The Fatal Frails (10 page)

He shrugged finally, and hailed a cab. He wondered why Jimmy Rogers was more willing to believe it was Tremaine than Stitt he was looking for. Because the doorman and the other help at the Winters’ apartment building hadn’t identified Stitt? They hadn’t identified Tremaine, either, but it had evidently been a near thing.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of the Duarte after paying off the cabbie. There was another possibility. Jimmy Rogers might know something about Jules Tremaine that Johnny didn’t. If Rogers—

Johnny became aware of Paul Sassella inside, waving to him vigorously through two sets of glass doors. Johnny went through the foyer in a hurry. “Call the Rosario,” Paul said to him the second he had his head in the lobby. “Urgent.”

Johnny headed for the booth phones, dredging up change. He was passed so swiftly up the line of the cardinal’s filtering-out section it was obvious his call was expected. “Kiki? Killain. Trouble?”

“I thought I should call you, Johnny.” The cardinal’s tone was grave. “I talked to my office at home today. One message said that a dealer in Barcelona had called and reported a monstrance offered to him for purchase.”

“Ow!” Johnny breathed. “Any details?”

“It happened four days ago, the offer was made in the form of a cable and it came from New York. The dealer was inquiring as to my interest.”

“Sabotage,” Johnny said wryly. “I been workin’ on Dechant’s associates, tryin’ to give the impression I had the thing. You’d given me enough information to give it a good pitch. I’d hoped to get enough of a ‘You’re crazy, Jack’ reaction from the guy who had it to give me somethin’ to go on. This offer goes to show you I haven’t been talkin’ to the right people.” He thought a moment. “Any signature on the cable that meant anything?”

“The signature was E. McPartland. No return address. Reply to be addressed ‘Will Call’ to the cable office in New York.”

“E. MacPartland,” Johnny repeated. “Never heard of him. More’n likely it’s a phony, anyway. Sent ‘Will Call,’ it could be addressed to John Doe.”

“Where do you feel you stand, Johnny?”

“Nowhere,” Johnny admitted promptly. “I hate to have to tell you I’m such a muttonhead, Kiki, but it’s the truth. Oh, I’ve got these people playin’ footie with me on crooked schemes Dechant had cooked up, but so far nothin’ leads back to the monstrance.”

“The thing that concerns me, of course, is that an offer might be made to a dealer who has a private client or two with no scruples about acquiring such an
objet d’art.”
The cardinal’s voice sounded tired. “And there’s the worse possibility that someone might break it up for the jewels.”

“I’ll keep punchin’,” Johnny promised gloomily. “Somethin’ might drop. This Dechant was a whingdizzler. The man never drew an honest breath. Every stone I turn over there’s a chance I’ll find the right slug skitterin’ off, but I don’t see much daylight.”

“Well …” the cardinal’s voice trailed off. “Good night, Johnny. Thanks. If I hear anything further, I’ll call again.”

“Fine. Hope I can come up with somethin’.” Johnny replaced the receiver slowly. He stared out bemusedly through the booth’s glass door at the darkened lobby. He roused himself finally, and went upstairs to change.

Vic Barnes waved a white envelope at him from the registration desk as Johnny stepped off the service elevator back into the lobby thirty minutes later. “Just came in, Johnny. Special messenger.

“Special messenger?” Johnny walked to the desk and took the plain white envelope with his name and that of the hotel on it. There was no return address. The envelope felt almost weightless. “What kind of special messenger?”

“Some kid in a kind of uniform. Western Union?” Vic asked himself. The round face creased with the effort of remembering. “No, I don’t think so,” he decided. “Just some kind of uniform.”

Johnny slit the back flap with a thumbnail. He extracted the single bit of paper inside and looked at a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars, made out to Johnny Killain and signed in a bold, flowing hand by Maximilian Stitt. There was no message.

Now here’s a man so anxious to avoid trouble he can’t wait for a bill, Johnny thought. “Lend me a pen, Vic, will you?” Johnny endorsed the check, folded it, put it in the breast pocket of his uniform and went back upstairs to find Amy.

He found her in the laundry room counting sheets. “Take this an’ pay off your sub-jobbers for the reclamation project,” he instructed her, handing her the check. He looked at her as she eyed him warily. “What’s the matter with you?”

