Johnny tried to hold his breath, which seemed to him to be so loud that it impaired his hearing.
“-must be entirely unaware of the evening's activities, Mr. Wilson, when you can speak so urgently of caution?”
He could picture the thin-lipped, supercilious features hovering over the mouthpiece.
“-perfectly aware of our agreement, but hear me out.
Two men were killed on the premises here tonight, one of them an employee. I have not seen the other, but do you seriously question his identity?”
Again the enveloping silence as the saturated uniform molded itself to Johnny like a wet gunnysack.
“-do get the picture? Then I'm sure you'll agree that becoming involved in such a fiasco is a small world apart from supplying you with the bits of information you fancied? I personally feel so strongly about it that you shan't hear from me again.”
A biting cramp settled in the calf of Johnny's left leg; he jammed the heel down hard to ease the knotted pressure.
“-have something to lose, sir. I shan't change my mind. I was a fool to listen to you originally.”
Awkwardly Johnny lifted the leg and dug at the cramp with iron fingers.
“-sorry. Kindly don't bother to call again.”
The finality of the tone straightened Johnny up; in the darkness he felt all turned around, but with fingertips lightly on the plaster to guide himself, he exchanged ear for eye in time to hazily frame the little manager in the peephole again as he sat slumped forward in his chair at the desk. Johnny's eyes stung from the perspiration, and he sleeved them roughly. Vision was playing tricks on him now; in the inky blackness great white lights roared up and silently assaulted his retinas, and nausea was a cold, balled fist in his middle.
Enough was enough; he'd heard more than he had had any licence to expect. With painful deliberation he wormed his way backward out of the cavern whose walls seemed to press in more tightly upon him by the moment, pausing only to use the flashlight to prompt the positioning of his feet.
He noted wryly upon reaching his starting point that the comparatively cramped confines of the maid's closet felt like a ballroom after the constricting embrace of the passageway between the walls, and in the first instant of light, air, and space in the outside corridor he felt like a grain of sand on the beach.
He blinked at the light in the corridor, hurriedly replaced the ladder in its accustomed spot, and thankfully closed the door. On the way to his room only two things were in his mind: he had to call Sally and find out whom Ronald Frederick had called, and he had to get out of this uniform and under the shower.
With his own door closed behind him he pulled his cigarettes from his breast pocket, then smashed the sodden pack against the wall in disgust. His throat felt parched, and his stomach uneasy; he stripped quickly, balling the soggy uniform trousers and jacket tightly and flinging them into the open closet on his way to the shower, but his impatience detoured him to the phone. “Sally?”
“Oh, Johnny-! Where've you been?”
“In the woodwork.”
“Isn't it terrible about Dutch?”
He could picture the thin, white face whose lips seemed always to turn blue in moments of stress, and he shook his head. “Don't take it so big, kid. He was an old man.”
“But he was alive an hour ago!”
He tried to keep the impatience from his tone. “He was an old man, Sally. He'd seen it all. And he went quick. A lot of us might like to go as quick some day.” He could hear the sibilant sounds as she sniffled into the operator's mouthpiece. “Pull yourself together, ma. There's something I want to know.”
“Y-yes-?”
“Who did Freddie call just now?”
“Freddie? He hasn't made any c-calls.”
“For God's sake, I heard him make it! Ten minutes ago, maybe. No longer.”
“He hasn't called anyone. Not from his room, anyway.”
He removed the receiver from his ear and stared at it questioningly before replacing it with a shrug. “So you blew one, ma. Forget it. You're a little shook. It's not the end of the world.”
“I didn't blow anything! He hasn't called a s-soul!”
He could hear the rising hysteria in her voice, and he made his own soothing. “Sure, sure, ma. Forget it. I musta blown a fuse up here. I'm gonna lie down for a few minutes after I shower. Tell Paul to call me if he needs me.” He hung up the phone and stared at the far wall, finger and thumb tugging absentmindedly at an ear lobe. “Now who in the hell could he have called?” He shrugged again. “Tough break. It's for sure the kid don't miss many.”
He worried it around under the steaming hot water, and after a cold rinse emerged no nearer a solution. He slid into fresh underwear, and glanced at his watch on the bureau; scarcely more than an hour since he had stood in the alley and watched the lights come on in the kitchen far down the side of the building.
Max was gone, and Dutch was gone, and Dumas-if that was his name-was gone, all violently, and judging from their temper the police knew little more than he did. Johnny ran a comb through thick, damp hair; it was just about time that a thread frazzled somewhere on the fringe and gave a man something he could follow up to the counterpane.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to divorce his mind from his still queasy stomach. He opened a drawer and looked in at a carton of cigarettes, changed his mind, and closed the drawer again. He went back into the bathroom and wrung out a towel in cold water, returned to the bed, stretched out, and placed it over his eyes. Deliberately he tried to make his mind a blank; he tried to withdraw physically from the painful hammering just behind his eyes.
The phone woke him. Bright sunlight poured in the room as he sat up with a start, and he blinked as he reached for it. “Yeah?”
“It's Sally.”
“Christ.” Unbelievingly he looked at the sun. “You still downstairs?”
“I'm at the apartment. It's noontime.”
“Noontime! Man, was that ever a blackout-”
“I sent Paul up to look at you. He said you were sound asleep, so I told him to leave you alone. He didn't have any trouble the balance of the shift.”
“You callin' for anything special?”
“Well, you wanted to know about anything that looked even a little bit unusual-”
“So what's unusual?”
“Well, we wouldn't notice it on our shift, but Myrna mentioned when I relieved her last night that 1224 has had every meal in her room since she checked in three days ago.”
“Sick, probably.”
“Myrna says not. I looked at the registry card, and she's a Mrs. Carl Muller, from Bremerhaven, Germany.”
Johnny frowned. “Could be something, at that You did right to call me. I'll probably be by the place in an hour or so, ma. Put some beer in the refrigerator, huh? See you soon.”
He swung his legs off the bed to the floor and stood up. His eyes were as gritty as though they had been well sanded, but outside of that he felt fine. He dropped to the floor and did a dozen pushups, then went into the bathroom and shaved. He dressed leisurely; he couldn't remember the last time he had been up this early in the day. He felt good.
He rode the main elevator down to the lobby and walked back through the bar to the kitchen, returning to normal after the luncheon rush. He waved to Hans, the first cook, standing to the left of the big range, a tall man with a perpetually sour expression. “Have someone throw a few eggs in a skillet for me, Hans? 'N a handful of home fries.”
Johnny drew a big mug of steaming coffee from the big urn and carried it over to the butcher's block in the corner which he always used as a table. He upended a ginger ale case for a seat, and seated himself as Hans himself silently placed on the block a platter containing a half dozen eggs sunnyside up and a heaping mound of potatoes.
“Thanks, Hans.” Johnny sugared his black coffee liberally, and looked up at the tall man standing beside him, and at the look on Hans's face he remembered. “Oh. Last night.” Johnny shook his head. “Rough. Police talk to you yet?”