Blondes are Skin Deep (8 page)

“I know,” Johnny said mockingly, “and if there’s a hole you’ll find it—if you get some help.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I haven’t any to give you,” he said.

I opened the door and walked out. I went down the hall to the stairs and started climbing. I reached the fifth floor, Edna Loomis’ floor. I put the passkey in her door and walked in.

She wasn’t there. Nothing was there except the impersonal furnishings of a hotel room. I did a quick prowl but there was no trace except a faint hint of her perfume and a half pint of whiskey remaining in a fifth.

I could hear the elevator grinding away and I knew the cops had started closing in on me. Hurriedly, I tipped the bottle and drank the half pint. It nearly choked me even if it was expensive liquor.

Then I walked out, waited until the elevator had stopped moving, rang for it, got it, and started for the top floor. Powers was waiting for me.

“Where in hell have you been, Mercer?”

I burped whiskey. I had only a little soup in my stomach and I was sore and stiff from my beating. I grinned at him as the liquor hit me. I went out like a light right at his feet.

I
WAS
TIRED
. I couldn’t believe that a simple kicking around and a half pint of whiskey would give me such a head, nor make me so weary. I rose from the couch, feeling as if I might come apart in every brittle joint. Catching up my robe, I groaned my way into it and headed for the bath.

I had to go through the bedroom. The shades were drawn but I could see Nelle outlined beneath the covers. One arm was flung outside them, trailing toward the floor, and her red hair was partly over her face, obscuring it.

I went on into the bath. A shot of cold water on my face and a brisk workout with the toothbrush did a little to restore me. I decided to shave but one touch of the shaver buzzing against my jaw was more than I could take. Chimp had done a good job.

After showering, I got back into my robe and tiptoed out through the bedroom. I was at the door when Nelle sat up. She brushed her hair back from her face and smiled at me as if everything was perfectly all right.

“Good morning, Nick.”

“Good morning, hell,” I said, and went into the living room.

I heard Nelle say, “You have got a hangover, haven’t you?” and laugh a little. I couldn’t see anything funny in it.

Getting the coffee-pot on the stove, I dressed and straightened up the couch, got the paper from downstairs, and was drawing the draperies when Nelle appeared. She wore a soft green housecoat, and looked fresh and happy as a new bride.

She was perfectly at ease. Damned if I could see why. This day looked no better than the previous one. It might even be worse. The only consolation I could get out of anything was in remembering my defeat of Lieutenant Powers the night before. And even then I couldn’t be sure whether he had given up or was waiting for my next move.

My fiasco of passing out on Powers had worked. When I came to, he and Nelle were using wet towels and hot coffee to bring me around. He didn’t seem particularly happy at what I had done, but there wasn’t much that he could do about it.

I was home, on the couch again, and Powers had brought me. He said, “What was the celebration for?”

I told him. I said “I wandered into Edna Loomis’ room—thought I might do a little work for you—but she was gone. I did find a half pint of whiskey, though.”

“Thanks,” Powers said. “If you felt like sharing information you should have shared that, too.”

“I should have,” I admitted. I was a little groggy but not so much that I didn’t watch what I said. “Anyway, I hated to see that liquor go to waste. So I drank it.”

“It took you long enough.”

“I’m a slow drinker,” I said.

That was that. Powers wasn’t handing out any information and neither was I. He left after being thanked by Nelle for bringing me home. She made it sound as if I staggered in stiff a great deal of the time.

She sang while she made breakfast. I read the paper. She took it over while I carefully munched toast. When she laid down the paper, her smile was even wider than before.

“They haven’t got Johnny yet.”

“I read it,” I said. I tried the coffee and life perked up a bit.

“They can’t figure out why Maretta Considine disappeared,” Nelle said.

“Maybe Considine said no to Johnny’s hanging around and she bumped him,” I said sourly.

Nelle was still smiling. It bothered me to see her sitting across my breakfast table. She acted too natural about, it, as if she belonged. I drank another cup of coffee to see if it wouldn’t improve matters.

I said, “What have you got to be so cheerful about? Johnny isn’t out of the woods.”

“As long as they don’t catch him,” she said, “he has a chance to prove his innocence.”

“He might give me a chance to do that,” I said. I looked steadily at her. “But all the help I got was being told to keep my nose out of his business.”

“Johnny knows what he’s doing,” she said a little defensively. She didn’t seem surprised that I had seen him.

I said, “Did you know where he was?”

“He wouldn’t tell me that.”