The colored girl’s silvery giggle tinkled through the room. “Miss Sally said I should give you some elbow room ‘cause you was mad at my tellin’ her about your room.”

“Well, maybe I was right then.” He looked with amusement at Amy’s widening eyes as she saw the check for the first time. “If you don’t knock down on the deal for the price of an outfit, you’re cheatin’ on Amy,” he told her.

“Mmm—mhh!” she confirmed enthusiastically. “Man, man! I’ll have ev’ry buck on Lenox Avenue fixin’ to snap my garter.” White teeth flashing, she looked from the check back to Johnny. “Even with that chair not worth re-up-holsterin’ it shouldn’t come to nowhere near this.”

“I’ll add what’s left to the Killain Bourbon Fund.” He started for the door. “Don’t skimp on that outfit.”

“Don’ you worry your head one little bit about
that,”
Amy’s voice floated after him.

Back in the lobby he found Paul at the bell-captain’s desk, glumly studying the log. “Four check-ins on our shift,” Paul said. “They’ll be padlocking the doors. I know I gripe when those school kids are here running up and down the corridors nights every spring, but they sure keep the old place from seeming so much like a tomb.”

“It’s the permanents keep this place alive,” Johnny grunted. “Those cut-rate school bus tours don’t add much except to the room occupancy percentages. Say, when the police went over Dechant’s room after you and Rogers sealed it that night, who was with them from the hotel?”

“I guess someone from the auditor’s office. It would have been on the day shift.”

“I’ll talk to Rollins,” Johnny decided. “He’ll have a list of anything removed.” He pulled at an ear lobe. “Dameron an’ I are both lookin’ for somethin’ Dechant should have had in his room, or anyway not too far away from it,” he explained. “It struck me that the police could have found it right off the bat, or a claim check or somethin’ like that, an’ I could be spinnin’ my wheels lookin’ for a gadget Dameron already had on ice. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“How big?” Paul asked interestedly.

“Thirty pounds. Eighteen inches by fifteen inches by—hell, I don’t know the other dimension.”

“If it only weighs thirty pounds, there can’t be too much to the other dimension,” the practical Paul observed. “If you’re carrying your burglary tools, there’s a bag in the cloakroom been there since before Dechant’s last trip.”

“Oh, no,” Johnny said softly.

“Don’t tell me ‘Oh, no’,” Paul asserted sturdily. “I was looking at it over the weekend, wondering when they were going to do something about it.”

“I meant ‘Oh, no, it couldn’t be that easy,’ “Johnny said. “Let’s have a look.” He followed the stocky Swiss through the door in the recessed niche between the elevators. Paul reached up to a rack and lifted a black bag down by the handle. “No good,” Johnny announced. “The way you swung it down it doesn’t weigh enough.”

“Could be empty,” Paul admitted.

Johnny lightly toed the scuffed, cheap, pressed paper finish with its reinforced corners. The bag slid on the floor. “Not a chance,” he said disappointedly. He looked at the broad cloth straps encircling each end and buckled down at the top. “Looks like a sample case. What the hell. Watch the door.”

Quickly he unfastened the straps and tested the flimsy lock with his thumb. From his wallet he removed a thin strip of celluloid. He bent down for a second, and the lock popped open with a click. Johnny separated the two sections that nested within each other. From the bottom section he took four nine-by-twelve glossy photos swaddled in tissue, and knew the second he uncovered the top one that he was looking at a picture of the monstrance. Even in the stark black-and-white, thickly studded jewels were plainly visible in the base and along the graceful golden spikes.

The only other object in the bag was a battered black automatic.

“Call Rogers at the precinct, Paul,” Johnny said. “If he’s not there, leave word for him to come by.”

“T
HIS WAS THE BASTARD’S SAMPLE CASE
,” Johnny said to Detective James Rogers two hours later. Paul Sassella looked on silently as the sandy-haired detective shuffled glossy photographs. “He couldn’t very well lug anything as valuable as the monstrance around with him all the time to show it, so he did the next best thing. He took pictures of it an’ the other stuff he stole from Hegel, had ‘em blown up an’ he was in business.”

