by Dan Marlowe
“You may think you know what you're doing,” Johnny pointed out as he rose to his feet, “but on the street where I live you'd be classified in a hurry. Fruitcake. Grade A.”
“If there's a medal goes with it I may apply later.”
“You could be forgetting one important item,” he suggested. “For my money, somebody killed Sanders, then followed Ellen across town and killed her. You were with Ellen, for a few minutes anyway. If the killer saw you too, where does that leave you?”
Lorraine Barnes drew on her gloves with a snap. “Next in line, you mean? I would very much like to see him try to kill me.”
Could that be because you know who he is? Johnny thought to himself. And have your own reasons for not naming him? Or because you're the killer and so have nothing to fear?
He stepped forward silently and picked up Vic's bag. Anyone who could follow the twists and turns in this woman could solve a couple of murders in his spare time. He followed Lorraine Barnes to the door.
The searing midday heat on the street drove Johnny along the steaming sidewalk on his way back to the hotel. The combination of no sleep, summer sun and a grueling three-hour session downtown had left him frayed. He would welcome the air-conditioned lobby.
He had lost his temper, of course. He always did. They had come at him in relays, pulling and hauling, reworking the same tired ground. In the final hour he had taken himself to his surest refuge-animal silence. They had tired of it, finally, and turned him out after he had signed his formal statement.
Lorraine Barnes was still being questioned, but Johnny felt few qualms about her. There was a woman for you. She had politely but firmly chased the lawyer Mike Larsen had sent — Mike had inexplicably not shown-and Johnny had waited beside her phone booth while she called her own lawyer and calmly instructed him that if he had not heard from her by three o'clock that he was to do whatever was necessary to release her.
He shook his head as he turned into the hotel foyer from the sizzling sidewalk. On the record today, Lorraine Barnes had more backbone and know-how than the average National Guard unit. Women-try to figure them, and lose your mind.
He could see Gus Poulles through the glass doors which separated the foyer from the lobby. Gus was Johnny's counterpart on the morning shift, the day bell captain, a pale, black-haired Greek with sunken, worldly eyes. Johnny emerged into the lobby's chill breath and walked to the desk; he and Gus had little need for extended conversation. They understood each other. Gus was a realist; he drifted through the hotel day after day fatalistically absorbing man's frailties.
The dark eyes inspected Johnny. “Bad?”
“Not good. They're still holding him.” Johnny frowned. “They act a little frantic down there. I don't get it. It can't be all that complicated, not when you can lean all over people the way they can. They seem-”
Gus held up a hand as his phone rang. “Bell captain, good morning.” He listened and looked at Johnny sardonically as the fingers of his free hand delicately pinched his nostrils. “No, sir. Not since I've been on.” He bowed to the phone, the mobile features twisted into a caricature of a sweet smile. “I'll check, Mr. Russo.” He covered the mouthpiece and called over his shoulder to the checkroom behind him. “Angelo! Anyone leave a white kitten here for Russo this morning?”
The short hairs on the back of Johnny's neck lifted; how many white kittens figured to be around this place?
“-sorry,” Gus was saying. “If it comes in I'll call you.”
“Russo,” Johnny said thoughtfully as Gus hung up. “Ed Russo. Edmund Russo, Esquire. Public stenographer's office on the mezzanine. A wheel. A big, round wheel. He wanted information from me about a guest once; surprised as hell when he didn't get it. A roughrider. Wears his spurs twenty-four hours a day.”
Gus nodded, dark eyes amused. “Chapter and verse.”
“Yeah.” Johnny straightened. “A self-appointed hard guy. And now he's interested in white kittens? Somehow I don't think he's the type. Not the type at all. I think I'll go see.”
“Hey-” Gus's voice trailed off behind Johnny, already moving in the direction of the stairs. Russo's query could be a coincidence, and again it might not. Johnny climbed the stairs; in motion he felt loose and easy, freed from the burden of doubt and self-blame he had felt since the first moment he had seen Ellen's body.
