Ferriston nodded.
“What did he look like?”
Ferriston’s eyes were glazing again and the Lieutenant shook him hard, back and forth, until a flicker returned.
“Tall fellow. Young.”
The head dropped with a thud, and the Lieutenant winced. Ferriston was out for good, and he would be out for a long time.
When the patrol car answered his call ten minutes later, the Lieutenant gave instructions. Ferriston was to be shipped to the hospital and sobered up. He was to be called when the man could talk coherently.
Tall and young, he thought as he headed back to the west side. Who in this picture was tall and young? None that he could think of. Of course Ferriston might give more details when he woke up, but if it was someone totally new — he’d been hoping that it would be one of the Bon Voyage bunch.
Who else had beer, close enough to her to want her murdered? A stage-door Johnny whom she had told to go peddle his papers? If so, they’d be looking the rest of their lives.
Rooney was parked in front of the night club when he got there. He had nothing to report and there had been no calls on the radio.
It’s all up to me, thought the Lieutenant. That’s the damn trouble with this department. He’d love someday while plugging away, while ruining shoe leather, to get it over the radio that his job had been done, that some eager beaver had come up with something. But the men on his squad — where you left them, that where you found them.
Clumping down the stairs, he guessed he was in a lousy mood. Tired. Not enough sleep.
Fisher, the manager, was in his office, still trying to get a singer to fly up right away. He was in such a spot that he could use almost any singer, but he preferred one with class, real class. The Lieutenant sat through a few minutes of it, then waved him to put the receiver down. With a final “And hurry up, Carl”, Fisher hung up.
“I’d like all personnel who work here now to report in an hour. And I’ll want the job records of everybody who’s worked here in the last two years.”
“Job records?” Fisher laughed gutturally. “This isn’t U.S. Steel, Lieutenant. I mean, they come and they go. Who keeps records?”
“How’s your memory then?” barked the Lieutenant.
“My memory’s great, great,” Fisher said hastily.
“Any tall young fellow work here the last few years?”
Fisher swiveled back in his creaky chair. “Lemme see, there were tall ones and young ones, but tall young ones?”
“How about customers of that description?”
“That’s a big order. We get a couple hundred different people every week and some of them have to be tall and young. Law of averages—”
“Did you notice anyone in particular? Someone who made a commotion? Who got funny with Madeleine?” He was snapping the words like whips.
“Nope,” said Fisher. “She knew how to handle men — never had a bit of trouble.”
Maybe Ferriston was all wet. He hadn’t been sober in years, probably, and if he was lying in an alley and a midget came up to him he’d think it was a tall man. Oh, the people you met in this game!
“Well, tell them to stand by. Everybody who works here. Waiters, musicians — everybody.” Then he had a thought. “How tall are you?”
“Shrimp. No bigger than Allie Parks.” The chair creaked as Fisher stood up. “That reminds me, you see Allie’s boy?”
“Allie’s son?”
“No, no, just hangs around Allie. Number One fan, messenger boy, yes-man, et cetera.”
“No, what’s he look like?”
“Well, he’s tall and young,” offered Fisher. “Kind of drippy if you ask me. Wants to be a comic. Allie keeps him around for laughs.”
“How come I didn’t see him?” demanded the Lieutenant.
“Well, hell, he don’t work here,” said Fisher defensively. “I try to keep him out of the way. Gets underfoot, fools around with the girls, and so forth.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Must be in Allie’s hotel. Allie’s paying his bills, that I know.”
The Lieutenant got the name of the hotel and left in a hurry. It was only a short distance away, a squat brick building with a canopied entrance. Inside, it had the institutional air usually found in places catering to transients, but the clerk behind the desk tried a smile to make it all seem homelike.
“Mr. Allie Parks?”
The clerk nodded.
“Is his assistant here too? Tall young fellow?”
“That would be…" The clerk consulted a card file. “Yes, Mr. Howard. But I see he checked out two hours ago.”
The Lieutenant asked if Mr. Howard had said where he was going and the clerk wondered aloud why he was answering all these questions. The Lieutenant flashed the tin and the questioning proceeded. Mr. Howard was tall, thin, about twenty-five, and was wearing a sports shirt and slacks when he checked out. He’d taken a cab at the stand outside. He had mentioned he wasn’t taking a plane; he didn’t like to fly.
The Lieutenant went to the phone. He put two men on the trail of young Howard — to trace him, if possible, to his destination. If he took a train there was a chance they could pick up someone waiting to meet him.
The thing now was to get a warrant to search the rooms of Allie and his Number One fan. There was no point in secrecy any more. The probing operation was over — it was time now to get in with both feet.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” said Rooney when he got back to the car. “Something just came over.”
“Spill it.”
“That drunk in the gin mill?”
The Lieutenant felt a chill. “He died?”
“No, no. They woke him up quick down there and he’s been talking a blue streak. Says the fella who hired him called somebody on the phone and said, like, ‘I made the deal. Yeah, he knows the one. There’ll be no mistake. She’s the chanteuse that ain’t French and can’t sing.’ ”
The girl that wasn’t French and couldn’t sing. Allie’s sour line.
“All right, back to the club. So, hold it.”
Allie Parks was approaching. He wore a chocolate-brown shirt and tan slacks, and the dark glasses made him look like a huge beetle. The Lieutenant stepped into his path.
“Going back for a nap, Mr. Parks?”
“Look, please, I’m in no mood to go into Sophie’s childhood,” said the comedian irritably. “Later maybe.”
The Lieutenant took his arm and half pulled him toward the car. Rooney flung the rear door open and the Lieutenant edged Parks inside.
“What’s this, a snatch?” Parks said angrily, making room for the Lieutenant.
“We’ve got a line on your boy, Parks.”
Parks gave him a hooded stare. “What does that make me?”
“It makes you the guy that got him to hire some bum to work that little trick.”
“Me?” Parks gave a nasty laugh. “Who told you? Howard that ain’t here? Or a bum that’s floating in alky?”
“He’s a pretty durable bum. Talks thirteen to the dozen. And your boy Howard will talk too. Even if he’s your Number One fan, he’s not going to carry the ball alone. No matter how much he wants to be a comic.”
Parks’s lip curled. “You ought to be a detective.”
“Maybe you had a reason,” the Lieutenant suggested. “Maybe there was more to this than met the eye.” Parks was silent. His bronzed face behind the dark glasses was expressionless. It seemed carved out of stone.
“I knew she couldn’t be as sweet as all that,” the Lieutenant said. “Nobody could be.”
He waited.
“She was Sophie Klinger,” Parks said now, tonelessly. “I made her Madeleine. She was a cow. I taught her to think different, to act different, to be different. But when it came right down to it, she stayed a cow.”