“A good thing, too,” I told her. “Probably saved me from jail.”
She frowned. “How’s that?”
“With your grown-up makeup washed off, I can tell your real age. They put you in jail for playing with kids under eighteen.”
“I’m twenty-four!” she said indignantly, but the indignation was all in her voice. Her eyes said she was pleased at the compliment. For a moment she examined me appraisingly, then she said, “I’m not sure I should have let you in. I don’t even know you.”
“Manny Moon,” I said, bowing formally.
She grinned and dropped a mock curtsey. “Antoinette DeKalb. Toni for short. Sit down while I get some clothes on.”
She moved past me and disappeared into a bedroom. I made a circuit of the living room, examining a set of prints on the wall, and was just preparing to sink into a soft chair when the bedroom door flew open again. Not two minutes had passed, and though she now wore a form-fitting green dress in place of the housecoat, her hair was still pinned up and her face free of makeup.
“Did you say Moon?” she demanded. “Manny Moon?”
“Yes,” I said, abandoning plans to sit.
“Is that the same as Manville Moon?”
“That’s my full name,” I admitted.
Her full skirt swished as she strode over to me, planted a fist on each hip and thrust out a round jaw. The top of her head just came even with my chin, I noticed.
“You’re the man in the newspaper!” she snapped. “The private detective who found that notebook!”
“Right,” I snapped back, placing fists on my own hips and shoving my jaw out just as far as hers.
Thrusting her head upward until her nose was an inch from my own, she said bitterly, “You didn’t come to see me. You came to ask questions, just like the reporters.”
“Not entirely,” I said, imitating her bitter voice.
“Then what do you want?” she yelled.
“This,” I said, dipping my face one inch and kissing her square on the lips.
We stood there at least thirty seconds, our hands still balled against our hips, nothing touching but our mouths. I was conscious of the clean odor of soap and the fresh taste of her lips without makeup. At first they were firm and unyielding, but suddenly they turned soft.
Ordinary women put their arms around your neck when they get interested in a kiss. Toni was no ordinary woman. The first indication that she really enjoyed it was when she used my ears as handles. So help me, she did. She grabbed one in each fist and pressed my mouth so hard against hers, I started to lose balance, and prevented both of us from tumbling to the floor only by grabbing her around the waist. Just before my ears came off, she let me go.
Feeling the mere loss of a pair of ears was worth it, I reached for her again.
“No you don’t,” she said, pushing a hand at my chest. “You came to ask questions, so ask your questions.”
“All right. Where did you learn that ear-hold?”
“I mean questions about Mr. Ketterer.”
“The hell with Ketterer,” I said. “Come here.”
Pushing me off again, she stamped one foot. “You listen to me, Manny Moon! You came here to pump me about Mr. Ketterer, didn’t you?”
“Well, partly,” I admitted.
“Well, I won’t have you kissing me while your mind is half on trying to pump information. You ask your questions, and maybe if I still feel like it afterward, you can kiss me again — once.”
I considered this, found no flaws in the arrangement and asked without any particular interest, “When did Ketterer put that notebook in the safe?”
“What safe?”
I put one hand on each of her shoulders, looked down into her eyes and said, “His own.”
“Is that where you found it?” she asked indifferently, reaching up and touching one ear.
I gave her a reproachful shake. “You said you wanted to get this over with. It stated right in the confession you had instructions what to do with the notebook in case Ketterer died. How could you obey them if you didn’t know where it was?”
“I had no such instructions,” she said dreamily, raising her other hand to touch my other ear. “I never heard of the notebook until I read about it in the paper. For that matter, I didn’t even know the combination to Mr. Ketterer’s safe.”
“But you identified the notebook!”
She shook her head, and a hand closed over one of my ears. “I identified Mr. Ketterer’s handwriting. I never saw the notebook before, and it was as much a shock to me as everyone else that he headed a gambling syndicate.”
Even with my attention more on Toni’s lips than on my questions, and only half-listening to the answers, this roused some interest in me. “Listen,” I said. “The three biggest gamblers in town visited your boss at a quarter to five the day he committed suicide, and left his office with him. Didn’t you know who they were?”
A fist gripped my other ear. “You’re a terrible detective. Mr. Ketterer was dictating to me from three-thirty until he left at five that day. He never made appointments later than three. Any more questions?”
“One,” I said. “Why are we wasting all this good time over a dead man?”
I still had my ears when I left the apartment, but I left most of my wits with Toni. Had any of the gentlemen who wished me dead encountered me between the time I left her and the time I reached the nearest tavern, where I stopped my head from spinning with a jolt of rye, it would have been a pushover. I doubt that they could have gotten me without anti-aircraft, however. I was too high in the air.
When I came back to earth, I made straight for headquarters to check on what had been gotten out of the young gunman who tried to kill me. There I learned nothing of interest except that the dead Keys had been a rather sloppy safe-cracker who specialized in nitroglycerine, and the young gunman, Hank, had refused to talk about anything at all.
As I passed the desk on the way out, I saw that Sergeant Danny Blake was booking a thin-faced little man who was still manacled to a policeman twice his size.
Blake looked up and called to me cheerily. “Look what we found living as big as you please at the Jefferson Hotel, Manny.”
I paused. “What?”
“Sammy Cutler. The hottest forger in the country.”
Suspecting that other gunmen employed by the gambling syndicate would lose little time trying to finish the job Hank and Keys had bungled, I observed the proper precautions. All afternoon I had kept one eye on the rear-view mirror while driving, and had kept under observation everyone within pistol range when afoot. Every muscle of my body was tensed for instant action, and I carefully kept my right hand out of my pocket and in the open, ready to dive at the P-38 under my arm.
I was rather glad to get home, where I could relax.
After locking the door from inside, I remembered the ease with which Keys had managed to pick the lock, and on the off-chance the syndicate had other lock experts on its payroll, I wedged a straight chair under the knob. Then I completely relaxed.
I relaxed too soon.
When I turned around, gorilla-like Dan Ironbaltz was regarding me sardonically from the hall doorway, the .38 revolver in his hand trained where my heart would have been had it not suddenly jumped to my throat.
He said quickly, “Turn around, Mr. Moon.”
The voice from that hairy throat was incongruously bell-like, almost a clear tenor. It was polite, too, but the expression in his eyes was faintly eager, as though he almost wished I wouldn’t obey.
When the expression began to turn to triumph, I turned about hurriedly, holding my hands shoulder high.