It was the sergeant’s turn to be looked at.
“He’s staying over at the Park Plaza.” Morton said.
Lieutenant Redfern scowled at his assistant. “He’s actually in town? You’ve seen him?”
“Sure. He’s down here on vacation. Been here all week. Somebody pointed him out to me the other night.”
The lieutenant’s scowl deepened. “It occur to you the department might be interested in learning that a known out-of-town hood is visiting here?”
Morton looked surprised, indicating that it hadn’t. The lieutenant dropped the subject as hopeless.
“Know anything about Stoneman’s private life?” he asked Ross.
The gambler said he knew the man had been married, but had never met his wife. “He did show me her picture. Quite a dish for a guy like Benny. Looked about half his age. They lived over on East Stoyle somewhere.”
He looked at Sam Black, who said, “Seven thirty-four.”
The lieutenant made a note of the address.
“One more thing, Ross,” he said, rising. “Knowing you, I suppose you’ll feel impelled to prove to whoever bumped Stoneman that it’s not healthy to knock off your employees. If you do any prying on your own and learn who gunned Stoneman, I’m warning you right now that the law has first call. Try taking matters into your own hands, and I’ll run you down as fast as I would any killer.”
Ross grinned at him. “When did I ever take the law into my own hands, Lieutenant?”
When the two detectives had departed, Sam Black said, “Now you ready to listen to my report?”
Ross said, “Go ahead.”
“A tall guy about thirty years old came in at eight. Had a brand new sunburn, a missing right earlobe, wore a two-hundred-dollar suit and a gun. He wanted upstairs, but I gave him the brush on general principles. He was looking for somebody, but he didn’t find him. He left just as Benny got off the elevator, and I’m pretty sure he spotted him getting off. He walked out not fifteen seconds ahead of Benny.”
Ross thought this over. “He fit Morton’s description of Big John Quinnel?”
“Not by three inches and sixty pounds. But hoods in Quinnel’s economic bracket don’t do their own gunning, do they?”
“Not likely. Maybe you’d better check up on Quinnel to see if your friend’s one of his gunnies.”
“Not me,” Black said. “I just quit.”
Ross’s eyebrows raised.
“This Quinnel is syndicate stuff,” Black explained. “But you haven’t got any sense. You’ll breeze in and start pushing him around just like you push around local hoods who step on your toes. You’ve got to be independent. You won’t tie in with Bix Lawson so we’d have an army of goons behind us. You’d rather pay three times as much protection and be on your own. Just so you don’t have to take orders from anybody. So what’s it get us? It leaves me and you all alone when the syndicate gets sore and decides to blow up the club. I’ll send you a card from Cuba.”
Ross glanced at his wristwatch. “Ten-thirty,” he said, completely ignoring his assistant’s outburst. “There’s still time to get started tonight. Morton said Quinnel’s staying at the Park Plaza. Get on over there and see what you can dig up.”
CHAPTER 3
It was two a.m. before Sam Black returned from his mission. He found Clancy Ross still awake in the front room of his apartment, which was on the third floor of the club.
Black said gloomily, “Big John’s been in town five days. Probably just vacationing, because he hasn’t had any conferences with local shots insofar as I could learn. Bix Lawson lives at the Park Plaza too, you know, but he hasn’t been to Quinnel’s suite or Quinnel to his, though they’ve had a few drinks together in the bar. The only visitors to Quinnel’s suite have been a succession of dolls. Usually in groups of three. Quinnel brought two bodyguards with him, and they’re all shacked up together in the same suite. It cost me twenty bucks to the bell captain to pry that much out. You can add it to my next pay check if either of us live till next payday.”
“See either of the two bodyguards?” Ross asked.
Black shook his head. “The bell captain told me a party had been going on in the suite since noon. Usual intimate size. Big John, the two bodyguards and three babes. Lieutenant Redfern and Sergeant Morton interrupted it for a time shortly before I got there, but were only upstairs about fifteen minutes. And nobody stirred out of the suite while I was there.”
Ross frowned at him. “Didn’t you ask the bell captain for descriptions of the two bodyguards?”
“Yeah, sure,” Black said reluctantly, and when Ross merely waited with patience, added in a resigned voice, “One of them is pale and skinny and answers to the name of Bugsy. But he’s registered as Earl Windt. The other is a tall, sunburned guy with a missing right earlobe. But his name’s not Larry Eaton. It’s Larry Horton. Probably a coincidence. There must be hundreds of tall, sunburned guys with missing earlobes.”
“No doubt,” Ross said, smiling slightly.
But there was no humor in the smile. It struck his assistant as anticipatory, and Black was afraid he knew what the gambler was anticipating.
“Listen,” Black said. “Benny was a nice guy. I liked him. But he was only here a month and he wasn’t much more than an acquaintance to either of us. If somebody bumped me, or Oscar the headwaiter, or one of the old-time housemen, I’d expect you to get mad. I’d get mad myself. But this is silly. Quinnel’s only got two guns with him, but just by lifting a phone he could probably have a hundred more in town within hours. We can’t fight a whole syndicate.”
Rising, Ross switched off the TV set. “Might as well get some sleep,” he said mildly. “Probably have a tough day tomorrow.”
