“What’s with you?” I asked. “You quit?”
“Resting,” he said. “Nobody at the bar except Mr. Malamed. Everybody watching Calvin and that Manaja. Wow, that Manaja! I got a needle for that Manaja.”
I extended my glass. “Let’s freshen this up, huh?”
Tobias sighed, ground out the cigarette in a sea-shell ashtray and stood up. “Okay. I’m ready.” He stretched languidly. “That Manaja!” He walked behind the bar.
“I’ll take Whitney.”
He grinned. “So would I. If I could.”
Mr. Joe Malamed had his arms crossed on the bar. His head nestled in his arms.
Tobias reached behind him for a bottle, and I moved to Mr. Malamed.
“I’m buying,” I said, “as long as it’s so lonely out here.”
Mr. Malamed made no answer.
I touched him. His head moved.
Blood made a bright red trickle on the white bar.
Tobias Eldridge gulped a brandy but it did nothing for the pallor of his face.
“This guy’s dead,” I said.
The lights went on in the inner room. Ruth Benson, the chanteuse, came on, singing her naughty songs.
“Dead?” Tobias said. “You sure?”
“One little bullet. Clean through the temple. I’m sure.”
“One little bullet,” Tobias said in wonderment. “One lousy little bullet.” His voice reached up to falsetto. “Why, the guy was just sitting here, just sitting here with a drink...”
The first one out was Irene Whitney.
She saw what I held in my hands, and screamed. Piercingly.
Ruth Benson’s song stopped. People poured out of the inner room. Screams topped screams. The men made a rush for the check-room, grabbing at coats. The cocktail lounge swarmed with hysteria.
I dropped Malamed back on the bar and fought through to the thick glass doors. I shot the bolt, locking the doors, and then I turned and spread my arms out wide like a young cop trying to hold up the pandemonium of onrushing traffic.
“All right,” I yelled. “Everybody. Quiet. Quiet.”
A young man in a tuxedo, dragging his coat, rushed me, trying to get out. I wound up a fist and caught him as he came. He went down clean. It helped. The noise simmered down to bubbling sounds.
“Quiet,” I yelled. “Shut up, everybody.”
Suddenly there was absolute silence. The women stared at me, goggle-eyed. The men stared at me exactly like the women.
“All right,” I said. “A guy’s been murdered. Nobody leaves ’till the cops come. That clear?”
There was no argument.
“Fine,” I said. “Now all you guys start putting your coats back into the check-room. And somebody get this drunk in front of me off the floor.”
Somebody did. Some of the men moved to the check-room and hung their coats back.
I said: “All right. Now all of you go back to your tables. All of you go back where you were.”
The crowd began to thin out. I said: “Any music in the house?”
A woman’s voice came back at me. “Yes.”
“Well, get them playing, will you?”
The woman’s voice called, “Stan, get the boys together. Start them playing.”
“Right, Mrs. Malamed. Right you are. Okay, boys. Let’s go. On the double.”
Soon there was music, soft strain.
“Okay,” I said. “Everybody back in place. Nobody comes in, nobody goes out. Till we get the cops.”
A young man, a guy with broad shoulders and black hair, shouldered through to me. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Who are you?”
“Melvin Long, Joe Malamed’s partner.”
“Well, get them back to their tables, Melvin. Get them all back to where they were.”
“You’re Chambers, aren’t you? Peter Chambers?”
“How do you know?”
“Seen you around.”
“Okay. Now get them back, huh? Get them all back.”
Soon enough the coats were back in the check-room and the customers were back in their chairs. Nobody remained in the cocktail lounge except Malamed, head-down on the bar near the archway, Tobias rigid near the brandy bottle behind the bar, Irene Whitney near the checkroom, and Melvin Long nervously rubbing his hands directly in front of me.
“You too,” I said. “You and Miss Whitney. Back there exactly where you were.”
Long said, “He’s right, Irene. Come on. You were out on the floor.”
He led her through the archway and now I was alone with Tobias. I left my station at the glass doors and went to the bar. I said, “One for you, one for me, and then you call the cops.”
I had scotch neat.
He had brandy.
Then he reached down, brought up the phone, stuck a trembling forefinger in the slot marked O, and whirled the dial.
II
Fifteen minutes later, Detective Lieutenant Parker and his gang of experts from Headquarters held class in the Long-Malamed. Parker, out of Homicide, was a straight cop with no curves. He was squat and solid and built like a beer barrel. He had a square jowl, crew-cut black hair, strong white teeth and black eyes. Parker had a respect for his fellow men, excepting criminals, and including private eyes. Detective Lieutenant Louis Parker, Homicide, New York City, was an old and valued friend. Under his capable supervision a good deal of work was accomplished in a comparatively short period of time.
Louis Parker summed it up: “The guy was killed from a bullet shot from the inside room. What with the drum raps and the light flashes, the pistol shot went unnoticed. He was killed by a thirty-eight. He was a sitting duck, a perfect target, out in the light of the cocktail lounge, near enough to the archway. Nobody saw anybody with a gun, they were all watching that oiled-up Manaja. Pretty gorgeous, that Manaja. And everybody’s accounted for. I mean, everybody was seated at his respective table, nobody went to the john or nothing. This eliminates quite a group.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I’ve got experts, and they’ve got instruments that measure. Now, from the trajectory of the bullet and the angle of entrance into the temple, considered in conjunction with the particular shape of the room—”
“Trajectory,” I said, my eyebrows up in admiration. “Real fancy.”
“Means the curve described by a body moving through space — the body, in this case, being a bullet discharged from a thirty-eight. Anyway, it eliminates a goodly group, and places in jeopardy only those within the segment from whence the shot could have been fired.”
“Whence,” I said. “Brother, what are our cops coming to?”
“The room seats two hundred and eight. And it was filled to capacity. But within our circle of jeopardy — only two tables: that of Mrs. foe Malamed, and a table seating a party of six, visitors in from San Francisco, with not the remotest acquaintanceship with Joe Malamed.”
“That narrows it down plenty, doesn’t it?”
“And how it does.” Parker turned to one of his uniformed minions. “Okay, let them go now. They get their coats out of the check-room and blow. Take the names, occupations, addresses. Have them show identification.” He consulted a card. “The ones that stay are Claire Malamed, Melvin Long, Charles Morse, Frank Hines, and Ruth Benson.”
“Why do they stay?” I asked.
“Because they were the ones seated at Mrs. Malamed’s table during Calvin Cole’s performance.” He called to the cop again. “It’s okay for Morse, Hines and Long to get their hats and coats. That whole crew’s going downtown with us.”