The apple cheeks darkened, and the lieutenant's stare passed from Johnny to the wooden-faced detective. “Officially you never heard that, Rogers,” he growled.
Johnny led the way to 615 and unlocked the door. “The trouble with your job nowadays,” he needled, “is that you do too much pitchin' an' not enough catchin'. You ought to drop around more often an' slop a little swill with the rest of us hogs.”
The lieutenant was silent; inside he eyed with grudging appreciation the attractively furnished oversized bed-sitting room, with its wall-to-wall deep pile carpeting and the three-quarter-sized refrigerator tucked neatly in a corner. “Damned if I don't like this a little better each time I see it,” he said gruffly. He ran an appraising eye over the gray-green Segonzac on the opposite wall, and the corners of his hard mouth turned upward. “I'm a cinch to outlive you, Johnny, the way you pace yourself. Why don't you will this to me, the same way Willie Martin left it to you?”
“An' give you a motive for gettin' rid of me, along with an inclination? I might not fit in a round hole, Joe, but I'm not that square, either. I don't own nothin' here yet, anyway; the new owners have gone to court over that clause in the will.”
Lieutenant Dameron raised an eyebrow. “I thought Willie went to a little trouble to plug that loophole?”
“That's why these corporations have lawyers.” Johnny nodded at the leather-covered armchairs. “Park it, you guys.” He seated himself on the edge of the bed. “These people caught the estate lawyers so hungry for a buyer they agreed to a transfer without prejudice as to the clause favorin' me, which meant they were entitled to go into court an' try to tip it over.”
“And you've got the expense of fighting it?”
Johnny shook his head. “Willie even thought of that. If it's contested, my legal expenses come right off the top of the estate, just like the room and the furnishings here.” He looked over at the two men in their chairs. “They'd have held still for the furnishings-it was the room that bugged them. Nobody ever heard of a hotel room bein' willed to someone before. They can't find any precedents.”
“They haven't tried to buy you off?” Detective Rogers asked.
“They tried,” Johnny admitted. “I blew that fuse for them, fast. If Willie wanted me to have this place, nobody's gonna muscle me out of it.”
Lieutenant Dameron looked around the room reminiscently. “You and Willie,” he said softly. “God help me, the gray hair you two gave me. In an operation that above all things demanded discretion-” He shook his head in remembered disbelief.
“Discretion didn't always get the job done, Joe,” Johnny replied. “Which brings us up to right now. What you bein' discreet about these days?”
“This business this morning-”
“Before we get into the double talk,” Johnny interrupted, “just what do you think actually happened over at the Rollin' Stone?”
“The newspapers had a rather full account, I thought. A bit sensationalized, but of course that's what sells newspapers.”
“Joe, this is Johnny. You don't believe the newspapers, or what the hell are you doing sittin' here?”
“There were certain aspects-”
“Bag it, Joe. Tell it to someone who doesn't know you.”
The gray eyes examined him frostily. “We have time to listen to your version, if you have one.”
“You won't like it. My version is that the kid was murdered by two gunmen sent to do that specific job.”
“You know you can't prove that!” The heavy voice was edged. “I just can't buy it, Johnny.”
“So don't buy it,” Johnny replied indifferently. “It'll sell itself to you. Just remember I said so.”
“I hope I don't have to warn you about withholding information,” the big man said icily. “I want to know what you know. Right now.”
Johnny laughed shortly. “You always get what you want?”
Lieutenant Dameron's hands closed down tightly on the arms of his chair. “By God, I'll-”
“Easy, Joe, easy.” Johnny rose to his feet leisurely and looked down at the man in the chair. “What did you bring over here for me? Not a damn echo, even. That's why for you I got nothing, in spades. I don't work one-way streets.” He made a production of looking at his watch. “You're abusin' my hospitality, boys.”
Detective Rogers rose, looking uncomfortable, but the steely gray eyes of the man in the armchair glared up at Johnny for five seconds before the lieutenant heaved himself to his feet. Without a word he strode to the door and flung it open. In the second that Johnny had Jimmy Rogers' sole attention he silently mouthed, “Come on back.” He received a quick affirmative nod before the slender man followed his superior from the room.
Johnny closed the door behind them and lit a cigarette. He stretched out on his back on the bed, and thought about the reason for the visit, never disclosed. Experimentally, he blew smoke rings at the ceiling; but, seeing they were all lopsided, he gave it up. He had stubbed out the cigarette when the knock came at the door, and he admitted a weary-looking Detective James Rogers.
“Man, oh, man!” the sandy-haired man exclaimed feelingly. “I know you don't like him, but do you mind making your point some time when I'm not around to get the rebuttal?” He probed at both ears.
“He's gone?”
“Fortissimo, he's gone. Now why am I back up here?”
“You know why you're back up here. I'll tell you what I wouldn't tell that big monkey just slammed outta here. From you just possibly I might get somethin' one of these days. Now listen.” Naming no names, Johnny swiftly gave his interpretation of the fixed fight and the deaths in the tavern as he now reconstructed them.
“Where did you learn all this?” Detective Rogers bristled.
“You practicin' to sound like Dameron? You ought to know there's people will talk to me won't talk to the police.”
“We'd had rumors on that fight,” the detective admitted. “The lieutenant's afraid of an investigation. Every time there's an investigation of a sporting event, the police department winds up in the middle of a political weight-throwing contest.”
“So good old Joe was out scoutin' the ground figurin' the safest way to lean?”
“It's hardly likely there'll be an investigation now, with the boy dying a hero, as far as the newspapers are concerned. Who wants to try to make any hay bucking those headlines?” Detective Rogers looked at Johnny thoughtfully. “I can't understand how you get away with it with the lieutenant.”
Johnny grinned. “You think I got somethin' on him? Not a damn thing, except in his own mind. Joe fought a good, tight war over there, but the rat holes we was sent to plug had to be handled in a way sometimes you wouldn't want to mention at a political rally. Joe knows that I don't give a damn, an' he's afraid I'll open my mouth in the wrong place an' run his dirty underwear up to the top of the mast along with mine.” He kept his tone casual. “Say, you know anyone named Munson?”
“Only Al Munson, Lonnie Turner's press agent,” the detective said absently. “He fixes me up with a ticket every now and then.” His attention sharpened. “What's with Munson?”
“Had a message from someone by that name,” Johnny said easily. “That's probably the one. Turner promoted that fight, didn't he? It's probably about the check for the kid's end.”
“Roketenetz hadn't been paid?”
“Hadn't been time, Jimmy.”
“He had thirty-eight hundred and a few dollars on him when we-brought him in,” the slender man said slowly.
Johnny whistled. “You just this minute held your own fight investigation, didn't you? Not that there was ever any doubt, if you saw it. This Gidlow-the kid's manager — haven't I heard that he's in Turner's pocket?”
“I've heard stories.” Jimmy Rogers tugged at an ear lobe exasperatedly. “I'd like to talk to Gidlow. I've got lines out for him all over town, but he doesn't show.”