The Oxford Book of American Det (51 page)

“Trouble?” Tony asked wearily.

“There’s a guy outside to see you, Tony. He won’t come in. I’m doing a wipe-off on the plate glass of the doors and he comes up beside me, a tall guy. ‘Get Tony,’ he says, out of the side of his mouth.”

Tony said: “Uh-huh,” and looked at the porter’s pale blue eyes. “Who was it?”

“Al, he said to say he was.”

Tony’s face became as expressionless as dough. “Okay.” He started to move off.

The porter caught his sleeve. “Listen, Tony. You got any enemies?” Tony laughed politely, his face still like dough.

“Listen, Tony.” The porter held his sleeve tightly. “There’s a big black car down the block, the other way from the hacks. There’s a guy standing beside it with his foot on the running board. This guy that spoke to me, he wears a dark-coloured, wrap-around overcoat with a high collar turned up against his ears. His hat’s way low. You can’t hardly see his face. He says, ‘Get Tony,’ out of the side of his mouth. You ain’t got any enemies, have you, Tony?”

“Only the finance company,” Tony said. “Beat it.”

He walked slowly and a little stiffly across the blue carpet, up the three shallow steps to the entrance lobby with the three elevators on one side and the desk on the other.

Only one elevator was working. Beside the open doors, his arms folded, the night operator stood silent in a neat blue uniform with silver facings. A lean, dark Mexican named Gomez. A new boy, breaking in on the night shift.

The other side was the desk, rose marble, with the night clerk leaning on it delicately.

A small neat man with a wispy reddish moustache and cheeks so rosy they looked rouged. He stared at Tony and poked a nail at his moustache.

Tony pointed a stiff index finger at him, folded the other three fingers tight to his palm, and flicked his thumb up and down on the stiff finger. The clerk touched the other side of his moustache and looked bored.

Tony went on past the closed and darkened newsstand and the side entrance to the drugstore, out to the brassbound plate-glass doors. He stopped just inside them and took a deep, hard breath. He squared his shoulders, pushed the doors open and stepped out into the cold damp night air.

The street was dark, silent. The rumble of traffic on Wilshire, two blocks away, had no body, no meaning. To the left were two taxis. Their drivers leaned against a fender, side by side, smoking. Tony walked the other way. The big dark car was a third of a block from the hotel entrance. Its lights were dimmed and it was only when he was almost up to it that he heard the gentle sound of its engine turning over.

A tall figure detached itself from the body of the car and strolled toward him, both hands in the pockets of the dark overcoat with the high collar. From the man’s mouth a cigarette tip glowed faintly, a rusty pearl.

They stopped two feet from each other.

The tall man said, “Hi, Tony. Long time no see.”

“Hello, Al. How’s it going?”

“Can’t complain.” The tall man started to take his right hand out of his overcoat pocket, then stopped and laughed quietly. “I forgot! Guess you don’t want to shake hands.”

“That don’t mean anything,” Tony said. “Shaking hands. Monkeys can shake hands.

What’s on your mind, Al?”

“Still the funny little fat guy, eh, Tony?”

“I guess.” Tony winked his eyes tight. His throat felt tight.

“You like your job back there?”

“It’s a job.”

Al laughed his quiet laugh again. “You take it slow, Tony. I’ll take it fast. So it’s a job and you want to hold it. Okay. There’s a girl named Eve Cressy flopping in your quiet hotel. Get her out. Fast and right now.”

“What’s the trouble?”

The tall man looked up and down the street. A man behind in the car coughed lightly.

“She’s hooked with a wrong number. Nothing against her personal, but she’ll lead trouble to you. Get her out, Tony. You got maybe an hour.”

“Sure,” Tony said aimlessly, without meaning.

Al took his hand out of his pocket and stretched it against Tony’s chest. He gave him a light lazy push. “I wouldn’t be telling you just for the hell of it, little fat brother. Get her out of there.”

“Okay,” Tony said, without any tone in his voice.

The tall man took back his hand and reached for the car door. He opened it and started to slip in like a lean black shadow.

Then he stopped and said something to the men in the car and got out again. He came back to where Tony stood silent, his pale eyes catching a little dim light from the street.

“Listen, Tony. You always kept your nose clean. You’re a good brother, Tony.” Tony didn’t speak.

Al leaned toward him, a long urgent shadow, the high collar almost touching his ears.

