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.
«Hotel business,» he said under his breath. «Phooey.»
The corridor was empty now. One lighted door still stood open. Its number was 815, two doors from the room the girls were in. Trombone music came from it softly — but not softly enough for 1:25 AM.
Steve Grayce turned into the room, crowded the door shut with his shoulder and went along past the bathroom. King Leopardi was alone in the room.
The bandleader was sprawled out in an easy chair, with a tall misted glass at his elbow. He swung the trombone in a tight circle as he played it and the lights danced in the horn.
Steve lit a cigarette, blew a plume of smoke and stared through it at Leopardi with a queer, half-admiring, half-contemptuous expression.
He said softly: «Lights out, yellow-pants. You play a sweet trumpet and your trombone don’t hurt either. But we can’t use it here. I already told you that once. Lay off. Put that thing away.»
Leopardi smiled nastily and blew a stuttering raspberry that sounded like a devil laughing.
«Says you,» he sneered. «Leopardi does what he likes, where he likes, when he likes. Nobody’s stopped him yet, gum-shoe. Take the air.»
Steve hunched his shoulders and went close to the tall dark man. He said patiently: «Put that bazooka down, big-stuff. People are trying to sleep. They’re funny that way. You’re a great guy on a band shell. Everywhere else you’re just a guy with a lot of jack and a personal reputation that stinks from here to Miami and back. I’ve got a job to do and I’m doing it. Blow that thing again and I’ll wrap it around your neck.»
Leopardi lowered the trombone and took a long drink from the glass at his elbow. His eyes glinted nastily. He lifted the trombone to his lips again, filled his lungs with air and blew a blast that rocked the walls. Then he stood up very suddenly and smoothly and smashed the instrument down on Steve’s head.
«I never did like house peepers,» he sneered. «They smell like public toilets.»
Steve took a short step back and shook his head. He leered, slid forward on one foot and smacked Leopardi open-handed. The blow looked light, but Leopardi reeled all the way across the room and sprawled at the foot of the bed, sitting on the floor, his right arm draped in an open suitcase.
For a moment neither man moved. Then Steve kicked the trombone away from him and squashed his cigarette in a glass tray. His black eyes were empty but his mouth grinned whitely.
«If you want trouble,» he said, «I come from where they make it.»
Leopardi smiled, thinly, tautly, and his right hand came up out of the suitcase with a gun in it. His thumb snicked the safety catch. He held the gun steady, pointing.
«Make some with this,» he said, and fired.
The bitter roar of the gun seemed a tremendous sound in the closed room. The bureau mirror splintered and glass flew. A sliver cut Steve’s cheek like a razor blade. Blood oozed in a small narrow line on his skin.
He left his feet in a dive. His right shoulder crushed against Leopardi’s bare chest and his left hand brushed the gun away from him, under the bed. He rolled swiftly to his right and came up on his knees spinning.
He said thickly, harshly: «You picked the wrong gee, brother.»
He swarmed on Leopardi and dragged him to his feet by his hair, by main strength. Leopardi yelled and hit him twice on the jaw and Steve grinned and kept his left hand twisted in the bandleader’s long sleek black hair. He turned his hand and the head twisted with it and Leopardi’s third punch landed on Steve’s shoulder. Steve took hold of the wrist behind the punch and twisted that and the bandleader went down on his knees yowling. Steve lifted him by the hair again, let go of his wrist and punched him three times in the stomach, short terrific jabs. He let go of the hair then as he sank the fourth punch almost to his wrist.
Leopardi sagged blindly to his knees and vomited.
Steve stepped away from him and went into the bathroom and got a towel off the rack. He threw it at Leopardi, jerked the open suitcase onto the bed and started throwing things into it.
Leopardi wiped his face and got to his feet still gagging. He swayed, braced himself on the end of the bureau. He was white as a sheet.
Steve Grayce said: «Get dressed, Leopardi. Or go out the way you are. It’s all one to me.»
Leopardi stumbled into the bathroom, pawing the wall like a blind man.
TWO
Millar stood very still behind the desk as the elevator opened. His face was white and scared and his cropped black mustache was a smudge across his upper lip. Leopardi came out of the elevator first, a muffler around his neck, a lightweight coat tossed over his arm, a hat tilted on his head. He walked stiffly, bent forward a little, his eyes vacant. His face had a greenish pallor.
Steve Grayce stepped out behind him carrying a suitcase, and Carl, the night porter, came last with two more suitcases and two instrument cases in black leather. Steve marched over to the desk and said harshly: «Mr. Leopardi’s bill — if any. He’s checking out.»
Millar goggled at him across the marble desk. «I — I don’t think, Steve —»
«O.K. I thought not.»
Leopardi smiled very thinly and unpleasantly and walked out through the brass-edged swing doors the porter held open for him. There were two nighthawk cabs in the line. One of them came to life and pulled up to the canopy and the porter loaded Leopardi’s stuff into it. Leopardi got into the cab and leaned forward to put his head to the open window. He said slowly and thickly: «I’m sorry for you, gum-heel. I mean sorry.»
Steve Grayce stepped back and looked at him woodenly. The cab moved off down the street, rounded a corner and was gone. Steve turned on his heel, took a quarter from his pocket and tossed it up in the air. He slapped it into the night porter’s hand.
«From the King,» he said. «Keep it to show your grandchildren.»
He went back into the hotel, got into the elevator without looking at Millar, shot it up to Eight again and went along the corridor, master-keyed his way into Leopardi’s room. He relocked it from the inside, pulled the bed out from the wall and went in behind it. He got a .32 automatic off the carpet, put it in his pocket and prowled the floor with his eyes looking for the ejected shell. He found it against the wastebasket, reached to pick it up, and stayed bent over, staring into the basket. His mouth tightened. He picked up the shell and dropped it absently into his pocket, then reached a questing finger into the basket and lifted out a torn scrap of paper on which a piece of newsprint had been pasted. Then he picked up the basket, pushed the bed back against the wall and dumped the contents of the basket out on it.
From the trash of torn papers and matches he separated a number of pieces with newsprint pasted to them. He went over to the desk with them and sat down. A few minutes later he had the torn scraps put together like a jigsaw puzzle and could read the message that had been made by cutting words and letters from magazines and pasting them on a sheet.
TEN GRAND BY TH U RS DAY NI GHT, LEO PAR DI. DAY AFTER YOU OPEN AT T HE CL U B SHAL OTTE. OR EL SE — CURTAINS. FROM HER BROTHER.
Steve Grayce said: «Huh.» He scooped the torn pieces into a hotel envelope, put that in his inside breast pocket and lit a cigarette. «The guy had guts,» he said. «I’ll grant him that — and his trumpet.»