by P. N. Elrod
Not that I was planning on leaving the office. I wanted to stick close to the phone in case Doreen should try calling. She might have had to hole up for the day herself, and I was hoping she’d feel safer now that it was dark.
Escott left to get something to eat; I filled in the time by reading what his paper had to say about McAlister’s murder. The reporter had done a fair job; most of the facts were straight, and the names spelled correctly. Mine had been excluded, which was a relief. It was an odd feeling, too, considering my days on the paper in New York, when I’d once fought tooth and nail for a byline.
Blair had issued a standard statement that his men were looking for a suspect, but he remained cagey concerning that person’s identity. Miss Kitty Donovan, the tenant of the flat in which McAlister’s body was found, was unavailable for comment.
I folded that section of the paper and tossed it onto the rest of the pile. They were full of the usual insanity. Some big brain was recommending that people start using the word syphilis in guessing games and spelling bees as a way of breaking down the taboos concerning venereal diseases. He had an idea that if people started putting it into crossword puzzles it would cease to be so shocking. In theory, it sounded like a good idea, but I had at least two maiden aunts who would have swooned in their high-button shoes at the idea. Once recovered, I was sure they’d have hunted the guy down and shot him on sight.
The other papers I left unread; I wasn’t in the mood to bone up on the the screwy workings of the rest of the world. My own little corner of it was more than enough to keep me unpleasantly occupied.
The blank white walls of the office offered no distractions. Escott liked them plain and for just that reason: so he could think. I stared at them and purposely cleared my mind of everything but white paint.
It worked for nearly a whole minute and then I was lost in the problem of whether or not to talk to Bobbi. I rarely mentioned my feedings at the Stockyards, no more than anyone would normally talk about how they brush their teeth. How I had used Doreen was on the same level— that’s what I was trying to tell myself, anyway. I was desperate for some grain of comfort, for any excuse that would let me off the hook. Nothing worked, though. I’d lost control and that was it.
No excuses.
So I put off thinking about Bobbi. I wouldn’t be able to decide what to do until after I saw Doreen again, which could be never. The phone wasn’t…
Wrong. The phone just did. Twice, as I stared at it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, lover.”
That damned sword twisted in me again. This was the first time I’d ever felt uneasy talking to Bobbi. “Hi, yourself.” I sounded artificially cheerful in my own ears.
“You weren’t at home, so I thought I’d try my luck at Charles’s office.”
“Yeah, I’m holding the fort while he puts on the feed bag.”
“When you didn’t come back last night I got a ride home with Gloria.”
“Yeah, sorry. Things got busy.”
“Did you catch up with that guy?” Bobbi hadn’t seen the papers yet.
I ran a nervous hand over the dark wood of Escott’s desk. “Yeah, Charles and I found him.”
“What happened?” Her tone turned serious. She’d picked up something from my own.
“Someone got to him first. Killed him.”
“Oh, Jack…”
She listened and eventually some of the story came out. I needed to talk, but even then it was only a sketchy account, especially the business with Doreen Grey. Mostly I spoke of McAlister’s death, which had bothered me more than I’d realized.
He was a nobody, a vain and disgusting little blackmailer, but his death was hardly a good ending for even his sort. Any pity I felt stemmed from the fact that I, too, had been murdered. It gave me a unique, if personally horrifying, insight into things.
“What about Charles?” she asked. “Is he square with the cops?”
“He seems to think so. He knows how to take care of himself and he’s got a sharp lawyer. He only wanted to wait until he could talk with Pierce first, to let him know the investigation’s changed from theft to murder.”
“And you don’t think the girl did it?”
I shrugged, which she couldn’t see. “She didn’t do herself any favors running out like that.”
“On the other hand, she doesn’t know you or Charles. She must have been too scared to think.”
“She handled herself pretty well at the hotel.”
“Yeah, but seeing her boyfriend like that…” Bobbi got quiet, retreating into her own memories. I knew they weren’t pleasant ones. I instantly forgot my troubles.
“God, I wish I could be there to hold you,” I said.
“I know.”
We didn’t say anything, but then talk would have been superfluous. I waited her out, eyes shut, listening.
After a long time, she heaved a sigh as though to clear her mind of the dust. “Maybe you can make it up to me later. Will you be coming by tonight?”
“If I can, baby. But if I’m not at the club by a quarter till closing, then you’d better hitch another ride.”
“In other words, I’ll expect you when I see you.”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Okay. If you can put up with my hours, I can handle yours.”
“Fair enough.”
I’d almost sounded normal toward the end, but after the last goodbye, the restless worry flowed back like a cold tide against my heart.
When Escott returned I was hunched over his radio trying to find something worth listening to—a futile effort in my present mood. I wound the dial back to his favorite station and shut the thing off.
Since the phone call, I’d managed to make one decision, and that was to go looking for Doreen. If I hung around the place much longer, I’d be climbing his blank white walls and talking to myself in three different voices. I was about to tell Escott, but he interrupted before I had the chance to draw breath to speak.
