Lenroot grinned at O’Hara. He said: “It’ll be a pleasure, Mr. Dahlman, a positive pleasure.”
He got O’Hara’s arm in a hard grip, grabbed Clancy by the shoulder. He said: “On your way, bums.”
O’Hara said hotly: “Listen, you fathead—”
“Nah,” said Lenroot. “I don’t have to listen. Get going. I been waiting a long time, O’Hara, to put you in your place.”
O’Hara’s eyes were humid, red was creeping up the back of his neck. He said: “If you’ll give your ears a chance instead of your mouth—”
Lenroot was marching them down the hall and he said: “When you had the Tribune behind you, I had to listen to your gab. But you’re just a tramp out of a job now. Shut up and scram!”
Clancy said: “You want me to take a poke at this mug, Kenny?”
O’Hara suddenly shrugged, stopped resisting Lenroot’s hand. He said: “O.K., Lenroot, but you’re going to regret this.”
“Yeah,” Lenroot grinned. He got them to the stairs and shoved and O’Hara skidded down two steps and Clancy went rubber-kneed down six steps to a landing. Lenroot dusted his hands and said: “Don’t let me catch you guys around up here any more. Goom-bye, O’Hara, and thanks for the most pleasure I’ve had since the first time I met you.”
He went back along the corridor.
Clancy said: “Come on, Kenny, leave you and me go back there and bounce that guy off the floor.”
O’Hara shook his head, came down the stairs to the landing, saying nothing, His face was dour, tight-muscled at the corners of the jaw and his eyes were dark and angry.
Clancy said: “Don’t take it so hard, Kenny. Hell, I been fired off lots better jobs than this. I been fired off the St. Looie Post-Dispatch, the Cincy Inquirer, the Newark Ledger, the Frisco Chronicle, the Atlanta Constitution, the—”
O’Hara managed a grin. “Quit bragging.”
“No kidding, I been fired off—”
“Never mind. Where can you develop that shot you took in 907?”
“Right in the hotel darkroom I can do it.”
“We don’t work for the hotel. Remember?”
“I know a commercial photog over on Hope Street. I can use his joint.”
“Go to it. And make me three prints. I’ll be around the hotel waiting for you.”
Clancy went away and O’Hara remained, an island of silent thoughtfulness in the sea of noise that was the lobby. Presently he made his way to the desk; he figured that the news that he had been fired wouldn’t have reached there yet. He was right.
A glossy-haired clerk readily acceded to a request for information on 907. “Certainly, O’Hara. The occupant of Room 907 was a Mr. W. J. Herman of Seattle.”
“Was?”
The clerk nodded. “He turned in his key and paid his bill not ten minutes ago.”
“What’d he look like?”
“A rather stout man. In fact, I might say very fat.”
“Thanks,” said O’Hara.
At the Diplomat the motor entrance is a floor below the lobby and the stairs that reach it are across the wide expanse from the desk. O’Hara fought his way slowly through the convention crowds and reached the top of the stairs.
He saw the angular brisk back of Rex Miller of Midland City halfway down the flight. Miller was hurrying, his well-shined black shoes twinkling from step to step. O’Hara matched his hurry, although not with the thought of wasting any time on Miller at the moment. If Mr. W. J. Herman of Seattle had checked out only ten minutes before, it was possible that he’d still be at the motor entrance, waiting for a cab. O’Hara didn’t know exactly what he’d do about it if that was so; but at least he could note the number of the cab and talk to the hacker later.
O’Hara swore at Lenroot silently. If Lenroot hadn’t been such a jerk and hadn’t roused O’Hara’s Irish, the fat man could have been grabbed before he so much as tried to check out. O’Hara swore at himself, too. He could have handled the big homicide dick if the O’Hara temper hadn’t slipped its leash.
Miller turned into the corridor that opened onto the motor court and for a moment was out of sight. O’Hara got to the corridor and halted abruptly. The special prosecutor from Midland City had stopped just inside the doorway and was in earnest but hurried consultation with the wiry young man whom O’Hara had last seen in 907.
The tableau lasted no more than a few seconds. Miller nodded and stepped to the sidewalk. The wiry young man followed.
A low, pale-green Cadillac, driven by Ernie, the dark-faced man, slid into view and stopped. The fat man, who was Mr. Herman of Seattle — at least, on the Diplomat register — was in the front seat beside Ernie. O’Hara saw Rex Miller reach for the rear door of the Cad, open it. Miller climbed into the car quickly, the wiry young man popped in after him. The Cad rolled away.
O’Hara got to the curb in time to see the Cad swinging around the corner of the boxwood hedge outlining the motor court. He got a glimpse of an Illinois license plate, a glimpse that gave him only two of the numbers, and then the Cad was gone.
He went back and up the stairs toward the lobby and the telephone booths. He was thinking about Lieutenant Lenroot whose face was going to be very red when he saw in the Tribune the 907 picture and read that one Rex Miller, special prosecutor in the Midland City case, had driven hurriedly away from the Diplomat with three prize suspects in the linen-closet killing.
He knew that Lenroot would try to land on him like a ton of brickbats for holding out. O’Hara had the comeback for that one, something about leading a mule to the information trough but not being able to force the mule to have any.
Wedging himself into a phone booth, he dialed the number of the Tribune and got through to the city desk.
A crisp, brusque voice said: “Hello, hello.”
O’Hara said: “Brad, this is Ken O’Hara.”
At the other end of the wire Braddock began to laugh. “Well, hello, black sheep. I hear you got fired.”
“O.K., I got fired.”
“I gave you a month to lose the spot and you made it in a week and now I suppose you want your job back.” He laughed again.
“That’s right — laugh!”
“O.K., boy, I’m laughing and I don’t know why I shouldn’t. I told you not to take that job, I said you were a reporter and not a press agent but, no, you knew it all and Uncle Braddock could go jump in the lake. And now you come around begging for your job back—”
O’Hara said hotly: “Who said I was begging for my job?”
“Oh, you don’t want it back?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Braddock had been burned when O’Hara had walked out on him. He still sounded burned. He said: “When you make up your mind, come around and see me. Right now, Irish, I’m busy.”
The line went dead in O’Hara’s ear and he said under his breath, but not very far under: “Then nuts to you, too.”
He had pronged the receiver and was stepping out of the booth as he said it, practically into the face of a pompous man with reached gray hair who stood waiting.
The pompous man said indignantly: “I beg your pardon, sir?”
O’Hara muttered: “Sorry. Just send the nuts back.”
O’Hara moved off through the lobby toward the entrance of the cocktail room and the pompous man decided the fellow must be crazy or drunk or both and let it go at that.
O’Hara was making wet, moody circles on the bar with his highball glass when Tony Ames found him thirty minutes later. He gave her a windy, up-from-under look.
She said: “You don’t have to bite me, too. I’m sorry, Ken. And if you want me to, I’ll go kick Mr. Dahlman in the face.”