“Oh, the hell with it,” Black said. “You’ve got a head like a brick. See you in the morning.”
By “morning” Black actually meant the next afternoon, as Club Rotunda didn’t open till four p.m., and the assistant manager customarily arrived only an hour beforehand. He had finished his usual check of the kitchen, bar and dining room before Clancy Ross came downstairs at a quarter of four.
When the gambler announced that he was going out and didn’t know when he’d be back, Sam Black went to the cloakroom and returned with his hat.
“I won’t need you,” Ross said.
“The hell you won’t,” Black told him. “If you insist on committing suicide, I want to be around to claim your body.”
“I’m only going down to police headquarters.”
“I’ll still go along. Maybe I’ll apply for a job on the force. Even big-time racketeers like Quinnel think twice before they bump cops.”
CHAPTER 4
Lieutenant Niles Redfern was working the four to midnight trick and had just arrived at his office when Ross and Black walked in. He told them that the lab report on Benny Stoneman showed five thirty-eight-caliber bullets in the stomach, all spaced so closely together a palm could cover them.
Ross asked, “Get anything from Quinnel?”
“I talked to him,” Redfern said. “He, two other guys and three women were having a party in his suite. They all swore it had started the previous noon and none of them had been out of the suite since. Which gave everybody alibis.” Neither Ross nor Black made any comment.
Lieutenant Redfern said he had also talked to the murdered bookkeeper’s widow, who was as beautiful as Ross had indicated. As a routine check the lieutenant had asked for an accounting of her movements, and her only alibi was that she had been home alone all evening.
The gambler asked, “Any suggestions from her about who might have gunned Benny?”
“One,” Redfern answered laconically. “She says he had a mistress.” Both Ross and Black looked surprised.
“Benny?” Black asked incredulously. “A dream of a w
ife and a mistress? Why the guy was at least forty-five and looked like Ichabod Crane.”
“He must have had something,” Redfern said. “His wife doesn’t know who the mistress was, but she’s sure he had one. From little bits of evidence like lipstick on handkerchiefs, always the same shade, and blonde hairs on his coat lapel. The wife’s a brunette.”
As this seemed to be all the information the lieutenant had, Ross and Black left. Outside, Black climbed into the right-hand seat of Ross’s Lincoln and watched with a scowl as his employer started the car.
CHAPTER 5
As they crossed the lobby of the Park Plaza toward the elevators, Ross and Black spotted two men and a woman coming from the bar. Both the men were huge without being fat. One, a stranger to Ross, was at least six feet four, with thick shoulders and a broad chest. He had a square, strong-jawed face with a blue-black chin, hairy eyebrows and thick, oily black hair.
The other man, nearly as tall and thick-chested, was Bix Lawson, local political boss and ruler of most of St. Stephen’s rackets. The woman, a sizzling brunette in her late twenties, looked vaguely familiar to Ross, but he couldn’t quite place her.
“Think that man with Lawson might be Quinnel?” he asked Black.
Black looked that way and shrugged. Just then a thin, pale-faced man who had come from the barroom a step or two ahead of the others and had paused to give the lobby a quick onceover, circled the group and placed himself protectively at the tallest man’s rear.
“It must be Quinnel,” Ross decided. “Paleface answers the description you got of his bodyguard Bugsy.”
“I guess,” Black said without enthusiasm.
They watched as the quartet crossed the lobby toward the main entrance to the hotel. When Ross made no move to intercept them, Black looked at him questioningly.
“It’s the other bodyguard I want to talk to,” Ross said. “Since Bugsy seems to be on duty, maybe he’s still up in Quinnel’s suite. If Quinnel and Bugsy take off somewhere, it will give us a clear field.”
Bix Lawson separated from the others at the door after bowing to the woman and giving his huge friend a comradely slap on the shoulder. He started back toward the bar while the others went on out, the pale bodyguard going first.
Ross moved on toward the elevators and Sam Black gloomily trailed him.
As Ross had hoped, they found the second bodyguard alone in suite seven-o-seven. The man with the missing earlobe looked a little startled when he saw Sam Black, then shifted his gaze to Clancy Ross.
“I’m Clancy Ross,” the gambler told him. “You’ve met Sam Black and know he could blow your alibi for last night higher than a space ship. Let’s have some conversation.” The sunburned man considered things only a moment before stepping aside and holding the door wide open. Ross and Black walked into a large room furnished with a sofa, several easy chairs, a television set and a small portable bar. Other rooms gave off it on either side.
Ross selected an easy chair, sank into it and lit a cigarette. Black dropped his hat on an end table and seated himself in the center of the sofa. The sunburned man remained standing, his back to the door.
“Is your real name Eaton or Horton?” Ross asked.
“Horton. What do you want?”
“Just some conversation. You walked out of my club just before my bookkeeper was gunned down last night. You either did it yourself or saw it done. I dropped by to find out which.”
Horton gazed at the gambler expressionlessly for a long time before saying, “You guys didn’t say anything to the cops about my being at the club, did you?”
“What makes you sure of that?”
“The boss checked up. On you, I mean, not with the cops. You wouldn’t spill to the cops because you like to wash your own laundry.”
