“I guess I'd have to say he was a good businessman-”
“Public-relationese for a hard-nosed bulldozer?”
Mike waved a hand as he seated himself on a leather-covered bench. “Speak no evil. He was smooth, and he got along. His wife was his partner in the business, and she was every bit as good as he was. I've heard rumors it wasn't much of a marriage, but nobody could say that about the business tie-up. They were good.”
“Was Ellen running around with this Sanders?”
“No.” Mike tasted the word, leaned back and tried it again, less positively. “No. I never saw them together, and I never heard anyone say they'd seen them together-”
“But there was something?”
“All right.” Mike stood up abruptly. “I'd heard… stories.” His hand gesture was impatient. “You can always hear stories. Once in a while they might even be true.”
“You told Ted Cuneo that Lorraine Barnes wasn't running around with Sanders. That on the level?”
As suddenly as he had stood up, Mike Larsen sat down. “What made you ask that?” He spread his hands. “We live in an imperfect world, Johnny.”
“Yeah. And now we got a self-appointed critic runnin' around and leveling off imperfections. No reservations on this Lorraine Barnes-Robert Sanders menage-a-deux?”
“No reservations. Which isn't to say that there are any notarized affidavits on file-” He hesitated and ran a hand over his chin. “This stuff I just told you-”
“I'm takin' a page in the Times. You get the by-line.”
Mike's grin was sheepish. “All right, I shouldn't have said it. You going by for Lorraine?”
“Yeah. What's she like, really? I don't think I've even seen her more than three or four times, when I'd stop by to pick up Vic when we were going fishin'.”
This time Mike's grin was cynical. “How do the poets put it? Fire-and-ice. For once you're well matched. She can melt down a bronze idol with her tongue, and she's right in your class in rocketry take-off. She has a very definite mind of her own. Keep your left hand high.”
Johnny grunted, waved idly and turned to the stairs. He walked the short distance to Vic's place; it was only six blocks east and two south of the hotel, one of the occasional half-block enclaves of apartments in midtown New York's business jungle. He walked because he needed to think, and he felt that he had the germ of something that needed thinking about.
He knew now why Vic had gone up to Ellen Saxon's room. Check that, Killain-by a process of elimination you think you know. Only one thing in the world could have taken him up there.
Somehow Lorraine Barnes had known that Ellen Saxon was in the hotel, and Lorraine had called Vic. To give Ellen a message or to bring her to the phone, more likely. Wait a minute-how did Vic know where she was? He didn't even know she was there at all until Lorraine told him so.
Johnny worried it around, unconsciously walking faster. Vic had to know, somehow; it was the only thing that made sense. And because Ellen was in an unregistered room it would have complicated things for Vic to call her through the hotel switchboard. He had to go up there to deliver the message, whatever it was. And finding the body and not knowing how deeply Lorraine was involved, Vic had gone into the deep freeze rather than say the wrong thing.
How had Lorraine known Ellen was in the hotel? There was only one way that she could have known. She had to have been someplace close to whatever it was that had panicked Ellen. If it hadn't been Lorraine herself, Johnny reminded himself suddenly. He tried again to think of the figure hunched down over the steering wheel of the dark sedan. Could it have been a woman? He shook his head; he didn't know. Could Lorraine have killed Robert Sanders and followed Ellen Saxon back to the hotel to kill her, too? Possible. Not probable. For one thing, Lorraine was known to hotel personnel. Still He looked up and around suddenly. His preoccupation had carried him half a block beyond Vic's apartment, and he turned and retraced his steps. Seen in the daylight, the neighborhood and the building were depressing. A rust-streaked iron fence with blunted pikes stood sentinel across the building's frontage and on both sides of the walk to the front door. He entered the gate and strode up the narrow cement strip; once past the door the vestibule was more spacious and attractive than hinted at by the exterior.
He pressed the button beneath the neatly lettered name plate, and tried to visualize Lorraine Barnes from the few times he had met her. A no-nonsense woman, he would have summarized it. Younger than Vic. No beauty. Attractive? He tried to remember; somehow The buzzer blasted through his reverie, and he leaned into the mouthpiece. “Johnny.”
“Come right up.”
He knew it was the second floor; he walked up, and she was standing in the open door of the apartment when he emerged into the hall from the landing. She stood aside to let him enter. “I do appreciate your taking this trouble, Johnny.”
He listened to the cool voice; he waited while she closed the door, then followed her inside from the short hall into a living room furnished in quiet good taste. A sofa of the type that could be made into a bed ran along the longest wall, and two comfortable armchairs were at the far end of the room facing the television set. The sofa's and armchairs' slipcovers were a flowered pastel, and almost matched the drapes. A wedding picture stood beside the percolator on the coffee table, and Johnny looked down at a younger-looking Vic and a Lorraine who seemed not to have changed at all.
“Coffee?” she asked him. “It's all ready. Sit down.”
He didn't want the coffee, but he wanted to talk. He sat down. He watched her brisk movements; he knew now that he had forgotten the details of her looks in the intervals between seeing her. And she was attractive. About thirty-five. Good figure. Very good. Hair well kept up. A detached attitude, and an expression to match.
He looked at the high neckline on her light blue sleeveless dress with its ruffled collar. Go ahead, Killain; ask her if she's scratched up under that high neckline. Sure, go ahead and ask her. This is only Vic's wife.
She served him on a small tray, bringing it over to his chair, black coffee with a tiny matched creamer and sugar bowl. As he sweetened the coffee she nodded to something back of him, and he half turned to look at the small bag on the floor. “I packed a few things for Vic I thought he might like to have.” Johnny nodded, and she continued evenly, with no particular emphasis in her tone. “Since I heard the radio this morning I'm not so sure I shouldn't pack one for myself.”
Johnny didn't pretend to misunderstand. “This Sanders thing? The police call you?”
“Not this morning.” Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn't. “I imagine they'll feel confident of getting it all at this session to which they so politely invited me. I'm afraid the whole thing could be a bit of a mess.”
He looked at her curiously. “In what way?”
“There are… ramifications. Ellen ran a bookkeeping machine over at the office. I'd been a stenographer until recently. Ellen-”
“Until recently?”
The light-colored eyes-gray? Blue-gray, Johnny decided — never wavered. “I've been acting as private secretary to Mr. Sanders.” Johnny held his tongue as her pause seemed to invite comment. When she resumed she had changed direction. “Did Ellen come directly to you last night? Or this morning, rather?”
“Yeah.” He sat up alertly. “Why?”
“Because I sent her to you.” Lorraine Barnes smiled faintly. “A fact I believe you would have deduced eventually. She refused to come back here with me, and she was afraid to go home. I finally suggested you. She jumped at it.”
“A lot of good I did her.” His voice was harsh. “Where was this?”