Dead of Night Page 3

  I got down on one knee, pulled the hangered dresses and night things aside so I could see the rest of him. He’d been propped up with his back to the closet wall and his knees hunched up under his chin. His right hand lay on a pair of golden slippers.

  His head lolled over on one side; the eyes were open, so was his mouth. He wasn’t as big as his legs had made me expect, but he must have been over six feet; the long, narrow, bony face made him look tall. It wasn’t a handsome face but its thin, high forehead lent him a look of alertness. For all the good it may have done him.

  Lanerd muttered, “Crysake! For crysake! That’s torn it!”

  Reidy stayed behind Lanerd, called past the adman’s shoulder, “Dead, Gil?” He knew the answer.

  I bent over so I could see the gashes in the back of the dead man’s tux between the shoulder blades, the soggy streaks crawling like snail slime down toward the small of his spine. Maybe you get used to that sort of thing if you see enough of it. Looking at that was more than enough for me. I had to swallow hard before I said, “Somebody worked on him with a knife.”

  I shoved back the silkies on the dress hangers, looked in the corners of the closet for the steak knife. It wasn’t there.

  Reidy asked what a hotel man naturally would, “He a guest, Gil?”

  “Doubt it.” Without moving him too much, I felt in the dead man’s pockets for a wallet or keys or letters. The wallet was there; there was silver in his pockets; I didn’t remove either. There was a holster under his left armpit. It was loaded. He’d never had a chance to pull it.

  Lanerd cleared his throat. “Name was Roffis. He was a—a guard—here to protect our star performer—”

  “She wasn’t the only one who needed protection.” Reidy’s face was oyster-gray.

  I knew what Duman was thinking, but it didn’t seem possible. If Lanerd had done the butcher job, his clothes would have shown it. It wasn’t reasonable to suppose he’d have waited around the suite after the murder. There were other points, but I didn’t want to go into them then. I went to the phone.

  “Hold it! Hold it, godsake!” Lanerd made his stop-sign gesture again. “You don’t want to call the cops!”

  “I don’t?” I picked up the handset. “Let me have Mona, honeychile. This’s Mister V.” Mona’s our switchboard super, a very crisp cookie in the headwork department.

  Lanerd held out both palms, pleading, “There’s a hell of a lot of things you don’t know about this business. If you’ll wait about ten minutes, Miss Millett will be back and—”

  “Millett?”

  “That’s right, that’s right!” Lanerd smoothed his carved-marble hair with both hands. “Miss Marino is Tildy Millett.”

  Reidy was startled. “The Queen of Skates? Here in the house?”

  “Oh, oh!” My surprise wasn’t due to her checking in under a nom de hotel. Plenty of people do, besides the John-Smith-and-wife couples who check in those midtown flea-bags after the niteries close. What jolted me was that I’d seen the Sweetheart of the Silver Skates, that’s the way they usually billed her, half a dozen times at the Music Hall, and she hadn’t looked anything like the lovely señorita with the fancy comb.

  Lanerd went on distractedly. “That’s why she wears that eye-patch disguise and keeps out of sight all she can. But—”

  Mona murmured, “’Sme, Mister V. What’ll it be?”

  “Slight delay,” I told her. “I’ll call back. Sit on this plug, will you?”

  She said she would. I racked the phone, turned to Lanerd.

  “Your idea she murdered this guy?” I asked.

  “No, no.” He groaned. “Stake my life she didn’t. It’s worse than that. The person who did that”—he stared at Roffis in horror—“is trying to kill her, too.”

  Chapter Five: D.A. COVER-UP?

  BACK WHEN A SECURITY OFFICER didn’t resent being called house dick to his face, it was sometimes possible to put the shush on a murder in a hotel. A freemealing district captain would occasionally return past favors by hustling an assistant medical examiner over to certify the corpse before newshounds got wind of the crime. But there’ve been some changes made.

  Even in those days, a homicide in the suite of a notable couldn’t have been kept quiet. Especially a nationally known character like Tildy Millett. She was what you might call a famous figure; the simplest silhouette of any trim-limbed femme in a short, flared-out skirt was merely a trade-mark for Tildy. Dame like that would be news if she did nothing more’n switch from one brand of face powder to another.

