«Huh?» he said thickly. «Huh?»
Aage nodded, calm as ice. «But you were right about murder, John. It was murder. Just half an hour ago, or so. In his office. They don’t know who did it — yet.»
Masters shrugged heavily and leaned back. He looked around him with a stupid expression. Very suddenly he began to laugh. His laughter bellowed and roared around the little turretlike room where the two men sat, overflowed into an enormous living room beyond, echoed back and forth through a maze of heavy dark furniture, enough standing lamps to light a boulevard, a double row of oil paintings in massive gold frames.
Aage sat silent. He rubbed his cigarette out slowly in the tray until there was nothing of the fire left but a thick dark smudge. He dusted his bony fingers together and waited.
Masters stopped laughing as abruptly as he had begun. The room was very still. Masters looked tired. He mopped his big face.
«We got to do something, Dave,» he said quietly. «I almost forgot. We got to break this fast. It’s dynamite.»
Aage reached behind the curtain again and brought the phone out, pushed it across the table over the scattered cards.
«Well — we know how, don’t we?» he said calmly.
A cunning light shone in Big John Masters’ muddy brown eyes. He licked his lips, reached a big hand for the phone.
«Yeah,» he said purringly, «we do, Dave. We do at that, by — !»
He dialed with a thick finger that would hardly go into the holes.
TWO
Donegan Marr’s face looked cool, neat, poised, even then. He was dressed in soft gray flannels and his hair was the same soft gray color as his suit, brushed back from a ruddy, youngish face. The skin was pale on the frontal bones where the hair would fall when he stood up. The rest of the skin was tanned.
He was lying back in a padded blue office chair. A cigar had gone out in a tray with a bronze greyhound on its rim. His left hand dangled beside the chair and his right hand held a gun loosely on the desk top. The polished nails glittered in sunlight from the big closed window behind him.
Blood had soaked the left side of his vest, made the gray flannel almost black. He was quite dead, had been dead for some time.
A tall man, very brown and slender and silent, leaned against a brown mahogany filing cabinet and looked fixedly at the dead man. His hands were in the pockets of a neat blue serge suit. There was a straw hat on the back of his head. But there was nothing casual about his eyes or his tight, straight mouth.
A big sandy-haired man was groping around on the blue rug. He said thickly, stooped over: «No shells, Sam.»
The dark man didn’t move, didn’t answer. The other stood up, yawned, looked at the man in the chair.
«Hell! This one will stink. Two months to election. Boy, is this a smack in the puss for somebody.»
The dark man said slowly: «We went to school together. We used to be buddies. We carried the torch for the same girl. He won, but we stayed good friends, all three of us. He was always a great kid … Maybe a shade too smart.»
The sandy-haired man walked around the room without touching anything. He bent over and sniffed at the gun on the desk, shook his head, said: «Not used — this one.» He wrinkled his nose, sniffed at the air. «Air-conditioned. The three top floors. Soundproofed too. High-grade stuff. They tell me this whole building is electric-welded. Not a rivet in it. Ever hear that, Sam?»
The dark man shook his head slowly.
«Wonder where the help was,» the sandy-haired man went on. «A big shot like him would have more than one girl.»
The dark man shook his head again. «That’s all, I guess. She was out to lunch. He was a lone wolf, Pete. Sharp as a weasel. In a few more years he’d have taken the town over.»
The sandy-haired man was behind the desk now, almost leaning over the dead man’s shoulder. He was looking down at a leather-backed appointment pad with buff leaves. He said slowly: «Somebody named Imlay was due here at twelve-fifteen. Only date on the pad.»
He glanced at a cheap watch on his wrist. «One-thirty. Long gone. Who’s Imlay? Say, wait a minute! There’s an assistant D.A. named Imlay. He’s running for judge on the Master-Aage ticket. D’you figure —»
There was a sharp knock on the door. The office was so long that the two men had to think a moment before they placed which of the three doors it was. Then the sandy-haired man went towards the most distant of them, saying over his shoulder: «M.E’s man maybe. Leak this to your favorite newshawk and you’re out a job. Am I right?»
The dark man didn’t answer. He moved slowly to the desk, leaned forward a little, spoke softly to the dead man.
«Goodbye, Donny. Just let it all go. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of Belle.»
The door at the end of the office opened and a brisk man with a bag came in, trotted down the blue carpet and put his bag on the desk. The sandy-haired man shut the door against a bulge of faces. He strolled back to the desk.
The brisk man cocked his head on one side, examining the corpse. «Two of them,» he muttered. «Look like about .32’s — hard slugs. Close to the heart but not touching. He must have died pretty soon. Maybe a minute or two.»
The dark man made a disgusted sound and walked to the window, stood with his back to the room, looking out, at the tops of high buildings and a warm blue sky. The sandy-haired man watched the examiner lift a dead eyelid. He said: «Wish the powder guy would get here. I wanta use the phone. This Imlay —»
The dark man turned his head slightly, with a dull smile. «Use it. This isn’t going to be any mystery.»
«Oh I don’t know,» the M.E.’s man said, flexing a wrist, then holding the back of his hand against the skin of the dead man’s face. «Might not be so damn political as you think, Delaguerra. He’s a good-looking stiff.»
The sandy-haired man took hold of the phone gingerly, with a handkerchief, laid the receiver down, dialed, picked the receiver up with the handkerchief and put it to his ear.
After a moment he snapped his chin down, said: «Pete Marcus. Wake the Inspector.» He yawned, waited again, then spoke in a different tone: «Marcus and Delaguerra, Inspector, from Donegan Marr’s office. No print or camera men here yet … Huh? … Holding off till the Commissioner gets here? … Okey … Yeah, he’s here.»
The dark man turned. The man at the phone gestured at him. «Take it, Spanish.»
Sam Delaguerra took the phone, ignoring the careful handkerchief, listened. His face got hard. He said quietly: «Sure I knew him — but I didn’t sleep with him … Nobody’s here but his secretary, a girl. She phoned the alarm in. There’s a name on a pad — Imlay, a twelve-fifteen appointment. No, we haven’t touched anything yet … No … Okey, right away.»
He hung up so slowly that the click of the instrument was barely audible. His hand stayed on it, then fell suddenly and heavily to his side. His voice was thick.
«I’m called off it, Pete. You’re to hold it down until Commissioner Drew gets here. Nobody gets in. White, black or Cherokee Indian.»
«What you called in for?» the sandy-haired man yelped angrily.
«Don’t know. It’s an order,» Delaguerra said tonelessly.
The M.E.’s man stopped writing on a form pad to look curiously at Delaguerra, with a sharp, sidelong look.
Delaguerra crossed the office and went through the communicating door. There was a smaller office outside, partly partitioned off for a waiting room, with a group of leather chairs and a table with magazines. Inside a counter was a typewriter desk, a safe, some filing cabinets. A small dark girl sat at the desk with her head down on a wadded handkerchief. Her hat was crooked on her head. Her shoulders jerked and her thick sobs were like panting.