The girl had dropped her magazine. She stooped, picked it up and placed it behind her on the chair. She said, “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go in the bedroom.”
“I won’t excuse you,” I stopped her getting up. “I came her to talk to you, damned if I won’t.”
Mortola held out one of his oversized paws like a circus cop and she sank back in the ottoman. He turned rheumy, dull eyes on me and directed, “Go ahead, talk to her.”
“Why do you want me to find Robert Donaldson?” I asked. “You weren’t married to him.”
The blonde glanced nervously at the big man. He answered her look with a long, arm stretching yawn. She said, “I want to see him for personal reasons.”
“What are they?”
“I can’t tell you. They’re personal.”
“You admit you weren’t married to Donaldson.”
“I admit nothing.” She smoothed invisible wrinkles in her dress and looked away from me.
Mortola moved restlessly on the sofa as we talked, stretched his legs in front of him, pulled them back, chewed lethargically on his cigar. Finally he blurted, “Where the hell is Donaldson?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I had him last night. I just missed him.”
“We know about last night. You talked to Donaldson up the river.” He flicked his cigar ash on the rug, “Where is he now?”
“I didn’t talk to him last night. I traced a girl friend of his to the river and followed her home. The house was dark when she got there and it was after two, so I couldn’t break in on her. I waited until a decent hour this morning, but she was gone.”
“Then how do you know he wasn’t married?”
“It wasn’t difficult,” I explained, taking the long chance with a bald lie. “Mrs. Donaldson, or whoever she is, told me they’d been married during the war. I checked with the Army and they have no record of it.”
“Very pat, Sweeney. You have an answer for everything.”
“What’s your interest in this, Mortola?” I asked.
He rose to his feet and scowled over me. “Donaldson is a thief,” he said. “He heisted some stuff from a friend of mine. I used this broad here to get you to find him so’s I could get the stuff back without no trouble from the cops.” He puffed disgustedly on the cigar, which had gone out, and threw it in the fire place. “Are you going to tell me where this thief is, nice and gentle?”
“What did Donaldson steal?”
“You tell me.” Satan scowled.
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
Mortola steered his wet eyes behind me expressively. I jumped off the sofa. Benny Lufts was pointing the automatic at me. Eddie, leering happily, took a step forward. The telephone chose this moment to fill the room with its screams.
Mortola started and said, “Hold it.” He answered the phone. “Yes,” he said into the receiver. “He’s here now... No... Wait a second, I’ll go in the other room.” He lay down the receiver and walked through a door on the far side of the room.
I lit a cigarette and threw the match in the fireplace. The girl sat tensely in the ottoman. She was definitely not so tan and composed today. There was an anxious, almost frightened cast in her blue green eyes as they observed the wrestling fingers in her lap. I started to compliment her on making a patsy of me when Mortola stuck his fat head through the door.
“Come in here, Benny,” he shouted.
Benny Lufts crossed over to the door and Eddie pulled a revolver, an undersized 38, from inside his coat. Nobody trusted me. From the other side of the room Syd came in. He was wearing two strips of adhesive tape and the uncovered part of his face was a jigsaw of wine colored scratches.
“Why don’t chou plug the bastard?” Syd asked his partner.
“Wait for Frankie,” Eddie advised, as if it were only a question of timing.
“Think of the neighbors too,” I warned.
Eddie laughed caustically. “No neighbors, and they’s no other tenants in the building.”
Mortola returned, followed by Benny Lufts. His step was less elephantine, his eyes shinier. “Put up the gun, Eddie,” he instructed, like a benevolent satan. “Sweeney is on our side, after all. Ain’t you Sweeney?”
“Indirectly,” I said, motioning toward the girl. “She’s my client.”
“Sure she is, and I sent her to you. You done a good job so far, consid’ring my boys been looking for Donaldson two weeks. Okay, stick to it. You find me Donaldson, I’ll pay you plenty.” He stood with his back to the fireplace, rubbing his buttocks sensuously as if he had just come in from a snowstorm and there was a fire in the grate.
“I have nothing against money,” I remarked.
“Course you haven’t,” Mortola inspected his three torpedos speculatively. “Benny, you and Eddie take Sweeney to the nearest cab stand.” He glowered at the bandaged gladiator, “Leave the gear with Syd, Benny.”
Benny Lufts handed Syd a square leather case, the size of a safety razor kit. Syd put it in his coat pocket and directed a venomous stare at me. “You and yours truly ain’t quits yet, Sweeney. Not by a long shot.” He spat the words at me.
I agreed I wasn’t through with him. Benny Lufts and Eddie led me to the elevator and back to the green Buick. This time I drew the rear seat. I relaxed on the foam rubber cushions, surprised and happy to be alive.
Driving, Eddie asked, “Who’s the guy on the phone?”
“Skip it,” Benny Lufts told him.
I interjected, “Don’t mind me, boys. You heard Frankie. I’m one of the family.”
“That’s what I mean,” Eddie kept on. “We’re all set to work this shamus over. Frankie gets a buzz and it’s all off, we’re buddy-buddy. What gives? I got a right to know.”
“Frankie’s got a contact,” Benny Lufts said. “Nobody knows him but Frankie. It’s none of our business. Shaddup and dump this clown off somewheres.”
They dropped me at a cab stand on Portrero and I caught a Yellow to the Mayflower building. The green Buick followed. There was a white ticket under the windshield wiper of my heap, the parking meter alongside blushed. It was three-thirty and they start towing cars away from Mission Street at four, but I decided to see Booker again before I moved it.
A handful of people were grouped outside the entrance to the Mayflower offices. They were talking and listening aimlessly to each other, like people do sometimes when there’s a big league ball game on a store radio. But there was no radio here.
I met Jimmy Underhill, a crime reporter on the Evening Herald, as he was coming down the stairs. His boyish face under a crew haircut registered astonishment. “Me and the cops are looking for you, Bill.” He grabbed my arm and turned me around, leading me into the street.
“The cops?”
“Your friend and mine, Inspector Hank Stroth,” Jimmy said. “The boss man of this shirt outfit is dead as hell. Hank thinks it’s murder and you’re his number one suspect.” We had covered half a block and were opposite a bar called Friendly’s. The green Buick was parked down the street. Jimmy added, “I don’t like to be seen in public with a murderer, but you can buy me a drink.”
I accepted. “Come on. Tell me how I killed this guy.”
Eight
After Syd and Eddie had escorted me from Booker’s office his secretary returned from her coffee break and proceeded with her usual routine. At five minutes past two a phone call came in for her boss. When he didn’t answer her buzz the girl entered his office and found him sprawled on the floor, dead. A superficial medical examination showed that Booker was an addict and had died from narcotics poisoning: he had taken or been given a shot of poisoned dope. A Mr. Sweeney called on him between one-thirty and two. No one saw him leave the office.