  Tildy Millett, the name was up there in incandescent lights somewhere on the Main Stem practically all the time. The crowds who’d swarmed to see the Icequadrilles, or made Holiday On Ice a six-week holdover, or seen her Skate Mates in Technicolor, they’d have wolfed any gossip about her. Even before this Mystery Miss hodelyo.

  So it didn’t seem as if there was any chance to avoid flash-bulbing and scare-headlining in connection with this dead man.

  I felt sorry for the poor guy; probably he’d been an all-right joe whose folks and friends would miss him plenty. But I didn’t know Roffis, whereas I did know just how much grief his death would cause around the Plaza Royale. If Dow Lanerd had any good reason for delaying the yapping of the hounds, I was ready to listen.

  I asked if he thought she knew something about the murder.

  “She was here with Roffis just before I came across from my rooms.” Lanerd was trying to decide how far into his confidence to take us. “He was supposed to escort her over to the studio. But about ten minutes before the three of them were scheduled to start—her maid Nikky goes everywhere with her—Roffis disappeared. Just like that. They looked through the suite for him, couldn’t find any trace, finally got worried, and called me because they were scared to go out without a guard.”

  Reidy looked at the blood-prints on the door. “How about this maid?”

  “No, no. Nikky might use a knife on a man—to defend herself.” Lanerd waggled his hand to indicate excitability. “Nikky Narian has what you might call a mercurial temperament. But she’d never have done a thing like this.” He squatted beside me, reached toward the dead man.

  I pushed him away. “They’ll be checking everything but the ceiling for prints.” He didn’t push easy. I shoved harder.

  He didn’t like that. He wasn’t used to it. His neck got red under the golf-links tan. “Roffis had a key to this suite. I wanted to find out if it’s still on him.”

  “Don’t.” I went to the phone. “Mona?”

  A brusque voice behind me: “Pudda phone down.” I did as requested. The guy in the door was the prissy-mouth with the misfit tuxedo. He had his right hand in the pocket of his dinner jacket just as Lanerd had. But the newcomer had an uglier scowl.

  Lanerd burst out, “Where is she, Hacklin?”

  Hacklin shifted his eyes from me to Reidy and back again.

  “These hotel people?”

  “Mister Vine’s the security chief.” Lanerd waved at me. “The other—”

  “Duman.” Reidy frowned. “Assistant manager.”

  I asked, “And you?”

  With his left hand Hacklin reached around to his hip pocket, brought out a wallet, flipped it open, in one smooth, practiced movement.

  From his manner I guessed he was flashing a buzzer, one of those gold-plated items which get plain-clothes men through many a door where they aren’t welcome. But it wasn’t that. It was an identification, complete with photo. Fat type across the top said: Office of the District Attorney, City of New York. Typed-in letters said that Hacklin, Byrd A., was a duly-authorized special assistant to the Prosecutor in charge of homicide investigations.

  It only took a couple of seconds, that inspection of credentials. But I did some high-speed cerebration in that brief space.

  Something a lot bigger than a video guessing-game was going on, for certain. Special assistants to homicide prosecutors don’t go a-squiring beauteous babes just because a choice sum is at stak
e!

  Hacklin stalked to the closet. Standing in the living-room door he could have seen the body, but I hadn’t been sure he had, until I saw there was no change of expression on his wide, stolid face.

  “We been workin’ together six years.” Hacklin’s voice was flat, emotionless. He surveyed the body for a long breath. “He stood up for my kid’s christening, last month.”

  “Tough.” I meant it.

  “Any idea who gave it to him?”

  I said, “Somebody with a steak knife. All we know.”

  “Who found him?”

  I said I had; Hacklin studied me impassively. Lanerd gripped Hacklin’s shoulder. “Didn’t Tildy come back from the studio with you?”

  “She gave me the runaround. She and that tricky maid.” Hacklin satisfied himself the gun was still in Roffis’s holster. He slid his hand down to the dead man’s right leg, let his fingers rest there a second, patted the knee several times rapidly. “I can stick with a female most places, but when she begs off to go to the john, lets me out. There’s a corridor outside that new studio, between it and the can. I waited across the hall. After ten minutes I sent one of the actresses in; Miss Millett and the maid had scramoosed.”

