Shake a Crooked Town (2 page)

Conscious of the notebook in his hand, he remembered his interrupted errand. He plumped up a pillow on the bed, eased himself down on his back, picked up the telephone again and propped it on his chest. “Long distance, Edna,” he told the switchboard operator when she came on the line. “I’ll handle it and get you the charges.” He read off the five-figure extension when he was connected with his Washington number. He smoked two-thirds of his cigarette and spoke to three different people before he recognized Toby Lowell’s thin, reedy voice. “Killain, Toby. In New York. What rat-holes you watchin’ these days?”

“The labels change but the rats and the holes are remarkably similar,” Toby Lowell said. “What’s on your mind, Johnny?”

“Any good reason I should’ve been hearin’ your name taken in vain today?”

“None whatsoever.” The dry tone was emphatic.

“I thought so,” Johnny said with satisfaction. Swiftly he ran down the previous thirty minutes’ conversation for the benefit of the other man. “The guy must really have sluffed his mainsail, Toby,” he concluded.

“Now just a moment. I do know a Girl Thompson.” A distinct change had come over the dry voice. “I don’t understand this. What does the man who claims to be Thompson look like?”

“Medium height, heavy set, red hair goin’ thin, voice like a sergeant major on dress parade—”

“That’s Thompson, all right.”

“His face looks like he tied into the business end of a mule.”

“I don’t know anything about that. The part about him being chief in Jefferson is right enough, though. My endorsement of him played a part in his originally getting the post. Jefferson’s my home town. I can’t imagine what happened. I would have thought I’d have heard about something as apparently serious as this.”

“He claims he got squeezed in a power play. You don’t go for that?”

“I simply don’t know, Johnny. There’s no doubt of his—ah—mental condition?”

Johnny hesitated. “There’s no doubt he’s packin’ a whale of a grudge that’s got him tipped in the saddle. It’d take a better man than me to tell you if he’s really flipped.”

“You expect to see him again?”

“Oh, sure.” Johnny grinned wryly into the phone. “Before I had the big picture I offered him an’ his wife the use of my room.”

“He and his wife,” Lowell repeated. There was a short silence before he continued. “I wish you’d have him call me, Johnny. I feel a bit responsible. Also, I’m curious. I recommended Carl for the position because he’d been with me overseas and seemed completely reliable. There have been Lowells in Jefferson since the War of 1812 and we take a civic interest. I should know more about this.”

“Okay, Toby. I’ll see if I can get him to call you.”

“What are you up to yourself these days? Do you ever see Dameron?”

Unconsciously Johnny’s free hand went to the bandage on his chest. “I’m just layin’ back clippin’ coupons. I see Joe once in a while. He’s the lieutenant in this precinct, you know.”

“I do know. Give him my best when you see him, will you? And thanks for calling, Johnny.”

Johnny replaced the receiver in the cradle slowly. After a moment he picked the phone up from his chest and returned it to the night table. He stretched out his legs lengthily. Well, he was in for it now. There was no graceful way to withdraw the invitation to Carl Thompson. He’d just have to keep an eye on Thompson and see to it that he got into no trouble around the Hotel Duarte. And it should only be for a couple of days at the most.

On the brighter side he had to admit he was looking forward to seeing Micheline Laurent—Micheline Thompson, rather—again. He wondered what the tough-fibered youngster he had known in those days would be like now.

He got up from the bed and dressed. He changed his mind three times about the tie to go with his lightweight tan suit. For late October it was unseasonably warm. He packed a small bag and called housekeeping to tell them to re-make his room.

He would throw the bag in the cloakroom downstairs and sometime after midnight take a key from the rack for an unoccupied room. Long service at the Duarte had its perquisites.

Bag in hand, he headed down the corridor to the elevator and the lobby.

By ten o’clock that night he had been holding down the same stool in the Duarte bar for over three hours. He hadn’t seen or heard from either of the Thompsons and he was more than a little bored with his own company. He drank slowly, lulled by the subdued hum of the out-of-season air-conditioning. He unhooked a heel from a bar stool rung and straightened his right leg as a muscle cramped in an over-muscled thigh. He supposed he should get up and move around. He stayed where he was.

