O’Hara grinned, said under his breath, “The old goat.”
But as he pulled out more prints, saw that they were all pictures of written pages and that the signatures progressed from “Homer A. Davenport,” to “Homer,” and finally, in the last few, to “Your adoring Daddy,” his grin turned a bit pinched, faintly embarrassed. All the letters had been written from a Chicago hotel during the previous summer and the contents painted a masterpiece of a solid citizen on the loose. It was a little nauseating to see what a sap a decent guy like Davenport could become when he started carrying the torch for a tramp.
O’Hara slid the prints back into the envelope, stuck the envelope under his belt at the front of his hard, flat belly, pulled his vest down. The packet made no noticeable bulge.
His wrist-watch told him he still had twenty minutes before the end of Inez Dana’s last number, so he spent ten of them shaking down a tiny kitchenette, found nothing that seemed to mean anything.
At eighty-twenty he put out the lights, stood in the darkness a moment, patting the packet over his stomach and thinking. He knew he had something but how it might tie in with the death of Johnny Lawton he didn’t know. At least the letters could be used as a lever to make Davenport do some talking; they had that much value.
He padded across to the door, opened it quietly and stepped without any attempt at concealment into the mellow light of the hallway.
A hand went around his arm. The hand belonged to Detective Shuford and Shuford jerked O’Hara around to face him. His round pink face had an expression half-way between glee and anger. He crowed, “Thanks for walking out into my mitts, O’Hara. I was just coming in for you.”
Councilman Davenport, with a stray end of his long lock lopping out at the side of his fedora, stood beside Shuford and the manager, Kerr, stood just behind the Councilman. Kerr’s face wore its usual mask of impersonal amusement but Davenport looked uneasily at O’Hara, at Shuford, and opened and closed his hands nervously. O’Hara said nothing.
“I had a hunch,” Shuford gurgled, “you still had ideas about pushing Miss Dana around. So when I get here a few minutes ago, I ask the check girl if she’s seen anybody looks like you. So she says a guy that looked like you sneaked up the stairs here a while back. So it’s burglary and will I get a kick out of sticking you away!”
Davenport shook his head. “This is very serious, O’Hara. I could scarcely believe Lieutenant Shuford was in earnest when he came to my table, told me his suspicions and asked me to be a witness. I must confess I’m shocked.”
O’Hara shrugged. He had his poise back after a very disquieting jolt. He said, “Don’t let it get you down, Councilman. Of course, Otto’s disappointed in me, too, but he’ll get over it.”
Shuford tightened his grip on O’Hara’s arm, clipped, “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t get one to ten out of it.”
Kerr drawled, “You’ve got yourself in a sweet mess, Irish. If you wanted to clown around why didn’t you come to me? You could have had the keys for the joint. After all, I’ve got the whole place under lease and I’d have let you prowl around as much as you wanted.”
“I’ll bet,” O’Hara said.
“I’m not kidding,” Kerr said gravely. “You seem to have it in your nut that there was something sour about what happened to Lawton last night. That attitude isn’t apt to do my business any good and if I can help you get over the idea, I’ll do it.”
Shuford growled, began to manhandle O’Hara toward the stairs and O’Hara flexed his arm, twisting Shuford’s grip off slowly and without too much visible effort.
He said, “Grow up, Otto. If you insist, we’ll go down and see Inspector Blane.”
“Blane, your eye!” Shuford’s neck bulged with anger but he didn’t put his hand on O’Hara’s arm again. “Your first stop is a cell over at the Westwood station. You newspaper guys get away with a lot but I’ll prosecute this case clear to the grand jury if I have to. Get going!”
O’Hara said nothing, walked down the stairs between Shuford and Davenport. At the foot he leaned over, said under his breath into the Councilman’s ear. “Maybe you’d use your influence to get me out of this, daddy. Or maybe I ought to say, adoring daddy.”
The Councilman jumped as though O’Hara had rammed a pin into the seat of his pants. He fixed O’Hara with the shocked, wounded gaze of an animal in pain.
Shuford said, “What? Hey, what’d you say, O’Hara?”
He glared at Davenport, at O’Hara suspiciously, and O’Hara grinned and said, “You’re too young to know, Otto. Let’s go.”
Davenport tried to keep the flutiness out of his voice but didn’t quite succeed. “Yes, I... I’ll see what can be done for you, O’Hara.”
“Now, Councilman,” Shuford said plaintively, “you know I got the goods on this guy and it ain’t right to—”
Kerr’s face was amused, impersonal but he said, “Let’s talk this over in my office. After all, Lieutenant, there’s no big rush to throw O’Hara into jail. I understand they keep the jails here open all night.”
Davenport put his hand persuasively on Shuford’s arm. He said, “Yes... yes, I’d suggest you — we all talk this thing over.”
Shuford said doggedly, “It ain’t going to do no good to talk it over. I caught this guy burglarizing Miss Dana’s apartment and I know she’ll sign a complaint. That’s all there is to it.”
“You’d better find out if she’ll sign a complaint, hadn’t you?” Kerr said smoothly. “Wait in my office and I’ll call her.”
Shuford grumbled, hesitated, but finally herded O’Hara after Kerr and the Councilman. They went through the dining-room, down the corridor that led to Kerr’s office.
Inside the office, Joe Rockley, the press agent, was sitting with his heels hooked on Kerr’s desk and a highball and a sandwich in his hands. This time the sandwich was ham and cheese but otherwise Rockley looked as though he hadn’t moved since O’Hara had left him there the night before.
He raised fluffy eyebrows, said languidly, “Hey, hey, gentlemen. What ho?”
Nobody answered him for a moment and he said, “Anything wrong, O’Hara? You don’t look happy and if you can’t be happy at the Barcelona, you can’t be happy anywhere. Our slogan.”
O’Hara grinned. “Nothing the matter with me. It’s our Detective Lieutenant — he’s having delusions, among them the delusions that I’m a burglar and that he’s going to slam me in jail.”
“No!” Rockley said. “Lieutenant, didn’t you ever hear that you can’t arrest newspaper men?”
Shuford swung, poked a stiff forefinger at Rockley. He said between his teeth, “Get outa here, funny guy. Scram!”
Rockley’s face lost its grin. He got up. Going toward the door, still clutching his sandwich and highball, he said to O’Hara, “I thought you were kidding. It seems you weren’t. Anything I can do or anybody I can call for you?”
Shuford snarled, “I said scram!” and aimed a foot at the seat of Rockley’s pants.
Rockley avoided the kick. Going out the door, he sighed, “Tsk, tsk, such a disposition.”
Kerr got out a box of cigars, opened them on his desk. But nobody took any and Kerr said, “Maybe I’m going out of my way to mess in this but, after all, it’s my spot and my success depends a lot on the kind of publicity I get. Pinching O’Hara out here, Lieutenant, won’t help my relations with the newspapers.”
“To hell with the newspapers,” Shuford growled. “Get Miss Dana and when she says she’ll sign a complaint, I’ll take the responsibility off your shoulders.”