The shade on the door of the public stenographer's office was still drawn securely, as it had been earlier that morning. Johnny didn't bother to knock when the doorknob responded to his inquiring rotation; the tiny outer office was dark as he entered. The chair usually occupied by the vividly blonde Miss Mavis Delaroche had been pushed neatly beneath her kneehole desk. A voice cleared itself and addressed Johnny raggedly from the interior. “Sorry. We're closed.”
Johnny walked over to the door which led to the larger back office; Ed Russo sat behind his own desk, the top of which was furnished solely with a bottle and glass, each half empty. He looked up impatiently as Johnny's shadow fell across his desk. “Sorry.” He took another look and obviously disapproved of what he saw. “Oh. Outside, Killain. I'm busy.”
“You look busy.” Johnny estimated him; Edmund Russo was a slim, usually polished individual right now in need of a little refurbishing. The narrow face needed a shave, the suit was rumpled, the tie loosened, the collar wilted, the eyes bloodshot.
Russo half rose in his chair at Johnny's steady regard. “Get out of here, will you? We're closed. Come on-blow.”
Johnny sat down leisurely in a chair opposite him, and Russo's knuckles whitened as he leaned forward over his desk. “You hear me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Get out!”
“This a public stenographer's office?” Johnny inquired mildly. “I want to send a letter.”
“You never sent a letter in your damn life. I already told you we're closed. Do you see Mavis out there? Now rack it up and drag.”
Johnny settled more solidly in his chair. “This letter is about a white kitten.”
Russo stared; he sat down slowly. “What do you know about-” He chopped off whatever he had been about to say and reached blindly for his glass. He swallowed lengthily and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He glared at Johnny, and his voice was stronger. “Beat it. Right now. Or I call the manager's office, wise guy.”
“Let's take it a little slower, Russo.” Johnny's voice hardened. “When I roomed Ellen Saxon last night she had a white kitten for you. Did you go upstairs to get it?”
The slim man slumped in his chair; the bloodshot eyes stared at Johnny. Then he seemed to re-cock himself joint by joint as reaction came to him. “Wise guy!” he sputtered again as he surged erect; his hand closed on the neck of the whisky bottle, and in one blurred, sweeping movement he fired it at Johnny's head. Johnny's instinctive move to the side got his head out of line, but not his shoulder; the bottle hit him heavily, bounced off and smashed on the parqueted floor.
Ed Russo had continued on around his desk in a stumbling run; Johnny was still only two-thirds of the way upright after the impact of the bottle when the flailing hands were pounding at his face. For an instant he absorbed the tattoo, then impatiently locked his hands together under Russo's chest and shoved. The man staggered back, and Johnny straightened up and moved away from the chair that hampered him. When Russo regained his balance and charged again, head down, Johnny sighted down the angle and put his shoulder behind the hard right-hand smash that caught the incoming jawline and blasted it floorward in a careening arc. Ed Russo slid on past into the corner and stayed there, and Johnny experimentally fingered a tingling spot on his own cheekbone.
He flexed his right hand and looked down at Russo and at the puddle of whisky and glass fragments on the floor. “Quite a reaction,” Johnny told the unconscious man aloud.
“I'd have to say you act like a man with something on his mind.”
He walked around behind Russo's desk and, after considering a moment, jerked open the center drawer. He didn't know what he expected to find,
but he blinked down at the newspaper folded to the black headline proclaiming the death of Robert Sanders.
He stood, looked at the far wall and silently slid the drawer shut. Robert Sanders. Ellen Saxon. Edmund Russo. Now what kind of a round robin was that? He groped around in his mind for a hook, a possible connection. He sighed, finally; he needed to do some thinking.
He left the office without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 6
Walter Stewart straightened in his swivel chair at the sound of the tap-tap of high heels approaching the partly opened door of his office; his blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands rapidly shuffled the cardboard folders on his desk. He was a slender man in an untidy-looking, expensively cut dark suit; he had a lean, aggressive face, and his graying hair thinned out on top to a noticeable bald spot. He glanced up at the open door with studied casualness as Florence Richardson entered.