This damn loafing around was for the birds, he decided moodily. He needed something to do beside acting as blotting paper for the Duarte’s bourbon. Doc Randall or no Doc Randall, he’d have Chet sign him back in for the first of the week. One little.28 slug in the chest wasn’t going to dry-dock Killain for another three weeks. What he needed—

“Hey, Johnny!” He looked up the bar to little Tommy Haines, the night bartender, hanging up the phone beside his cash register. “Marty says he’s got a call for you in the lobby.”

Johnny grunted acknowledgement and slid from the stool. He felt sluggish. Lethargic. It wasn’t the liquor; it was the inactivity. He was rusting up faster than a mothballed battleship.

He walked out through the dimly lit bar lounge, his bulky two hundred and forty pounds padding softly on the lounge carpet. In the lobby he took the phone pushed toward him at the front desk by Marty Seiden, the carrot-topped reservation clerk. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Killain?” The female voice was low-keyed. Johnny thought it had a touch of breathlessness. “Years ago you saved my life in the Cabon Pass south of Bagnères-de-Luchon when we were caught by a night patrol. Is it possible you’d remember?”

“Is it possible I could forget?” Johnny returned promptly. “You’re Mich—”

“Excuse me, please,” the low voice cut in. “I know you’re speaking from a public place. This is going to sound melodramatic but could you come down right away to Room 1047 in the Hotel Manhattan on Eighth Avenue?” He realized that the voice was pleading. “I’ve had myself driven down from upstate this evening to try to find my husband and keep him from making a bad mistake. You don’t know him but I’m sure he’s going to try to see you. It’s essential that I speak to you first. Please believe this is no domestic squabble. It’s serious. Most serious. Can you do me the favor of coming at once?”

Twice during the urgent, rapid-fire plea Johnny had opened his mouth, and twice closed it. “Sure,” he said finally. “1047? I’ll be right down.”

“I can’t possibly tell you how grateful I’ll be, Mr. Killain.”

Johnny stood by the desk a moment after he had pushed the phone back to Marty. Micheline Thompson had had herself driven down from upstate tonight? Well, Thompson had lied about Toby Lowell telling him where to find Johnny. What was so odd in his lying about his wife being with him?

Conscious of the bowtied, flip-talking Marty’s curious stare, Johnny turned away from the desk. Halfway through the foyer to Forty-Fifth Street he pulled up short. The recollection of Carl Thompson in Johnny’s room that afternoon had suddenly brought to mind a thick white envelope carelessly tossed onto the bureau and afterward forgotten.

Johnny retraced his steps and headed for the service elevator. No point at all in leaving that kind of temptation around in front of people.

In the sixth-floor corridor he remembered he’d given Thompson his key. At the door of 615 he removed an illegal brass passkey from his wallet and let himself in.

From the doorway he could see the bureau plainly. The thick white envelope was not there.

Carl Thompson was.

Sprawled beside the leather-covered armchair, the redhaired man lay hunched together, with a slender, bone-handled knife protruding starkly from his back. The portion of his face visible disclosed the grotesque mask of a man totally surprised by violent death.

Without moving a step inside Johnny examined the room carefully. As nearly as he could tell nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Except the envelope, he thought bitterly. Stupid to have left it there. Although there was always a chance in a thousand the housekeeper or the maid in straightening up the room had put it in a drawer.

This wasn’t the time to try to find out. Johnny knew he should call the police immediately. He knew just as well he wasn’t going to do it. They could wait thirty minutes while he walked down to the Manhattan. Some of the questions the police were going to ask required better answers than he had at the moment.

He backed out into the corridor and closed the door, listening for the click of the automatic lock. He returned the passkey to his wallet as with lengthened stride he hurried back to the elevator.

I
N THE BLOCK
and a half between the Duarte and the Manhattan Johnny revised his thinking about Carl Thompson. Crazy the man may have been, but it looked very much as though his angry statements of that afternoon had received the ultimate confirmation. Someone had seen to it that Thompson did no more talking.

The police were going to ask a lot of questions about the presence of Thompson’s body in Johnny’s room. John hoped that Micheline Thompson could supply some of the answers.

