“A gambler’s right bower gets more dough than a cop,” I said. “Ten times more, you told me last night. But the gambler gets more than the bower. A hundred times more.”
“I frame Tony and then step into his shoes, huh?”
“Uh-huh. That is roughly the gist of the idea.”
“Geez, who’da thought it. But why kill Costain?”
“Damned if I know. You’ve got me there, pal.”
“Geez, I must be nuts,” he sighed. “I’m screwy to even be talking to you. Your gun is the kill gun. The law says so, and you as much as admit it, but you claim you didn’t do the job. You are a fugitive, and here I sit. Geez, if that lad up front knew who you were, he’d shoot us both — that’s a cinch. I ought to turn you in.”
I grinned crookedly and jiggled a cigarette into my face and managed to light it without roasting more than half of my nose.
“Now’s your chance,” I said. My voice sounded as if it had to come through a pipe. A sewer pipe, ten miles long.
“Hell, John, we are both nuts.” He snorted, softly. “I never was much of a policeman. Take it easy. Lay low. I gotta get going. Offhand, I don’t really know what I can do for you, but I’ll do something. See you, boy.”
We shook hands and my hand felt as if he had broken it. I watched him out and then ambled up and paid my check. The prowlie stood behind me, waiting to pay his. I slid out the door. Down at the corner, at Fountain Avenue, I looked back over my shoulder. The prowl car swung out from the curb, did a fast U-turn, with its siren snarling, and headed north on Vermont.
I hiked back to the hotel.
Chapter Six
A Heel Run Down
Except for an owlish-looking deskman, not the one who had checked me in, the dimmed lobby was empty. Something seemed wrong when I got up to the room. The door was unlocked — but I couldn’t remember, for sure, whether I had locked it. I eased inside, closed the door. Nothing moved. Noise in the air shaft was about the same. I found the light.
My suitcase was still under the bed. I hauled it out. A search told me that my stuff was all there, but someone had pawed it over. I sniffed at the soda on the dresser. The bottle was still half full, with a few sluggish last bubbles rising in it. I decided not to touch it. The whiskey bottle was gone.
There were no alcoves or closets to the room where a stranger might hide. I doused the light, stepped into the hallway, locked the door and tried the knob this time. Then I prowled back to the elevator and rode it down.
The deskman leaned against his side of the desk and yawned at me. I pushed through the door to the men’s room. Used paper towels littered the floor. Other paper had been dropped around the bowls in the stalls. My nose curled a little at the smell in there. The hungry-eyed, pimply-faced bellhop didn’t seem to mind it.
He was a mouth breather. His eyes were glued to a thick, three-inch square picture book and he was lolling in an old worn-out lobby chair in a corner. He glanced up, saw me. His hand, with the book in it, slid off the arm of the chair and dropped behind it. He looked as guilty as if he’d been caught with his hand in a blind man’s tin cup.
I grabbed the front of his jacket, lifted him. The picture book dropped and skidded under the chair. He had a breath like a sick mule. I let go of him. He flopped back in the chair, hard. The chair moved. Glass rattled on the floor tiles — my whiskey bottle, empty now.
“Did the guy hire you to ransack my room?” I grated.
“What guy?” he whined. “I ain’t ransacked nothing.”
“You little— How much did he pay you?”
“Nothing. I don’t even know what you mean, fella.”
“The hell you don’t. I mean fatty, the big guy, Keever.”
“Honest, mister, he never paid me nothing. Not a cent.”
Hinges squeaked dryly behind me. I whirled. The owlish-looking deskman poked his nose in a couple of inches past the edge of the door and said: “What goes on?”
“Hey, Gus, help,” the hop croaked. “This guy’s murdering me.”
Gus vanished.
I yanked the sawed-off thirty-two out of my belt. The kid paled visibly and seemed to shrink in size until his suit almost fitted loosely. “You asked for it,” I snapped. “Talk it up, fast.”
“He — that is, the fast guy, he says, keep an eye on you. He never paid me no dough. He just says, keep your seven bucks — if you took it off me, let him know. If you check out, let him know. He says to tail you, if I can. But you don’t check out. I seen your bag upstairs when I—”
“Let him know where?” I rapped.
“I forget,” he whispered. “I don’t remember.”
I held the gun muzzle to his nose and grinned nastily.
“Villa Morocco Apartments,” he wheezed. “Twelve-B.”
I shoved the gun into my pocket and got out of there.
As I hit the street, I heard the brief low growl of another siren over on Vermont. Gus had called the law. I walked west a block and cut north. At Sunset Boulevard, I hailed a cab.
There were warm lights in the Villa Morocco lobby. It looked cozy. I didn’t go in. I paid off the cab at the curb and plowed through the entrance arcade to the inner court. Flower fragrance on the air in the court seemed heavier at night than in daytime. Lamps over some of the apartment doors were on. I went back past the splash of the fountain.
Twelve-B was dark. Twelve-A, upstairs, had a look of somebody home. I punched Keever’s bell, hoping that it was Keever’s, and heard faint and distant chimes followed by nothing. Foliage screened me off from the front office windows. I leaned on the button again, waited. A door opened and closed, somewhere up above, and heels clicked along the balcony. The heels reached the open wooden stairway, clumped down it. The figure was a woman in a fur coat — a large, bosomy blonde. Her heels changed note at the bottom on the patio stone, echoed hollowly under the arcade and faded. The door in front of me was not locked when I thumbed the latch.
I held it open a few inches and listened. Nothing stirred, or screamed. No guns went off in my face. I moved inside, pressed the door shut. Its catch slid in place with a dry click. I held my breath, opened my mouth, grimaced with the strain of not breathing, and listened some more.
Silence almost smothered me. Then a toilet flushed somewhere, distantly, and water flowed in the piping in another part of the building. That made the world seem a little more normal. Around me, in 12B, nobody moved.
After a long moment, I struck a match and a tiny light flared up about twenty paces away. A ghostly face under the brim of a hat gave me a long scared stare. Then I grinned and it grinned foolishly back at me. It was my own face, reflected from the mirrored wall around a familiar appearing dark-tiled fireplace.
A lot of brocaded furniture bulked dimly in the wavering matchlight. Glassware and polished metal ornaments gleamed dully. There were dark heavy drapes, walls with built-in shelves lined with books and more brassy fire tools on a little rack at the end of the hearth tiles, like the ones upstairs. There was also more thick carpeting to walk on, as soft as swamp moss. It seemed like far too much apartment for any guy living on just a house dick’s wages.
I waded across the living room in the dark. A swing door, like the one in Gail Tremaine’s apartment, let me into a small serving pantry and then the kitchen. I figured it would be safe to risk a light, that far back, and flipped a switch. The back door was wide open.
I peered out into the night. The alley looked deserted. A light outside the door at the top of the back stairs was on. A soft cool night breeze blew against my face. I pulled my face in and closed the door on the breeze.
A row of empty beer bottles stood on the drainboard of the kitchen sink. There were some ants in the breadbox, nothing else, no staple groceries on the kitchen shelves. Dishes in the cupboards had a thin film of dust on them. The refrigerator was empty and dusty inside and the electric cord was not even plugged in. The gas stove oven was full of pots and pans that had a look of rust and disuse.