When I managed to extricate myself from Underwood and the rest of the crowd I went back to the registration area. There were even more people milling around now, among them one kid wearing a futuristic jumpsuit and a holstered plastic ray-gun, with spaced-out eyes to go with the costume. But I didn’t see any familiar faces until I got to the main reception lobby and glanced over at the elevators, — both Dancer and the dusty pulp artist, Ozzie Meeker, were standing there, each of them loaded down with armfuls of small, framed oil paintings.
I veered over there and reached them just as one of the elevators opened up and disgorged a bunch of people. Dancer saw me and grinned all over his face-a wet, loose kind of grin. The whites of his eyes had a wounded look, and his breath would have knocked over a horse.
“Hey, shamus,” he said, “what’s happening?”
“Not much. Where you headed?”
“Art Room up on the mezzanine. Got to help Ozzie here set up his display.”
“Mind if I tag along? I want to talk to you for a minute.”
“Sure. More the merrier, what the hell.”
Meeker was holding the elevator, and he watched me from behind his horn-rims with bright, birdlike eyes as Dancer and I moved inside. Up close, the skin of his face had a brown, sun-cracked look, webbed with tiny crosshatches of wrinkles-the skin of a man who spent a good part of his time outdoors, as Colodny obviously did. There was a whiskey smell on him too, but not half as strong, and his gaze was steady and free of the glassiness that showed behind Dancer’s squint.
He said, “I don’t think we met at the party last night. I’m Ozzie Meeker. You’re the detective, right?”
“Right.”
“Best damn detective in the business,” Dancer said in his annoying way. “Solved a couple of murders in Cypress Bay a few years back, you know that, Ozzie? Some shamus, bet your ass.”
“Interesting,” Meeker said, as if he meant it.
The elevator stopped at the mezzanine and we got out and turned into the westside corridor. I said to Meeker, “Couldn’t help noticing that you and Frank Colodny had a little altercation last night. Nothing serious, I hope.”
He shrugged. “Frank and I don’t get along too well anymore.”
“How could anybody get along with that bastard?” Dancer said. “Screwed Ozzie out of money back in the pulp days too, just like he screwed his writers. Ozzie was the best damn cover artist the pulps ever had. Drew beautiful stuff. You remember his stuff?”
“Yes, “I said.
“Got some of it right here. Originals. Never got the recognition he deserved. Did you, Ozzie?”
Meeker shrugged again. “Do any of us?”
“Not me,” Dancer said. “But hell, I never deserved any.”
The Art Room hadn’t officially opened yet, and the doors to it were closed; another guard-type was posted out front. He let us go inside when Meeker showed his name tag. A dozen or so men and women occupied the room, setting up displays of original oils, reproductions, laminated and framed covers, pen-and-ink interior illustrations, old editorial layout sheets, storyboards, and other pulp artwork and ephemera. According to the convention brochure, the material was all owned by private collectors and was being shown by them; the only ex-pulp artist in attendance was Meeker.
He had been given a place of honor as a result, near the door so his display would be the first you’d see when you came in, and he and Dancer unloaded themselves there. His art, most of which depicted Western gunslingers in various action scenes, was striking; not as good as that done by Eggenhofer, the king of Western pulp artists, but still pretty good. His distinctive signature-his last name inside the loop of a lariat-was prominent on each painting.
Dancer said, “What time’s the exhibit open, Ozzie?”
“One o’clock. Same time as Wade’s panel.”
“Should have time for a couple more belts, hah?”
“I don’t see why not,” Meeker said.
I did, but I didn’t say so. Delivering temperance lectures was out of my line.
go ahead and get started, Ozzie,” Dancer said. “Soon as I talk to my buddy the shamus, I’ll give you a hand.”
I told Meeker it was nice meeting him and prodded Dancer over into a corner. “That Ozzie’s a hell of a nice guy, you know that?” he said. He gave me one of his sardonic grins, loose and moist at the edges. “Generous with his booze, too. Real generous.”
“That where you’ve been this morning? With him?”
“Yup. Since I ran into him in the hall at eight-thirty. We got adjoining rooms. Damn convenient.” He squinted at me. “How long you been here?”
“I came in at ten.”
“You ring up my room around that time?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thought it was probably you. I heard the phone but by the time I got through the door it was too late.”
“I tried to find you last night, too,” I said, “after you disappeared from the party. But you weren’t in then, either.”
He frowned with a bewildered sort of intensity, the way a drunk does when he’s trying to remember something. “What time was that?”
“Around ten-thirty.”
“I must’ve been in,” he said. “I went straight there from the party. Maybe I was already asleep.”
“Maybe you were. How come you left the party without saying anything?”
“I had to puke. Something I ate; my gut was boiling.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, so I was a little drunkie too. What the hell.”
“You didn’t happen to see Cybil Wade on the way back to your room, did you?”
That got me nothing at all. Dancer’s reaction was one of dull puzzlement, with flickers of something under it that was probably pain. “No, I didn’t see her,” he said. “Why?”
“Just wondering.” I couldn’t see any purpose in mentioning the intruder in the Wades’ room; it was liable to stir him up, and he was unpredictable enough as it was. “Are you going to Ivan Wade’s panel?”
“Not me. The hell with old Ivan; he’s full of bullshit anyway.” He squinted at me again. “Speaking of bullshit, you find out anything yet about the big extortion scam?”
“No, not yet. But I’m in there pitching.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Best damn private eye in the business.”
He gave me a broad wink, banged me on the shoulder, and moved back to where Meeker was working with his art display. He was pretty steady on his feet, but the habitual drinker learns how to control his motor responses. I wondered if he’d learned how to control his facial expressions and his tongue too-if he was hiding something, if there were motives or designed perking away inside that shaggy head of his. It didn’t seem likely. Still, I had an uneasy feeling about him. He may have been guiltless so far, but if there was any more trouble, I thought, it would be Russ Dancer who was smack in the middle of it.
I had had enough of elevators for a while; I took the stairs back down to the lobby. And the first person I saw when I walked through the door was Kerry.
She was just coming out of the newsstand and tobacco shop across the lobby, alone and wearing a white satiny-looking blouse, a pair of dark blue slacks, and an introspective and faintly agitated look. When she saw me, three or four seconds later, one eyebrow went up and she made a beckoning gesture; then she sidestepped to one of the pillars and stood plucking at her coppery hair- not fluffing it the way women do, just plucking, as if she was restless and her hand did not want to be still.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said when I got to her. “Did you just get here?”
“No, at ten o’clock. But I’ve been moving around. Did you talk to your mother?”
She nodded. “After breakfast.”
“What about the gun?”
“She claims she brought it with her as a joke, to I illustrate her panel comments about private eyes. [She says it wasn’t loaded.”
“Do you believe her?”