by Dan Marlowe
He drew a harsh breath and crossed the room in a lunge. He felt for a pulse and dropped the limp wrist hopelessly. There was no pulse. Ellen-he still couldn't believe it.
He fought his way back up to the surface; he couldn't seem to get off dead center mentally. He forced himself to lean forward and look more closely at Ellen's outthrust arm and hand; he avoided looking at her face. When he turned to Vic he didn't recognize his own voice. “What were you doing up here, Vic?”
Vic never even heard him. The stocky man had dropped down on a chair just inside the door and had retreated to a private world of his own. He was bent nearly double in the chair, with the lower half of his face cradled in his hands and the protruding eyes staring glassily.
Johnny stepped into the bathroom and turned on the cold water. He grabbed a towel from the rack, soaked it in the running water, wrung it out hard, folded it three times lengthwise and brought it out and handed it to Vic, who plunged his face into it. Johnny was already making the round trip to wet down another towel; by the third trip Vic was back on his feet and Johnny had a hand on his shoulder. “Why did you come up here, Vic?”
The waxen-faced man swallowed hard. A hand crept up and removed his glasses, absently stuffing them into the breast pocket of his jacket. He had trouble finding his voice; it seemed to come from a long distance. “I–I can't tell you.”
“What the hell do you mean you can't tell me!” Johnny rapped back at him. Without the glasses the deathly pale features looked more defenseless than before. He looked at the water marks from the wet towels on the shoulders of the black alpaca jacket, and he tried to keep his voice down. “Look, Vic; this is Johnny. I don't think you did it. I know you better than that. I know you didn't do it, but I also need to know a few other things. Why did you come up here?”
Vic stared at him dumbly.
Johnny fought for patience. “How much time you think we got, Vic? This is important. I've worked with you for seven years. Fifty times I've asked you to block out a room for me. This is the first time you ever came upstairs. Why?”
The stocky man's voice was a leaden monotone. “The p-police will say I did it.”
It brought Johnny up short. They would, too, if Vic didn't make any more sense than he had up to now. If they don't think you did it, he added silently to himself. He had to find out what Vic knew before the police got there, or he wasn't going to find out anything at all.
He pushed Vic back down into the chair again, and the spaniel eyes stared up at him. “Are you listening, Vic? Do you hear me?”
A nod, and again the hard swallowing movement of the throat.
“The police are going to ask you the same thing I did, Vic.” Johnny leaned over him. “What are you going to tell them?”
Silence. And then Vic's head came up, and a fleeting impression of an expression passed over the damp, ashen face. “I'll tell them-” He hesitated, and his voice strengthened a little with the necessity for conveying his thought. “I'll tell them I-had a date with her. Yes. Date with her… that's it.”
Johnny restrained a wild desire to laugh. “Date with her? You? For God's sake, Vic-”
But Vic had gone away again. With the head bowed the slack-lipped mumble was scarcely understandable. “-date with her.”
Johnny's nails bit into his palms. Time. No time. No time for this damned foolishness. Somewhere inside him a spring was winding down, tighter and tighter. He leaned forward again. “Vic!” He tried to put his own desperate sense of urgency into his voice. “You know they're gonna take you in if you tell them that?” He stared down at Vic's bowed head; he wasn't getting through. He aimed his hard voice down at the withdrawn man. “Do you know who she was, Vic?”
And Vic's head came up; again the voice was a little stronger. “Yes. Ellen Saxon.”
Johnny felt winded, suspended in space and time. How did Vic know Ellen Saxon? How had he known she was here in this room? How did- He shook his head. No time. No time at all. He tried to capitalize on the breakthrough. “Vic. Look at me. Did you know that Ellen Saxon had been married to me?”
The whites overran Vic's eyes. “Mar-ried?” The halting voice made two distinct syllables of the one word; before Johnny's eyes the bones of the round face seemed to dissolve, and the facial flesh slackened. The stocky man pitched sideways from his chair, and Johnny had to lunge hard to catch him before he hit the floor.
The jolting grab as his arms absorbed Vic's weight released Johnny from his own inertia. He lifted strongly, settling Vic back in the chair and propping him up. He glanced quickly around the room; he had a lot to do, and he wasn't thinking clearly.
