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  “Yeah. Johnny Scaluck was drilled in one of two phone booths that stand right adjoining. He got it through the glass, while he was gabbing. Waiters rushed to the booth but the gunman ducked through a fire door. Nobody remembered seeing him. But after the commotion was over, Herb hustled over to quiz around for the Prosecutor’s office. He found Miss Millett had been in the next booth only a few seconds before Johnny got his. She’d seen the murderer but had been too scared to say so ’til Herb dragged it out of her.”

  “How’d she happen to be in a dive like the Blue Blazer, anyway?” That wasn’t the question I really wanted an answer to: What if this killer was still roaming our corridors?

  “Lanerd was with her. They didn’t want to go to the class joints, afraid she’d be recognized.” Hacklin tongued the unlighted cigar around. “After she identified this chopper, ordinarily we’d have turned her over to the police, protective custody. But the Prosecutor didn’t want any more mortalities among his witnesses. Johnny the Grocer’d been dropped because he was going to incriminate some high-placed cops. So we didn’t even tell the Centre Street people about her, or let on she’d seen the murderer.”

  “You didn’t even tell the security office.” No matter what he thought, that had been dumb.

  He didn’t bother to answer. “We had a conference with Lanerd and her agent. They told us Miss Millet was under ironclad contract to appear on this Stack O’ Jack show until somebody guessed her identity. They were ready to tear the Criminal Courts building down, brick by brick, if we tried to keep her from appearing on the show.”

  “This killer—” I realized why Lanerd had found that gun so comfortable, nestling in his pocket—“this murderer knew she’d seen him at the time of the shooting?”

  “Sure. He warned her to keep her mouth shut or he’d get her, later.”

  “Then, supposedly, he’d tell his friends on the Confidential Squad about her, wouldn’t he?”

  “He might.” Hacklin spat out a shred of leaf. “Or he might not. He wouldn’t know she’d picked his picture out of the Gallery. ’Course we don’t know for positive any of the force was connected with Scaluck’s wipe-out. But the idea was not to take any chances. That’s why I don’t go for your talking to this lieutenant pal of yours.”

  “So you let Tildy Millett stay here. Knowing her being here put other people in danger.” I was beginning to stew about what a killer like that would do if he was cornered in a hotel.

  “Either Herb was with her or I was with her all the time. Herb had the noon to midnight tour; I came on at twelve and stayed till noon. I suppose you could have done more than we did!”

  “Goes without saying. Two of you. Eight hundred hotel employees. But that’s locking the stable. How about letting us have photos of this killer so we can watch for him?”

  “He’s Al Gowriss. Two-time loser. A morphy, besides. Stop at nothing when he’s geared up.” Hacklin took a police flyer out of his pocket, unfolded it.

  The muddy photo showed a lean, mean face with narrow-set eyes menacing out of deep-shadowed sockets; I’d never have forgotten features like those, if I’d seen them. “New to me.” I glanced at his record. Al Gowriss, alias Al Gorce, Al Manning, etc., etc. Two convictions. A dozen arrests for armed robbery, atrocious assault, manslaughter. Warning: dangerous, likely to be armed. “Sweet boy.”

  “Most likely he wouldn’t have tried to crash in here; he’d be as out of place as a crocodile in a pansy bed, around a swankery like this. He’d hire somebody who could get into her room with no trouble.”

  “That ‘inside job’ is a fixed idea of yours.” I smelled cigarette smoke, strong cigarettes, probably British.

  A wavery wisp of gray drifted in under the corridor door—there’s a quarter-inch space above the sill so floor patrols can check for fire at night. Our air-conditioning pulls a slight draft in under all the doors.

  Hacklin was puzzled by my going toward the door. “Gowriss would have had enough dough to hire a dozen room-service waiters.” He eyed my movements suspiciously. “What’re you—”

  I jerked open the door before he unwittingly warned the smoker.

  The blonde must have had her ear smack against the panel; she sprawled into the room.

  When I caught her, to keep her from falling, she didn’t try to free herself. Instead she looked at me, eyes swimming with tears.

  “Let me see him,” she whispered. “Please let me see him before they take him away!”

