“You okay, Eb?” I asked him.
That got me a sharp look. “Rum dandy. Why?”
“You look kind of beat.”
“Yeah, well, never mind how I look. This is business. So let’s have the details-everything you didn’t go into on the phone.”
“Sure. But it’s a little complicated.”
“It always is when you’re mixed up in it.”
I went over it all step by step, beginning with Dancer’s visit to my office on Thursday afternoon and finishing with what I had done since entering this suite. Eberhardt listened without interrupting and without changing expression. “That’s all of it?” he said when I was done.
“All of it as far as I know.”
“Uh-huh. Well, it looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. Your boy Dancer, there, broke into the Wade woman’s room Thursday night and swiped her gun. Today he gets drunk and uses the gun on Colodny, because of this ‘Hoodwink’ crap and because they were old enemies.” Eberhardt shrugged. “An easy one for a change.”
Sure, I thought, an easy one. Cut-and-dried. Dancer’s been in trouble and asking for more for three days; and nobody else could have shot Colodny. He’s guilty no matter how much he protests otherwise. So what if a lot of other people might have hated Colodny enough to want him dead? So what if it doesn’t feel right? Dancer killed him and that’s that. An easy one for a change….
ELEVEN
Eberhardt shooed me out of there before long, with instructions not to leave the hotel for the next couple of hours in case he wanted to talk to me again. There was a uniformed cop stationed at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, and two more in the east corridor, to keep gawkers from cluttering up the area. A fourth cop somewhere near the elevators was having trouble with one citizen; I could hear their raised voices as I started up the hall.
The citizen turned out to be Lloyd Underwood. I recognized his voice before I saw him, querulous and more manic than ever, saying, “Why can’t I see Russ Dancer? Everyone is waiting for him in the auditorium; he’s forty minutes late for his panel already. Has something happened to him? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s not my job to tell you anything, buddy,” the cop said. “If you want to wait around and talk to one of the inspectors, that’s fine so long as you keep quiet. Otherwise, back on the elevator.”
I made the turn out of the corridor, toward where they were. Underwood spotted me immediately, waved a fistful of mimeographed papers in my direction, and ran over to paw at my arm.
“You came from Dancer’s room, didn’t you?” he said. “What’s going on? This officer won’t tell me anything-”
“Take it easy,” I said, “calm down.”
“But something’s happened, I know it has.”
“Something’s happened, all right. We’ll talk about it on the way down to the auditorium.”
I prodded him to the elevator panel, pushed the down button. The cop watched me without saying anything; he looked more bored than anything else. A car came pretty soon, and when Underwood and I were inside, I punched the button for the mezzanine and waited until the doors slid shut and the car began to descend before I said, “Frank Colodny is dead.”
“What?” he said. “What?”
“You heard me right. He was killed in Dancer’s room.”
Underwood gaped at me. “Dead? Killed? Oh, my God! How did it happen? You don’t mean that Dancer-”
“It looks that way. Maybe not, though. It’s too soon to tell just what took place.”
The car stopped and the doors whispered open. Underwood stayed where he was, looking horrified, so I had to take his arm and steer him out. He said then, “What am I going to tell everybody?
“They’re all waiting; I have to tell them something…”
“That’s up to you. But don’t use the word murder, and don’t imply anything against Dancer. Keep it as low-key as you can.”
“Low-key,” he said. He still looked horrified, but he sounded flustered and aggrieved. “The convention is ruined. You know that, don’t you?” As if it were my fault. “All the work we put into it, all the time and money… God.” “Yeah,“I said.
“And not just for this year-ruined for good. How can we put on a con again after a thing like this? Who would want to come?”
I said sourly, “Not Frank Colodny, that’s for sure.”
There were maybe a dozen people standing around in the hallway outside the auditorium, smoking, talking in low voices. Through the open doors I could see the rest inside, most of them on their feet too; Kerry was one of the few sitting down. The general atmosphere seemed to be one of agitation and annoyance: the most popular object in the room was the clock on the wall.
As soon as we stepped inside, Underwood broke away and made straight for the dais. I moved over to hold up the side wall. Kerry had got up as soon as I appeared and she came over to join me. So did Bert Praxas and Waldo Ramsey, both of whom had been standing nearby.
Kerry put her hand on my arm. “What’s going on?” she said. “Is Dancer drunk again?”
“He’s drunk, all right. But it’s worse than that.”
Underwood was up on the dais now, calling for attention through one of the table microphones. The rumble of conversation in the room died away into an expectant hush; you could almost see necks craning forward. I picked out the ones belonging to Cybil Wade and Ozzie Meeker and kept my eye on them. Ivan Wade was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Jim Bohannon.
“I’m sorry to say I have some tragic news,“Underwood said into the microphone. “Frank Colodny has been … killed in an accident here in the hotel.”
It rocked them pretty good, as that kind of news always does. Voices rose, people looked at each other in disbelief, a couple of those sitting down popped up like jack-in-the-boxes. I was still watching Cybil Wade and Ozzie Meeker. Beyond a slight head jerk Meeker didn’t show any reaction at all, but Cybil seemed to go through a whole series of them. First she stiffened and her eyes got wide and her mouth came open; then her mouth closed, and she raised one hand to touch the makeup-faded bruise on her cheek; then the hand dropped and the rigidity left her; then the near corner of her mouth lifted slightly in what might have been a grim smile; then her whole body appeared to sag and she slumped lower on the chair, the way a person does at a release of tension. All of this in no more than six or seven seconds.
Kerry’s hand was tight on my arm. When I heard her say, “My God!” in a low voice I transferred my gaze from her mother to her. She wore a shocked and frightened expression, and her eyes were full of questions. Ramsey and Praxas looked shocked too; neither of them could seem to decide whether to give his attention to Underwood or to me.
People were clamoring at Underwood for more information. He kept saying, “I don’t know any of the details. It has something to do with Russ Dancer, and the police have been called in. They’re upstairs now. That’s all I know.”
“But that’s not all you know, is it?” Kerry said to me. “What happened to Colodny?”
“He was shot. In Dancer’s room.”
“Shot? You mean murdered.”
“The police think so.” I was not going to tell her he’d been shot with Cybil’s stolen gun, not here in front of Praxas and Ramsey and the others milling around.
Ramsey said, “Did Dancer do it?”
“Maybe. He says no, but I found him alone with the body a few seconds after it happened. I heard the shot as I was coming down the hallway.”
“But why?” Praxas asked. “Why would Russ do such a thing?”
“He didn’t like Colodny much. And he thought Colodny was behind the ‘Hoodwink’ extortion.”
“That’s not much of a motive for murder.”
“It might be if a man was drunk enough and had violent tendencies to begin with.”
“I guess so. But my God, a cold-blooded murder…”
Underwood made another announcement, this one to the effect that the rest of today’s program would have to be cancelled; he looked pained as he did it. Then the buzzing crowd began to file out of the auditorium. But Ozzie Meeker kept on sitting in his chair, the only person in the room who was. Behind his horn-rimmed glasses his bird-like eyes seemed fixed on a spot somewhere to the left of the dais. He looked about as unconcerned as a man can look in the middle of general upheaval. I wondered if maybe he was drunk again, or if maybe he was savoring Colodny’s demise for reasons of his own. I had not forgotten the angry words the two of them had had on Thursday night.