“You're staying on this evening, Mr. Stewart?”
Her voice was low-keyed-like her personality, he thought. And her appearance. Attractive enough, with the fresh, clear complexion contrasted with the prematurely gray hair, but the severely tailored suit and the glasses militated against the masculine head-turn in a crowd, the hallmark of the man's woman.
“A few moments only, Miss Richardson.” He nodded down at the opened folders in front of him. “I have a late dinner engagement, and I thought I might use the time profitably to update one or two of these programs.”
“If there's anything I can do-”
“Nothing, thanks. I'm just noodling, actually.”
“Well, if you're sure… you'll get the safe?”
“I won't forget. I'll take care of it.”
“I'll put the night latch on the outer door as I leave. Good night, Mr. Stewart.”
“Good night, Miss Richardson.” He sat and listened again to the tap-tap of her heels, diminishing now, and then the slight sound of the door. Capable girl-damn capable. He was lucky to have her. Kept the office running like a watch, and no fuss and feathers about it, either.
He pushed a folder absently along the side of his desk with a stiffened forefinger and leaned back lazily in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. He stared for a moment at the far wall with its framed certificates, an idle toe tapping idly on the inner well of the desk. He unclasped his hands and stood up restlessly, shoving the hands deeply into his pockets.
He wandered out into the outer office, from whose floor space his own partitioned-off, glassed-in privacy had been carved. It was quiet now in the office after the daylong tac-tac-tac of the machines. Approvingly he noted the neat, clean desk tops; he insisted upon a clean desk at quitting time. A six-girl office, Stewart, he reminded himself; do you remember when you used to wonder if you'd ever have a one-girl office? Or a place of your own at all? And not so long ago, either.
He glanced at the gold lettering on the heavily frosted glass of the outer door; it always reassured him to see it there. He was reading it backward from where he stood, of course, but then he really didn't need to read it at all. He'd carried those letters of gold in his heart for ten years before he ever got them up on glass. Walter Stewart, Insurance Broker. And directly beneath in smaller block print, we sell service. Neat, but not gaudy. Conservative insurance service for conservative clients. Too bad you couldn't put that up on the door, too.
He rested an elbow on a chest-high, olive green filing cabinet, and as an afterthought tested the top drawer. Locked, as it should be. Miss Richardson checked them personally each evening before she left; he'd never found her to be careless. Away from the office as much as he was, it was a relief not to have to be eternally concerned with the grinding function of the hour-by-hour small emergencies of office routine. Miss Richardson handled it all. He himself had no patience for such details; he begrudged the time spent in such fashion as a distraction from a broker's true metier. He Three sharp raps on the glass aroused him; he crossed to the gold-lettered door, opened it and stood aside. “Come in.”
A big man entered; he was dressed flamboyantly in a vividly checked sport coat and light-colored slacks. He wore an expensive panama with a too-wide brim, and he had a livid scar that slightly pulled down a corner of the heavy mouth. The face was a scarred full moon.
Walter Stewart led the way directly back to the inner office, and pulled the guest chair up beside his desk. The big man seated himself and removed a small notebook from an inside breast pocket which he passed across the desk to Walter Stewart, who thumbed casually through its closely written contents, then nodded. He opened the center drawer of his desk and took out a sealed white envelope; he leaned forward slightly to hand it to the big man, who slit the flap with a thumbnail, removed the small sheaf of bills, flipped them between thumb and forefinger as casually as Walter Stewart had thumbed the notebook, restored the bills to the envelope and the envelope to the inside breast pocket.
Not a word had been spoken during the almost ritualistic transfer, but as the big man made a movement to rise Walter Stewart raised a hand.
“One moment,” he said. His eyes followed the movement of his hands on the desk top as they faced two folders together on the blotter. He kept his eyes on the folders as he continued. “I find that I shan't need the service any longer.” He forced himself to look across the desk.