He grabbed up his torn uniform jacket from the floor, the jacket he had thrown over Ellen's shoulders out in the street in that short time ago that now seemed like such a long time ago. He scooped up the wet towels, and looked for the kitten. He picked up the small white body from the floor where it was playing with the tassels on the bedspread and tucked it under his arm.
In the corridor a dozen strides took him to the door of 615, his own room. He opened it, dropped jacket, towels, and kitten inside, and closed and locked it. Back at the door of 629 he saw that Vic was again in the land of the living, and his voice was hard. “On your feet, Vic. Got to get out of here.”
In the doorway, with Vic already in the corridor, Johnny stopped and turned for a final searing look at the bed. Repressed emotion rioted within him, but he held it down. Savagely he closed the door from the outside and propelled Vic down the hall. Vic moved like an automaton, with Johnny's hand at his elbow.
They moved like a team off the elevator into the lobby, and Paul looked up from the registration desk. “You found him. I was beginning-” Paul broke off when he saw Johnny's face. His glance slid off to Vic, hesitated, and returned to Johnny.
“Got a bad one, Paul,” Johnny told him. He glanced around the deserted lobby. “Get Sally up here. We got work to do.”
Paul silently slithered down the narrow passageway behind the marbled counter and was back almost immediately with Sally. She looked from Johnny to Vic, and her thin features turned anxious.
“All right,” Johnny said abruptly. He tried to sort out his thoughts. “Listen close; I only got time to say this once. We have a dead woman up in 629. Her name is Ellen Saxon. She used to be-”
“Oh, Johnny, no!” Sally's shocked exclamation halted his staccato recital. “Ellen? Dead?”
“Murdered.” The word seemed to reverberate through the stillness of the lobby. “She used to be my wife,” he explained to Paul. No need to explain to Sally. Sally was the one person in the world who knew how Johnny Killain had felt about Ellen Saxon. “I put her in the room about an hour ago, unregistered. Vic found her there about fifteen minutes ago. Approximately.”
Sally's hand was at her throat. “Oh, Johnny-”
He continued harshly. “We're going to cut our losses a little before we call the police. We'll register her in, now. Gimme a blank, Paul.”
He took the registration card and handed it to Sally. “Need a woman's handwriting. Put down 'Ellen Saxon'.”
She wrote swiftly, and looked up at him. “Address?”
Johnny grunted. Address? That was a bad one. He didn't know. Where “Four Twelve Darby Court.” Johnny's eyes swiveled to Vic, who had said it. You couldn't tell from looking at that sodden, wrung-out face that Vic had said anything at all, Johnny reflected. Vic looked back at him, but it was a question if he saw him.
“Put it down,” Johnny told Sally. “I don't know if it's right or not. I don't know how he knows, if it is. I don't know why he went up there. There's too damn much I don't know. Put it down. Paul?”
“Yes, Johnny?”
“Get me the logbook. And your screwdriver.” He picked up the little screwdriver Paul laid down on the counter before he moved out from behind it and reached for the cord on the electric time clock. He pulled the plug, unfastened the two screws that held the metal cover in place on the clock, and slid it off. He turned to
Paul at his elbow with the chronological listing of roomings and room service in the logbook and opened it to the current page. He almost smiled. “First break we've had tonight. Only half a dozen entries on this page, and they're all on this shift. Paul, you get this page out of here completely, and be careful no one can tell a page has been removed. On the new page write back in again the entries that were in your handwriting, leaving spaces for me to do the same. Leave me one extra space at the right place for me to enter Ellen Saxon as roomed at two-forty-five a.m. Got it?”
“Got it.” Paul's tone was brisk; he was already slipping his knife from his pocket.
Johnny turned back to the time clock. With the speed born of practice he jiggered the dial with his screwdriver and set it back for a 2:38 a.m. punch, plugged the clock back in and punched the back of the card Sally had filled out. He handed it to her. “Fix up the room carbons for this rack and yours, huh?” He could hear her at the typewriter as he unplugged the time clock again, reset it correctly after a glance at his watch and tested it with a blank card. He nodded, tore up the card, slid the metal cover back on and screwed it down tightly. On a bet one time he had done the whole thing in four minutes.