He entered the Manhattan’s Forty-Fifth Street entrance and inside detoured to the bell captain’s desk. “H’ya, boy,” he greeted Wink Litchfield, its paunchy, graying generalissimo. Litchfield was a Duarte alumnus. His right eye had a heavy lid that had earned him his nickname.

“H’ya, boy, yourself,” Wink returned. He surveyed Johnny with interest. “I heard you got yourself shot up chasin’ a broad. Times sure have changed. It was you had to use the gun when I knew you.”

“You’ll get old, too, one of these days,” Johnny told him. “What you got in 1047, Wink?”

The bell captain nodded as though at a private judgment confirmed. “A doll, naturally, or you wouldn’t be askin’. I was just up there. 1047’s a suite. The doll’s registered in, but a big-man-on-campus type is fieldin’ the bunts at the door.”

“He must be a big-big-man-on-campus if he’s got you hoppin’ the bells in person, Wink.”

“A very good man,” Litchfield agreed. “Deals in paper money only. From his looks I wouldn’t give him a yard start in a broken field but a good man on the financial fast draw. What’s with you and 1047?”

“What time did they check in?” Johnny sidestepped.

“You workin’ for Moscow now? I could look it up in the log, but say five-thirty. I know it was just before I started sendin’ the middle shift out to supper.” But Micheline Thompson had said on the phone that she had been driven down from Jefferson that evening, Johnny thought. What the hell was going on? “What’s with you and 1047, Johnny?” Wink repeated.

“I’m invited to the party.”

Apprehension showed in Litchfield’s face. “Now wait a minute,” he warned. “Trouble we can’t use around here. This isn’t the Duarte. No one’s gonna hold still for you thumpin’ around here freewheelin’ over an’ through people.”

“Remind me to call you the next time I need a character reference, Wink. I said I’m invited, damn it. Call her up.”

Litchfield reached for his telephone. He looked almost disappointed as he replaced it. “You’re expected,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyway, I think I’ll take you up there myself. Just in case you somehow sandbagged me on this phone call.”

“Don’t you for God’s sake trust your own operators?”

“Not where you’re concerned, I don’t,” Wink Litchfield said flatly. “I know you, man.” He led the way to an elevator. On the tenth floor he preceded Johnny around two right-hand turns to the suite entrance at the end of the long hallway. The door opened at once at his light tap. Johnny eyed the olive-skinned, dark-haired man who appeared in it. He was of medium height but solidly built. Despite horn-rimmed glasses, his slightly full face gave an impression of strength. His dark suit was flawlessly cut.

“Killain?” he inquired of Johnny. He opened the door wider. “Come on in.” He didn’t even look at Wink Litchfield. Johnny had a final glimpse of the bell captain’s disapproving face as the door separated them. “I’m Jim Daddario,” the solidly built man said over his shoulder as he led the way into the suite’s sittingroom. “I’m a friend of Mrs.—of the Thompsons.” He waved at two men getting to their feet. “Associates of mine. Jigger Kratz, Tommy Savino. Johnny Killain, boys.” He walked to a door at the right and knocked sharply. “Killain’s here, Micheline.”

Johnny nodded to Kratz and Savino. Jigger Kratz was a mountain of a man with surprising light blue eyes in a rugged face. Savino was much younger, and slim, dark, and handsome. The two men moved to the door with the barest acknowledgement of Johnny’s nod. “See you in about an hour, Jim,” Kratz rumbled to Daddario as they went out.

Johnny turned expectantly at the sound of an opening door. He stared frankly at the woman who entered the room. If Carl Thompson had looked like hard times, his wife looked like ready money. The puffed white sleeves of her not quite off-the-shoulder white satin cocktail sheath were of lace. So was the bouffant pompom adorning her dark hair. A sash of the same material as the dress artfully cinched her at the waist and descended to mid-thigh in wide-flaring scarves. Her shoes were of matching white satin and her only jewelry was a three-times-around pearl bracelet on her right wrist. At bosom, waist, thighs, and knees the white satin sheath was sleekly snug.

