Johnny walked over to the door which led to the larger back office; Ed Russo sat behind his own desk, the top of which was furnished solely with a bottle and glass, each half empty. He looked up impatiently as Johnny's shadow fell across his desk. “Sorry.” He took another look and obviously disapproved of what he saw. “Oh. Outside, Killain. I'm busy.”
“You look busy.” Johnny estimated him; Edmund Russo was a slim, usually polished individual right now in need of a little refurbishing. The narrow face needed a shave, the suit was rumpled, the tie loosened, the collar wilted, the eyes bloodshot.
Russo half rose in his chair at Johnny's steady regard. “Get out of here, will you? We're closed. Come on-blow.”
Johnny sat down leisurely in a chair opposite him, and Russo's knuckles whitened as he leaned forward over his desk. “You hear me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Get out!”
“This a public stenographer's office?” Johnny inquired mildly. “I want to send a letter.”
“You never sent a letter in your damn life. I already told you we're closed. Do you see Mavis out there? Now rack it up and drag.”
Johnny settled more solidly in his chair. “This letter is about a white kitten.”
Russo stared; he sat down slowly. “What do you know about-” He chopped off whatever he had been about to say and reached blindly for his glass. He swallowed lengthily and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He glared at Johnny, and his voice was stronger. “Beat it. Right now. Or I call the manager's office, wise guy.”
“Let's take it a little slower, Russo.” Johnny's voice hardened. “When I roomed Ellen Saxon last night she had a white kitten for you. Did you go upstairs to get it?”
The slim man slumped in his chair; the bloodshot eyes stared at Johnny. Then he seemed to re-cock himself joint by joint as reaction came to him. “Wise guy!” he sputtered again as he surged erect; his hand closed on the neck of the whisky bottle, and in one blurred, sweeping movement he fired it at Johnny's head. Johnny's instinctive move to the side got his head out of line, but not his shoulder; the bottle hit him heavily, bounced off and smashed on the parqueted floor.
Ed Russo had continued on around his desk in a stumbling run; Johnny was still only two-thirds of the way upright after the impact of the bottle when the flailing hands were pounding at his face. For an instant he absorbed the tattoo, then impatiently locked his hands together under Russo's chest and shoved. The man staggered back, and Johnny straightened up and moved away from the chair that hampered him. When Russo regained his balance and charged again, head down, Johnny sighted down the angle and put his shoulder behind the hard right-hand smash that caught the incoming jawline and blasted it floorward in a careening arc. Ed Russo slid on past into the corner and stayed there, and Johnny experimentally fingered a tingling spot on his own cheekbone.
He flexed his right hand and looked down at Russo and at the puddle of whisky and glass fragments on the floor. “Quite a reaction,” Johnny told the unconscious man aloud.
“I'd have to say you act like a man with something on his mind.”
He walked around behind Russo's desk and, after considering a moment, jerked open the center drawer. He didn't know what he expected to find, but he blinked down at the newspaper folded to the black headline proclaiming the death of Robert Sanders.
He stood, looked at the far wall and silently slid the drawer shut. Robert Sanders. Ellen Saxon. Edmund Russo. Now what kind of a round robin was that? He groped around in his mind for a hook, a possible connection. He sighed, finally; he needed to do some thinking.
He left the office without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 6
Walter Stewart straightened in his swivel chair at the sound of the tap-tap of high heels approaching the partly opened door of his office; his blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands rapidly shuffled the cardboard folders on his desk. He was a slender man in an untidy-looking, expensively cut dark suit; he had a lean, aggressive face, and his graying hair thinned out on top to a noticeable bald spot. He glanced up at the open door with studied casualness as Florence Richardson entered.
“You're staying on this evening, Mr. Stewart?”
Her voice was low-keyed-like her personality, he thought. And her appearance. Attractive enough, with the fresh, clear complexion contrasted with the prematurely gray hair, but the severely tailored suit and the glasses militated against the masculine head-turn in a crowd, the hallmark of the man's woman.
“A few moments only, Miss Richardson.” He nodded down at the opened folders in front of him. “I have a late dinner engagement, and I thought I might use the time profitably to update one or two of these programs.”
“If there's anything I can do-”
“Nothing, thanks. I'm just noodling, actually.”
“Well, if you're sure… you'll get the safe?”
“I won't forget. I'll take care of it.”
“I'll put the night latch on the outer door as I leave. Good night, Mr. Stewart.”
“Good night, Miss Richardson.” He sat and listened again to the tap-tap of her heels, diminishing now, and then the slight sound of the door. Capable girl-damn capable. He was lucky to have her. Kept the office running like a watch, and no fuss and feathers about it, either.
He pushed a folder absently along the side of his desk with a stiffened forefinger and leaned back lazily in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. He stared for a moment at the far wall with its framed certificates, an idle toe tapping idly on the inner well of the desk. He unclasped his hands and stood up restlessly, shoving the hands deeply into his pockets.
He wandered out into the outer office, from whose floor space his own partitioned-off, glassed-in privacy had been carved. It was quiet now in the office after the daylong tac-tac-tac of the machines. Approvingly he noted the neat, clean desk tops; he insisted upon a clean desk at quitting time. A six-girl office, Stewart, he reminded himself; do you remember when you used to wonder if you'd ever have a one-girl office? Or a place of your own at all? And not so long ago, either.
He glanced at the gold lettering on the heavily frosted glass of the outer door; it always reassured him to see it there. He was reading it backward from where he stood, of course, but then he really didn't need to read it at all. He'd carried those letters of gold in his heart for ten years before he ever got them up on glass. Walter Stewart, Insurance Broker. And directly beneath in smaller block print, we sell service. Neat, but not gaudy. Conservative insurance service for conservative clients. Too bad you couldn't put that up on the door, too.
He rested an elbow on a chest-high, olive green filing cabinet, and as an afterthought tested the top drawer. Locked, as it should be. Miss Richardson checked them personally each evening before she left; he'd never found her to be careless. Away from the office as much as he was, it was a relief not to have to be eternally concerned with the grinding function of the hour-by-hour small emergencies of office routine. Miss Richardson handled it all. He himself had no patience for such details; he begrudged the time spent in such fashion as a distraction from a broker's true metier. He Three sharp raps on the glass aroused him; he crossed to the gold-lettered door, opened it and stood aside. “Come in.”
A big man entered; he was dressed flamboyantly in a vividly checked sport coat and light-colored slacks. He wore an expensive panama with a too-wide brim, and he had a livid scar that slightly pulled down a corner of the heavy mouth. The face was a scarred full moon.
Walter Stewart led the way directly back to the inner office, and pulled the guest chair up beside his desk. The big man seated himself and removed a small notebook from an inside breast pocket which he passed across the desk to Walter Stewart, who thumbed casually through its closely written contents, then nodded. He opened the center drawer of his desk and took out a sealed white envelope; he leaned forward slightly to hand it to the big man, who slit the flap with a thumbnail, removed the small sheaf of bills, flipped them between thumb and forefinger as casually as Walter Stewart had thumbed the notebook, restored the bills to the envelope and the envelope to the inside breast pocket.