  Reidy frowned. “Doesn’t mean she killed this man.”

  Hacklin eyed him bleakly. “Don’t strain your brain speculating about this. It’s official business. My business. Herb was my partner. I don’t want any theorists mucking around with it. All I want you to do is lock your lip and get out of here. Oh, one thing. Call Spring four nine-one-two-one on a pay phone. Ask for Schneider. Tell him to jump over here fast. Got that? Four nine-one-two-one.”

  Reidy didn’t care much for the way it was put to him. He looked to me for a cue. In his book I’m the guy to be giving orders when trouble is busting around the Plaza Royale. That’s how my book reads, too. But I’d been working in the dark up to then. I wanted more light before I began to throw my weight around. So I reassured Reidy.

  “We’re all in a fog. But Hacklin seems to know the road. Let him drive, time being.”

  Hacklin growled, deep in his throat, as if he was minded to tell me off. But he didn’t. He repeated, “Don’t call through the hotel switchboard. And don’t come back up here, or tell a damn soul what’s happened. Thanks.”

  Reidy nodded dourly. “Spring four nine-one-two-one, Schneider.” He flicked me on the arm with the back of his hand, took a parting shot at the bull in the china shop. “You’re in charge, Gil.” He went away before Hacklin tried to challenge that last remark.

  Lanerd began, “What, for godsake, we going to do about—”

  Hacklin rubbed one hand over his face as if to shut out the whole scene—the dead man, all of us. “Tell you what you’re going to do, Mister Lanerd. You’re going to chase over to Video City, get hold of anybody who might have seen Miss Millett depart, anybody who had any idea where she went.”

  “Hell, I can’t! I’m due to make a speech downstairs at a convention banquet in just about—”

  “Hell with your social obligations.” None of the deference due the Great Man in Hacklin’s tone. “Get over there, find out where she went, where she is. Don’t argue. We’ve played it your way long’s we’re going to. Herb wouldn’t be dead now if we’d done if different.”

  Lanerd agreed with poor grace. “I’m sorry about Roffis. Damn sorry. I’ll do what I can to find Tildy.”

  “Phone me when you get to the studio.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t have to ask you to keep quiet about this?” Hacklin asked wearily.

  “No, no.” Lanerd seemed to be glad to get out.

  On the chance the hotel’s name might somehow be kept out of the tabloids, I let Hacklin know where I stood.

  “One thing sure, you don’t have to ask me!”

  “Don’t I?” He had a mean glint in his eye. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m about to ask you plenty!”

  Chapter Six: DEAD STOOLIES DON’T SING

  EX-COPS NEVER MAKE GOOD HOUSE OFFICERS. In uniform, they get too used to pushing people around, can’t overcome the habit. That bulldozing approach makes ’em liabilities around a hotel. This Hacklin was demonstrating.

  He wasn’t actually a blue, still he had the law behind him. But I couldn’t let him snap that Simon Legree lash at me. Not so any bellman or floor maids could overhear him; the Chinese aren’t the only people sensitive about face. So I threw the first punch.

  “Don’t mind my taking that call-back from Lieutenant Weissman, when it comes?”

  All I meant was to jolt him out of that browbeating frame of mind. Show him I had friends over at the precinct. What my phoney question did, though, was bring him to me, jaw a-jutting.

  “You phoned Harry Weissman?”

  “Why not? Harry’s handled grief like this for us before.”

  We do get along with the precinct badges; hand them a pinch on a platter now and again.

  “You actually speak to him?” The whites of Hacklin’s eyes looked like the bluish skin of a hard-boiled egg left too long in the icebox.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then don’t.” He put up his left hand to shove me, boys-in-the-back-room style.

  I had to make up my mind, fast. Let him get that edge on me, or risk a real muss. If it came to a kilkenny, he’d have, say, forty pounds on me. I only pushed the pointer up to one seventy, dripping wet. Hacklin had beef on his bones. But if he got away with his rough-riding, in no time he’d be ordering me around like a headwaiter bossing a new bus boy.

