The Fatal Frails (7 page)

“It wasn’t much of a hit,” Johnny said patiently. He was going to get rid of this woman in a hurry, that he knew. He was in no mood for small talk. Key in hand he stopped at 615, and froze instantly. One glance was enough to show that the lock had been forced with no particular finesse. “Stay back tight against the wall!” he threw over his shoulder at the blonde, and barreled inside with a rush.

The hard-flung door banged off the inside wall. Johnny stood just inside the threshold, and for once in his life stared blankly at the welter of upside-down chairs, torn-up bed, torn-down curtains, overturned chest of drawers, and dumped-out refrigerator. The floor was a tangled litter of bedclothing, cushions, pillows and papers thrown down from table drawers.

Recovering, he made a quick circuit of the room. The bathroom and the closet were the only places anyone could hide, and there was no one there. He turned to find Madeleine Winters surveying the devastation from the doorway. “A pig couldn’t find its little ones in here if it didn’t hear them grunt,” he said wryly.

“Didn’t that expression sound more like
‘Un cochon n’y retrouverait pas ses petits à moins de les entendre’
the first time you heard it?” the blonde inquired.

“Maybe it did,” Johnny admitted absently, his eyes roaming the wreckage of his room. His attention sharpened. “What was your name before it was Winters?”

“Maillard.” She gestured at the room. “You haven’t even looked to see if anything’s missing.”

He didn’t answer her. He walked over to a chair with its bottom slashed, and handfuls of coarse, wiry hair dribbling out, and kicked it gently. “I sure wish I’d stumbled in here while this was goin’ on,” he said in a thinking-out-loud voice.

Madeleine Winters’ voice rose. “You haven’t even—”

“I heard you,” Johnny interrupted her. He righted a chair and sat down. “I don’t need to look. It wasn’t here.” He bent stiffly to unlace his shoes, then changed his mind, got up and went to the phone. “Ring Housekeeping, will you, Sally?” he asked when she came on the line. “Amy?” he inquired of the languid drawl that eventually answered. “Killain. Hustle your tail on down here. Bring an appetite for hard labor.” He hung up and removed his jacket and shirt, carefully.

“But what are you going to
do?”
the blonde cried forcefully. “Nothing at all?”

“Do? I’m goin’ to work,” Johnny said blandly. He removed a uniform from the closet and draped it over the chair back. He noticed that the pockets in some of the other clothing had been ruthlessly slashed, and his lips tightened.

“Work!” the blonde exclaimed scornfully. “I don’t understand a man like you in a place like this, Killain.”

“I like it here.” Johnny sat down, and tackled the shoes again. He glanced upward to note the petulance of Madeleine Winters’ expression. “I like it fine. Nobody bothers me. Look around when you go back downstairs. You see a night manager? No. You see a house dick? No. You see Killain. It gives a man a little room to spread his wings. Around here I do it my way, an’ the brass don’t ask me how I get it done.”

The blonde spoke swiftly as he paused. “Killain, I can make it worth—” She stopped suddenly at the sound of a knock at the door.

Amy, the tall colored girl who handled housekeeping nights, sidled in with her attention directed downward at the broken lock. “Mist’ Johnny, somebody done bust—” she began, then straightened and saw the room. “Hoo-ee!” The pretty face crinkled in an impudent grin. “Who you gone an’ got mad at this time?”

“This time I wasn’t here,” Johnny told her. “I hope you brought a shovel.” He redirected his attention to Madeleine Winters. “Go ahead,” he invited her.

“I can’t talk now,” she protested sulkily, an eye on Amy, who was examining her with bright-eyed interest.

“Okay,” Johnny shrugged. “Good night.”

“Good night?” The green eyes flattened at the corners in the manner of a cat’s. “Don’t get on your high horse with me, Killain. I came—” She turned suddenly to Amy. “You’ll excuse us for just a moment, please?” She really had a charming smile when she wanted to use it, Johnny reflected.

Amy promptly dropped the shredded curtains she had been gloomily regarding. “I’ll get my cleanin’ things,” she said, and went out.

