Either way it looked like my long-delayed payoff was coming up. So I just sat where I was and rubbed cold cream into my map as an excuse for staying up, to get all the dope I could. He came out again, collar gone now, and massaged the back of his neck. That meant he was trying to figure out whether to let the jam ride and take a chance on getting away with it, or do something to straighten it out.
He took off his coat and vest, and took a .32 out of one of the pockets. He took a sniff at the bore, and then tapped it against the palm of his hand a couple of times, worried. That wasn’t his gun; he would have used a caliber like that to pick his teeth with.
Finally he went out to the phone again, and dialed a different number, without any zeros. “Louie,” he said in a low voice. “I want you to come over here and do something for me.”
Louie made it fast. But that’s all he was geared for anyway, just one of his stooges. He brought him into the room with him. I was working on my neck now.
Louie said, “H’lo, Mae,” just to stay in good with Buck, not knowing for sure if I’d been scratched yet.
“Never mind her,” Buck said, letting him know I had. He gave me a traffic signal toward the bathroom with his thumb. “G’wan, get inside there and swaller some iodine or something until I tell you to come out again. And keep that door closed.”
I missed some of it that way, but not for lack of pushing my ear hard enough against the door seam. His voice rose irritably every once in a while, which was a habit of his whenever he was talking to his stooges, and that helped some.
“Naw, no one heard it and no one saw it, or I woulda gotten Mendes on the wire right off,” was the first thing I got, after a minute or two of static. Mendes was his mouthpiece.
More poor reception, and then: “Why didn’t I leave it there? Suppose it was hers! Don’t you think they’re gonna know someone was up there, you dumb lug? Her wrist was weaker than I thought it would be; I pushed it all the way back over her shoulder, and it hit something, turned aside, and the bullet went into her from the back!”
More interference, and then: “I wouldn’t wanna pass it off like that even if I could. I didn’t want to lose the kid, even after what I found out. I was just gonna slap her around a few times. I got somebody lined up for it. No one takes anything away from me without paying for it!”
A name was coming up. I shifted down to the keyhole, where the reception was better.
“The boy friend’s name is Frank Rogers; I got that much out of her before it happened. He came on here to take her back to her home town, when they’d heard she was getting in wrong. He’s at the Hallerton House, one of these men’s hotels. You know how to work it. Put a little vaseline on the gun, but see that you’ve got on gloves yourself. You be looking it over just as he comes along — in the hall outside his room, for instance. You drop the gun and it lands on one of your pet corns. You grab your foot with both hands and hop around, so you’ve got an excuse for not picking it up yourself. He’ll bend down and hand it back to you without thinking twice — any guy would. Then just keep it well wrapped up after that, so it don’t catch cold.”
Some low-pitched beefing I couldn’t catch came in from Louie at this point. Then Buck overrode him: “What you worrying about? You don’t have to go in there with her, you yellow belly. The body’s safe until ten; the woman that does her cleaning don’t come around before then. Just see that you leave the gun around inside the building some place where the cops can’t miss it, like he threw it away on the lam. Now get over there fast. He’ll be getting up early; he was figuring on taking her back with him on the early-morning bus. The six o’clock one. So hurry.”
I heard the outside door slam, I counted ten, and then I drifted out. “We’re kind of low on iodine in there,” I said meekly. “Should I have used a razor?”
He fired his shoe at me. It missed my head but busted the mirror. “Have a little bad luck on me,” he wished fervently.
There were still enough pieces left in the mirror’s frame to do piecework by, so I sat down at it again, for a stall to stay awake longer than him. He put on a pair of pajamas with zebra stripes. The last thing he said was, “You may as well quit that; it’s not gonna get you anything — even in the dark.” His yap dropped open and he started to breathe heavy.
I took another halfturn on the cold cream, to make sure he was asleep. I kept thinking, “I gotta find out who she is. Was, I mean. This is what I been waiting for six months. This is my chance to fix him good, and if I pass it up it’ll never come again, he’s too cagy. I’ve got the fall guy’s name. Frank Rogers. But I gotta find out hers, and especially where she’s lying dead right now.” Then a short cut occurred to me. “What the hell, this Rogers can tell me who and where she is.”
I had to work fast, but I had to work carefully too. One wrong move and I knew what my finish would be. And it wouldn’t be just another busted tooth this time either. He or some one of his gang would kill me. That was why there was no question of just anonymously ratting on Buck to the cops. I had to stay out of it altogether. They had to trace it back to him themselves. I had to find some way of making sure they did — and leave me in the clear, on the sidelines, when they did. Even with him in the death house, my life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if there was a leak afterwards.
I wouldn’t call it a frame. There was once a guy named Gordon, may his good soul rest in peace... Never mind that now.
I didn’t have much time. Those stooges of Buck’s moved fast when they were on his shift. That Louie must be practically at Rogers’ hotel by now. Here goes, I thought, and I tiptoed out to the phone, keeping my face turned his way so I could do a quick right-about-face if his eyes opened.
The dial made an awful clack. I tried to bury it against my chest, but it wouldn’t go around then. Finally I muffled it all I could by keeping my finger in the slot on the return trip each time, but I expected to feel a slug in the back of my neck any minute.
“Get me Mr. Frank Rogers and get him fast,” I said to the hotel clerk under my breath. They got him fast but not fast enough to suit me. He sounded sleepy too, must have just got up. Which was another bad break; it would have been bad enough talking to someone wide-awake.
I began: “I haven’t time to repeat what I’m going to say a second time, so don’t ask me to, get it the first. I’ve got a message for you from your girl friend.”
“Alma?” he said, surprised.
That was only one-third of what I needed. “To make sure I’ve got the right party, kick back with her full name and address. There may be another Frank Rogers in the same building.”
He fell for it. “Alma Kitteredge, 832 East Seventy-second. What’s the message?”
“Just put on your pants and pull out of town fast. She’s not coming with you, you’ll find out why when you get back home. Buy a two-cent paper and shut up about this call.”
I was going to warn him not to touch anything, not to pick up any guns for any strangers, but before I had time I had to hang up. Buck had just changed sides in the hay. “What are you doing out there?” he growled.
“Just bringing in the morning paper, dee-yur.”
It hadn’t come yet, but he was asleep again by then anyway.
I made a quick round-trip to the closet, grabbed up whatever was handiest, and got dressed out there in the foyer on the installment plan, stopping between each layer to see if I was still in the clear. I put on my checker-board swagger-coat. Black and white plaid; you could see it a mile away even with low visibility, but it had been on the end hanger. I wasn’t heading for an Easter parade, anyway.