I tried to get Ohls, but they said he was still down at Solano. And by that time the night was full of sirens.
I had a little trouble but not too much. Fenweather pulled too much weight. Not all of the story came out, but enough so that the City Hall boys in the two-hundred-dollar suits had their left elbows in front of their faces for some time.
Pina was picked up in Salt Lake City. He broke and implicated four others of Manny Tinnen’s gang. Two of them were killed resisting arrest, the other two got life without parole.
Miss Glenn made a clean getaway and was never heard of again. I think that’s about all, except that I had to turn the twenty-two grand over to the Public Administrator. He allowed me two hundred dollars fee and nine dollars and twenty cents mileage. Sometimes I wonder what he did with the rest of it.
THE KING IN YELLOW
ONE
George Millar, night auditor at the Canton Hotel, was a dapper wiry little man, with a soft deep voice like a torch singer’s. He kept it low, but his eyes were sharp and angry, as he said into the PBX mouthpiece: «I’m very sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ll send up at once.»
He tore off the headpiece, dropped it on the keys of the switchboard and marched swiftly from behind the pebbled screen and out into the entrance lobby. It was past one and the Carlton was two thirds residential. In the main lobby, down three shallow steps, lamps were dimmed and the night porter had finished tidying up. The place was deserted — a wide space of dim furniture, rich carpet. Faintly in the distance a radio sounded. Millar went down the steps and walked quickly towards the sound, turned through an archway and looked at a man stretched out on a pale green davenport and what looked like all the loose cushions in the hotel. He lay on his side dreamy-eyed and listened to the radio two yards away from him.
Millar barked: «Hey, you! Are you the house dick here or the house cat?»
Steve Grayce turned his head slowly and looked at Millar. He was a long black-haired man, about twenty-eight, with deep-set silent eyes and a rather gentle mouth. He jerked a thumb at the radio and smiled. «King Leopardi, George. Hear that trumpet tone. Smooth as an angel’s wing, boy.»
«Swell! Goon back upstairs and get him out of the corridor!»
Steve Grayce looked shocked. «What — again? I thought I had those birds put to bed long ago.» He swung his feet to the floor and stood up. He was at least a foot taller than Millar.
«Well, Eight-sixteen says no. Eight-sixteen says he’s out in the hall with two of his stooges. He’s dressed in yellow satin shorts and a trombone and he and his pals are putting on a jam session. And one of those hustlers Quillan registered in Eight-eleven is out there truckin’ for them. Now get on to it, Steve — and this time make it stick.»
Steve Grayce smiled wryly. He said: «Leopardi doesn’t belong here anyway. Can I use chloroform or just my blackjack?»
He stepped long legs over the pale-green carpet, through the arch and across the main lobby to the single elevator that was open and lighted. He slid the doors shut and ran it up to Eight, stopped it roughly and stepped out into the corridor.
The noise hit him like a sudden wind. The walls echoed with it. Half a dozen doors were open and angry guests in night robes stood in them peering.
«It’s O.K. folks,» Steve Grayce said rapidly. «This is absolutely the last act. Just relax.»
He rounded a corner and the hot music almost took him off his feet. Three men were lined up against the wall, near an open door from which light streamed. The middle one, the one with the trombone, was six feet tall, powerful and graceful, with a hairline mustache. His face was flushed and his eyes had an alcoholic glitter. He wore yellow satin shorts with large initials embroidered in black on the left leg — nothing more. His torso was tanned and naked.
The two with him were in pajamas, the usual halfway-goodlooking band boys, both drunk, but not staggering drunk. One jittered madly on a clarinet and the other on a tenor saxophone.
Back and forth in front of them, strutting, trucking, preening herself like a magpie, arching her arms and her eyebrows, bending her fingers back until the carmine nails almost touched her arms, a metallic blonde swayed and went to town on the music. Her voice was a throaty screech, without melody, as false as her eyebrows and as sharp as her nails. She wore highheeled slippers and black pajamas with a long purple sash.
Steve Grayce stopped dead and made a sharp downward motion with his hand. «Wrap it up!» he snapped. «Can it. Put it on ice. Take it away and bury it. The show’s out. Scram, now — scram!»
King Leopardi took the trombone from his lips and bellowed: «Fanfare to a house dick!»
The three drunks blew a stuttering note that shook the walls. The girl laughed foolishly and kicked out. Her slipper caught Steve Grayce in the chest. He picked it out of the air, jumped towards the girl and took hold of her wrist.
«Tough, eh?» he grinned. «I’ll take you first.»
«Get him!» Leopardi yelled. «Sock him low! Dance the gumheel on his neck!»
Steve swept the girl off her feet, tucked her under his arm and ran. He carried her as easily as a parcel. She tried to kick his legs. He laughed and shot a glance through a lighted doorway. A man’s brown brogues lay under a bureau. He went on past that to a second lighted doorway, slammed through and kicked the door shut, turned far enough to twist the tabbed key in the lock. Almost at once a fist hit the door. He paid no attention to it.
He pushed the girl along the short passage past the bathroom, and let her go. She reeled away from him and put her back to the bureau, panting, her eyes furious. A lock of damp golddipped hair swung down over one eye. She shook her head violently and bared her teeth.
«How would you like to get vagged, sister?»
«Go to hell!» she spit out. «The King’s a friend of mine, see? You better keep your paws off me, copper.»
«You run the circuit with the boys?»
She spat at him again.
«How’d you know they’d be here?»
Another girl was sprawled across the bed, her head to the wall, tousled black hair over a white face. There was a tear in the leg of her pajamas. She lay limp and groaned.
Steve said harshly: «Oh, oh, the torn-pajama act. It flops here, sister, it flops hard. Now listen, you kids. You can go to bed and stay till morning or you can take the bounce. Make up your minds.»
The black-haired girl groaned. The blonde said: «You get out of my room, you damned gum-heel!»
She reached behind her and threw a hand mirror. Steve ducked. The mirror slammed against the wall and fell without breaking. The black-haired girl rolled over on the bed and said wearily: «Oh lay off. I’m sick.»
She lay with her eyes closed, the lids fluttering.
The blonde swiveled her hips across the room to a desk by the window, poured herself a full half-glass of Scotch in a water glass and gurgled it down before Steve could get to her. She choked violently, dropped the glass and went down on her hands and knees.
Steve said grimly: «That’s the one that kicks you in the face, sister.»
The girl crouched, shaking her head. She gagged once, lifted the carmine nails to paw at her mouth. She tried to get up, and her foot skidded out from under her and she fell down on her side and went fast asleep.
Steve sighed, went over and shut the window and fastened it. He rolled the black-haired girl over and straightened her on the bed and got the bedclothes from under her, tucked a pillow under her head. He picked the blonde bodily off the floor and dumped her on the bed and covered both girls to the chin. He opened the transom, switched off the ceiling light and unlocked the door. He relocked it from the outside, with a master key on a chain.