Johnny forestalled the blonde before she could speak. “You came over here to buy something?”

It took her by surprise. “Well, no. I came—”

“You came to put me on the pay roll so you’d have me handy in the oat bin when it come time to slam down the lid.”

“I don’t see how you can say that. I never intended—”

“You’re not buyin’,” he interrupted. “That leaves Palmer.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t buying,” she said quickly. “I said that wasn’t my idea in coming here tonight.”

“You figure whoever got Arends winged that one at you tonight?” he asked her casually.

Her features seemed to shrink, and she circled her lips rapidly with the tip of her tongue. “I don’t know. I need help. Don’t you see that I could buy the thing from you tonight, and wind up dead before morning? It wouldn’t solve anything for me.”

“But it would for me. All I want is to convert.”

She chose to disregard this completely. “Come to work for me, Killain,” she pleaded. The vibrant voice was artistically husky. “I do need help, and I promise it wouldn’t be the worst job in the world. I need someone like you. Jules Tremaine would kill me as quick as he’d look at me. He proved that tonight.”

“Sorry,” Johnny said curtly.

The beautiful face looked pinched. “You mean—you won’t?”

“That’s what I meant.”

The change of expression was instantaneous. Madeleine Winters hitched her fur stole about herself with a vicious twist of her shoulders. “I won’t forget this. You won’t, either.”

“That’s better,” Johnny said approvingly. “For a minute there I was afraid you were goin’ soft on me.”

She was already on her way to the door. Only the broken lock prevented a really effective slam. Amy thrust her head cautiously inside before entering. “You is shuah rough on ‘em, Mist’ Johnny. That one got steam comin’ out of her ears. She pretty enough to expect to have it the other way aroun’.” Amy’s silvery giggle rippled through the room.

“See what you can do with this mess,” Johnny told her. He finished dressing and headed for the service elevator and the lobby. He found Paul in the cloakroom. “A guy about six-one, Paul,” he began without preliminary. “Looks slender, but isn’t. Walks like he had a poker up his back. A real cold face an’ eyes. Crew-cut gray hair, if he didn’t have a hat on.”

Paul nodded. “A man like that came in just after the shift changed. He went directly to the house phones, spoke to someone and went upstairs.”

“He called a number at random, an’ if he got an answer asked ‘em if they wanted to buy any insurance,” Johnny said musingly. “When they hung up on him he went upstairs as if by invitation. Tore my place all to hell.” Max Stitt’s footprints had been all over that job, he decided. A man looking for a thirty-pound object slashes curtains and clothes only from pure meanness. Unless he didn’t know what he was looking for? Not likely.

He flexed his hands unconsciously. He would interview Mr. Stitt in the morning. He planned to enjoy it.

S
ALLY FONTAINE LOOKED UP FROM HER
magazine as Johnny’s key let him almost noiselessly into the apartment. He grunted at the sight of her in the living-room armchair. “Thought you’d be rackin’ up sack-time, ma. Conscience keepin’ you awake?”

“There’s nothing the matter with
my
conscience.” She laid aside the magazine and looked him over as he approached her chair. “You avoided me all night at work,” she said accusingly.

He slipped an arm beneath the knees and another about the shoulders of her flowered lounging pajamas and scooped her out of the chair. He sat down carefully with her on his lap. “I was afraid you’d see the blonde I took up to the room.”

“I saw the blonde,” she informed him. “I heard what you found when you took her up there, too.”

“Yeah? You tell that little giggler Amy I’ll paddle her two shades darker if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Amy knows who to do her talking to,” Sally told him. “She wouldn’t say a word to anyone but me!”

“I’ll impress it on her that you’re not on the free list either, ma.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. “I need about three hours’ sleep. Set the alarm for eleven, will you?” He attempted to outstare the close-range inspection of the brown eyes. “Think you’ll know me the next time you see me?”