“It’s trouble business, Tony. The boys won’t like it, but I’m telling you just the same.

This Cressy was married to a lad named Johnny Rails. Rails is out of Quentin two, three days, or a week. He did a three-spot for manslaughter. The girl put him there. He ran down an old man one night when he was drunk, and she was with him. He wouldn’t stop. She told him to go in and tell it, or else. He didn’t go in. So the Johns come for him.”

Tony said, “That’s too bad.”

“It’s kosher, kid. It’s my business to know. This Rails flapped his mouth in stir about how the girl would be waiting for him when he got out, all set to forgive and forget, and he was going straight to her.”

Tony said, “What’s he to you?” His voice had a dry, stiff crackle, like thick paper.

Al laughed. “The trouble boys want to see him. He ran a table at a spot on the Strip and figured out a scheme. He and another guy took the house for fifty grand. The other lad coughed up, but we still need Johnny’s twenty-five. The trouble boys don’t get paid to forget.”

Tony looked up and down the dark street. One of the taxi drivers flicked a cigarette stub in a long arc over the top of one of the cabs. Tony watched it fall and spark on the pavement. He listened to the quiet sound of the big car’s motor.

“I don’t want any part of it,” he said. “I’ll get her out.” Al backed away from him, nodding. “Wise kid. How’s mom these days?”

“Okay,” Tony said.

“Tell her I was asking for her.”

“Asking for her isn’t anything,” Tony said.

Al turned quickly and got into the car. The car curved lazily in the middle of the block and drifted back toward the corner. Its lights went up and sprayed on a wall. It turned a corner and was gone. The lingering smell of its exhaust drifted past Tony’s nose. He turned and walked back to the hotel and into it. He went along to the radio room.

The radio still muttered, but the girl was gone from the davenport in front of it. The pressed cushions were hollowed out by her body. Tony reached down and touched them. He thought they were still warm. He turned the radio off and stood there, turning a thumb slowly in front of his body, his hand flat against his stomach. Then he went back through the lobby toward the elevator bank and stood beside a majolica jar of white sand. The clerk fussed behind a pebbled-glass screen at one end of the desk.

The air was dead.

The elevator bank was dark. Tony looked at the indicator of the middle car and saw that it was at 14.

“Gone to bed,” he said under his breath.

The door of the porter’s room beside the elevators opened and the little Mexican night operator came out in street clothes. He looked at Tony with a quiet sidewise look out of eyes the colour of dried-out chestnuts.

“Good night, boss.”

“Yeah,” Tony said absently.

He took a thin dappled cigar out of his vest pocket and smelled it. He examined it slowly, turning it around in his neat fingers. There was a small tear along the side. He frowned at that and put the cigar away.

There was a distant sound and the hand on the indicator began to steal around the bronze dial. Light glittered up in the shaft and the straight line of the car floor dissolved the darkness below. The car stopped and the doors opened, and Carl came out of it.

His eyes caught Tony’s with a kind of jump and he walked over to him, his head on one side, a thin shine along his pink upper lip.

“Listen, Tony.”

Tony took his arm in a hard swift hand and turned him. He pushed him quickly, yet somehow casually, down the steps to the dim main lobby and steered him into a corner. He let go of the arm. His throat tightened again, for no reason he could think of.

“Well?” he said darkly. “Listen to what?”

The porter reached into a pocket and hauled out a dollar bill. “He gimme this,” he said loosely. His glittering eyes looked past Tony’s shoulder at nothing. They winked rapidly. “Ice and ginger ale.”

“Don’t stall,” Tony growled.

“Guy in Fourteen-B,” the porter said.

“Lemme smell your breath.”

The porter leaned toward him obediently.

“Liquor,” Tony said harshly.

“He gimme a drink.”

Tony looked down at the dollar bill. “Nobody’s in Fourteen-B. Not on my list,” he said.

“Yeah. There is.” The porter licked his lips and his eyes opened and shut several times.

“Tall dark guy.”

“All right,” Tony said crossly. “All right. There’s a tall dark guy in Fourteen-B and he gave you a buck and a drink. Then what?”

“Gat under his arm,” Carl said, and blinked.

Tony smiled, but his eyes had taken on the lifeless glitter of thick ice. “You take Miss Cressy up to her room?”

Carl shook his head. “Gomez. I saw her go up.”