  Chapter Seven: KEYHOLE-PEEPING BLONDE

  SHE WAS what our maître d’hotel would have called a dish of the most desirable. Medium height, lithe waist, and—not to kick the clichés around too much—stocking-ad legs, diving-girl figger. Say, twenty-twoish. Eyes too large for the small, sunburned oval of her face; behind the tear-glisten they were grayish-green with sparks of deeper, luminous emerald. Like the gleam in a cat’s eyes when headlights hit them. Snub nose, reddened at the tip; evidently she’d had the weeps for some time.

  Those lobby experts who claim to be able to name what part of the country a guest hails from, what he’s worth, his profession or business, merely by sizing up clothing, jewelry, luggage, and mannerisms, they wouldn’t have doped out a great deal from her.

  I couldn’t tell anything from the white nylon print in Tahitian pattern—scarlet and gray. It went nicely with the pale, corn-silky hair sleeked back from her forehead.

  She might have bought that dress in one of the Fifty-Seventh Street shoppes where they tax an extra twenty for the label, or it could have come from a bargain counter free-for-all down on Fourteenth. Her hairdo told nothing. All she carried was that British reeker which had given her away. I did notice she filed her nails short, the way our public stenos keep theirs.

  I wasn’t in any rush to let her go. Hacklin moved in beside me to block her off from peeking past us at the body.

  “Who you want to see?” His tone was equivalent to flashing a badge.

  She raised her left hand, touched the tip of her cigarette to the back of my thumb. I let go for just that split second that allowed her to wrench away, dodge around me, to where she could get a good look at the dead man.

  “Dowie.” It was hardly a whisper; she kept it under her breath in a kind of smothered wail.

  Hacklin made a grab for her, caught her, but only because she’d frozen into a crouch in front of the closet.

  “It’s not—not him!” She began to blubber, leaning limply against Hacklin, who couldn’t think of anything better than to shake her.

  “Cut it,” he commanded. “Shuddup!”

  She raised the level a shrill half-pitch.

  I thought he was going to slap her, in the style illustrated in the movies as recommended treatment for hysterical females. But she buried her face on his chest, so he couldn’t.

  “I heard you say—somebody was dead.” She sniffled. “I thought it was Dow.”

  Hacklin pushed her away, to the arm of a divan. “You’re the dame I saw in the studio. You Missus Lanerd?”

  “No.” She shook her head like a dog coming out of water. “I’m Ruth Moore. Mister Lanerd’s private secretary.”

  I stopped licking the place where she’d burned my thumb. “Why were you making like a gossipeeper in the corridor?”

  “Mister Lanerd wasn’t at the studio.” She glanced over her shoulder at Roffis, shivered. “He’s always at the studio, program nights. When he didn’t show up, I asked Miss Millett where he was; she said he’d stayed here at the hotel. She seemed terribly upset about something; that didn’t make me worry any less. Jeff, he’s our producer, he couldn’t tell me anything, either. He was bothered about Mister Lanerd’s absence, too. So I hurried back here to his suite, thinking that was where Miss Millett meant. But he wasn’t over there. Then I heard voices across the hall. I knew there shouldn’t be anyone in Miss Millett’s rooms, so I came and listened at the door.”

  Hacklin grunted skeptically. “How long you been keyholing out there?”

  “Onl
y a minute or two.” She did what she could to fix her face with her soggy handkerchief. “Who—did that?” She pointed at Roffis.

  Hacklin raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t have any idea?”

  “No.” Then it struck her; Lanerd’s absence, the dead man, the officer investigating. She slapped the handkerchief to her mouth. “Oh, no! You couldn’t possibly suspect Mister Lanerd of a thing like that!” Probably Hacklin hadn’t, up to then. But it must have occurred to him now that his boss downtown might ask why he’d sent Lanerd away after he’d been found in the same room with a murdered man. “When were you last in this suite, Miss Moore?”

  “I’ve never been in here before.” She had herself pretty well under control.

  “You seem to know your way around the hotel right well. How’d you get into Lanerd’s rooms?” That accusing-finger method didn’t adorn Hacklin’s style.

