Oscar cut into the curb with a squeal of brakes and Tony Ames said, “Now what?”
“Now a black eye and a bloody nose,” O’Hara grinned. “Virtually a signboard saying Eddie has passed this way. You wait here, honey.”
“Oh, sure,” Tony said. “That’s all I do.”
O’Hara got out, crossed the street and walked back to the apartment house. The doorman had his handkerchief out, patting at his nose tenderly. He looked as though he might usually be good-natured but he wasn’t good-natured now.
O’Hara said, “Look, captain, did you see a young blond guy?”
The doorman glared at O’Hara bale-fully. He took two catlike steps and grabbed O’Hara by the front of the coat. He said, “You a friend of that guy?”
“He’s a hard guy to be friends with,” O’Hara said diplomatically.
“You’re telling me?” snarled the doorman. “So this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, gorgeous, who was that I just seen come in here?’ and I tell him who does he think he is and I don’t go for that gorgeous stuff and if he ain’t careful I’ll sock him and—”
“And,” O’Hara said, lifting the doorman’s grip off his lapels, “he took the first sock.”
“For nothing at all, too,” said the doorman aggrievedly. “And I wasn’t looking, neither. And when I come to, he was gone or I’d of... I’d of—”
“Sure,” O’Hara said soothingly. “You haven’t seen him since?”
“Just leave me see that guy once again.”
“I’ll bet. Incidentally, who was the guy our friend was so interested in, the guy that had come in here just before?”
“Oh, you wanta know things, too?” said the doorman. “Well, who comes and who goes here ain’t the public’s business. Now beat it before I sock you — and call the cops, too.”
O’Hara grinned. “If I had your fight record, I’d call the cops first.”
The doorman snarled, “Izzatso?” and started at O’Hara. He began a swing and as he did so, a cab slanted in toward the awning and the doorman pulled his swing, missed O’Hara’s blocking arm by two feet and let his hand grab for the door of the cab instead. He opened the door and the redheaded girl O’Hara had last seen at the Bolero the night before tumbled out into the doorman’s arms. She was gloriously drunk and she put her arms around the doorman’s neck and pulled herself up straight.
She said, “Hi yah, toots?”
The doorman said, “I’m fine, Miss. Now take it easy.”
He threw a nasty look at O’Hara and the redhead followed the look with one of hers that wasn’t nasty.
She said to O’Hara, “Hi yah, ya old handsome brute. Say, toots, how’s to introduce me to old handsome brute here?”
“Now, Miss,” the doorman said, beginning to haul her inside, “just take it easy. Easy.”
At the door the redhead rolled her eyes at O’Hara but she didn’t offer any resistance to being dragged in. O’Hara watched the doorman get her into an elevator. The door clanged and whirring noises came from inside the shaft. O’Hara went in and watched the indicator spin until it stopped at six.
There were stairs at the rear of the lobby and O’Hara went inside, threaded his way between potted plants, went up the stairs. He went quietly and when he was at the third floor he heard the rumble of the descending elevator.
Each floor had three apartments, one that ran across the front of the building and one each along the sides. At the sixth floor O’Hara stepped along the hall on soft carpeting. There was a lot of noise somewhere on the floor and it didn’t take long to locate it in the front apartment. The noise included all the ingredients of a Hollywood party and O’Hara skipped that apartment.
At the rear of the hall the globe of a fire-escape light glowed ruddily. O’Hara padded down the carpet to the window beneath the light, got the window open and poked his head out. A row of windows flanked the fire-escape at either side. One side was dark; from the other, light poured into the night. O’Hara climbed out on the fire-escape landing, found the nearest window was still three feet out of reach.
He scowled at the window in frustration and while he was scowling someone inside blocked the light for a moment, passed on.
After a little O’Hara snapped his fingers noiselessly, surveyed the hall and, seeing it still empty, climbed inside again. He went to the elevator shaft, wrestled with the small mirror that was hinged at the edge of the door frame and wrenched it off the hinge. A brass strip held down the carpeting at the elevator entrance and he got his fingers under one end of the strip and ripped it up.
Back on the fire escape, he slid the end of the brass strip into the slot that had held the mirror to the hinge. Bending the strip of brass, he got a satisfactory angle to the mirror and extended it toward the lighted window. The brass strip, none too stout, quivered in his hand and the mirror shimmered light at him, showing small quivering figures inside the lighted room.
He steadied the mirror and the figures stopped quivering, became three men and a woman. The woman was the redheaded girl and one of the men was Vic Philippi. One of the other two men was the hoodlum who had been with Philippi the night before and O’Hara didn’t know the third man. The mirror showed them only from the knees up because they were fairly close to the window but he could see them looking at something on the floor. By moving the mirror up and down a bit O’Hara managed to get a look at the floor of the room at the far side of the room. He worked on it for a couple of minutes.
The best he could get in the mirror was something that looked at first like a pair of feet. He steadied the mirror and saw that the something actually was a pair of feet. He got a cold feeling at the pit of his stomach and then it went away because the feet were clad in gray, suede shoes. And Eddie Mullen had worn sturdy and expensive affairs of imported Scotch grain.
The feet in the gray suede shoes were so awkwardly inanimate that O’Hara had a hunch they’d never wear out any more shoe leather. He wondered who the owner of the feet might be and while he was working the mirror around, trying to get an image of the rest of the body, the glass wiggled at the end of the brass strip and suddenly slid off and went down into darkness. In its flight it flashed light up at him once as it passed a third-floor window and then there was a tiny explosion of breaking glass in the yard below.
O’Hara swore, not because he was superstitious about breaking mirrors, but because he had been just on the point of finding out who wore those very quiet suede shoes and now, before he could do that, he’d have to go to the fifth floor or the seventh and help himself to another mirror. However, as long as the elevator mirrors held out, he could hold out.
The hall was empty when O’Hara climbed off the fire escape. The party in the front apartment was going stronger than ever and somebody there was singing about the “Butcher Boy” very loudly while the radio was concentrating on “Says My Heart.” O’Hara walked toward the stairway, came even with the doors of the two rear apartments.
One of the doors opened and the redheaded girl came out, staggering and rubber-kneed, while a man behind her grabbed at her vainly. The redhead barged into O’Hara, wound herself around him. Her breath washed up at him in a warm, beery wave.
She said, “H’yah, toots,” and then got a good look at O’Hara. “Ha, it’s old handsome brute.”
O’Hara tried to look nonchalant while he unwound the girl’s arms from around his neck and the man behind her got her around the waist. The man, O’Hara thanked his lucky stars, was the man he didn’t know and who, presumably, didn’t know him.
The man had a large, round, oily face with a small cupid’s bow mouth that was very displeased now. He said, “Cripes, Seena, d’you have to go on the make for every stranger you run into? Come on — and, mister, will you excuse it?”