  I took a step back so he wouldn’t rock me on my heels, used both hands to grab the fingers of the one he pushed out at me. He thought I was trying to fend him off, kept shoving. I bent his palm back toward his chest with all the force I could get into it.

  He slugged at me with his right. The blow had no force; he was pulling away from me as he punched, bending at the knees, twisting to free his hand from that leverage.

  I let go before any bones cracked. You can easy snap a wrist with that judo hold. Hacklin dropped to one knee to save himself from toppling. He looked ugly enough to go for his gun, so I spoke up quick; he could have taken it for salve, if he wanted to.

  “I don’t mind playing on your team, coach, but les’ save that strong arm for the other side, hah?”

  He came up on both feet, red-faced, hot-eyed. All his downtown training and associations were in favor of his making something of it. I think he would have if I hadn’t pointed to the bedroom door.

  “Did you spot these blood-prints, coach?”

  He made that great-big-papa-bear noise, deep in his throat. His eyes still smoldered. But he moved them from me to the door. “You must have picked that grip up in a commando unit.”

  That called for no comment; I didn’t make any. “Have to get you to show it to me again sometime.” He wanted me to know it was only a temporary truce. “Meanwhile, get straight. I’m calling signals on this team. Don’t notify Weissman. That’s an order.”

  If it made him feel better, that was jake with me. “More gore on the inside of that door jamb.” I showed him.

  “How come you were mucking around her suite, anyhow, Vine?”

  I told him. About Elsie and the pillow slip. Lanerd and his automatic.

  “What about the steak knife?” He puzzled over the finger marks on the door.

  “Auguste. One of our room-service captains. He’s been serving up here; probably the tips are too fat to let one of his regular waiters work the suite. Tonight, after the service tables were wheeled down, the routine checkup showed one knife missing. Auguste came back for it. I did a simple sum. Four bloody fingerprints minus one knife equals somebody slashed. So I searched around.”

  “Queer prints,” Hacklin muttered. “They outline the fingers. But there aren’t any whorl marks or loops, even where the blood’s drying. Maybe the boys can get an impression out of them, but to me it looks like they were made by somebody with gloves on. Your waiters wear gloves?”

>   “Sometimes. In summer time. Cotton whites.” I didn’t like the direction his quiz was taking. “You’re not going to dust off that oldie about an inside job!”

  “Very likely,” he admitted. “We been on guard against that since we came in here.”

  “I take it back. Not going to play for your team, after all.”

  “Maybe we don’t want you, Vine. You a gambling man?”

  “Where there’s an element of judgment involved.” I couldn’t figure what difference it made. “Any further details, see my bookie.”

  “Horses, huh?” He mulled it over as if it was something serious. “You happen to read that guff about Johnny the Grocer?”

  I had. “Fixer who got himself riddled in some East Side hotspot, three or four days ago?” I began to connect up his queries about gambling. “Payoff lad for a policy ring. Supposed to deliver protection lettuce to cops. Held out some green goods he’d been told to pass along. Big boys got him for it.”

  Hacklin waggled his hand in derision. “That’s what the newspapers said. Fact is, Johnny’d been taking singing lessons, was all set to give a recital. He’d been through a couple rehearsals, in the Prosecutor’s office. Real performance was to have been Wednesday morning at headquarters. Rumor was, he’d finger some high-ups on the Commissioner’s Confidential Squad. Tuesday night somebody played the drum for him. Boom! Only testimony he gave was to the docs when they cut him up, on the slab.”

  “From what I read, nobody saw who gunned him.” The picture was beginning to take shape in my mind, a little blurred. “Or was that more newspaper mahooley?”

  “Yeah.” Hacklin took out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth at an angle like a schooner’s bowsprit. “I got to tell you this so you’ll see why it was prob’ly an inside job.”

  I said I wouldn’t guarantee to go along on that.

  “You’ll go along—or come along, don’t worry about that.” He flexed the fingers I’d punished. “It was given out officially that nobody saw the actual shooting or the crut who used the gun. But there was one witness.”

  “Tildy Millett.” I’d seen that coming.