“That it did, Joe. Now you and I know that Bill Fogarty and Curly were not constant companions, they were not close friends. It is not likely that Bill Fogarty would have confided personally in Curly. They were not enemies, but they were not intimate, either. So we assume that the quarrel between Bill Fogarty and Miss Mason must have involved something of a more general nature than a mere lovers’ squabble. It must have been about something that several people knew something about, Curly being one of those who knew. That is not to say that Curly knew specifically what Bill and Miss Mason quarreled about, or even that they had a quarrel at all. But I believe they quarreled about something that was known to certain people in town, Curly being one of them, and I believe Bill Fogarty’s telegram was his way of saying to us ‘I don’t want to talk about it, but if you should ask Curly Evans you would probably get some interesting answers.’”
I looked at Singer for a while. Then I said: “You’ve really got it figured out, haven’t you? I think you know ‘who done it,’ as they say. Come across. Who was it?”
“If I told you that now, I would be making an accusation that I couldn’t support. I’d rather not make the accusation until I can substantiate it. I have a strong hunch that the Hotel Sheraton will furnish some answers.”
“What do you expect to find?” I asked.
Singer shrugged. “I don’t know. Let’s get off the bus and look around.”
CHAPTER 10
The Hotel Sheraton was a third-rate dump on the edge of the business district. The only thing that distinguished it from a million other similar spots was a tavern in the basement which boasted an orchestra and dance floor.
We stood out in front and looked at it.
“What do we do?” I said. “Walk in and ask for Sam Granger and Don Eastman?”
“Not right at first,” Singer said. “I think we can be more subtle than that.”
“Well, let’s go have a few beers and look the joint over.”
“It is at times like this, Joe,” Singer said, “that I am grateful for your presence. You are much more at home in the world of low and fancy bistros than I am.”
“No brains,” I said. “Just a little experience and a barroom tan.”
“You do have brains, Joe. Don’t run yourself down. The only difference between us is the way we apply ourselves. We use our mental machinery for different ends.”
Which was a very generous thing for Singer to say.
We went into the tavern. It was eight o’clock and the place was hardly awake yet. There were a few people at tables in dark corners and a few at the bar. The orchestra hadn’t arrived yet and the dance floor was empty and dark.
We picked a table near the dance floor. From it we could see every door in the place—there were quite a few doors—and everything that went on at the bar. After about five minutes a waitress shuffled up, yawned, and took our order. We asked for beers and she walked away. After another five minutes she came back with the beers. Singer reached for his money, but I kicked him under the table.
“We’ll be here some time,” I said. “Just give us a check, and come back in about ten minutes.”
“Oh yeah?” she said. “You think you can drink a whole bottle of beer without passing out?”
“How would you like a punch in the paunch?” I said.
She snipped away.
“We might have made a friend of her,” Singer said.
“Not her. Dames like that don’t make friends.”
“You are very smart about women, Joe. Where did you learn it? Surely not in Preston.”
“Preston is not a bad place to learn,” I said. “You can learn a lot in Preston. Of course, there are some details you pick up only in dumps like this. Dames are pretty much the same. What’s different is their environment.”
“I see,” Singer said. After a minute he went on: “Now take Marian Mason. What kind of girl do you think she was?”
“Well,” I said, “a smart girl. Not smart enough to keep on living, but smart up to that point.”
“I’m serious, Joe. What did you think of her?”
“I didn’t really know her intimately,” I said, “until after she was dead. And even then it was only for a little while.”
Singer sighed.
“I guess it’s no use,” he said. “I thought you must have some opinion of her. I seem to remember hearing you admire her.”
“Oh, I admired her all right. She was lovely to look at.”
“I imagine she was.”
“You imagine she was! I’m telling you she was. She was the most beautiful thing to hit Preston in my lifetime.”
“Do you think she was—promiscuous? Did she have—as they say—hot pants?”
“That I really don’t know,” I said. “I never got close enough to find out.”
“I was thinking of the fact that at the time of her death she was pregnant.”
“That can happen to anybody. It doesn’t mean she had hot pants. Of course, it doesn’t mean she didn’t, either. Let’s have another beer. And a sandwich. I know you never eat—but I’ve got to.”
“I’ll have something when the job is finished,” Singer said.
This time the waitress didn’t make any cracks. People were beginning to trickle in. I began to notice that guys would come in and sit down for a few minutes, have a drink, get up, and go out a little door in the back corner and not come back. After about six guys had done this I began to figure they couldn’t all be going where you’d think. Sooner or later, some of them would have come back.
“Just what are we looking for here?” I asked Singer.
“We’re not sure,” Singer said. “But you can keep your eye peeled for somebody we know.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?”
“I have already discovered,” I said, “that there’s more to this joint than meets the eye. Why, for instance, do those guys keep going through the little door in the corner? They never come back.”
“Suppose you find out, Joe. Ask questions. Look around.”
“I don’t have much to go on,” I said.