Beneath the white pompom and the dark hair her face was very nearly exotic. Clear ivory skin emphasized contrasting highlights of dusky rose. Her slim brows were plucked in a straight line. She had broad cheekbones, a strong nose, and a wide mouth boldly etched in vivid lipstick. It was not a beautiful face but it was strikingly attractive.

“You’re the scrawny-lookin’ little bit of tabasco I was up in the hills with?” Johnny demanded in disbelief.

“I am indeed.” She walked directly to him and took a big hand between both of hers. “Girls grow up. People change.” Her voice had a vibrant quality Johnny hadn’t noticed on the phone. She inspected his face critically and smiled as though she approved of what she saw. She turned to Daddario who, Johnny realized, had been standing to one side quietly sizing up the meeting. “This is the man, Jim, but for whom the life of Micheline Laurent would have been a brief, unhappy one.”

“You’re lucky he still measures up to what you remember,” Daddario commented. He fumbled in his breast pocket and removed a cigar. “Most of my early heroes were a hell of a letdown to me by the time I got my growth.”

Micheline Thompson’s dark eyes had returned to Johnny. “Even after all this time I still find it difficult to believe what I saw him do.” She appeared to rouse herself. “It was very good of you to come, Mr. Killain.” She released his hand and seated herself deftly in a straightbacked chair. The tightness of the sheath demanded deftness. Her back was to the room’s strongest light but Johnny could see shadows beneath the big dark eyes.

“What’s it all about?” he asked her.

She motioned him to a chair near hers. “Please sit down, Mr. Killain. I hardly know—”

“The name’s Johnny,” he said, sitting down. “You never used to call me Mr. Killain.” Across from him, Daddario seated himself on a chaise longue and methodically stripped cellophane from his cigar.

“I never knew your name,” she said earnestly. “Then you were always Manos, the bear that appeared and disappeared silently in the darkness.” She smiled, most attractively, he thought. “I like Johnny better. And I, of course, am Micheline.” The smile faded. “Forgive me if this sounds abrupt. I have no easy way to say it. My husband is—was—chief of police in the city of Jefferson in this state. He had been for some time.” The low voice wavered, then strengthened. “He lost the position recently when it was determined he had accepted money to overlook certain things. It came to light when he was absent from his post recovering from a cruel beating inflicted by someone unknown. My husband had been under treatment and had been making a difficult recovery. His removal from office was a severe setback to his mental condition. He has never since been rational on the subject of his removal. Despite precautions, day before yesterday he disappeared. I’m concerned that he will make a bad matter worse by attempting something foolhardy or even criminal against those he blames for his troubles.”

Johnny tested the sound of her voice in his ears. She appeared earnest and sincere. Her eyes rested upon him anxiously. “Carl—my husband—was a part of the operation we know during the war,” she continued. “He heard me speak of you many times. I thought he might try to enlist your aid in the desperate thing he hopes to do.”

“How would he find me? How did you find me yourself?” Johnny asked bluntly.

“Jim found you.” Johnny glanced at Daddario. The dark man flicked ash from his cigar, unheeding. A very quiet master of ceremonies, Johnny thought. He looked back at Micheline. “Jim is a good friend of Carl’s. Jim has been of much help. He is the president of the city council in Jefferson. He was able to hush things up when Carl—when it happened.”

“There’s no question in your mind about the truth of the charges brought against your husband?” Johnny asked her.

“Please.” Her hands, large for a woman’s, tightened in her lap. “There is no question. It was explained to me in detail.”

“Explained? How about proved?”

“Please,” she said again. “There is no doubt, Mr. Kill—Johnny.”

There was no mistaking the hopeless discouragement in her voice. He wondered uneasily what her reaction would be if she knew her husband at that moment lay dead on the floor of Johnny Killain’s room in the Hotel Duarte. He was conscious of Daddario’s enigmatic gaze above the wreath of his cigar smoke. Johnny rose to his feet. There were undercurrents here he didn’t understand, as well as two diametrically opposed stories. “You want me to call you if I hear from him?” he asked her.

