“What about a window?”
The Inspector went to a window, pulled the drapery aside and shook an ornamental grillwork set into the stucco outside the window. “Every window but the bathroom has these and you couldn’t get a Singer’s midget out the bathroom window.”
“Any connecting doors to the other apartments?”
“None. There’s three other apartments, all rented to members of the floor show. The radio boys went through the other places right away and found nobody.” Blane was patient, had about him the attitude that he didn’t mind humoring O’Hara. “Anything else, Irish?”
City Councilman Davenport came across the room with ponderous dignity and put his hand sympathetically on O’Hara’s shoulder. “I know how you feel, my boy. I, too, had known Lawton a long time and liked him.”
O’Hara’s face had a crabbed, rebellious look but he shrugged, said nothing.
Tymes, the bureau photographer, came in. He was a small man in rumpled brown with a pod of stomach and he whistled “Little Old Lady,” as he put his bag down and got out tripod and camera. He interrupted his whistling to say, “I’ll get it from the doorway, Inspector.”
He began his whistle again and the men in the room stood back from the body. O’Hara lounged by the coffee table, let his glance wander down to the litter of Lawton’s possessions. He pawed through them with a finger. His back was to the others.
Detective Shuford, across the room, said sharply, “Hey, O’Hara!”
“You guys again?” Blane barked.
“Inspector, O’Hara just snitched something out of that junk of Lawton’s,” Shuford whined.
Blane came over heavily and O’Hara said, “As usual, Otto’s all wet.” His eyes were clear, candid.
Blane looked doubtful but he said, “Leave things alone or out you go on the curb with the rest of your newspaper tribe, O’Hara.”
The photographer came out from under his black hood, began to get his flash gun ready. He was still whistling.
“For Pete’s sake, Tymes,” Blane snapped, “cut out that whistling.”
Tymes said, “Aw, Inspector, I just do it to keep my spirits up.”
“Well, let ’em drop.”
O’Hara waited until the photographer had his second shot, said, “Where’s a phone around here, Kerr?”
“My office.”
“How’s about using it to make a call?”
“Go to it,” the manager of the club said in his pleasantly husky drawl.
O’Hara picked his way around the tripod at the doorway, went down thickly carpeted steps to a foyer that connected with the entrance to the Club Barcelona Three more steps took him past a thin red-headed check girl and into the dining-room which was long and wide with a dais at the far end for the Swing Boys. The ink-spot of dance floor was jammed, and if there were any vacant tables, O’Hara couldn’t spot them. He went along the wall, dodging waiters, and into a corridor that led to Johnny Kerr’s office.
Inside the office a stocky man with a pink face and fluffy blond hair lolled in a big, leather-padded chair with his heels hooked on the edge of a desk. He had a highball in one hand and a table-tennis bat in the other and he was making languid passes in the air at an imaginary ball. There was a half-eaten club sandwich on the desk. When the man saw O’Hara he threw the tennis-table bat on the desk with a clatter and stuck out his right hand.
“As I live and inhale and exhale,” he chortled, “if it isn’t my old pal, O’Hara. How are you, kid?”
O’Hara shook the outstretched hand. “Hello, Rock. How’s the press agent racket?”
Joe Rockley beamed. “Swell, Ken, swell. I nearly make a living out of it, what with handling the Barcelona, Station KGP, a couple of other spots and a convention now and then.” His pink face went serious. “Tough about Law-ton. I was sitting right here with Kerr when the uproar started and this Dana wench busted in, saying Johnny had taken a shot at her. I thought at first she was nuts. Well, I suppose the Barcelona gets plastered on the front pages tomorrow.”
“Not in the Tribune,” O’Hara said. He pulled the phone over, dialed and got the Tribune. He talked briefly to Brad-dock on the city desk, not much more lengthily to a rewrite man and cradled the phone.
Rockley was making sleepy passes with the bat again. He grinned, said, “My doc told me to take-up tennis for my figure so I’m making it table tennis because I can eat and practice at the same time. I’m getting a swell backhand.”
O’Hara said, “Rock, as space chiseler for this joint you probably saw a bit of Lawton.”
“Yeah,” Rockley said, “he was here a lot, especially since Kerr put the Dana girl in the show.”
“Would you say Johnny was carrying the torch for her?”
“I don’t know if you’d call it that. He was seeing plenty of her, though.”
“Ever hear him pull any suicide talk?”
“Not that I remember,” Rockley said.
O’Hara nodded, scowling faintly. “Well, I’ve got a sweet assignment now. I’ve got to go out and see Mrs. Lawton and tell her Johnny doesn’t live there any more. That’s bad enough but when she learns it was over another woman — wow!”
“I’m glad it’s your job and not mine.”
“Incidentally,” O’Hara said, picking up the phone again, “who is Dana? Where’s she from? What do you know about her?”
“I might say not much,” Rockley shrugged. “In fact, I will say not much. Kerr gave her a tryout at Lawton’s request and she clicked. But I’ll be glad to find out all I can for you about her.”
O’Hara dialed a number, waited and then said, “I get you out of bed, Tony?”
Tony Ames yawned along miles of wire. “Yes, if you really want to know.” Tony was very fond of O’Hara. She worked on the Tribune, too, and they saw a lot of each other.
“I don’t but I thought it’d be polite to ask. Listen, duchess, I’ve got a nice lousy job for you.”
“That’s the sort you usually shove over onto me.”
“I’m serious. Johnny Lawton killed himself tonight.”
Her tone one of shocked unbelief, Tony Ames said, “Johnny Lawton did what?”
“Killed himself. And I’ve got to go out and break the news to his wife. Will you meet me there? I never did know what to do about weeping women.”
“Of course I’ll meet you.”
“It’s 1533 South Norton, block below Pico.”
“In twenty minutes. Poor Johnny! Of all people, I never thought he—”
“Neither did I. Twenty minutes it is.”
O’Hara stood up and Rockley said, “How about a little drinkie, Ken?”
“Thanks. I’m not in the mood tonight.”
“Drop in whenever you’re out this way. The Barcelona can always scrape up a filet mignon or at least a sardine for a practicing newspaper man.”
He flipped an indolent salute at O’Hara as O’Hara went out the door and then went back to his highball, his club sandwich.
The Club Barcelona was on Palms Boulevard, far to the south of the city proper but still within the city limits. O’Hara looked up at it as he came out of the building. It was a long two-story affair of white stucco that had originally been built as an automobile showroom with apartments above. Three years before, O’Hara knew, Johnny Kerr had come to the coast with the hint of a Chicago background about him and had taken over the building, turning it into a night club. It had done well; in fact, if this particular night’s crowd was a normal sample, Kerr was doing better than well.
Along one side of the building was a graveled parking space and O’Hara trudged around there, gravel clicking from his toes. From above him, as he climbed into his shabby coupé, came the rumble of Inspector Blane’s voice, asking questions, and a contralto that was Inez Dana’s voice, answering them.