“He didn’t need a case this size for four pictures and one handgun,” Rogers objected. He balanced the automatic on his palm.

“He needed a case this size if he contacted a live one who wanted to see the actual merchandise,” Johnny said. “It’s our tough luck there’s nothing in it now, that’s all.”

The slender man held the automatic up to the light and squinted up the barrel. “Crime to leave a gun in this condition,” he said absently. “Hasn’t been fired in months. Or cleaned, either.” He looked at Paul. “You got a little dab of machine oil around?”

“Sure,” Paul said readily. “I’ll get it.”

Detective Rogers removed the clip from the base of the automatic and laid it aside. “Empty,” he said tersely. He took a key chain with a tiny screwdriver on it from his pocket and laid it beside the clip. In movement too quick for Johnny to follow, Rogers balanced the automatic between his palms and twisted, and with two loud clacks it came apart in his hands. Swiftly he spread out barrel, slide, grip and recoil action, picked up the barrel, sniffed at it and put it down again.

“You do that like you’d done it before,” Johnny said.

“I fool around with them.” The detective nodded as Paul came back in and handed him a small bottle and clean rag. “Thanks. Exactly what I need.” He looked at Johnny. “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

Paul looked down at the dismantled gun in surprise. “Don’t you test them first for fingerprints?” he blurted, and almost blushed to find himself the center of attention.

“Metal gives a poor transfer,” Rogers said smiling, “despite what you read. We’re not looking for any guns, anyway. We’ve got the one Dechant killed himself with, and we’ve got the one that killed Arends.” The slim hands flew over the piecemeal bits of metal, wiping, oiling, wiping again.

A buzzer sounded overhead. “Front desk,” Paul said conversationally, and went out to answer it.

“There was no question about the gun that got Arends?” Johnny asked. “It was the one layin’ beside him?”

“No doubt at all, according to Ballistics, and they haven’t made a mistake since 1908, if you listen to
them.”
In what looked like three deft movements, the sandy-haired man slapped the automatic back together in seconds. He wiped his greasy hands on a clean corner of the rag, his eyes appraisingly on Johnny. “Why the question?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny said slowly. “It leaves you with a choice of an amateur tryin’ to make it look like suicide by leavin’ the gun, or an amateur gettin’ the lump an’ droppin’ the gun in a panic when he flew.”

Rogers dropped the reassembled automatic back into the sample case. “One more for the police property officer.” He replaced the top on Paul’s bottle of oil. “What’s the matter with either of those pictures?”

“Nothin’, probably. I just wish—”

The cloakroom door opened for a second, and Paul’s head loomed in it. “Emergency, Johnny.” The door started to close as his head disappeared. Moving with a speed his bulk appeared to make impossible, Johnny caught it before it shut and was out into the lobby with Detective Rogers at his heels.

Johnny took one look at the woman being supported between two men just inside the foyer doors, her face a bloody mask in which the only recognizable feature was one eye fixed in staring shock. “Take her up on the mezzanine, Paul!” he said over his shoulder, and continued on to the switchboard without breaking stride. “Ring Doc Randall, ma,” he said to Sally, and picked up a house phone. He heard the click of the connection in the middle of the second ring. “Killain, Doc. Bring your bag down to the mezzanine. Don’t wait for your pants.” The connection was gone with an explosive grunt.

“What is it?” Sally wanted to know as he hung up.

“Car accident, looks like. Call the hospital and get an ambulance over here.” His eyes were on the little group of men moving carefully up the mezzanine steps with their burden. “Doc’ll probably give me hell for movin’ her, but the lounge up there’s a damn sight better’n a marble floor.”

He went up the mezzanine stairs three at a time and reached the top as Dr. Randall emerged from the elevator with Paul beside him. In pajamas and dressing gown with trailing cord, and his white hair standing up all over his head, the doctor hurried into the oval, curtained lounge, carrying his little black bag. Johnny could hear his brisk voice. “All right. Let’s get half of these people out of here.”

Johnny was halfway to the lounge entrance when Detective Rogers burst through it, heading for the stairs. He pulled up at sight of Johnny. “Recognize her?” he asked grimly.