“We have to get started,” Singer said. “You solve the mystery of the back door and I’ll see whether I can find young Mr. Granger.”
“I start first?”
“Yes, please.”
I got up and wandered away from the table.
* * * *
It was about thirty minutes later that things began to happen to me so fast I lost count. Sometimes I’m still convinced that I was the one who solved the killing of Marian Mason. When I really think about it, though, I have to admit that none of it would have made much sense if Singer hadn’t figured it out. I never would have figured it out myself.
I went to the bar, got on a stool, and ordered a highball. There were two bartenders. One of them mixed drinks. The other one stood around, answered the telephone, and talked to the customers. They seemed to get a lot of telephone calls at that place. About every four or five minutes the phone would ring—it had been toned down to a dull buzz—and this spare bartender would pick it up, say a few words, and hang up. Then pretty soon it would happen all over again. The rest of the time he would stand first at one place and then another along the bar and talk to somebody. Usually, after he had finished, that somebody would get up and walk away, and—if I watched—I always saw him go into that door in the back corner, the door nobody ever seemed to come back out of. It dawned on me at last that maybe there was a crap game back there and I should investigate. But I knew I would have to be okay with this boy at the bar before I could get through that door. I knew it because I had seen a couple of boys try it and not make it.
It happened this way: The front door opened. A guy came in and sat down at the bar and had a drink, quick-like. He set the glass down, paid for the drink, and got up. Instead of going out the front door he headed for that back one. Just sailed right along, as if he owned the place. Then, when he got to the door in the back, all of a sudde
n there was a big citizen there standing right in front of it and this customer banged right into him. He never even got his hand on the knob. The bouncer simply gave him a little twist and the guy turned around, swaying a little from surprise, and wended his way out into the street.
The first time, that was all I saw. The second time I had a hunch the same thing was going to happen, so I kept my eye on everything, especially at the bar. This time I saw that the guy that came in and ordered a drink didn’t say anything to the boy at the bar. He had his drink and then, like the first guy, he got up to go to the back. But when I looked at the mug behind the bar I saw him give a signal toward the back corner of the joint. It wasn’t much of a signal, just a slight lift of the right hand and a chopping motion. Then I watched the back door again and the same thing happened. The bruiser in the corner was suddenly standing there in the way, and the boy who wanted to get through couldn’t quite make it, and he, too, went back into the street.
Still, I thought, guys would come in and sit at tables and have a drink and get through all right without coming near the bar.
It took me a few minutes, but I finally got it straight. There were guys who could get in without the password, whatever it was, because the guy behind the bar knew them. There were other guys he didn’t know, and they had to have the password. They had to stop by the bar. If they didn’t bother to stop by the bar and pass the time of day with the mug there, they just couldn’t get it. It was a perfect system. And I saw then that while the extra bartender didn’t mix any drinks, he kept busy. He was there to keep his eyes open, and that is no mean task in a place where the lights are low and there are people milling around and the only thing you’ve got to go on is a little wave of the hand.
So it was clear that before I could learn anything about this dump, the way Singer wanted me to, I would have to get through the little door in the back corner.
And the only way I could get through the little door was to find out what you had to say to the spare bartender. I had to learn the password. So I began to beat my brains out for a way to catch on to the magic words. And in order to help my poor head along I bought another drink. I hoped Singer wasn’t impatient. This might take me some time.
This little hotel is getting to be an interesting place, I thought, and drank my drink slowly.
A guy came in and sat down on the stool next to me. He ordered a scotch and soda. It came with a swizzle stick. He took the swizzle stick and began tapping on the glass with it, looking around, now and then he’d stop and take a drink, then he’d start tapping again. It made me nervous. I kept wishing he’d stop. I was about to explain to him that I was trying to think and would he mind going somewhere else with that symphony, when something in the way he was tapping stopped me short. There was a pattern in it. He wasn’t just tapping for the hell of it, or because he was nervous. He was tapping some kind of message. There would be a couple of short taps, then a pause; and then one tap, and a pause; and then three taps. Then there would be a long pause. And pretty soon he would do it all over again. It went like this: Tap-tap… Tap… Tap-tap-tap.… Tap-tap… Tap… Tap-tap-tap.
He would do this a couple of times, then take a drink and look around the room, and then start the tapping all over again. And sure enough, after maybe ten minutes this mug who answered the telephone wandered over, leaned on the bar right in front of the guy sitting next to me.
The customer took another drink, set down his glass, and said, “Room for the night.”
The mug behind the bar studied him. Then he asked, “With or without?”
“Without.”
“Number 14,” said the mug.
“Check,” the guy said.
The mug walked away to answer the telephone, and the guy at the bar finished his drink. Then he got up, walked across the dance floor, and disappeared through the little back door. No interference. No trouble.
I ordered another highball, this time scotch, and it came with a swizzle stick. It was probably my imagination, but I could have sworn at the time that the moment the bartender set the drink down for me, that other mug back there began to take more interest. So scotch highballs were maybe a part of the formula, too. I don’t know what I’d have done if they hadn’t given me a swizzle stick. I could have sat there all night, wondering what was going on.
