“Who brought her stuff down?”
Argen followed the man over to the bell captain’s desk, heard him say, “Andy, would you know who went up to handle a checkout on twelve twenty-one at nine last night?”
The fat bell captain turned back the pages of a tattered notebook, ran his thumb down a column. “Simmins. He’s on four to midnight.”
The assistant manager looked inquiringly at Argen. “Thanks,” Argen said. “I’ll stop back.”
When Argen got back to headquarters, Lieutenant Fowler wanted to see him. Fowler was a year from retirement and had the ponderous poise of a Southern senator. He said, “This Matthews has been pulling on all the strings he can reach. Seems he went to school with lots of big people. One stinking sergeant doesn’t satisfy him. A squad of captains he wants. So now I am officially personally in charge of the case. To him it sounds better. You carry on like before. Only drop the other stuff and stick with this exclusive. You want a partner?”
“Not yet.”
“How does it look?”
“Not as easy as it did. Before, like I told you. I figured she ate alone in one of those fancy little French places up in that neighborhood and it was a nice night so she felt like walking and she looked like money, and somebody wanted the money and hit too hard. But they hit way too hard, so hard it looks like on purpose. And now I find she checked out at nine from the hotel. It makes her awful damn busy to check out, find a place to put the luggage, and get fifteen blocks uptown in time to get hit on the head so the old guy can find her a little after ten. It smells a little different now.”
“You handle it careful, Argen. This Matthews knows heavy people. They could fall on us.”
“I better get a picture and start checking those restaurants.”
“I think I’ll give you a partner anyway. It’ll look better. How about Shimler?”
“He gets in my way. Give me one of the kids. Brock, if he’s loose.”
Fowler had Brock pulled in off a juvenile knifing and detailed him to the Matthews case. Argen and Brock went down the street for coffee and Argen briefed him. Brock asked the right questions. He was a slight dark young man with an adenoidal look of abysmal stupidity. Argen knew he was one of the most promising young ones they had. He had cop sense. Argen had thought a lot about cop sense. He knew he had it, but he didn’t know how to describe it. It was a sort of restless irritability when facts didn’t fall into a predictable pattern. And an urge to nudge and nibble the facts until they fitted. Plus the knack of making intuitive guesses, wild leaps that had nothing at all to do with the facts.
“Maybe,” Argen said, “this Simmins can tell us where she was going, especially if he put the stuff in a cab.”
Before they went to the hotel Argen phoned the hospital and managed to get Matthews on the line. His daughter’s condition was unchanged. He agreed to phone Boston and have his secretary take his daughter’s picture, a recent one, from his desk and air mail it down, special delivery. Argen told him about the checkout. Matthews said that was damned nonsense. Argen said he had checked it and it was the truth.
The assistant manager let them talk to Simmins in an office in the credit department. Simmins was a balding young man with wise, sad eyes. He sat on the edge of the chair and meditatively cracked the knuckles of his oversized hands.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You say it was a woman?”
“A young one. Blonde. Room twelve twenty-one she was in. And it was nine o’clock. Come on, you ought to remember blondes.”
“Just a minute. It’s coming back. I went up and she was all set to go. She came down in the elevator with me. I waited and she paid and then she wanted a cab.”
“Which entrance?”
“The main one. She give me a buck.”
“Where did she tell the cab to go?”
“I didn’t hear her say anything. I guess she told him after he got moving maybe.”
“Simmins, this is important. She got herself hit on the head. Maybe she’ll die from it. You got to remember more about her. How did she act?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nervous like. You know, like catching a plane or something.”
“How was she dressed?”
“She had something black on.”
“Wasn’t she wearing a gray suit?”
“No. I’m sure of that. It was black hut I don’t know if it was a suit or a dress or what. It was black.”
“What was the luggage?”
“Two suitcases. Gray, I think, with a stripe. And some big packages like from stores, tied together. Packages the shape clothes come in.”
Brock asked his first question. “Boy, she opened her purse to get that buck for you. Can you remember what color the bag was?”
“Black, too. With some shiny things on it. You know, round shiny things like scales, sort of.”
“Sequins?”
“Yeah. That’s what they call them.” Argen nodded approvingly at Brock. “Simmins, what would you say about this girl’s looks? Was she class?”
“Class? No, I wouldn’t figure that. She looked a little rough, you know what I mean.”
“How old?”
“Thirty, maybe.”
They let Simmins go back to work after telling him they might have to question him later. They told him that if he remembered anything more about the woman, he should get in touch at once.
Argen said to Brock, “Now we got a new kind of thing. The wrong clothes, the wrong pulse, the wrong woman. Somebody checked her out. It’s a big place. It wouldn’t be hard to do. The thing is to get hold of the key. There wasn’t any key in the Matthews girl’s purse when I found it. Let’s figure it this way, Willy. Say she got thumped on the head about eight-thirty or so. The guy finds a hotel key in the purse. He gets hold of his girl friend and has her check out of the hotel. I don’t like it. You tell me why.”
Brock scowled and tugged at his ear. “It doesn’t fit good. How would they know there wasn’t somebody else in the room? And with the key, why not just go through her stuff and take anything that was worth while? It sounds more like when she got hit, she got hit hard on account of whoever hit her knew she had to stay out a long time so the stuff could be gotten out of the room.”
Argen nodded. “And one more thing. She’d been here three days. Those rooms go for fifteen a day. Paying forty-five in cash isn’t in character with the guys who would slug her for the dough in her purse. This time of year it isn’t dark until eight-fifteen or so. The timing had to be close. I don’t like the direction this thing is moving. It begins to smell bigger. Know what I mean?”
Sergeant Argen phoned the hospital and found that Matthews had left for the hotel. The girl’s condition was unchanged. They waited for Matthews and went up to his room with him.
Argen explained that they had found out that some other woman had checked Helen Matthews out of the hotel. He asked whether Helen had had any item of substantial value and size with her.
“I know that question sounds pretty funny, Mr. Matthews. But I got to account for all the luggage being taken.”
Matthews seemed subdued by the long hours of waiting. He shook his head wearily. “She had nothing like that. I don’t know what you’re driving at. She has some valuable jewelry that belonged to her mother, but that’s in the lock box. She didn’t bring it down here. I want to know who did this terrible thing. Why isn’t Lieutenant Fowler here working on this?”
“He’s working on another angle, Mr. Matthews.”
“You people just don’t seem to be taking this seriously. She may... may not...”
Brock and Argen left the hotel. They stood near the main entrance, and Argen looked thoughtfully at the constant stream of people coining and going.