“Stow it, Ernest. Save it for your tear-wet pillow.” He addressed himself to Johnny again. “You don't look like the type to me to split legal hairs, and you can damn well bet your second-best store teeth that I'm not, either. I'm in the process of finding out that Dechant's been playing me for a fool right along. I don't like it. All the importing he did-with my money, the bastard-was just a blind for whatever else he was doing. He never made a quarter on his legitimate operations. He bought and sold over and over again at cost, even at a small loss. Since he lived like a maharajah ever since I've known him, it leaves me wondering where the money came from.”
Palmer grinned at the obviously unhappy Faulkner. “I'm indebted to Ernest for the information as to the lack of financial righteousness in Claude's affairs. Ernest is sweating it out, because as Dechant's lawyer he signed a lot of little pieces of paper he now knows had no basis in fact. Ernest is afraid he's going to wind up as the bagman. I'm afraid I'm not going to get my money.” He shook free a cigarette from the pack he removed from his breast pocket. He offered it to Johnny, who refused. “So what are you afraid of, Killain?”
“That no one'll pay me enough for my trouble.” Johnny lifted his own empty glass. “Refill?”
“No, thanks.” Harry Palmer leaned forward in his chair. “A couple of people approached me recently-at different times, that is-about giving them a hand with the recovery of an object that had been the subject of some mismanagement.” He grinned faintly. “I wasn't interested, until I found out what kind of a jackpot I was in trying to get my money out of Dechant's screwed-up estate. Right now I could be interested as hell, if you're for real. Tremaine told me you were over at his place this afternoon making noises that you knew something. Arends told me that you were over at his place raising general hell. Before he died.” He paused. “That's something I'd like to know a little more about. Jack Arends was a good friend of mine.” He turned to accept the lawyer's proffered light for the cigarette, which had remained unlighted in his mouth during his speech. He puffed hard twice, and with a wave of his hand dismissed Jack Arends as well as the cloud of smoke around his head. “You gave me the password, Killain.” He stared at Johnny keenly. “I want my hands on something that'll give me a lever toward recovering my money. Do you come in that door?”
“If the door's marked Money.”
Harry Palmer removed a folded-over checkbook from an inside jacket pocket, spread it on his knee and wrote swiftly with a fountain pen. He ripped the check from the book and waved it in the air to dry, leaned forward and handed it to Johnny. “It's not signed, Killain. You turn the stuff over to Tremaine. When he tells me it's the right stuff, I'll sign the check.”
Johnny looked down at the unsigned check in his hand for forty thousand dollars. He flicked it between thumb and forefinger so that it sailed back onto Palmer's lap. “You talk like a man without good sense, Palmer. I don't do business with checks, signed or unsigned. I don't do business with Tremaine, if you're the buyer. I do business with you. For cash.”
“Now don't go off half cocked, boy,” the little man warned him. “I never appear in these things personally. And, as for the check, ask around a little. I think you'll find out that when Harry Palmer says he'll do a thing, Harry Palmer delivers the goods.”
“No cash, no deal, Palmer.” Johnny walked back to the refrigerator and refilled his glass. “It's not enough, anyway.” He leveled a finger at the man in the chair. “I've already had a better offer than yours, but I haven't seen the color of any money there yet, either. I'll tell you right now, the first with the gelt gets the stuff.”
“You've been offered more?” The little man's eyes had narrowed. “I don't believe it. There aren't enough people-” He looked around impatiently as Ernest Faulkner leaned over the arm of his chair to tug at his sleeve. The lawyer murmured in an undertone.
Harry Palmer first looked thoughtful, then shrugged and bounced abruptly to his feet. “You think it over, Killain. And don't try to outsmart a man that makes his living at it. Come on, Ernest.” From the door he looked back at Johnny. “Killain. If it stays like this, I go for myself, understood? No hard feelings if your corns get trampled?” He grinned, waved and disappeared.
He'd overplayed that hand a little, Johnny decided as the door closed behind them. Still, he couldn't afford to let himself be cornered. He'd hear from Palmer again.
He finished his drink and rinsed out the glasses in the bathroom. With all these people milling around, where could the thing be? Or, if one of them had it, could it be that he'd be afraid to come to the surface with it for fear the sharks would tear his throat out?
He left the glasses to drain, and returned to the elevator and the lobby.
He looked up from the desk as Sally called to him from the switchboard. He crossed the lobby in his soft-footed shuffle and leaned on the little gate between them as Sally's brown eyes inspected him. “What did those men want, Johnny?”
“Well, it's like this, ma. They want to buy somethin' I don't have. They don't know I haven't got it, so I'll sell it to them.”
“It sounds like one of your deals,” she observed. “What are you actually-” She broke off, nodding over his shoulder. “Are you sure your customers haven't filed a complaint already?”
Johnny turned to see Lieutenant Joseph Dameron advancing across the lobby toward them, with Detective Ted Cuneo half a pace behind. The lieutenant's apple-cheeked ruddiness was void of expression, but Ted Cuneo's popeyed stare glinted with anticipatory malice. Johnny felt that he could hear the storm-warning signal flags snapping in the wind. “You changed shifts, Joe?” he greeted the lieutenant blandly. “Or just quit sleepin'?”
Lieutenant Dameron nodded briefly to Sally before addressing Johnny. “Can we talk upstairs?”
“We can talk right here, Joe.”
“I'd like it better upstairs, Johnny.”
“Sorry. I'm on duty.”
“A hell of a lot that ever bothered you!” Quick anger flared in the official voice.
“Well, I guess I got to level with you,” Johnny said apologetically. “I got a blonde waitin' upstairs for my coffee break. She's allergic to gendarmes.”
The frost in the gray eyes hardened to ice. “I said I'd like-”
“Joe, I don't give a damn what you'd like,” Johnny wedged in. “You want to talk? So talk.”
The lieutenant's smile was wintry. “Strictly in character.” His eyes flickered to Sally again before returning to Johnny. “You went out to see Arends yesterday at Empire Freight Forwarding.”
“Wrong,” Johnny told him.
“Don't tell me it's wrong!” Ted Cuneo broke in. “I checked with-”
“The pair of you'd make stinkin' witnesses,” Johnny inserted cuttingly. “No wonder you average about fifty per cent convictions. I went out to Empire. Arends happened to be there.”
Two pinpoints of red dotted Cuneo's sallow complexion. “Watch your mouth, man,” he said dangerously. “I mean it.”
“You're aware of course, Johnny, that the situation has changed since we had our little talk the other evening.” Lieutenant Dameron's tone was level. “A man has been killed. This is a police operation now. You can't go around rooting up indiscriminate stumps with your nose.”
“Show me,” Johnny invited.
“Show you what?” Cuneo demanded aggressively.
Johnny kept his eyes fixed on the lieutenant. “Show me the chapter an' section of the statute that says I can't.”
“Now look, you-” Cuneo growled from the side of his mouth.
“A pretty good jackleg lawyer told me one time people would be surprised as hell to know how limited police powers really were,” Johnny said softly. He leaned back negligently on his elbows on the wooden gate. “He said it's the extra-legal powers they assume to themselves that get them their mileage. An' in trouble, too, sometimes.”