  I thought he’d gone far enough. “Mister Lanerd often uses his duplex for business entertainment. His advertising-agency crowd comes and goes, all hours of day and night. Miss Moore could get a key just by asking. Expect she’s known, down at the desk.”

  “Yes, indeed.” She nodded gratefully.

  Hacklin didn’t care for my interference. “Nobody’s going to come and go in here, tell you that. You stay put, Miss Moore, till I get a detail statement from you.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” I tsked him. “Girl’s unstrung. Let her go back to Lanerd’s suite. I’ll be responsible for her.” The phone jangled. I moved toward it. That was all he needed to urge him to beat me to it.

  As he picked up the handset, I motioned her out.

  “Thank you!” She started to leave.

  Hacklin rumbled at the phone. “Gone where?… Lexington?” He hollered at Miss Moore, “Come back here!” then apologized to the party on the other end of his line. “I’m not talking to you, go on… that’s like sayin’ Main Street, there’s a Lexington ’n every one of the forty-eight—huh?… Kentucky?”

  The secretary got to the door. A large, meaty-faced individual in rumpled seersucker barred her way. “Excuse me.” She tried to edge past.

  He didn’t move.

  I called, “Schneider!” I hoped he was Schneider! “’S all right.”

  The wary eyes of a trained observer went from her to me, to Hacklin, finally to the outstretched feet in the closet. He assumed I knew what I was doing, stepped aside long enough to let the Moore kid get out. He hurried to the closet.

  “Holy Mother! Herb!”

  Hacklin shouted, “Hey, you!” and had to apologize to the phone again. “Not talking to you, Mister Lanerd!… Your secretary… well, okay… Call back soon’s you find out.”

  He hung up, glowering. “What you think you’re doin’, countermanding my orders?”

  Schneider squatted in front of the dead man, swearing in a steady monotone.

  I put on my Sunday look of innocent astonishment. “You’re trying to keep this Johnny-the-Grocer business sub rosa. How you going to do that if you start badgering Lanerd’s secretary?”

  Schneider gave me the slow up and down. “Whatsit, Byrd?”

  “House officer,” Hacklin snarled. “Name of Vine.”

  “A wise-o?” Schneider pursed his lips.

  “Just a guy who knows his job,” I said. “Now, if you were to ask me politely, instead of bellowing like boars in a bog, I might offer assistance with a few things you’ll need help on. Checking our floor patrol to see if he noticed any loiterer in the corridor. Elevator operators to find out if they brought this Gowriss up here.”

  Hacklin was caught between an urge to jump me through the hoops and a realization that he hadn’t much dope to pass on to the D.A., except what I’d given or could give him. “Okay, Vine. We’ll get back to the Moore girl later. To you, too.” He stared at me with the surgical inspection Sandor gives unknown applicants at the velvet rope down in the Calypso Room. “Herd that waiter up here, pronto. And round up all your employees who’ve been in this suite last couple days.”

  I shook my head decisively. “No.”

  Schneider caught my shoulder, spun me to face him. “Whaddya mean, no?”

  “No can do. Day-side staff’s off duty. Shift quits at six. Most of ’em’ll be out painting the town, nice Saturday night. Some of ’em won’t be in tomorrow, either. Day off.” I let him pull me around enough so it could have been accidental that my heel ground on the toe of his shoe. I didn’t apologize. “Thing is, you DAides don’t know anything about how a hotel is run. If you started fine-combing our bellmen and floor maids, you’d panic everybody by spreading rumors a murderer’s prowling the corridors!”

  Schneider was working himself up to taking a sock at me. But Hacklin growled, “Leave him alone, Charley. Go on down, phone the office. Ask Frank and Bailey to drop everything, get over here. Muncey, too. We’ll get around to Smart Stuff here, later on.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Schneider left.

  Hacklin rubbed his chin. “Herb was a friend of Charley’s.”

  “Put me down for flowers, too.” If I sounded caustic, it was the way I felt. “But don’t expect me to help you make your next blunder. You want something out of the staff, ask me. Do what I can to get it for you. Start chivvying them on your own, I’ll buck you from here to Albany.”

  I went out before he decided maybe I wasn’t going to toss Auguste to the lions, after all.

  When I knocked at 2ICC, Ruth Moore opened the door before my knuckles hit the second time.