“It’s something about the way you’re moving,” she decided aloud. She dropped a hand experimentally on one shoulder, probed lightly, passed on to the other, and inevitably descended to Johnny’s adhesive-corseted waist. “I knew it!” she declared. “What happened this time?”

“Someone whiffled one through the blonde’s front door tonight. I just happened to be there.”

“I’ll bet you just happened to be there.” Her eyes widened as his words registered. “You were shot?”

“Creased, ma. Just creased. Your cuticle scissors give me a harder time when you’re manicurin’ my paws. The hell of it was my foot got tangled up in a mat an’ threw me when I went after the gent.”

“And a good thing, too,” she stated firmly. “How you keep from being killed—” Head cocked to one side, she examined his face. “What were you doing there in the first place?” she asked abruptly.

“You mean aside from the obvious, ma?” He ducked a left lead and smothered her hands in his. “That’s what’s known as a long, involved story. Stop worryin’. It wasn’t even meant for me.”

“If you hadn’t been there, you couldn’t have been hit,” Sally pointed out with unerring feminine logic. “Was it the blonde they were shooting at? She looked just the type.”

“I guess she was supposed to be up at bat, all right,” Johnny admitted. He ruffled the soft brown hair under his hand. “She’s a little shook. She’s allergic to the clay-pigeon bit.”

Sally dropped her head on Johnny’s shoulder and closed her eyes. “From the look of her, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving pigeon,” she murmured. The eyes flew open again, and she lifted her head to look at him. “Tell me about it,” she said.

He eased the slim body on his lap to a more comfortable position. “I’m just tryin’ to give the man you called for me the other night a hand in retrievin’ a piece of goods swiped from him a while back.”

The brown eyes speculated. “And it was Claude Dechant who did the swiping? That’s why you asked me all those questions about the people he used to telephone?”

“It was Dechant. An’ he killed himself. I’d like to know why.” Johnny stared broodingly across the room over a flower-pajamaed shoulder. “About all I’ve done so far tryin’ to find out is to tie into the damnedest bunch of do-it-yourself characters you ever saw.”

“Did one of them tear up your room tonight?”

“One of them did.” Johnny’s eyes darkened. “I’m gonna speak to him about it.” He looked at Sally on his lap. “I’m also gonna tuck it in the sheets, ma. I need a little shuteye, an’ it’ll take Amy half a day to straighten out my place.”

She slid from his lap and led the way into the bedroom. She turned down the bed while Johnny stood in the middle of the floor and shed clothes like a snake sheds skin. Sally sighed and picked up after him. He sat on the edge of the bed and tested the mobility of his corset. It wasn’t too bad, he decided.

Sally sat down beside him, and he slipped an arm around her. “Johnny, you’re not going to get into trouble over the man who searched you room, are you?”

“Divil a bit of it, ma. He’s gonna get in trouble.” He gave her a one-armed hug.

“You know what I—mean!” she said breathlessly as her ribs contracted.

He was silent. He could have sworn he’d had only one use for the bed in his mind when he’d come in here, but the feel of Sally against him was rapidly changing his perspective.

She turned her head inquiringly at the more purposeful pressure of his arm. She saw his eyes. “Stop it!” she scolded lightly. “You know you don’t feel—”

“The hell I don’t. Shuck yourself on in here.”

She stood up obediently, but her eyes remained doubtful. She paused with the pajama top half off. “You’re sure that you feel like it?”

“It’s only my ribs that’re taped, ma,” He watched as she disposed of the pajamas and plumped herself down alongside him. “Get those bony knees out of the way.”

“They’re not bony,” she said placidly. “They’re slender.”

“So’s a picket fence.” For a very short time he could hear Sally’s breathing. After that the sound of his own filled his ears.

• • •

Johnny stood in warm noonday sunlight outside the Empire Freight Forwarding Corporation’s stout wire fence. It was summer sure enough today, and he was not sure that he approved. He felt sluggish. He tried to flex mental muscles and gear himself up for the meeting with Stitt and its explosive possibilities. Based on Stitt’s reaction the last time Johnny had been here, sluggishness was not a condition he could afford.