“I would very much appreciate it.” She rose and walked with him to the door. Daddario leaned back on the chaise longue but followed them with his eyes. “Be careful that if Carl comes to see you he doesn’t talk you onto his side,” she said earnestly. “It’s a losing side but he can be most persuasive.” She gave him her hand, her touch cool. “I’m most grateful for your response to my call.” Unexpectedly, her hand in his tightened, gripped hard. The sudden pressure indicating emotion of some sort was belied by a practiced hostess-smile.
“Merci, mon ami,”
she said softly and closed the door behind him.

Johnny stood irresolute in the corridor. Was she trying to tell him something? They’d never been out of Daddario’s sight. He looked at the closed door. Was she a prisoner in that damned suite? Was Daddario forcing her to act a role in order to insure silence about Carl Thompson’s knowledge of Daddario’s political activities in Jefferson? Daddario had been able to “hush things up” when charges had been made against Thompson—

Johnny set himself in motion toward the elevator. He was still preoccupied on the way down. In the lobby he went directly to a phone booth. There was one thing he could do. Carl Thompson had said his wife had been with him at the Taft. If she had been, her story of having been driven down from Jefferson that night was a lie. At least part of the story was a lie anyway because they’d been checked in too early. But if she’d been with her husband that morning how else could her presence upstairs now telling a story so unfavorable to him be explained except by pressure?

He dialed the Taft. It didn’t take long to find out that there had been no Mr. and Mrs. Carl Thompson at the Taft that day or for several days past.

Johnny left the booth feeling frustrated. He had no alternative but to believe that Carl Thompson had tried to play him for a sucker. But why had Thompson been killed?

He pushed through the lobby revolving door and outside, on the neon-lighted near-midnight deserted sidewalk, he halted abruptly. Had his call to the Taft proved anything except that, as spooked as Carl Thompson had been, he hadn’t registered in his own name?

He was tempted to go back upstairs and take a fall out of Daddario. Two things stopped him. If Daddario actually was a family friend helping out in an emergency any commotion that Johnny caused would just intensify the shock Micheline Thompson faced when the news from the Duarte reached her. And, as far as Johnny himself was concerned, the smartest thing he could do would be to get back to the Duarte and get straightened away on the discovery of Carl Thompson’s body.

Without thinking, he had used the Manhattan Eighth Avenue exit. He turned right to Forty-Fifth Street. Around the corner, a man in a dark suit stood against the sheer wall of the hotel, his back to Johnny and his eyes glued on the Forty-Fifth Street exit. Across the street a horn blatted, short and then long. The watching man spun quickly to look at the horn-blowing car. Almost without a pause he continued to pivot until he was facing Johnny head on. He raised his arm and a thick-looking weapon glinted in his hand.

Instinct took Johnny to the sidewalk. He grunted as his knees hit the cement hard under the impact of his own weight. He rolled toward the curb and the shelter of illegally parked cars. Above his head he hear a muffled plop-plop and the whine of metal distressed by sharp contact with concrete. The lights of the marquee seemed all too bright.

The sound of running feet drummed in his ears. He snaked his way on hands and knees out into the street between cars. He was in time to see a sedan pull away from the opposite curb and roar west across Eighth Avenue against the light. He stood up warily. When nothing happened he brushed off his palms and the knees of his trousers. His knees were stinging and the trousers had huge rents in them. For the benefit of a rubberneck gazing curiously at him from the sidewalk, Johnny lifted his right leg and inspected the heel of his shoe as though wondering what had tripped him. The rubberneck walked away.

Johnny drew a long breath. A man with a silenced gun watching the Manhattan’s Forty-Fifth Street entrance for Killain’s exit? A man in a car across the street who recognized Killain unexpectedly turning the corner and warned his partner in time for him to get in a couple of shots? What in the hell was going on?

He examined again the torn-out knees of his trousers. A button was missing from his jacket and street dirt was ground into it. He was positive he’d never before seen the man who had shot at him. He was just as positive he’d know him the next time he saw him.

He set off grimly up the street, his knees twinging at every stride.

At the Duarte he walked into a lobby boiling over with blue-uniformed police and snap-brim-hatted detectives. He discovered that it somehow didn’t surprise him. Behind the front desk, Marty Seiden all but stood on his head in a wordless effort to catch Johnny’s eye. Had to play it straight, Johnny decided. Looking neither right nor left he headed for the elevators.