Paul pushed the logbook over to him, and Johnny reached for his pen. He looked across the counter at Sally. “All set? Call the police, and put Paul through to them. Paul, you say I just called you from upstairs.”
Sally's features looked pinched. “What are you going to tell them?”
Johnny shrugged. “The truth, except this little corner we just cut here. I'd rather tell them I found her, but look at Vic. How long d'you think it would stand up once they started to talk to him?” He could see them looking at Vic, then quickly away. “The hell of it is they're a cinch to take him in.” He picked up his pen again and started to write, then paused as he looked up. “Paul, after you talk to the police call in a couple of the boys that live closest. Get 'em in here fast. We're gonna have the law kneelin' on our chests the balance of this shift, and we'll need a little extra help till the day crowd comes on.”
Sally moved down to the switchboard, and Paul again circled behind the counter and picked up his phone. Vic stood, motionless, and stared off into space. Johnny made the last entry in the logbook, closed it and returned it to the bell captain's desk. He ran back over the routine in his mind-that should do it. Ellen Saxon could now properly be accounted for so far as the hotel and the police were concerned, and he would not be held up by tedious executive office and police inquiries about a registry irregularity in his own effort to find the murderer of Ellen Saxon.
He drew a deep breath, and his hands clenched. He felt as though he had been running down a long, dark street. He looked down at his hands, and with an awkward movement forcibly relaxed their knotted rigidity. He turned away from the desk.
Paul was hanging up his phone as Johnny returned to him. “Okay?” Paul nodded silently. “Good. Keep an eye on the switchboard a few minutes, will you? I need to talk to Sally.”
He continued on down to the little gate. “Let's go upstairs a minute, Ma. You might have the answers to a coupla questions I need answered.”
She slipped off the headphone and stood up. He held the gate open for her and followed her across the lobby onto the service elevator. “Johnny-” she began tentatively, and he shook his head.
“Post mortems upstairs, Ma,” he said, and his mouth twisted at the unintentional double entendre. He shot the cab aloft in a silent rush.
CHAPTER 4
Johnny closed the door of his room behind them, and Sassy advanced from under the bed in a ludicrously stiff-legged prance, the small ears alertly cocked.
Sally stared. “Johnny! Where on earth-”
Johnny introduced them. “Sassy, this is Sally.” He sat down in his armchair as Sally knelt and reached out a hand and drew the kitten to her. Sassy eyed her carefully, but made no protest, and Johnny shook his head. “How the hell do you like that? She like to ate me, horns and all, the first time I went near her.”
“You're beautiful,” Sally crooned to the kitten, and Sassy's head bobbed in complaisant agreement as she busily rough-tongued Sally's bare forearm. “Did you say 'her'?”
“Yeah. She's my new bodyguard.”
“Where did you get her, Johnny?”
“Ellen.”
“Oh.” Reminded, Sally shivered. She put Sassy down and sat down on the arm of Johnny's chair. “I still can hardly-believe it. Why Ellen?”
“I've got some better 'whys' than that.” Johnny stared across the room morosely. “Why did Ellen come here at all? Why wouldn't she tell me why she was so scared? Why did Vic go up to that room? Why can't I get it through my thick skull how the murderer could find her in an unregistered room?” He crouched forward in the chair, feeling driven in his impotence, then snorted impatiently and sank back. “Fix me a drink, Ma. Somethin's got to start the wheels turnin'.”
“Do you think you should?” she asked doubtfully. “You've got to talk to the police, you know.” She rose resignedly, however, and went to the wall cabinet and took down a bottle of bourbon and two three-finger shot glasses. She made a little face and returned one of them. “Why you can't use a civilized glass like ordinary people instead of these ten gallon hats you have here-”
“A slight exaggeration, Ma,” he told her as she poured. “An' bring the bottle back here with you.”