He set himself in motion finally and started up the narrow cement walk. He headed this time directly for the door marked
Office
. His first quick look around inside disclosed no one but the plain little receptionist at her desk. “I’d like to see—” Johnny began, but he never got to complete it.

The receptionist turned in her chair as a door at the rear of the office flew open. Carrying a huge wooden bucket in both hands, Max Stitt burst into view. There was no other word to describe it, Johnny thought. At a walk so rapid it was almost a run, the erect-looking man advanced to the desk nearest the front of the office and set down his bucket. “Helen!” It was like a bugle’s blare, although the girl was less than a dozen feet away. The voice pulsed with excitement. “Come and have a drink!” The girl rose to her feet with an uncertain look outside the railing. Following the direction of her gaze, Stitt looked and saw Johnny. “Killain!” he trumpeted. “Come in and have a drink!”

Johnny stared. The usually dead-white, rigidly controlled features were flushed and animated. Each individual hair in the graying crew-cut seemed to bristle spikily. Max Stitt wore a business suit, a white shirt and a tie, the tie badly askew. A second before Stitt removed a champagne magnum from his bucket, Johnny realized suddenly that the man was half-seas over.

“Come in, come in!” Stitt urged Johnny. He poured liberally into a glass he dredged up from the depths of the ice-packed bucket and handed it to the receptionist, who accepted it with an embarrassed smile. “Drink up, Helen,” he told the girl. “Take the rest of the day off. Have a good dinner on me. Run the ticket through petty cash in the morning.” He disregarded the girl’s murmured thanks to walk over and unlatch the gate in the wooden railing. “Come in,” he repeated. He saw Johnny’s face. “That affair of last night,” he said dismissingly. “Send me the bill.”

“I brought you the bill, Stitt.”

For a second, at Johnny’s tone, the cold eyes congealed and the features hardened to a rigid austerity. Just for a second, and then before Johnny’s unbelieving eyes the Max Stitt he thought he knew was gone again. “Any other day of my life, Killain, I would accommodate you. I would accommodate you gladly. Any day prior to today. At ten o’clock this morning I became a half-owner of the business here. It is an event in a man’s life. At ten o’clock this morning I was done with affairs such as that of last night.” He held up the magnum. “You will join me?”

“Too early for bubbly,” Johnny said cautiously. “You got any schnapps?”

“I do have schnapps.” Stitt walked to a green filing cabinet in a corner and removed a dark, squat bottle. He half filled a water glass he removed from a desk. He splashed champagne into a glass he took from the bucket, handed Johnny the water glass and raised his own aloft. “To ten o’clock this morning,” he toasted, and downed his champagne.

“Mr. Stitt—” the receptionist put in timidly from the side. “If you really don’t need me any more today—”

“Run along,” he told her. “Draw the curtain on the door. I’ve packed off the warehouse crew, too. Anyone coming in that door this afternoon can have a drink, nothing else. Tomorrow business as usual, Helen.”

After pulling down the yellow curtain on the front door, the girl went out a door in the back, her bag under her arm. Max Stitt seated himself behind a desk, loosened his collar and produced a box of cigars, which he offered to Johnny. He elevated his feet to the top of the desk, slid down on his spine, stripped the cellophane from a cigar and sighed profoundly in the cloud of smoke from its lighted tip. “I have become legitimized,” Max Stitt proclaimed solemnly to Johnny. “I have no further interest in the disposition of Hegel’s piece. I’m done with all that. In this life a man steals what he must to set himself up legitimately. After that a wise man steals only from the tax people.”

“I doubt that Dechant would have agreed with you.” Johnny was curious to see how far Stitt’s mellow mood would take him.

“Claude Dechant was a fool,” Stitt said flatly. “To be more specific, a fool over women. They bled him. A pipeline to Fort Knox couldn’t have kept him going. He lacked my perspective.” The corners of his mouth lifted around his cigar. “To me, women are an irritation ninety-eight per cent of the time. The other two per cent of the time they are merely slightly less of an irritation. I can’t stand their gabble, or their grasping.”

