She turned a hand over palm down, resignedly. “Let's say in the very near vicinity of Robert Sanders' apartment.”
“Did you know Sanders was dead?”
“No. I might have managed differently if I had, but that's hindsight, of course. I only knew that Ellen had seen something that had frightened her nearly out of her mind. I couldn't get a coherent sentence out of her. We couldn't stand on the sidewalk; I put her in a cab and sent her on to you.”
“Do you know why Ellen was there, or with whom?”
“No. She would answer no questions at all. I came back here, but I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know what had frightened her, or I felt that I did. I had something at stake myself. I called Vic at the hotel and asked him to have her call me back. He was surprised; asked me why I thought she'd be there. I told him I'd sent her to you, and he said oh, yes, that he knew where she was, but why on earth he went up there-”
“He got a bad break on that.” Johnny explained about the unregistered room. “With Ellen not registered, there was no rack or phone listing for her. Vic could have asked the operator to ring an unregistered room, but since it was me that put Ellen in there he might have thought it was important to me not to have the operator know it. When he found the body he didn't know if or how deeply you were involved, so he said nothing.”
This time it was Lorraine Barnes' turn to say nothing in a pause that invited comment. While the silence lengthened she studied a fingernail's gloss and buffed it lightly on a fold of her dress. She spoke finally as Johnny was casting about in his mind for a fresh assault upon her glacial calm. “I'm not going to tell the police that I was anywhere near Robert Sanders' apartment this morning, Johnny.”
He stared at her. “That's your business, but you know they're gonna shake you to your back teeth? You think you can make it stick?”
“I'm relieved to hear you say that it's my business. As for making it stick-why, you never know until you try.” Her voice was quiet, unruffled. Nerve, he thought admiringly. She had nerve in great, jumped-up bunches. “I believe that Ellen was the only one who saw me; I'm going to hope that she was.” Her tone was factual, with no hint of apology. “You see, Johnny, for Vic there can be no satisfactory explanation for my being in that neighborhood this morning. I wish no further involvement. Vic would want it that way.”
The hell of it is, Johnny thought, Vic would want it that way. This cool-voiced little witch might be the whore of all the world, but Vic would want what she wanted. He put down his coffee cup. “If you're not going to tell the police why did you tell me?”
She smiled, the same faint smile that was not really a smile at all. “A calculated risk. You're no fool, Johnny. Sooner or later you would have figured out what sent Vic up to Ellen's room. If you were going to tell the police everything you know, or suspect, there wasn't a great deal of point in what I was planning. I had to know where I stood.”
“What makes you think I haven't told them everything, or won't this morning? I'm under the gun downtown, too, you know.”
She considered him steadily. “I don't have to be right, but I think you're a little too primitive for that.” She removed a pair of white gloves from her handbag. “Are we ready?”
“You may think you know what you're doing,” Johnny pointed out as he rose to his feet, “but on the street where I live you'd be classified in a hurry. Fruitcake. Grade A.”
“If there's a medal goes with it I may apply later.”
“You could be forgetting one important item,” he suggested. “For my money, somebody killed Sanders, then followed Ellen across town and killed her. You were with Ellen, for a few minutes anyway. If the killer saw you too, where does that leave you?”
Lorraine Barnes drew on her gloves with a snap. “Next in line, you mean? I would very much like to see him try to kill me.”
Could that be because you know who he is? Johnny thought to himself. And have your own reasons for not naming him? Or because you're the killer and so have nothing to fear?
He stepped forward silently and picked up Vic's bag. Anyone who could follow the twists and turns in this woman could solve a couple of murders in his spare time. He followed Lorraine Barnes to the door.
The searing midday heat on the street drove Johnny along the steaming sidewalk on his way back to the hotel. The combination of no sleep, summer sun and a grueling three-hour session downtown had left him frayed. He would welcome the air-conditioned lobby.
He had lost his temper, of course. He always did. They had come at him in relays, pulling and hauling, reworking the same tired ground. In the final hour he had taken himself to his surest refuge-animal silence. They had tired of it, finally, and turned him out after he had signed his formal statement.
Lorraine Barnes was still being questioned, but Johnny felt few qualms about her. There was a woman for you. She had politely but firmly chased the lawyer Mike Larsen had sent — Mike had inexplicably not shown-and Johnny had waited beside her phone booth while she called her own lawyer and calmly instructed him that if he had not heard from her by three o'clock that he was to do whatever was necessary to release her.
He shook his head as he turned into the hotel foyer from the sizzling sidewalk. On the record today, Lorraine Barnes had more backbone and know-how than the average National Guard unit. Women-try to figure them, and lose your mind.
He could see Gus Poulles through the glass doors which separated the foyer from the lobby. Gus was Johnny's counterpart on the morning shift, the day bell captain, a pale, black-haired Greek with sunken, worldly eyes. Johnny emerged into the lobby's chill breath and walked to the desk; he and Gus had little need for extended conversation. They understood each other. Gus was a realist; he drifted through the hotel day after day fatalistically absorbing man's frailties.
The dark eyes inspected Johnny. “Bad?”
“Not good. They're still holding him.” Johnny frowned. “They act a little frantic down there. I don't get it. It can't be all that complicated, not when you can lean all over people the way they can. They seem-”
Gus held up a hand as his phone rang. “Bell captain, good morning.” He listened and looked at Johnny sardonically as the fingers of his free hand delicately pinched his nostrils. “No, sir. Not since I've been on.” He bowed to the phone, the mobile features twisted into a caricature of a sweet smile. “I'll check, Mr. Russo.” He covered the mouthpiece and called over his shoulder to the checkroom behind him. “Angelo! Anyone leave a white kitten here for Russo this morning?”
The short hairs on the back of Johnny's neck lifted; how many white kittens figured to be around this place?
“-sorry,” Gus was saying. “If it comes in I'll call you.”
“Russo,” Johnny said thoughtfully as Gus hung up. “Ed Russo. Edmund Russo, Esquire. Public stenographer's office on the mezzanine. A wheel. A big, round wheel. He wanted information from me about a guest once; surprised as hell when he didn't get it. A roughrider. Wears his spurs twenty-four hours a day.”
Gus nodded, dark eyes amused. “Chapter and verse.”
“Yeah.” Johnny straightened. “A self-appointed hard guy. And now he's interested in white kittens? Somehow I don't think he's the type. Not the type at all. I think I'll go see.”
“Hey-” Gus's voice trailed off behind Johnny, already moving in the direction of the stairs. Russo's query could be a coincidence, and again it might not. Johnny climbed the stairs; in motion he felt loose and easy, freed from the burden of doubt and self-blame he had felt since the first moment he had seen Ellen's body.
The shade on the door of the public stenographer's office was still drawn securely, as it had been earlier that morning. Johnny didn't bother to knock when the doorknob responded to his inquiring rotation; the tiny outer office was dark as he entered. The chair usually occupied by the vividly blonde Miss Mavis Delaroche had been pushed neatly beneath her kneehole desk. A voice cleared itself and addressed Johnny raggedly from the interior. “Sorry. We're closed.”