“No. I had a note from him this morning saying you'd scooped that gunman that had been living in your pocket lately, and that I should make arrangements to talk to him when his snow melts off.”
“This was at the same time. Joe said he'd been trying to work out Freddie's rung on the ladder in this thing, and the part that bothered him was the telephone call I'd heard him make resignin' from a stool pigeon detail. That's the call my girl on the board didn't catch, and last night after Joe called me I talked to a man who told me why.” “Because he didn't make it?” the sandyhaired man hazarded.
“Because he didn't make it. His place is wired up like a Christmas tree. I couldn't get near him unless I used a helicopter. He knew I was there, and he gave me the informer bit, and I went for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Jimmy Rogers shrugged as he re-opened his notebook. “It looks to me like your character-good-for-a-laugh, as you introduced him, has had the laugh on all of us.” He pulled out his pen and stared at it. “Still does, for that matter. We don't have him yet.”
“I'm beginnin' to smell hair burning.”
“We're getting closer, but we're not ready to bundle this up and run downtown to put it in the D.A.'s hot little hand. Not yet.”
“Then what the hell do you need, for God's sake? Doesn't this thing here tonight point to him all over again? That's what they were doin' in the kitchen here that night, him and that Frenchie what's-his-name. They were tuckin' the stiff away in the locker, and poor old Dutch caught them at it. Who else could get in that box?”
“The man that was with you when you opened it, for one.
“Hans?” Johnny rubbed his chin. “He could, at that. But I know it was Freddie.”
“Can you stand up in court and prove it? Let's talk sense. For instance, didn't the behavior of this Hans-” Jimmy Rogers glanced down at his notebook, “-Reider strike you as being something out of the ordinary?”
“He threw a fit, for sure. Horns and all. I had to knock him out to get him out of the box. He was orey-eyed, frothin' at the mouth in German, it sounded like. He came to while your examiner was here and threw another wing-ding, and your boy slipped him a needle and packed him upstairs. Hell, I told you all that before.”
“I know you did. I'm trying to make a point, in my feeble way. If reaction could be laid out on a Fahrenheit thermometer, just where would you rate his performance?”
Johnny grunted. “212: Right through the roof. He took it big.”
“I'd like to know why. I'm looking forward to our conversation in the morning.”
“His nerves were gone, anyway. He'd been sweatin' out the promotion here, afraid he was going to be bypassed. He'd just got through tellin' me he wasn't sleeping good.”
“The shylocks had him. He'd borrowed heavily recently.”
“Yeah? So he needed money bad? No wonder he wanted the job so bad he could taste it. Say, that reminds me… last night when I left the place to check that thing out for Joe I ran into Hans on the sidewalk waitin' in a doorway up the street. I got curious and doubled back, and the one he was waitin' for turned out to be this Myrna telephone operator on the middle shift. You know the one?”
“I know her. A well-frosted tomato.” Jimmy Rogers turned pages in the ever-ready notebook. “Myrna Hansen. Age thirty two. Collecting alimony from two ex-husbands. Up on a lightweight blackmail charge six years ago. Nol-prossed. Completely uncooperative under questioning.”
“I can see I should've asked you that yesterday. Did you see the body before they took it out?”
Detective Rogers closed the notebook again. “You mean his face? I wondered when you'd get around to that.”
“He looked like he'd had a hard time.”
“Doc says he had it while he was alive, too. With a knife.”
Johnny grimaced. “Somebody carved him to make him talk? Rough.”
“It complicates things. Either we have someone in the crowd getting out of line and being disposed of-and the method makes it unlikely-or else there's an opposition crowd on the scene.”
“Maybe Hans can straighten it out for you.”
“I'd like to think so. What's on your mind now?”
Johnny looked at his watch. “Work. All this has been on the house. My shift's just coming on.”
“The lieutenant will probably want to talk to you tomorrow.” Jimmy Rogers slapped his pockets automatically to account for his belongings, nodded to Johnny, and walked out of the kitchen through the service door at the bar. Johnny sat and listened to the diminishing sound of his heels on the tile, and then it was very quiet in the big kitchen.
Johnny was on his way through the lobby to the street when he heard his name called. Marty Seiden, a middle shift front desk man, waved a red and white envelope at him from the registration counter. “Cablegram, John. Just came in.” Marty was a fresh-faced youngster addicted to pointed collars and bow ties; he had a highly developed clothes' sense, and he looked approvingly at Johnny as he stepped up to the desk. “You look really sharp, John.”
Johnny glanced down at his lightweight summer suit as he slit open the cable. “Handsome is as handsome does, kid. Or don't they teach you that in school these days?” He ran his eyes over the block type on the white sheet.
IN TONIGHT CHECK BOAC OFFICE CALL SHIRLEY RESERVE
mario.
He crumpled the sheet in his hand and stood undecided a moment before nodding to Marty and turning away from the desk. He looked at his watch; plenty of time, but he would have to-
“Why, Ugly! How nice you look!”
Johnny looked down into the round face, brown eyes, and sleekly shining hair of the girl who had stepped into his path, and he smiled. “Hi, Frannie. How's the sociological experiments coming along?”
She blushed vividly and tossed her head. “Don't be mean. I came by to apologize for acting like a snapping turtle the other night. I must have sounded like a shrew.”
He steered her out of the lobby traffic and over against the unoccupied bell captain's desk and considered the serious young face. “You were a perfect lady, Frannie, except in your instincts, and that's the way a man likes to have his lady function.”
A fresh wave of color enveloped her. “You make it sound-well, it probably did look-I'm not like that all the time, really.”
“Now you're disillusioning me.”
Her look was reproachful. “Go ahead and tease; I suppose I deserve it. I do want to thank you, though; you kept me from making a mistake. I realized how silly I must have sounded when I got to my room. I brooded about it for a while, then I went out to the elevator hoping I could find you and apologize, so that you wouldn't think I was just a nitwit schoolgirl, but that man said you had just gone down for the doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. For the man with the bleeding face. He must have had a terrible fall. The dark man said he'd just sent you down, so I went back to my room. In the morning you weren't around, so-”
Johnny's mind raced into high gear. This pretty youngster had stumbled on the opening act of the drama in the kitchen the night Dutch had been killed; it was so simple when it was all laid out for you. Frank Lustig hadn't been a no-pay skip from 938 that night; Frank Lustig had been killed in 938 by Frenchie Dumas, and the girl had walked in on the operation of transferring the body to the room service elevator for disposal in the kitchen. Frank Lustig was the body in the meat locker.
Johnny opened his mouth to ask the girl if Dumas had been alone with the bleeding-faced man in the corridor, and dosed it again. He must have been alone; if the other man was Freddie, and the girl had seen him, the way this crowd played she very likely would herself have ended up in the meat locker. Johnny looked at the well-scrubbed youthful glow; you had a very, very close call, little kitten. Eight lives left. He held out his hand, and she put her small, warm one in his solemnly. “Apology accepted, Frannie. You come back and see me in about five years when you get bored with your husband.”