“But you know where he is now?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Getting answers from her was like prying out a stubborn tooth. “Don’t be coy,” I said. “You weren’t surprised that I saw him last night. So he must have called and told you.”

“He called,” she admitted. “It’s no secret.”

“Did he say what he was going to do?”

Nelle got herself some more coffee. While her back was to me, she said, “No. He didn’t tell me.”

She was lying again. I could feel it, and sense it from the way she stood. She was as clumsy a liar as she was a
femme fatale
.

I wondered why I didn’t give up the whole thing. Leaving the place to Nelle, I went out into the sunshine. I walked downtown. I thought by walking I could enjoy the spring sunshine and the breeze off the Sound, but it didn’t even make a dent.

Nelle, I thought, was just as bad as Johnny, and as Kane Hall. I could put most of it together now, and it was painfully obvious. Johnny was in something a little deeper than he had ever expected. He knew how loyal I was to him, and he probably figured I would be equally as loyal to the man we worked for—Kane Hall. As a result, he refused to trust me. He had given Nelle the same idea.

Hall, on the other hand, had seen me haul Johnny out of more than one scrape, and he knew without being told how I felt toward Nelle. He reversed Johnny’s reasoning and refused to give me any cooperation for fear I would use it in Johnny’s favor and against him.

I should have quit, but I couldn’t quit. Maretta Considine had a lot to do with it. She just didn’t seem the type who would continue to go with a guy if he had done the things Johnny was supposed to have done.

The business of Maretta running off with Johnny had me stuck, though. I couldn’t see any percentage in it. Unless, as Johnny said, it was a matter of protection. It was a sucker’s trick, a typical Johnny Doane trick, but if she could trust him to that extent, I thought I should be able to trust him a little.

I felt pretty good when I went into the lobby. The sight of Chimp and Les Peone conversing by the desk knocked me back a little. Chimp turned and saw me. There was no expression at all on his face. Peone registered hatred but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

“How’s Kane?”

Chimp said, “He’ll live. All he got was a creasing.”

I shifted my feet to test my balance. It wasn’t good. I said, “I’m going up to see him.”

Chimp looked at Peone and nodded. Peone went to the switchboard. Inside of two minutes I had an okay, went to the elevator and started up. There were no cops around, either downstairs or at Hall’s. I was not molested but I was bothered. Chimp bothered me. He was too smooth. Chimp was smart and when he got smooth I got worried. He had been too easy, too close to friendliness for a man who had so recently tried to kick me to death. It smelled bad. I hoped that Hall might have the answer.

Hall was up and around, at least. Tien answered the door, not offering me her usual smile, and escorted me into the living room. Hall was at his desk. The only difference in him that I could see was one arm in a sling and a little pallor on his face.

“What do you want?” There was nothing in his voice, no friendliness, no lack of it.

“I came to see how you were,” I said.

“I believe you did,” Tien said suddenly, and gave me a shy smile.

“I did,” I said. “I started to last night but I didn’t make it.”

Hall’s teeth showed in amusement. “I heard about that. Sit down, Nick.”

I sat. Hall said nothing, neither did I. We stared at one another in silence.

“You win,” I said finally.

“I always do,” Hall answered. He reached out with his good hand and took a cigar.

“I didn’t do it,” I told him.

“I never thought you did. That isn’t your way—shooting a man in the back.”

“It isn’t Johnny’s way either,” I said.

Hall studied the tip of his cigar and then bit it off with one neat nip of his strong teeth. “You sound sure.”

“I am,” I said. “I saw him last night. I saw his girl, too.”

“Is that why you came—to tell me?”

“No. I came to see you.”

“All right,” Hall said. He took a moment to light the cigar. He puffed at it for a while. I knew that he was trying to decide whether or not to come right out and ask me. He did, finally.

“Was it here that you saw Johnny?”

I thought about Quist. He wasn’t worth much but even so I would hate to think that I was responsible for Hall turning him over to Chimp or Peone. I said, “In Edna Loomis’ room. She smuggled him in.”

“She was Considine’s mistress,” Hall said, as if it might be news to me.

“I gathered as much.”

“She’s got my hundred grand,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“And she’s in with Johnny,” I said, following his train of thought. “Or so we think. Did it ever occur to you that Johnny might be working his own angle?”

“Boring from within?” Hall said. His laughter was soft. “Is that what he told you?”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t tell me a damned thing.”

“But still you’re sure that he’s innocent.”

“I know Johnny,” I said. “That’s all. I’m sure enough so that I’m going back on the job.”