“Get away from me,” Tony said between his teeth. “And don’t accept any more drinks from the guests.”

He didn’t move until Carl had gone back into his cubbyhole by the elevators and shut the door. Then he moved silently up the three steps and stood in front of the desk, looking at the veined rose marble, the onyx pen set, the fresh registration card in its leather frame. He lifted a hand and smacked it down hard on the marble. The clerk popped out from behind the glass screen like a chipmunk coming out of its hole.

Tony took a flimsy out of his breast pocket and spread it on the desk. “No Fourteen-B

on this,” he said in a bitter voice.

The clerk wisped politely at his moustache. “So sorry. You must have been out to supper when he checked in.”

“Who?”

“Registered as James Watterson, San Diego.” The clerk yawned.

“Ask for anybody?”

The clerk stopped in the middle of the yawn and looked at the top of Tony’s head.

“Why yes. He asked for a swing band. Why?”

“Smart, fast and funny,” Tony said. “If you like ‘em that way.” He wrote on his flimsy and stuffed it back into his pocket. “I’m going upstairs and palm doorknobs. There’s four tower rooms you ain’t rented yet. Get up on your toes, son. You’re slipping.”

“I made out,” the clerk drawled, and completed his yawn. “Hurry back, pop. I don’t know how I’ll get through the time.”

“You could shave that pink fuzz off your lip,” Tony said, and went across to the elevators.

He opened up a dark one and lit the dome light and shot the car up to fourteen. He darkened it again, stepped out and closed the doors. This lobby was smaller than any other, except the one immediately below it. It had a single blue-panelled door in each of the walls other than the elevator wall. On each door was a gold number and letter with a gold wreath around it. Tony walked over to 14A and put his ear to the panel.

He heard nothing. Eve Cressy might be in bed asleep, or in the bathroom, or out on the balcony. Or she might be sitting there in the room, a few feet from the door, looking at the wall. Well, he wouldn’t expect to be able to hear her sit and look at the wall. He went over to 14B and put his ear to that panel. This was different. There was a sound in there. A man coughed. It sounded somehow like a solitary cough. There were no voices. Tony pressed the small nacre button beside the door.

Steps came without hurry. A thickened voice spoke through the panel. Tony made no answer, no sound. The thickened voice repeated the question. Lightly, maliciously, Tony pressed the bell again.

Mr. James Watterson, of San Diego, should now open the door and give forth noise.

He didn’t. A silence fell beyond that door that was like the silence of a glacier. Once more Tony put his ear to the wood. Silence utterly.

He got out a master key on a chain and pushed it delicately into the lock of the door.

He turned it, pushed the door inward three inches and withdrew the key. Then he waited.

“All right,” the voice said harshly. “Come in and get it.” Tony pushed the door wide and stood there, framed against the light from the lobby.

The man was tall, black-haired, angular and white-faced. He held a gun. He held it as though he knew about guns.

“Step right in,” he drawled.

Tony went in through the door and pushed it shut with his shoulder. He kept his hands a little out from his sides, the clever fingers curled and slack. He smiled his quiet little smile.

“Mr. Watterson?”

“And after that what?”

“I’m the house detective here.”

“It slays me.”

The tall, white-faced, somehow handsome and somehow not handsome man backed slowly into the room. It was a large room with a low balcony around two sides of it.

French doors opened out on the little private open-air balcony that each of the tower rooms had. There was a grate set for a log fire behind a panelled screen in front of a cheerful davenport. A tall misted glass stood on a hotel tray beside a deep, cozy chair.

The man backed toward this and stood in front of it. The large, glistening gun drooped and pointed at the floor.

“It slays me,” he said. “I’m in the dump an hour and the house copper gives me the bus. Okay, sweetheart, look in the closet and bathroom. But she just left.”

“You didn’t see her yet,” Tony said.

The man’s bleached face filled with unexpected lines. His thickened voice edged toward a snarl. “Yeah? Who didn’t I see yet?”

“A girl named Eve Cressy.”

The man swallowed. He put his gun down on the table beside the tray. He let himself down into the chair backwards, stiffly, like a man with a touch of lumbago. Then he leaned forward and put his hands on his kneecaps and smiled brightly between his teeth. “So she got here, huh? I didn’t ask about her yet. I’m a careful guy. I didn’t ask yet.”