Ross gave him a bright smile. “Since you know how I operate, we can save a lot of explanation. I imagine you deny gunning Stoneman yourself.”
The sunburned man’s lips formed a cynical grin. “You imagine right, mister. Isn’t that a sort of dumb question?”
“Because you d give the same answer even if you had killed him? I don’t think so. As I said before, either you killed him or saw it done. You walked out too closely ahead of the shooting to be more than yards from the entrance when it happened. Since you claim you didn’t kill the man, you must have seen who did. All you have to do to convince me you’re innocent is give me a description of the real killer.”
The bodyguard snorted. “I don’t know a thing, mister. I was gone before the shooting started.”
Ross shook his head. “I don’t think you understand,” he said patiently. “You had to see the shooting if you didn’t do it yourself. If you can’t describe the killer, I’ll have to assume you’re it. I don’t think you’d like that.”
Horton’s face abruptly lost all expression. “Is that a threat?”
“Of course,” Ross said easily. “Were you people under the impression you could walk into town and start bumping off my employees without risking a hearse ride back to Chicago?”
After staring at Ross in astonishment, the bodyguard emitted a deliberately humorless laugh. “Who you think you’re talking to, buster? We know all about you. You’re an independent. You’ve got no backing from Bix Lawson, and Bix wouldn’t lift a hand to help you out of a jam. Matter of fact, I think he’d be pleased to see you go down. You better scram out of here before I get mad. And don’t come back.”
He started to pull the door open as Ross punched out his cigarette and came to his feet. With a resigned expression on his face, Sam Black folded hands in his lap and leaned back comfortably.
Walking over to the door, Ross pushed it shut again with one hand and casually gave Horton a backhand slap with the other.
With a grunt of anger the bodyguard lashed out with a left hook. Easily the gambler deflected it with his right palm, whooshed the air from the man by sinking his left into his stomach, then grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head downward at the same time he brought up a knee. When the gambler flung him back to smash against the wall, blood spurted from both Horton’s nostrils.
Without giving the man time to recover, Ross grabbed his necktie with one hand, put the other behind his head and hurled him halfway across the room to crash headfirst into an easy chair. When Horton fumbled at his armpit and groggily tried to scramble back to his feet, Ross’s open palm caught him full across the mouth, knocking him back to a seated position. The man made no further attempt to reach for a gun.
Fastidiously the gambler wiped his bloodied palm on the bodyguard’s shoulder. “Now how about that description?”
Horton glared up at him with hate, his jaws clenched. Unemotionally the gambler slapped him twice more, full swings which jolted the sunburned man’s head first one way and then the other, spattering droplets of blood in either direction.
Ross waited inquiringly for a moment, when the man still showed no inclination to speak, cocked his right fist and reached for a handhold in his hair.
“Hold it,” the bodyguard said thickly. “It was a woman.”
Ross let his hands drop to his sides. “Know her?”
Horton shook his head, his expression enraged but wary. Ross waited while he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and sopped up some of the blood flowing from his nose.
“It was dark out and I only glanced at her once,” Horton mumbled through the handkerchief. “I don’t even remember if she was a blonde or brunette. She was maybe in her late twenties, not bad looking, but I couldn’t give any more description than that if you beat me all night. She was double-parked in a blue sedan. A Ford, I think, though maybe not. All these new cars look alike to me. My car was at the curb right behind her. I got in, waited for her to move so I could drive out, and then this guy came out of the club. She leaned over to the right-hand win
dow, let him have it and drove away. I scrammed after her.”
“Catch the license?”
The man shook his head. “I didn’t want any part of it.”
“Now,” Ross said, “we come to the jackpot question. What were you doing at the club last night?”
“Just looking for a good time.”
Ross shook his head. “You were hunting for someone. Who?”
Horton looked up at him and Ross let his china-blue eyes grow opaque.
The bodyguard estimated his chance of getting away with sticking to the story that he had merely been out for a good time, decided he didn’t have any.
“Benny Stoneman,” he said sullenly.
“Oh? Why?”
“Don’t you read the papers? The boss is in line for an income-tax rap. Stoneman used to be his bookkeeper. Big John wanted me to talk to him to make sure he said the right things if he was ever called to testify. He didn’t want to look him up personally, because if the Feds ever got wind of a contact between him and Benny, they’d probably yammer about coercion. You know how it is.”
“No, I don’t,” Ross said. “I pay my income tax. So why didn’t you just ask for Benny?”
“Because if the Feds ever checked to see it he’d been got to, it would look bad if they turned up that somebody from the organization had been inquiring around for him. Big John told me to make it look like an accidental meeting.”
After consideration Ross decided the story was logical. Though Horton hadn’t mentioned it, obviously a death threat would have accompanied the instructions to the bookkeeper to “say the right things,” and just as obviously Big John Quinnel wouldn’t want anyone other than Stoneman to know there had been a contact.
“I guess that’s all for the moment,” the gambler decided. “If I think of any more questions, I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER 6
As it was now near the dinner hour, Ross dropped Sam Black off at the club to attend to business, and made his next call alone.
The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 22