He accepted the brimming shot glass from her and tossed it off in a long, hard swallow. He waited for the impact, shuddered, took the bourbon bottle from Sally's hand and splashed a thimbleful more into the glass and chased the first load down. He refilled the shot glass again, and set glass and bottle down on the table beside the chair.
Sally broke the little silence. Her voice was quiet, but there was a note of constraint in it. “I realize how this must have shaken you, Johnny.”
“Shaken me?” His lips drew back mirthlessly from his teeth. He picked up the refilled shot glass and gulped half its contents, then looked up at Sally on the arm of his chair. “You're the only one in the world who knew how I felt about that kid. I never blamed her for rackin' up on me when she did. I was a hard rock still livin' too close to those days overseas, an' she just couldn't understand. I hadn't seen her three times in the last five years, but it wasn't ever any different with me.”
He stared down moodily into the half empty glass, lifted it suddenly and drained it. His hand closed tightly around the solid-feeling thickness of the glass, and his voice hoarsened. “So tonight she's in some kind of trouble, and she comes to me. To me, mind you. And what do I do for her? I get her killed.” He bounded to his feet from the depths of the chair, furiously driven by the impotent anger bubbling in his veins, and his voice soared. “I'll tell you one thing. I'll find the guy that did it if I have to live to be a hundred and four. I'll get him. For sure I'll get him, and when I do I'll feed him to the crows a very small piece at a time. I'll get him, damn him-”
He whirled on the balls of his feet, and Sally gasped and smothered a scream as his arm rose and fell in a whiplash motion. The heavy shot glass exploded in a starburst of glass fragments in the center of the big dresser mirror, which vanished in a crystal spray. Johnny stood, half-crouched forward from the violence of his follow-through, his ears still filled with the soul-satisfying smash.
He straightened slowly; on the arm of the chair Sally was crying. He patted her head awkwardly, then walked over to the wall cabinet and removed the other shot glass. Back at the chair he poured himself another drink, the bourbon sloshing over the glass rim and running down his wrist and fingers.
“You'll be supposed to make s-sense when you talk to the police,” Sally said disapprovingly, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Make as much sense as usual.” The phone rang, and he reached for it. “Yeah?”
“They're on the way up, Johnny.”
“Thanks, Paul.” He replaced the phone, looked at Sally and tried not to see the tear-streaks. “The constabu
lary, Ma. You got to run.”
She scrubbed openly at her eyes with her hands, stood up and walked to the door. “Promise me you'll keep your temper, Johnny?”
“Yeah, yeah, Ma. Sure.” He closed the door behind her and looked around the room. He picked Sassy up and carried her into the bathroom; he put her down in the tub as she blinked her disapproval. He closed the bathroom door and returned to the chair and his refilled glass. He sat down again and waited.
Trailing fingers of blue smoke swirled and drifted about the walls of his room; he sat and tested in his mind the cumulative questions and answers of the past two hours. He was tired of questions and answers. He looked at the eddying haze in the room; he ought to stir himself and open a window, he supposed. He sat where he was.
He looked up sharply as his door opened and the smoke gusted violently; Detective Cuneo walked directly to the straight-backed chair in the room's center and sat down astraddle it, facing front-to-back. His folded arms rested upon the upper back rest, and his chin rested upon his arms.
After two hours Johnny felt that he knew this man rather well. A quick, incisive man; a lean six-footer with a hatchet face and large-pupilled eyes. The mouth was snug and the lips thin; the jawline slanted to a sharp chin. Detective Cuneo entering a room looked like a detective entering a room.
“About Barnes-” the man in the chair said abruptly, and Johnny looked at him. “We're taking him in. He doesn't talk here maybe he'll talk over there.”
“He didn't do it,” Johnny said.
“I didn't say he did,” Cuneo replied sharply. “I do say that he's not telling us what he knows. When he does-” He broke off as the door opened again, and he twisted to look at the slender, sandy-haired man who entered the room and closed the door again. “Hi, Jimmy. How'd you make out?”
“Tell you later.” The slender man nodded to Johnny in his chair. “'To, Johnny. Long time.”
Johnny nodded in turn, and Cuneo looked from his partner to Johnny and back again. He couldn't keep the surprise from his voice. “You know this guy?”
