O’Hara managed a grin. “Excuse, kitten. Let’s park and I’ll buy you a drink.”
They found a booth and ordered, O’Hara’s Scotch being his third. He stared at the table for seconds, finally said: “What I hate about that guy, Braddock, is he’s always right. He said I was ruining a fair reporter to make a lousy press agent and, by God, that’s just what I did. I guess it turned me into a mouse, Tony. I let that daisy-chain assistant manager fire me and then Lenroot gave me the bum’s rush and just a while ago Braddock had me back on my heels. And, cripes, I couldn’t think of a comeback to any of them.”
Tony Ames’ wide-spaced hazel eyes were sorry. “Aw, cheer up, Ken.”
“I’ll cheer up when I get my self-respect back. And, kitten, I’ll get it back.”
“You’re silly to let it get you down.”
“Quit trying to buck me up, Miss Ames. I’m not going to be a happy Irishman until I’ve made more of a monkey out of Lenroot than he made out of me — and until Brad begs me to come back. And, by cripes, I’ll put it over.”
Tony looked interested. “You mean on this Diplomat murder?”
O’Hara grinned. “That, you Tribune minion, would be telling. You working on it?”
“I was up there helping Shep Carter from the police beat for a while.”
“Lenroot getting anywhere?”
“He hadn’t up to the time I left. There was no identification on the body. None of the hotel employees questioned so far had seen the man before, with the exception of an elevator operator who said he took him to eight early in the afternoon.” She stopped and then said slowly: “Ken, you know things about this murder that you’re not telling.”
For a moment O’Hara didn’t answer. Then he said: “Tony, I’m going to put you in a spot I’ve been in many times. If I tell you something in confidence, I know you’re not going to violate my confidence by tipping off Brad or the cops. I know a little something about this killing. I’m going to find out more and then I’m going to hang it on Brad and Lenroot like a horsecollar on a jackass.”
Tony looked worried. She said: “Ken, this is a murder. Do you think you ought to hold out?”
“Hold out?” said O’Hara. “Hold out? All afternoon I’ve been trying to tell those two guys what I know. And what do I get out of it? Insults, a kicking around!”
Tony sighed: “Some time I’d like to find an Irishman who could be sore but sensible.”
“He died and went to heaven a thousand years ago.”
Clancy peered in at the entrance of the cocktail room and O’Hara got up. He said: “I’ll be seeing you, kitten.”
“Uh-huh,” said Tony, smiling a little.
He went out and herded Clancy to the comparative quiet of an alcove. There he studied one of the prints that Clancy produced. The little photog hadn’t lied; drunk or sober he could shoot swell pix and this sample was no exception.
The fat man was in the center like a Buddha in a sweat-stained shirt. The wiry mustached man lounged gracefully against the bureau and Ernie was frozen into a pose of startled motion. The jockey-sized man grinned straight into the camera and O’Hara thought it a little ironic that he seemed the happiest guy in the picture and had wound up dead within minutes of that moment.
The picture supplied other details that O’Hara hadn’t noticed when he’d been in 907 because his attention had been occupied exclusively by four hot characters. The fat man’s coat was hanging on a post of the bed and there was a folded newspaper sticking from one of the pockets. There were three empty beer bottles on the bureau and two unopened bottles. On the writing desk was a folded document of some sort. O’Hara thought he could distinguish lines and markings of some kind on it.
Even with his naked eyes, O’Hara could read the letters, MIDLAND NEWS at the top of the newspaper.
Clancy yawned. He was getting bored. He was also getting sober, which was worse. He said: “Leave us get a drink, Kenny.”
“You go get one,” O’Hara said.
Clancy ambled away and O’Hara headed for the corridor that housed a half-dozen specialty shops. In the jewelry shop O’Hara borrowed a jeweler’s glass from the slinky brunette behind the counter. He screwed it into his eye and bent over the picture.
The indistinct lines on what had looked at first like a folded document jumped up blackly and O’Hara saw that it was not a document but a road map. A highway had been paralleled in crayon and the marking led to the town name “Alkali Center” near the edge of the fold.
O’Hara returned the glass to the slinky brunette and went back toward the lobby, more puzzled now than he had been before. In the beginning he hadn’t seen any more to the killing of the jockey-sized man than a simple and sordid disagreement between thugs. It seemed apparent now that it stemmed somehow from the Midland City racket case. But how? And why had Rex Miller, special prosecutor in that case, waltzed off with three hoodlums, one of whom must certainly have committed the murder?
For a moment O’Hara toyed with the thought that the Midland City organization had put the snatch on the man who was fighting them. But, reconstructing the scene, O’Hara discarded the idea. Talking with the wiry man at the motor entrance, Miller had given no indication of being fearful or even startled; and, if he had been intercepted unexpectedly by the wiry man, he would at least have been startled. Too, he had hurried across the walk and climbed into the Cadillac with no hint of hesitancy or unwillingness.
It wasn’t entirely unknown for a battle to be framed, for a state administration to pick a special prosecutor who’d put up just enough fight to make the public think something was being done about its troubles.
But that didn’t explain the dead man on nine. Nor a road map marked as far as Alkali Center. Set in the middle of the bleak Mojave Desert, ringed in by hot rugged mountains as barren as the surface of the moon, the small town of Alkali Center would seem to hold little interest for racketeers from the lush civilized flatlands of the midwest.
O’Hara sat down at a writing desk, scribbled a few terse notes on a sheet of Diplomat stationery, sealed the notes and a print of the picture in an envelope. He wrote his name on the envelope, slipped it into his pocket and went to find Clancy.
He dug Clancy out of the barroom and together they headed for the basement garage where O’Hara’s unwashed coupe sat like an unashamed leper among the proud and shiny cars of the Diplomat trade. Clancy didn’t ask why; he just went along.
O’Hara said: “I’m taking a ride out into the desert, Clancy. I could use some help maybe.”
“O.K., Kenny.”
“There’s maybe one chance in ten we might run into trouble. I just wanted you to know.”
Clancy yawned. “Well, I got nothing else to do and I’d kinda like to see the desert. It must be the sheik in me.”
“Got a camera to take the place of the busted one?”
“Yeah. Drive by my place and we’ll pick it up.”
They angled around an impressive town car and O’Hara pulled open the door of his coupe.
Tony Ames grinned at him from the seat. She said: “I’d been wondering how much longer you’d be.”
“What’s the idea?” O’Hara said. “If any.”
Tony shrugged. “I haven’t anything interesting to do tonight and—”
“Me, too,” said O’Hara. “But we won’t be doing anything interesting together tonight, kitten.”
“Now look,” said Tony firmly, “I can always tell when you’re getting wound up to do something wacky. You get that Battle-of-the-Boyne look in your eyes. All right, let’s go and do it and get it off your mind and then you and Brad can kiss and make up and life can go on.”