“And what if it is Johnny?”

“Then I’m stuck,” I said. “He gets turned in. It’s out of your hands now, Kane. If it is Johnny I’ll try to get your dough back—but I won’t give him to you.”

“That isn’t necessary now,” Hall agreed. “The police know more about the operations than I thought.”

Which was so much hokum. As Powers had said, Hall was protected by his connections. He wasn’t hurting anyone. He never took any bets but big ones, from men who could afford them, men he knew could afford them. Hall’s worry wasn’t the police, it was publicity that might activate some well-intentioned reform group.

I said, “Then we’re agreed?”

For an answer, Hall opened his desk drawer and took out the two checks he had given me once before. I pocketed them. He said, “No strings.”

“A few questions,” I said.

“With the answers up to me.”

“I’ll try anyway,” I told him. “I want to know about the shooting.”

“It happened about six,” he said readily enough. “Tien was out.”

Which meant either that she had been making payments or collecting. A lot of Hall’s customers never showed up at the hotel. I nodded for him to go on.

“I was tired and I started into the bedroom. I was going through the door when I heard someone come in. I thought it was Tien and I called out, ‘I’m going to bed.’ Someone shot at me. I hear it was Johnny’s old blunderbuss.”

“It was,” I said. “You didn’t see anything?”

“The shock threw me forward,” he explained. “It knocked me out of the chair. I was in the doorway, mostly in the bedroom, and the chair blocked my view even if I had been able to turn around and see.”

“How come the job wasn’t finished?”

“That was Tien,” Hall said, but with no particular affection in his voice. “I could hear everything that went on—it was a damned nightmare. Whoever shot at me was coming across the floor to finish me, and Tien opened the door. I heard someone running.

“It was dusky; the lights were off and the sun doesn’t hit this room at that time of evening. Whoever it was made it to the kitchen. I tried to call out to Tien but it was as if I were paralyzed all over. I couldn’t make a sound.”

When he stopped, Tien said, “I saw the chair and called out. When Kane didn’t answer I ran to see what had happened. I got around the chair and knelt down. Then I heard someone running, too. But the door slammed before I could even get into the living room.”

“You chased the guy, I suppose.”

“I saw the elevator going down when I got to the door,” she said. “I called the desk and told Les Peone to get Chimp right away.”

Hall said, “The elevator never got down. Chimp reported that it stopped on the second floor. As soon as the indicator stopped, he went up the steps but he didn’t have a chance—everything was quiet. Then Tien called the police.”

The second floor—Johnny’s floor. I said, “Why the cops? Couldn’t Chimp handle it?”

“That isn’t Chimp’s kind of job,” Hall said. “He did what he could but—well, you know he flubbed it in Portland. It isn’t his strong point, that’s all. Anyway, a bullet wound would have been reported to the cops by any doctor I might call in.”

I knew some who wouldn’t have reported it, but I just nodded. If Hall wanted to pretend to me that he had called the police from necessity rather than choice, that was his business. It just gave me one more thing to think about.

I said, “Did Powers get anywhere?”

“No. He thinks it’s Johnny, of course.”

“All right,” I said. “How many more questions do I get?”

“None,” Hall said. “I don’t have any more answers.”

I got up. “I’ll go to work then. You might call down and tell Chimp to behave himself. The next time I won’t walk into his foot.”

“Show him the door,” Hall said. “And call Chimp.”

Tien escorted me. When we were at the door, I said, “Who could get in here?”

“Anyone,” she said. “Anyone who knew about the master key. It fits this lock, too, in case of emergency.”

I played it innocent. “Where is that?”

“It’s in a drawer in the desk downstairs,” she said. She sounded faintly surprised, as if I should have known. “Under the cash tray.”

“And Peone was on duty at six?”

She smiled, shaking her head. “I doubt if he even knows about it yet.”

“Quist does. Chimp does.”

“Quist was sleeping,” she said. “And Chimp was on duty in the lobby.”

I let it go. “Were you out as long as you expected?” I asked.

“Not quite,” Tien said. “I usually get back around six-thirty from collecting. Last night I was ten or fifteen minutes early.”

I said, “Anyone who knew the routine here would naturally pick that time to make a play for Kane.”

“We thought of that,” Tien said.

In the elevator, I did some thinking, too. There was something I had forgotten. When I put my hand in my pocket it closed over the key Quist had slipped to me.

I felt as if I had a live hand grenade in my fist. And I couldn’t quite see Peone letting me slip it back into the desk drawer.