Johnny took a swallow of the pungent, colorless liquor in his glass. “You knew Dechant a long time,” Johnny suggested.

Max Stitt nodded. “We were from Colmar. We’d never worked together, but we knew each other. In ‘forty he went with the French, I with the Germans. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him in an Italian lieutenant’s uniform in a
cantina
in Florence in August of ‘forty-four. Right away, when he saw me, he had a plan. Claude always thought big, give the devil his due. I was a captain in charge of two demolition squads. The one bridge out of six left standing in the general retreat from Florence had not been my assignment.” The natural arrogance was back in Stitt’s voice, Johnny noted. “Claude was attached to a Canadian colonel as interpreter and liaison, and, of course, in that Italian uniform a spy. It would have been amusing to have gotten him hung, but I listened to him.”

Stitt puffed lengthily on his cigar. “He had detailed maps of three of the larger deposits of medieval and modern art that had been moved in around the city from all over Italy. There were over thirty of them altogether, I’m told. I could get trucks. It looked easy, but the Allied advance overran us. It turned out, too, that other people had the same idea we did. Some stuff was loaded and rushed off God knows where. It was never seen again. We were lucky finally to get out with a whole skin. It came down finally to Claude burying a few pieces himself. It took him three years to get back to get them. I was over here by that time. The pickings looked a little better on this side. I hooked on with Arends. He needed someone with my organizing ability who knew the back alleys of Europe like I did.” Max Stitt shrugged.

Johnny prompted him. “And at ten o’clock this morning—”

“I listened to the lawyer read Arends’ will. He’d never paid me what the job I was doing for him was worth, but we had an agreement in writing that, if anything happened to him, half of this was mine. I couldn’t be sure of him, though. He could have added a codicil to his will at any time. I had to hope he’d figure finally that his widow would be better off with me running the business, and that’s the way it went. I signed a contract with her at the lawyer’s to continue as general manager at an increase, with half the profits.” He straightened up in his chair, refilled his champagne glass and raised it to Johnny. “To the end of the old road. No hard feelings. You’ll have trouble disposing of that piece. Not many buyers for a thing like that. That’s why Claude was a good man to have around: he had contacts.”

“With you comin’ into a windfall like that, you’re not afraid of the police tryin’ to pin the tail on you for Arends?”

“They might think I hired it. They know I didn’t do it.” Max Stitt looked down at his glass. “Arends wasn’t alone when he went up to Madeleine’s apartment. Two of the help told the police that another man went upstairs with Jack. They never did see him come down. The police had me over there last night. It seems I’m not the man.”

“Did you hear a description?”

“They were careful that I didn’t. They shouldn’t have too much trouble finding out.”

“You think you know?”

“I know that as of ten o’clock this morning I started minding Max Stitt’s business, and his only.”

“Did I tell you Palmer made me an offer for the piece?” Johnny asked casually.

“Palmer
did? Palmer? He wouldn’t pay a quarter to see an elephant roller-skate. Something wrong there. He stole his money young, and he’s been a cautious type ever since. If he ever knew one-tenth the uses to which Claude put his money—”

“What I hear, him an’ Faulkner are goin’ to school on it.”

Max Stitt laughed, a harsh, unmusical sound. “Faulkner,” he said disparagingly. “That
warmer Bruder?”

“He seems to get around with the redhead.”

“She’s using him.”

“You were a little rough on her a while back.”

“She told you that?” Stitt looked surprised, then smiled wisely. “She didn’t tell you. You saw. So she’s using you, too.” He stood up behind the desk. “I showed her that no woman uses Max Stitt.” He lifted the magnum and held it to the light. “Empty. And I’ve talked myself sober.” His light-colored eyes considered Johnny. “Yesterday it wouldn’t have been like this, Killain. Tomorrow it won’t be. All I want is to be left alone.” He stubbed out his cigar with finality. “Sorry to rush you, but I’m locking up.”