“You mean I’m supposed—” Johnny looked at the blood-streaked piece of fur in the detective’s left hand. He had seen that mink stole before. “Madeleine Winters?” he asked incredulously.

Rogers nodded. “Viciously assaulted twenty feet from the hotel marquee by a man who got out of a car.”

“Christ! I thought it was some woman went through a windshield. What was she doing—”

Detective Rogers was no longer listening. He ran quickly down the stairs. After one indecisive glance at the curtained lounge, Johnny followed him. At the switchboard Rogers passed telephone numbers in to Sally as fast he could copy them down from his notebook. “Call all these people,” he said crisply. “If they come on when I’m on another line, hold them on. Don’t let them get off.”

Sally’s hands flashed over the board as she set up lines and dialed. “The first one doesn’t answer, Mr. Rogers,” she said in seconds. His mouth a thin line, the detective marked an “x” beside the first number of a duplicate list he jotted down. From where he stood slightly to one side, Johnny could see that there were five of the numbers. He strained to get a look at least at the exchanges, but Rogers’ body half blocked his view. “Pick up the phone beside you, Mr. Rogers,” Sally said suddenly.

“Hello!” the detective barked. “Who is this?” He cut right back into the sounds emerging from the receiver. “I know perfectly well whom I’m calling at this hour of the morning. This is Detective Rogers.” He must be talking to Stitt, Johnny thought. Only Stitt would give him a growl like that. “Are you alone?” the detective continued. “Is there anyone who can verify how long you’ve been there?” He listened briefly. “All right. I’ll talk to you again in the morning.”

“The third one doesn’t answer yet, Mr. Rogers,” Sally said quietly. “The first one still doesn’t answer. The—Pick up your phone again, please. Here’s the fourth one.”

“Who is this?” Detective Rogers began again. “This is Detective Rogers. Are you alone?” Something indefinable in Rogers’ tone made Johnny feel the detective was talking to a woman. Gloria Philips. Had to be. “Is there anyone who can verify—”

Johnny tried to listen and at the same time catch the attention of the intern and the ambulance driver who appeared from the foyer with a folded stretcher. They finally caught his silent hand-signals and went up to the mezzanine.

“I’ve been holding the fifth one for a minute and a half,” Sally was saying when Johnny could again pay attention. “The first and third numbers still do not answer.”

“Hello,” Rogers said into his phone. “Who is this? This is Detective—”

A sound from the stairs brought Johnny’s head around. The stretcher was descending the stairs, Paul and the ambulance driver at its head and two strangers at the rear. Alongside walked the hatless intern and Dr. Randall.

Attracted by the voices, Detective Rogers turned at the phone, into which he was still speaking, until he could see the little procession. “—in the morning,” he said. “No. No. Damn it, no! I’m busy!” He hung up abruptly. “Oh, Doctor!” he called. Both the intern and the hotel physician stopped and looked. Rogers waited long enough to glance in at Sally and receive a negative headshake before walking over to the two men. “Can I talk to her?” he asked.

“Not a chance,” Dr. Randall said emphatically. “Speaking for myself, of course. She’s under heavy sedation, and will remain so for some time.” The interne nodded agreement. “A vindictive assault,” the older man continued. “A superficial examination indicates that every blow was facial. As brutal an attack as I’ve ever been called in upon.”

“When can I talk to her?” the detective persisted.

Dr. Randall looked at the intern, who shrugged. Looking frustrated, Roger jerked his panama down over his sandy hair and started for the door. Halfway there he turned and came back. In front of Sally’s switchboard he swept off the hat and bowed. “That was a damn fine job,” he said sincerely. “Thanks.” Sally flushed with pleasure as the slender man crammed the hat back on and half trotted from the lobby.

There goes a real sharp cutting tool, Johnny thought to himself as Rogers disappeared through the foyer doors. You keep fooling around with that boy, Killain, and some one of these days he’s going to nail your ears to the wall. How’d you like that question he slipped in on each of them asking if anyone was present who could verify how long they’d been there? Let one of those jokers come back in the morning now and try to supply an alibi for someone who needs it. Rogers had them already on record. It took something more than a head like a billygoat to come up with that on the spur of the moment.

He roused himself and went to look for Amy to have her clean up the mezzanine lounge.

