The old man said to Mrs. Worth, “I guess we’ve done all we can here.”
Gunner glared at him. “You think I wanted to let that hood go?”
Hawk looked at him curiously. “Course not, Sergeant. I understand your technical reasons for turning him loose.”
Courteously, he bent over the aged Anna Stenger and helped her to her feet. Then, as though in idle afterthought, he said, “Doesn’t seem quite right there should be separate rules for gangsters and ordinary people, though. Wasn’t when I wore a badge.”
“How long ago was that?” Gunner asked.
The old man smiled. “Before you were born, Sergeant. Been retired over forty years.”
Sergeant Gunner’s primary reaction to the whole incident was frustration. He felt it unfair to be blamed for a situation beyond his control, yet at the same time he had to admit there was justification for old Gerard Hawk’s unconcealed contempt for the modern law enforcement system. Because the sergeant represented that system, the old man’s attitude continued to rankle long after he and his companions had gone.
He was still feeling frustration when he logged in the following morning and received word that Nick Spoda had been shot dead the previous night. As a homicide cop, Gunner had a natural aversion to murder, but this killing actually gave him a lift.
“The call just came in,” the captain said. “But the guy who called figures it must have happened last night. Manager of the hotel where Nick lived. Want to take it?”
“Naturally,” Gunner said. “I want to pin a medal on the killer.”
Nick Spoda’s home had been the Midland Hotel, a respectable but inexpensive place on upper Grand Avenue. Gunner found a number of people awaiting him in the lobby.
There was the hotel manager, a nervous man who seemed more concerned about possible bad publicity for the hotel than he was disturbed by the death of a tenant. With him was a sleepy-eyed night clerk whom the manager had dragged from bed on the assumption that the police would want to talk to the man who had been on duty when the crime occurred. There was also a uniformed policeman, Mark Fallon, and the same two men who had accompanied him to headquarters the day before.
Mark Fallon seemed to be suffering from barely controlled rage. “We already know who did this, Sergeant,” he said. “I would like to go along when you make the arrest.”
Gunner eyed the lawyer with distaste. Had anyone else present announced that he knew the name of the killer, he would have asked for details before he did anything else. But Fallon aroused in him a desire to be contrary.
“Hold it until I’m ready for you,” he said. He turned to the patrolman. “Where is it?”
“Second floor, Sarge. My partner’s guarding the door.”
Ordering everyone to wait in the lobby, Gunner climbed stairs to the second floor. Halfway along the hall, another uniformed policeman stood in front of a closed door. Several other doors were open, and tenants stood in them, curiously watching the patrolman.
In the room, Gunner found Nick Spoda sprawled on his back just outside the bathroom door, a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead. He was dressed, but the collar of his shirt was tucked in all around, and shaving cream had dried on his checks. A safety razor was gripped in his right hand.
It was apparent that someone had entered the room while Spoda was shaving. The gangster had stepped to the bathroom door to see who it was and had been shot.
“The manager says nothing’s been touched,” the patrolman said. “A cleaning maid discovered him about an hour ago, around eight. She didn’t disturb anything, and the manager said he didn’t even enter the room, just looked from the doorway.”
Bending over the body, Gunner lifted the head enough to satisfy himself there was no exit wound. “Still in the head,” he said, ostensibly to the patrolman, but really to himself. “Shouldn’t be too mashed up for comparison purposes.”
Rising, he went over the room quickly but thoroughly, finding nothing of interest. In the bathroom, he found a can of shaving cream on the washbowl counter and a couple of inches of soap-filmed water in the bowl.
Noting the sergeant’s scowl, the patrolman said, “Nothing, huh?”
“The killer didn’t leave any calling cards,” Gunner said.
Instructing the guard to admit the lab man and photographer when they arrived, and release the body to the morgue as soon as they finished their work, he returned to the lobby. He addressed his first question to Mark Fallon.
“What are you doing here, counselor?”
The lawyer said, “I had a golf date with Nick. When I walked in and learned what had happened, I stuck around. That old coot who was in your office yesterday killed him, Sergeant.”
When Gunner gave his eyebrows an inquiring hike, Fallon said, “I phoned Nick at seven-thirty last night to make our golf date. He told me old Hawk had just called and asked to come see him at eight-thirty. That’s when he was shot.”
Tabling him, Gunner turned to the hotel manager. “What’s your name?”
“Thomas Bower.”
“All right, Mr. Bower, tell me what you know.”
He didn’t know very much. Aside from having looked into Spoda’s room long enough to assure himself the man was dead, he knew only what he had gotten from the night desk clerk. When he started to relay that, Gunner cut him off in favor of getting it from the source.
“You tell it,” he said to the clerk.
The night clerk was a thin man in his twenties named Amuel Card. He said he lived at the hotel. He said he had heard a shot about eight-thirty the previous night, sounding as though it came from the second floor.
“What did you do about it?” Gunner asked.
“Went up and looked down the hall. All the doors were closed and I couldn’t see anything, so I figured it must have been a backfire from outdoors, and just sounded like it came from inside.”
“None of the second-floor tenants heard it?”
“I don’t think any were in, except Mr. Spoda. Most tenants are out to dinner about then.”
“You know Gerard Hawk?” Gunner asked.
The clerk shook his head. “Unless he’s the old guy who came by about six, just after I went on duty.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall and kind of bent over. White hair and a droopy white mustache. He asked for Mr. Spoda’s room number, but he never went up. Just thanked me and left.”
“He didn’t come back at eight-thirty?”
Again the clerk shook his head. Then he shrugged. “Maybe by the back stairs, but I didn’t see him.”
Gunner went to examine the back stairs. They could be seen from the desk, he noted, but were invisible from the left side of the lobby.
Returning to the clerk, he asked, “Were you behind the desk when you heard the shot?”
“No, reading a paper over there.” He pointed to a leather easy chair well to the left of the desk. “When things are quiet, I don’t sit at the desk much.”
Mark Fallon said, “It’s obvious that crazy old man killed him, Sergeant. You have any objection to my going along when you make the arrest?”
After examining him moodily, Gunner shrugged. “Leave your pet apes behind and you can come.”
The lawyer told his two henchmen he wouldn’t need them anymore that day.
Mrs. Worth answered the door at the Riverview Senior Citizens Retirement Home. Showing them into an immaculate but old-fashioned parlor, she invited them to sit.