One of the suite’s two telephones sat on an end table next to the couch. I sidestepped around to it and lifted the receiver and dialed nine to get an outside line. While I did that I remembered to check my watch. The time was 12:37, which put the time of the shooting at approximately 12:30.
When I got the Hall of Justice on the line I asked for the Homicide Squad and Lieutenant Eberhardt. I had not talked to Eb in over a week-he was my closest friend on and off the force and had been for more than three decades-so I did not know if he was on duty this weekend or not. But it would ” make things a little easier for me if he was.
And that was the way it worked out. Eberhardt came on after thirty seconds, and I told him where I was calling from and gave him a quick rundown of what had happened as far as I knew it. When I was done he said angrily, as if something was biting on him, “A homicide at a pulp convention. Another one of your dillies. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“It’s not my fault, Eb.”
“Did I say it was? Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”
The line buzzed in my ear. I put the receiver down and looked at Dancer. He was still gripping his knees, rocking back and forth a little now with his eyes squeezed shut and his face scrunched up tight. You could almost see the pain he was suffering, mental and physical both.
I moved to where Colodny lay on the rose-patterned carpet, steeled myself the way I always had to do in the presence of violent death, and went to one knee beside the body. As far as I could tell without touching him, he had been shot in the heart region at close range; scorched-powder marks were mixed with the blood on his white shirt-front. There weren’t any other marks on him that I could see.
When I straightened again I made an automatic inventory of the room. No indication of a struggle; nothing out of place and no damage except for the whiskey spilled over the couch. There was another door in the inner wall opposite the entrance, which figured to be a connecting door with the adjacent suite. Ozzie Meeker’s? I moved over there to have a look at it, and it was locked. I could tell that without touching the knob, by peering into the crack between its edge and the jamb: parts of the bolts were visible in there-two of them, one thrown on this side and one thrown on the other side, both deadbolt locks similar to the one on the entrance door, except that you couldn’t open it from the other suite with a key.
Dancer made a funny, low, keening sound, and I looked over at him. He had quit rocking and was sitting motionless, staring at nothing; a line of spittle dribbled from one corner of his mouth. He made the sound again, kept on making it, and I realized that it wasn’t keening at all-it was a familiar, tuneless singing..
“No tengo tabaco, “No tengo papel, “No tengo dinero- “Goddammit to hell…”
I went over to him and punched his arm. The chanting cut off in midverse; his eyelids fluttered and his eyes focused again, slowly, as if he were coming back from a long way away. His gaze settled on my face and clung there, moist and pain-edged.
“Talk to me, Russ,” I said.
“Talk?”
“What happened in here?”
“I don’t know,“he said thickly. “Don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“Nothing to tell. Loud noise woke me up. Then more noises. I came out here, there he was. Lying there with the gun next to him. I thought it was booze at first. DT’s. Things crawling out of walls. Jesus.”
“Are you saying you didn’t let him in here?”
“No. Wasn’t me.”
“Then how did he get in?”
“Must’ve got a key somewhere.”
“How long ago did you come up here?”
“Don’t remember. Right after Benny and I got back from the bar. Goddamn Bloody Marys hit me hard.”
“Who’s Benny?”
“Convention guy.”
“You came up here alone?”
“Yeah. Alone. Must’ve passed out.”
“And stayed passed out until you heard the noises?”
“Yeah.”
“Listen to me, Russ,” I said. “I heard the shots too; I was right out in the hall. Nobody left this suite afterward, and there wasn’t anybody in here but you when I came in. The hall door was locked, probably from the inside; the connecting door is locked on this side and on the other side too; and even if it were possible for somebody to get in or out through the bedroom windows, which it isn’t, they’re all locked. You tell me how somebody else could have killed Colodny.”
“Don’t know.” He grimaced and jammed the heels of both hands against his temples. “Jesus, my head’s coming apart.”
“This is only a sample of what you’ll get from the police.”
“I didn’t do it; how many times I have to tell you? Maybe he did it himself. Shot himself.”
“Sure. In your room instead of his own. And in the chest, not the head like most gun suicides. And with a gun stolen from Cybil Wade because it was easier than taking a bottle of sleeping pills, say, or throwing himself out a window.”
“Cybil?” Dancer said. “Sweeteyes with a gun?”
“You don’t know anything about that either, huh?”
He made an anguished sound that turned into a half-cough, half-retch. “Leave me alone. Leave me the hell alone, will you?”
Somebody started banging loudly on the hall door. Not enough time had passed for it to be Eberhardt, so that meant the hotel manager. I crossed to the door and asked who was there, and a voice said, “Security officer. The manager’s with me.”
I unlocked the door and let them in. The security officer looked about as much like an old-fashioned hotel dick as I did like Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; he was a neat, dapper little guy with graying hair and delicate-looking hands, dressed in an expensive Wilkes-Bashford suit. The manager, on the other hand, looked just as you’d expect the manager of a Victorian throwback like the Continental to look: tall, prim, reserved, and right now wearing an expression of fluttery horror. His name was Mr. Rigby, and his prominent Adam’s apple never did stop bobbing up and down his neck like a yo-yo on a string. The security officer’s name was Harris.
Rigby did not stay long. He took one blanching look at what was left of Colodny, listened to Dancer start in again with his “No tengo” chant, made shocked noises about the Continental’s reputation, and went away to do something administrative. When he was gone, Harris asked me for an account of what had happened. I gave him one, omitting the more involved details. He looked, sounded, and acted neutral and businesslike, which made him easy to deal with. He knew as well as I did that guys like us, hotel cops and private cops, were better off not trying to get too involved in a homicide case.
But he did prowl around a little, the way I had, looking at the doors and windows without touching anything. While he was doing that, I stood off against one wall and kept an eye on Dancer. And waited. And wished to Christ I was somewhere else.
Harris was just coming out of the bedroom when the banging started again on the hall door. He opened up, and I heard Eberhardt identify himself. Then he came trooping inside with an inspector I knew named Klein and two other plainclothesmen outfitted with a lab kit and photographic equipment.
Eberhardt looked tired. There were puffy bags under both eyes, and the sharp angles and contrasting blunt planes of his face seemed less defined than usual, as if the features were all beginning to melt together. It made me wonder if there was anything wrong with him, or if it was just that he was being overworked again.
He spent the first couple of minutes examining the body. Then, while the lab boys went to work and Klein started asking Dancer a few preliminary questions, he came over and glowered at me around the battered old briar clamped in one corner of his mouth.