In his room an hour later Johnny poured himself his third double shot of bourbon. He slipped down his tie, unfastened his collar and, as an afterthought, kicked off his shoes before he returned to his armchair and settled down with the bourbon. He took a small swallow, chasing it around his mouth with his tongue.

Five telephone numbers, now. Roger was hot on Tremaine. Say Tremaine’s was the first number the detective had had Sally call. So Tremaine had no alibi. At least he wasn’t home. And for this Tremaine could need an alibi.

Stitt had been home, assuming the second number to be his. From the growl Rogers had got for an answer, it about had to be Stitt. Stitt wanted no trouble, he claimed. The savagery of the attack was right up Stitt’s alley, though. And Gloria said that Madeleine Winters had turned Stitt in on a deal that could have cost him a prison sentence. Could Stitt have hired the job done?

Then there was Gloria Philips herself. She didn’t like Madeleine, either. But on the face of things at least it was unlikely she disliked her enough for this sort of thing.

Harry Palmer must have gotten the last call. It must have been gabby Harry hanging on asking questions with Rogers trying to shake him off. Which would leave the lawyer Faulkner not answering the third call. Still, Faulkner was a talker, too. Maybe the last call had gone to him, and Palmer hadn’t answered the third call. Not that it made much difference as between those two. There was no apparent motive for either.

Johnny had his glass halfway to his lips again when a solution occurred to him. He tossed off the balance of his drink hurriedly, rose and in his stockinged feet walked to the phone. “Say, ma—”

“I’ve got a call for you,” she interrupted him.

“Wait. Those phone numbers Rogers handed in to you to call. Read ‘em off to me, will you?”

“You’re too late, man. That sour-looking Detective Cuneo came in a few minutes ago and asked me for them. He had to go all through my wastepaper basket, but he found them.”

“That Rogers is gettin’ too damn smart,” Johnny grunted. “Cuneo still downstairs?”

“Not in sight, anyway.”

“Okay. Put on the call.” There was a second’s dead air before he got the connection. “Yeah?”

“Killain?” Johnny thought the voice was guarded. “Don’t use my name. This is the man who sent you the check. I’m over at Toffenetti’s. Take a walk around.”

Toffenetti’s was on Broadway, a block west and two blocks south of the Duarte. “What’s the matter with right here?” Johnny asked, more to be contrary than because he had any real objection to Toffenetti’s.

“I don’t know who’s watching your place. I don’t think you do, either. I had two phone calls tonight I don’t like. I want—”

“Two
phone calls?” Johnny interrupted.

“Yes.” The voice paused. “You sound as if you might have known about one of them.”

A shrewd Prussian, Johnny thought. “Maybe I do. I’ll be right over. Tell Danny at the soda fountain Killain wants the usual.” He hung up and dressed hurriedly, took the service elevator down to the lobby and told Paul he was going out for a little while. He swung down Forty-fifth Street in the mild night air, waving to Joe taking care of his last minute customers in the bar across from the theater. Joe waved back, and beckoned with the bottle in his uplifted hand. Johnny pointed to his wrist with a circular motion to indicate fleeting time as he passed by. On the corner, Shorty, the newsstand man, reached out to punch Johnny on the arm. Johnny scooped him up with an arm around his middle and carried him kicking and hollering half a block up Broadway before he let him go. Shorty stood in the middle of the sidewalk, and of the first fifteen words of his cheerful diatribe the only two printable were “big walrus.” A hundred yards up the street, Jackie Dolan, the owlhoot night patrolman, jabbed Johnny in the ribs with his billy and ducked a left to the body. This was the world of Killain.

At Toffenetti’s Johnny found Max Stitt in a back booth. The cold-eyed man was distastefully regarding the enormous four-scoop sundae with berries, nuts and whipped cream across the table from him. “You’re actually going to eat that sickening-looking thing?” he demanded as Johnny sat down and pulled it toward him.

“Goes just right on top of three double bourbons,” Johnny told him, spooning busily.

“Bourbons! And then that?” Words appeared to fail the other man.

“I always claimed that anything a boa constrictor can eat, I can eat,” Johnny said. He looked at Max Stitt across the booth table. “What’s on your mind?”