  “Shouldn’t do that,” I told her. “Open the door to anybody who knocks.”

  “I was sure it was you.”

  “Ask, before you let anyone in. Party who did that stab job may still be on the floor.” I went over to the French windows opening onto the private terrace overlooking Central Park; under a striped cabana canopy there were half a dozen beach chairs and chaises, but nothing bigger than a Pomeranian could have been hiding out there. “Your boss is over at the studio trying to get on Tildy Millett’s trail.”

  “He’s been spending a good deal of time at it.” She was acid. “Maybe what she’s done now will change that.”

  “Think she killed the guy across the hall?”

  “Why else would she run away?” The luminous emerald gleamed in her eyes.

  “Might be other reasons.”

  “Oh, yes. I know them. But they’re all tied in together, her reasons for running away, for murdering her bodyguard.”

  “Lanerd?”

  She studied me. “I wish I knew whether I could trust you?”

  I said I wouldn’t guarantee it. But she could try.

  Chapter Eight: CASH REQUESTED

  THE D.A.’S OFFICE has its own copyrighted brand of double talk. “An arrest is imminent” usually means the Prosecutor doesn’t have a suspect in sight. “Painstaking detective work has resulted in a roundup of the entire gang of criminals” can be translated to “a stool pigeon talked plenty.” Same with “inside job.” That’s police-ese for “no clues.”

  But that last term is poison to any security man. We hear it enough. Countess Falsiebra accuses a floor maid of stealing a dinner ring, positive it must have been an “inside job.” I search around, find the ring where the countess left it, on the edge of the tub behind the shower curtain.

  Calling an employee “thief” is bad enough. But if word got around we had a killer on our payroll, in twenty-four hours we’d have more empty rooms than all the unheated Maine motels in midwinter. If Ruth Moore could point the finger in some other direction, even in the direction of a fabulous guest like Tildy Millett, that was better than having one of the staff under suspicion.

  But apparently she wasn’t sure it was the thing to do. To cover her indecision, she mumbled, “Excuse me,” slid into the bedroom at the left.

  I followed as far as the door. A killer who’d wanted to observe the goings and comings in 21MM couldn’t have had a better watchtower than that particular bedroom. Its corridor door was exactly opposite Tildy’s bedroo
m. As I’d just told Hacklin, it wouldn’t have been difficult for any well-dressed lad with jaunty assurance to get a key to the suite paid for by Lanerd, Kenson & Fullbright.

  It wouldn’t have been too much of a trick for such a person to keep out of sight; few of the visitors to the suite would have spent much time in that bedroom. The beds were littered with attaché cases, cartons of cigarettes, stacks of purple and yellow studio tickets bound with rubber bands.

  “I ought to get Mister Lanerd’s permission before saying anything, Mister Vine.” She went to the bureau, turned her head to frown at me, reached into the drawer without looking, and pulled out a man’s monogrammed hanky. “But it’s no secret Tildy has a disposition that’s as unpredictable as a woman driver at a yellow light. She can be so-o-o sweet one minute, poison the next.”

  “Why would she carve a man who was protecting her?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t. If he’d been making a pass at her—”

  “—and Lanerd walked in? That what’s in your mind?”

  “It—is—not!”

  “Lanerd’s been playing kneesie with her?”

  She flapped the handkerchief derisively. “Mister Lanerd doesn’t keep me informed about such things. She might, as you so daintily put it, have been trying to get him to—play kneesie with her. He’s very attractive—”

  “Can imagine.”

  “He’s so naive about women. They take advantage of him!” The fiercely defensive way she said it, it didn’t sound silly.

  “Maybe he had a notion this bodyguard was taking his duties too literally?”

  “Mister Lanerd wouldn’t ever be jealous. He hates that sort of thing. That’s why he was so angry when Mrs. Lanerd—” She put the handkerchief to her mouth as if she’d said more than she meant to.

  I thought she’d intended to let the innocent remark slip out.

  “Mrs. Lanerd was disturbed about her husband’s relations with the skating star?”

  She puckered her forehead dubiously. “If you say I told you so, I’ll say you lie.”

  “’Kay. Say.”