“Get your coat and hat,” he said. “They’ve found Miss Grey. She’s in hospital.”
He dropped an evening edition onto the cot. It was folded open to a story on the front page. The headline read, “Shooting Victim in Critical Condition.” The facts were slim. A woman had been found lying in a drainage ditch of a city park with three bullet wounds. The police were still trying to identify her.
“This could be anybody,” I said faintly.
“I called someone I know there and got a description of her. It matches the one in your report.”
“Oh, Christ.” I stopped wasting time and grabbed my stuff and followed him down to his car. He couldn’t drive fast enough for me. When we eventually got to the hospital, I hung in the background, letting him ask rhe questions at the front desk, then followed again as he headed off down a corridor.
Wc were used to working like that by now; he dealt directly with the public while I stayed out of the way and went unnoticed. It worked until we reached the surgical ward. We had another desk to pass and no one was allowed through except family.
Escott started to make explanations to the nurse in charge, but I interrupted. “Look, I need to see the woman who was shot. I think she might be my cousin.”
The woman asked questions. Other people had been calling the hospital and making inquiries about her patient., She wouldn’t say who. I gave her a song and dance about Doreen not turning up for work today and her general description. The latter seemed to make a difference. The nurse’s expression was grave as she went off to confer with her supervisor. Both returned with a doctor, who look us off to one side to hear things all over again. I’d always been a lousy liar; tonight it seemed to come naturally.
“If she is your cousin, you’ll have to talk to the police,” he told me.
“Fine,” I agreed. Escort’s eyes flickered, but he kept his comments ro himself.
Under the eye of the supervisor and with the help of a large orderly, I was enveloped in a hospital gown that l
ooked like a sheet with sleeves and given a cloth mask to cover my nose and mouth. This time, Escoft had to stay outside and wait, but he was turning it into an opportunity. I glanced back before walking through the doors to the ward and saw him turning on rhe charm for the nurse at the desk. She didn’t seem too cooperative, but he could work miracles with that accent of his.
The mask did not shut out the smell. It was always the same: a kind of death-sweet stink that I always associated with hospitals. The people who worked with it and the suffering that engendered it deserved Medals of Honor.
I was taken past a couple of beds loaded with silent human wreck age and shown a frail figure all but smothered under her bandages. A nurse stood close by, watching her breathe.
Until this moment, I’d held on to a vague hope that it would not be Doreen. As it was, I barely recognized her in this sterile setting. Her face was slack and colorless, the skin spread thinly over the sharp bones beneath. Only her carrot red hair stood out, a bright incongruity against the harsh steel and enamel fixtures. I put out a hand to stroke its limp strands.
“Is she your cousin?” asked the doctor.
If I said no I’d have protection from the dangerous curiosity of officialdom. It was also an easy escape from a responsibility I didn’t want and could ill afford.
On her neck were the faint marks I’d left. Engulfed as she was with all the tubes and bandages, they were nothing, barely noticeable.
The doctor repeated his question.
“Yes,” I said, hardly aware that I’d spoken.
He expressed sympathy and told me he needed information.
I anticipated the first question. “Her name is Doreen.”
“Last name?” Grey.
The nurse wrote it on the chart at the foot of the bed without any reaction. Maybe she’d never heard of the Oscar Wilde book. I gave Escott’s office address and phone number for a place of residence and made a guess at Doreen’s age. If I didn’t know an answer I said so. She took down the meager scraps of fact and then the doctor led me back out to the hall.
Escott looked up. He was leaning comfortably against the desk facing the nurse and she had a smile on her face. Both sobered and straightened when I emerged from the ward.
“It’s Doreen,” I told him.
He also said something sympathetic. I didn’t really listen. For the next half hour, as I ran the gauntlet of answering questions for a lot of people in uniforms, I didn’t listen to much of anything.
The doctor in charge of her case was named Rosinski. He seemed to know his business and was reluctant to make any optimistic promises. From the way his eyes shifted and how he answered my own questions, I knew he wasn’t holding out much hope of Doreen pulling through.
“Her lungs were punctured, and one of them collapsed,” he said. “I take it as a good sign that she survived long enough for us to get her into surgery, but that’s it as far as it goes. She was very lucky that the bullets didn’t bounce around her ribs and cause more damage than they did.”
“What kind of bullets?” I asked.
“Very small; twenty-twos. The holes aren’t much, but they’re enough to do the job. The main problem now is to keep her breathing and hope that pneumonia doesn’t set in.”
“Was there much blood loss?”
“Her pressure and volume were low when she was brought in—”
“But she’s not harmed from it, is she?”
“No more than one would expect in such a case.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that her blood loss is something we took care of early on. Right now, she’s got other things to worry about.”
“When will you know anything?”
Rosinski would only shake his head. “We’ll both have to wait and see on that one.”
Earlier, I’d let Escott know I was willing to run my end of things for the time being, so he’d gone off to tend some business of his own, giving me room to work. He must have kept tabs on me, though, since he turned up not long after the questioning ended.
