushed it out on a bed-stand ashtray and jerked her to her feet. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I slammed her against my chest and kissed her.
One sharp-toed pump kicked against my good leg. Momentarily she writhed like a snake and tried to turn her head away, then suddenly wound her arms about my neck and started to choke me to death. All at once instead of kissing her, I found myself simply hanging on while she kissed me. Just as steam began to issue from my ears, she jerked free, stepped back a pace and regarded me with her head cocked to one side.
I reached for her again, she side-stepped with a mocking smile and calmly walked into the front room. In the glass over the mantel she repaired her lipstick while I watched broodingly. I realized my reaching for her after she had jerked away had been a mistake, for all she had wanted was a show of interest on my part so that she could repulse it. I had reacted exactly as she wanted, and for the rest of the day she would probably treat me with standoffish skittishness, as though I were a wolf whose passes she must constantly guard against. I contemplated the prospect dubiously, recognizing she had neatly managed to reverse our usual roles.
Wiping the lipstick from my mouth with a handkerchief, I growled at her, “If the temperament fit is over, let’s go.”
At Police Headquarters we were informed both Warren Day and Lieutenant Hannegan were taking naps in the infirmary and had left instructions for no one to rouse them until four. Since it was only two P.M.. when we arrived, I told the desk we would not wait.
As an afterthought I inquired about Isobel Jones and learned she had been released on bond as a material witness only an hour before.
“Let’s visit the lady’s husband,” I said to Fausta. “Probably I can get the same information from him I wanted from the inspector anyway.”
In the outer office of the Jones and Knight Investment Company we found the secretary-bookkeeper Matilda Graves poring over a huge ledger. As nearly as I could tell the ledger contained nothing but columns of figures, but they must have been sad figures, for she furtively dabbed at her eyes with a piece of Kleenex when we entered, and her face was flushed from weeping. Surely Knight’s death had not brought on her grief, I thought, for during our previous conversations I had gotten the distinct impression she not only did not care much for the shaggy-haired partner, but was actually afraid of him.
Later, during our conversation with her remaining employer, we learned Matilda’s tears were solely for herself, and stemmed from Jones’s discovery that she had been doing a sloppy job of bookkeeping.
When she spoke to Harlan Jones over the intercom, she announced only that I was there, so Fausta entering his private office with me was a surprise to him. We found him feverishly comparing a pile of bank statements with what seemed to be a stack of duplicate deposit slips. He did not seem particularly glad to see me, but his eyes lighted with almost breathless interest when they touched Fausta.
“Miss Fausta Moreni,” I said. “This is Mr. Jones, Fausta.”
Jones’s round body popped out of its chair like a bounced rubber ball. His face fixed in an almost groveling smile, he told Fausta he was delighted to meet her and quickly rounded the desk to hold a chair for her. He let me find my own chair.
When he had fussily reseated himself, he continued to gaze at Fausta as though fascinated. It was a common reaction for men to pant slightly the first time they saw Fausta, but Jones seemed to be overdoing it. I glanced at her to check if our momentary struggle at her apartment had loosened some strap and allowed more of her to show than she intended, but she was as fully dressed as is customary for women to dress during the summer in our part of the country. That is not very fully, but Fausta’s lightweight sl
eeveless dress exposed nothing more interesting than her smooth shoulders and equally smooth neck.
I finally deduced Harlan Jones was not upset so much by Fausta as just plain upset. The emotion he was exhibiting was not passion, but ordinary nervousness, and I guessed that our appearance had nothing to do with it. He had been jittering like a monkey on a string before we ever entered the office, I decided, and since he was poring over bank statements when we arrived, I guessed it was these which had raised his blood pressure.
I said, “I understand Mrs. Jones was released finally, Mr. Jones.”
“Yes,” he said, wrenching his nervous gaze from Fausta long enough to look at me. “I just spoke to her on the phone. She plans to take a shower and then nap until she recovers from the ordeal.”
The ordeal had been two-sided, I thought. She had accounted for herself pretty well inasmuch as she had Homicide’s two top men laid out on their backs.
“What I really dropped in about was the bank-deposit slip found in Willard Knight’s pocket,” I said. “Inspector Day told me you went to the bank this morning to check on it. Find out anything?”
“I’m still finding things out,” he said, gesturing toward the pile of bank statements and deposit slips on his desk. “It’s a rather appalling discovery to make about a dead partner, but it seems Knight has been juggling the basic company account for some time.”
“Finding shortages?”
He shook his head. “Fortunately no. At least as nearly as I can make out from a quick check, and I don’t believe that an audit will disclose any shortage either. But had it not been for the deposit Knight made only yesterday afternoon just a few hours before he died, the firm would be seventy thousand short. And that would have meant bankruptcy.” Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped the back of his neck and shivered again over the narrow escape.
“The seventy thousand belonged to the firm, did it?” I asked. “And Knight replaced it on the q.t.?”
“Worse than that. It was a client’s money in our custody. Apparently Knight had been using funds intrusted to us for his own personal speculations for nearly a year. Frequently instead of depositing a check received from a client, he would use the money for market speculation first, then deposit it after he had made use of it. Apparently he was consistently lucky, or at least not unlucky, for while I am sure he never made any very substantial profits, he never seems to have lost his illegally borrowed capital either. At least the records indicate he always managed to deposit what he had withheld before the last day of the month, so that the bank statement always showed the proper balance.”
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