“I haven't had a chance to look.” Johnny could cheerfully have throttled the little auditor. He knew how this was going to look to Cuneo.
“I'd like to hear about this money,” the detective said unpleasantly.
“Well-” Rollins stared uncertainly from Cuneo to Johnny and back again. The atmosphere was beginning to get through to him. “I sent an envelope up to Johnny this afternoon by one of the bellboys. It contained wages I'd been holding for him in the safe.”
“Cash?” Cuneo demanded. Rollins nodded. “How much?”
“Nine hundred and thirty-nine dollars.” The auditor said it almost apologetically.
Cuneo stared. He turned abruptly to Johnny. “Is it here?” Johnny went to the bureau and opened and closed drawers. When he closed the last one he faced about silently. No words were necessary.
“Where was it when you last saw it?” Cuneo pressed him.
“On top of the bureau,” Johnny admitted reluctantly.
“A thousand bucks right on top of the-” Cuneo waggled his head in amazement. “And this Thompson was supposed to be cracked?” He looked at his superior. “I like the sound of this a hell of a lot better than that jazz we heard before. This poor bastard Thompson probably caught a hotel thief right in the act.” He swung back to Rollins. “Who'd you send up here with the money?”
“Richie Gordon, one of our regular boys.” Rollins said it defensively.
“Did he know what was in the envelope?”
“He could have.” Rollins looked unhappy. “He was in the outer office when I was talking to the bookkeeper about getting it out of the safe.”
“Better have a talk with this Gordon, Ted, and find out how much broadcasting he did about his errand,” Dameron said.
“Right,” Detective Cuneo said briskly. He looked at Johnny, solemnly tapped a finger to his forehead three times, and left the room.
“I'll-I'd better check around downstairs,” Chet Rollins said uneasily. When no one said him nay he departed hurriedly.
“You guys are foulin' off the pitch, Joe,” Johnny began as the room emptied. “This Richie Gordon's a good kid.”
“Good kids talk, too.” Lieutenant Dameron plucked a loose thread from the sleeve of a tan suit very similar in color to Johnny's. “How come we didn't hear about this money before? Are you going to try to deny it makes more sense than what you were peddling?”
“The hell it does. I heard Thompson's story right out of the horse's mouth, Joe. You didn't. All right, I forgot the envelope on the bureau an' it's gone. What I'm sayin' is that if the money hadn't been missing something else would have been gone. The closet would've been stripped if nothing else offered. Whoever did the job wanted it to look like a room robbery walked in on by Thompson.”
“You've been watching too many late, late shows. Be over at the station in the morning to sign a statement.” Lieutenant Dameron settled his expensive-looking dark brown fedora more firmly on his head and started from the room.
“Goddammit, Joe-” Johnny tramped to the door after him.
“In the morning,” the lieutenant repeated from the corridor. He marched off toward the elevator, his heels hitting heavily.
From the doorway Johnny watched him go. How in the hell was he going to let a little daylight into that thick skull? Why Joe Dameron couldn't see something as plain as Down the hall Dameron strode past the corridor leading to the west wing. A dark figure leaped from it, behind the lieutenant's broad back. The right arm swung viciously. Clubbed hard at the base of the neck, Dameron dropped heavily. His momentum pitched him forward on his face. His hat flew off and bounced away. He struggled to roll over. Above him the dark figure stood poised, glittering steel in the left hand. A woman's silk stocking covered the head.
Johnny came down the corridor in all-out charge. The intent stocking-masked assailant whirled from its crouch at the sound of the bull-buffalo rush. Before the knife could be oriented to the new danger Johnny's lowered shoulder blasted the man under the breastbone with tremendous force, up and off the floor into the wall. The man screamed as the stocking-mask slammed into the wall. He caromed off into Johnny's reaching hands and Johnny dug in his heels in a sliding skid to halt his own headlong progress. He almost jumped into the air from the recoil of the force with which he smashed the man to the floor. The body hit hard with a soggy sound, bounced, and fell back as limply as a disjointed rag doll. The silk stocking was a flat wet smear.
“Jesus!” It was a breathy rasp from behind Johnny. The lieutenant knelt up on the floor with a. 38 special in both hands trained steadily on the body on the floor. When it didn't move Dameron spared a hand to rub the base of his neck. “Slip inside and call in on your phone,” he mumbled hoarsely to Johnny.
Lieutenant Joseph Dameron sat slumped in the depths of Johnny's armchair, a drink in his hand. His red face looked shiny. He glanced at Johnny lying on the bed with his hands clasped loosely behind his head. “My damn neck feels like a truck ran over it,” he complained.
“Why the hell is it you get a carpet to fall on and I get the sidewalk?” Johnny inquired from the bed.
Dameron started to reply and then sat up straighter as the same lean-faced medical examiner Johnny had seen earlier entered the room. “Well, Frank?” the lieutenant asked.
“Why don't you run a shuttle service over here?” the medical examiner demanded irritably. He set down his bag.
“What about that one in the hall, Frank?”
“Deceased. Violently. Neck broken. Back broken. Minor fractures. Lesions, contusions, and abrasions. Face about obliterated. Identification will have to be from his prints. This hotel running locomotives down its corridors?” No one answered him. He shrugged, picked up his bag and bounced it against his thigh. “Should I take a look at you, Lieutenant?”
“I'm all right, Frank,” Dameron said. “Thanks. Thanks just the same.” The medical examiner departed and the lieutenant raised his glass toward the bed. “Just like Europe, by God. Killain to the rescue in the nick of time. Where was the camera and the man with the megaphone?”
“I wish I'd had a camera to get the expression on your tomato puss when you came up for air,” Johnny said. He rolled up on an elbow and looked at the chair. “Like the time they cornered us in the cave outside Florence. You were the same ripe shade of kelly green when you found twenty cases of dynamite and realized the assorted loose lead they'd wafted at us had chipped a few splinters off the boxes.”
Lieutenant Dameron grunted and took a long pull at his drink. “Reminds me, I had a card from Jimmy Rogers,” he said when he put down his glass. “Before he left on vacation he told me the only reason he was still around was that you'd stepped in and taken a slug intended for him.”
“Then he told you a damn lie. Jimmy doesn't need me to hold his end up an' you know it.” Johnny leveled a finger at the chair. “You know that this guy out here thought it was me, don't you, Joe?”
“Thought it was you?” Dameron's eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”
Johnny bounded from the bed and went to the armchair. He placed his sleeve alongside Dameron's. The material was different but the color was a match. “He thought it was me,” Johnny repeated. “That was my boy from up the street back to finish the job. He didn't see your face till your hat fell off. From the back we're a size except your most recent forty pounds is lard. I keep tellin' you but you don't listen: someone's afraid of what Thompson might have told me.”
“Can you identify him?”
“With no face? The rest of him fits.”
“I can't see it, Johnny. What'll you bet his prints make him an inside worker?”
“A hotel thief who jumps a man right out in the open? Why did he go for you, Joe?”
Dameron hesitated. “I tell you I don't believe it,” he said finally. “You're-”
“Joe.” The lieutenant fell silent at the stark monosyllable. Johnny stared down at him. “You don't believe it, or you won't believe it? I already told you I talked to Toby Lowell today. Did you? Did you get another call beside the one that sent you over here? Are you holdin' the lid on something?”