“This is hardly the place I’d expect to find someone with your particular condition,” he said in a subdued voice, taking a seat nearby.
“It’s quiet,” I mumbled, staring at the floor.
I’d found refuge in the hospital chapel. The silence of the small room helped soothe my inner turmoil, and I won’t lie and say that I didn’t use the place for its intended purpose. Doreen needed all the help she could get; I just hoped that God hadn’t minded hearing a prayer from the guy who may have helped to put her life in jeopardy in the first place.
“All the same…” But he didn’t finish whatever he might have said about the oddity of a vampire being in a kind of church, and shrugged the rest away. He could see I wasn’t in the mood for it. “I had to call Lieutenant Blair.”
“What’d he have to say?” I wasn’t all that interested, but wanted distraction from the stuff inside my head.
“Little that may be repeated in these surroundings. He dispatched a man to be here in case Miss Grey should wake up.”
“Yeah, I remember talking to that guy. He may have a long wait.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just that we were doing private work for Pierce and that we’d also wanted to question Doreen about McAlister’s death. He took it all down and left it at that.”
“Was he not curious that you are listed as her next of kin?”
“Yeah, but I told him she really didn’t have anyone else to look after her. When we talked last night I got the feeling that she really was all alone.”
“Alone,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Obviously not.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“I was only speculating about who might have shot her.”
“Kyler or one of his stooges.”
“Are you so certain?”
“Something’s telling you different?”
“The circumstances of her assault.”
“What about them?”
“Can you recall what caliber weapons Kyler’s men possessed?”
“Chaven was using a thirty-eight, Hodge had a forty-five.”
“I learned that the bullets taken from Miss Grey were from a twenty-two… an experienced criminal might prefer a larger caliber.”
“There’re always exceptions. Kyler or Rimik could have been carrying the right size.”
“True.” He started to dig for his pipe, remembered where he was, and changed his mind. “But if one is planning to kill a person, a small bullet is a poor choice for the job.”
“Unless you want to be quiet about it. Back in New York I filed more than one murder story on the subject. Put a twenty-two right up next to a person and it makes less noise than a popping balloon.”
“It was with that in mind that I managed to arrange and make an examination of the clothes she was wearing.”
I shook my head. Escott could talk a tree out of its sap. “She was shot from a distance, right?”
“Correct. It’s very possible that the person who shot her was an amateur.”
“Just because it was a small bullet?”
“Because she was not killed outright. Did Kyler strike you as the type who would plan a murder and then botch the job?”
He had a point there. “Unless he wanted to make it look like the work of an amateur.”
“The major objection I see against that is the fact that she did not simply disappear as did others before her. That’s his usual pattern.”
“Like Domax and Sanderson?”
“Hmm. A disappearance simply raises questions that may never have answers. Leaving a body to be found may result in the same situation, but one is at least certain of the violence involved and may work outward from that point.”
“Okay, if we take Kyler out of things, who’s left?”
“The same person who killed McAlister.”
“I can figure that, Charles, but who?”
He shrugged. “We shan
’t discover that sitting around here.”
“And Doreen?”
“We can always call the nurse on duty for any news concerning changes in her condition.”
“What’re you planning to do?”
“To get out and ask some questions. I suggest we start with Vaughn Kyler.”
I nearly choked. “Great. Might as well start at the bottom and work our way up. How do we find him?”
“We won’t have to. My researches today were most rewarding….”
“You found out where he hangs his hat?”
“Not quite, but I’ve an idea on where to start. Care to come along?”
“Lead on, Macduff.”
Escott winced. “That’s ‘lay on’.”
“Sorry.”
“The misquote doesn’t bother me so much as your choice of play to misquote from.”
Escott was not even remotely a superstitious man—except when it came to the theater. His particular quirk had to do with Macbeth, and he never would say why. I apologized again, respecting the quirk, even if I didn’t understand it.
He shook his shoulders straight and drew in a deep breath. “Ah, well, perhaps our surroundings will cancel out any malign influences. We can hope so, at least.”
“Amen to that,” I said, and followed him out.
Not that I was taking his stuff too seriously, but I did insist on a quick stop back at the office to pick up his bulletproof vest and the Webley-Fosbery. Just in case. If we got close enough to interview Kyler, he’d probably be frisked and not allowed to keep it. On the other hand, if Kyler didn’t want to see us, we would very definitely need some protection. I still had Doreen’s automatic, but without bullets it wasn’t much more than a weight dragging in my pocket.
Escott stowed his gun into his shoulder holster. With his suit coat and overcoat on top, it was invisible, even to experienced eyes. Now I realized why he favored single-breasted styling; they look okay unbuttoned and he’d left things that way to be able to get at his gun more easily.
We were all set to go when the low rumble of a motor drew my attention to the outside. From either end of the front window, we peered through the slats of the blinds to the street below. A flashy new Packard had parked just in front of Escott’s Nash.