So after fifteen minutes or so had passed and a couple of guys had come and had a drink beside me and left, I picked up my swizzle stick and started playing chopsticks on the side of my glass. I tapped it out three times and then waited. I waited a long time. The mug wasn’t doing anything else, but he wasn’t in my direction, either. So I tried it again. The telephone rang and I had to wait for that, and when he got through telephoning I tapped once more. This time it worked.
The face on the guy was something to carry around at Hallowe’en. He put his elbows on the bar in front of me and leaned there and stared at me, and it was all I could do to make myself look back at him. Big nose, blobbed all over his face, pockmarks and thick, blue lips. He was a ghoul. He had practically no neck, and his hands were thick and broad and short, with big freckles on them and bristly hair like a pig’s hair.
The sight of him almost shocked me out of my memory, but I managed to hang on long enough to get the first words out.
“Room for the night,” I said.
He just looked at me. I was ready to crawl away somewhere and die.
“You been sittin’ here a long time. Take you so long to make up your mind?” His voice was like a wood rasp.
Don’t try to argue with him, I said to myself.
“Never mind,” I said finally. “Room for the night.”
After a little while he said, “Gimme a reference.”
By this time I was in the water and getting used to it, and also I was a little sore.
“Guy from Freddie’s.”
“Name?”
“Who knows names at Freddie’s?”
Freddie’s was a place down on the lake front that I had heard about from Curly Evans. It was one of his hang-outs. Bums, guys off the boats, and general deadbeats hung around there, and Curly had told some tall yarns about the place.
The mug thought this over a little and then he asked,. “With or without?”
I had to think about it. The other guy had said “without.” I didn’t know whether that was part of it, or whether it had to do with what he hoped to get back of that door. I was curious, but I decided to play it the same way.
“Without,” I said.
The mug looked at me for a long time. I had to force myself to look back at him. At last he said, “Number 8.”
“Check,” I said. I guess I yelled it, because he had started away, and when I said it he stopped and jerked his head around. Those little pig eyes bored into me. That’s all, I thought, and braced myself. But then the telephone rang and he went on his way. I finished my drink and got off the stool. As I cut my path to the back door in the corner I glanced over toward the table where I’d left Singer. He was gone.
When I got to the door I saw the big bruiser who had got in the way of the guys who couldn’t play. He was sitting at a table with a dame, and his eyes were steady and fixed. I imagined they were fixed on the mug behind the bar.
These guys are like zombies, I thought.
He didn’t make a move when I put my hand on the knob of the door and twisted it. It opened away from me and I stepped through.
I was in a narrow corridor with doors along the far side, both to the right and the left. The corridor ran perhaps twenty feet to the left and ended in a blank wall. To the right it ran maybe fifteen feet and made a right-angled left turn toward what would be the back of the building.
One of the doors across from me was open and I looked in. It was a club room of some kind. It was thick with smoke and the lights glared. There was music coming from a small juke-box in the middle of the back wall. There were tables with drinks on them and people sitting around. A guy was doing a crazy kind of dance in th
e center of the room. A group at one of the tables, men and women, were laughing at him. He juggled up and down and waved his arms around—not really dancing, just jumping. Another crowd at one of the other tables were swaying back and forth with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing. I couldn’t make out the song. It sounded pretty weird. At some places there were couples necking. And I mean necking. Not the gentle kind of stuff you do with your girl in a parked car.
The room was crowded and noisy and smelled bitter. A girl got up from a table, pulled her skirt up above her knees, and began to dance, a funny, shuffling dance. Then a guy who had been sitting next to her got up and slugged her. She fell down and got to her knees. She got up and looked at him, pulled back her leg and let him have it on the shin with everything she had. He grabbed his shin and hit her again. This time she didn’t fall down. She staggered over toward the door where I was standing. She was laughing. She came out into the corridor, walked past me without seeing me, and went into a room near the end of the hall.
I was about to turn away from this room and go on down the hall when I saw what looked like a familiar face. It was so hazy in there and there was so much moving around that I couldn’t be sure.
I stepped inside. There was a table near the door with three girls and a guy sitting at it. One of the girls reached up and pulled at my sleeve.
“Sit down, honey,” she said, “and have a drink.”
I gave her a look and pulled away, going farther into the room. I was getting closer to that familiar face, and after a couple of minutes I knew I was right.
It was Don Eastman. He was sitting at a table with a little guy in a white dinner jacket and a dame. He hadn’t seen me yet.
But I had seen him. The next job was to get him out of there. That might not be so easy.
I pushed past a couple of dancers and stepped up to Don Eastman’s table.
“Hello, Donald,” I said.
CHAPTER 11
Eastman glanced up. There was a puzzled look on his face at first. Then he grinned and said: “Hello, Joe. Sit down. How’d you get in here?”
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