“Sorry to hear it, Mr. Stewart.” There was no change, of expression on the heavy features; in the quiet office the voice was a rolling bass, ruggedly deep. “We're a little bit proud of our service. Is it something specific?”
“Not at all,” Walter Stewart said. He said it hastily. “It's the fact rather that circumstances have changed-” He paused; he didn't like the sound of the phrase. He tried again. “There eventually comes a time when it becomes necessary to reassess a given situation.”
“In other words, you feel you've outgrown us, Mr. Stewart.”
Walter Stewart restrained the impulsive reply on the tip of his tongue. He felt warmth invading his features, but he made himself speak calmly. “Such a statement implies ingratitude on my part. I neither feel nor wish to be made to feel ungrateful.”
“Look at it from our point of view.” The heavy voice rolled over Walter Stewart as the big man leaned back in his chair and ran his eye appraisingly from the comfortably furnished office in which they sat on out to the spacious exterior. “I've been making these little visits to you for about four years now, Mr. Stewart. Not always to this address; three different addresses, I believe. Each in turn a little more substantial, a little more fashionable. You've prospered; you've moved on and up. Do you remember the first address, Mr. Stewart?”
Walter Stewart did remember; he sat, silent. The big man waved a negligent hand about him. “I personally much prefer this address, and the circumstances it represents. I think you do, too. My associates and I like to feel that our service was of some material help to you in attaining the address and circumstances. You know the expense involved in maintaining our service; it is an expense which we can support only by a firm, equitable arrangement with our clients. You follow me, Mr. Stewart?”
Walter Stewart circled dry lips with his tongue. “I have always felt our arrangement to be equitable.”
“Exactly,” the heavy voice said, and waited. Walter Stewart sought for words. He was clever with words, but he could find none at the moment to avoid the direct question he had previously side-stepped. Despite himself his voice sharpened. “Do you take the attitude then that this arrangement is permanent?”
“A matter of terminology. I myself prefer the word 'Irrevocable'.”
“I refuse to concede-” Walter Stewart broke off suddenly. His blunt fingers drummed rapidly on the desk top. He looked up in sudden alarm as the big man rose, but there was a smile on the moon face. Or it could have been a smile except for the scar.
“You'll excuse me, I'm sure, Mr. Stewart. I have another appointment. I'd like to leave you with this thought. My associates and I dislike sounding arbitrary, but we feel that over the years
our relationship has developed into something mutually profitable. We wouldn't like to see the status quo disturbed. We really wouldn't, believe me.” Thick fingers flirted with the too-wide brim of the panama as he settled it more firmly on his head. “See you next month, Mr. Stewart. As usual. Unless you call. And if I were you, I wouldn't call. Good night.”
Walter Stewart sat and listened to the tread of the heavy footsteps, cut off by the sound of the closing door. He drew a long breath, and stared down unseeingly at the blotter on his desk.
So now you know, Stewart. Now you know.
He sank back in his chair and closed his eyes, then leaned forward as he forced himself to open them again. What are you worried about? he asked himself impatiently. Nothing has changed. Not one single thing has changed.
Blackmail. He rolled it around on his tongue. He shrugged; sticks and stones may break your bones, Stewart, but names will never hurt you. You may be tied to the railroad track, but as the man very carefully pointed out you like the way you're living, too.
There's no difference, except that now you know that you bought the whirlwind.
And haven't you really always known?
Johnny sat bolt upright on the bed, startled from sleep by a thumping on his chest. His instinctively quick movement dislodged the scampering Sassy, who bounded down to the end of the bed and turned to wrinkle her nose at him disapprovingly. “You got to cut that out, baby doll; I might swing first and look later.”
He stretched and looked at the late afternoon sunlight beneath the three-quarters-drawn shade. Might as well get up and eat. He lay back and stared up at the ceiling. He'd get going in a minute; shower first, shave…
Sassy boarded his right leg, walked smoothly up the length of his body, and resettled herself on his chest, face-to-face. He looked down at the blue eyes and the serious little face. “You've sure taken over this quarter-deck, white stuff. Something tells me I've gone under new management.”
