Hoodwink

by Bill Pronzini

  “No. Better let me handle him alone.”

  “Tough-guy stuff?”

  “I hope not. Why don’t you go ahead and have lunch? I’ll join you as soon as I can—or meet you in the auditorium for Colodny’s panel at one if I run late.”

  She said all right, not without reluctance, and I went off to check the Continental Bar. No sign of Dancer there. And no sign of him in the registration area or the huckster room. I went up to the mezzanine and looked into the auditorium and the Pulp Art room. He was not in either of those places. Which meant he’d left the hotel again, maybe to do some more drinking, or he was up in his room after all, passed out or partying.

  I got back into the elevator and rode up to the sixth floor. When I turned along the east corridor, a middle-aged maid with loose piles of butterscotch hair was just coming past the little cul-de-sac that contained the entrance to Dancer’s room, pushing one of those big all-purpose hotel carts loaded with fresh linen, detergents, trash receptacles, and the like. She looked harried, the way most hotel maids always seem to, and as I moved toward her she lifted one hand and rubbed the back of it across her forehead.

  That was when the gun went off.

  The flat, banging sound seemed to erupt ahead of me and to my right, behind where the maid was—Dancer’s room. The maid had stopped dead and so had I, and for an instant we were staring at each other across twenty yards of empty carpeting. Then there was a low cry and a series of other sounds muffled by the walls that I couldn’t identify.

  The hackles went up on my neck, and there was a prickling sensation along my scalp like something scurrying through dry grass. I uprooted myself, went charging ahead along the hall. The gunshot had come from Dancer’s room, all right; I was sure of it. Ahead of me the maid had backed off and was peering into the cul-de-sac with a seriocomic expression of confusion and fright. I pounded past another of the cul-de-sacs, past her cart. More noises came from behind the thick corridor wall, still deadened and unidentifiable. When I neared the maid she scrambled aside, but she was slow doing it and I almost collided with her. We veered off from each other, her squeaking a little, stumbling, and I caught hold of the wall at the corner and pulled myself around it into the cul-de-sac.

  Nobody was in the passageway. All three doors—the entrances to 617 and 619 and the one to the storage closet at the end—were shut. I ran ,118

  to Dancer’s door and grabbed the knob and twisted hard; it bound up halfway through the rotation. I hung onto it, rattled the door in its frame. Then I quit rattling and held a breath to listen.

  Silence inside there now.

  “Dancer?” I shouted. “Open the door!”

  Nothing.

  I looked back toward the corridor. The maid was still poised there, watching me huge-eyed, like one of the children in a painting by Keane. “I’m a detective!” I yelled at her. “I need your passkey!”

  I had to yell it a second time, moving back toward her, before it got through and she responded. She held the key out at arm’s length, timidly, as if she were afraid I might want to take her arm along with it. I jerked it out of her hand, ran back to 617, and slotted it into the lock. The latch clicked; the knob rotated all the way in my hand this time and the door popped inward. I shoved it all the way, tensing, and took two quick steps into the room.

  Dancer was ten feet away, in the middle of the carpet near the couch, swaying a little. His face was gray, blotchy, and his eyes were only half focused and so red-rimmed and red-lined they looked bloody. The smell of raw whiskey coming off him and from the open quart bottle of rye overturned on the couch, mingled with the stench of cordite, was nauseating.

  And lying back-sprawled at his feet, one leg drawn up and both arms wrapped across his chest, was Frank Colodny. You only had to look at him once—the position he was in, the facial rictus and the blank staring eyes, the blood showing beneath the crossed arms—to know that he was dead.

  Dancer turned his head toward me, blinked, blinked again, and seemed to recognize me. “I didn’t do it,” he said in a sick, slurred voice. “Christ Almighty, I didn’t kill him.”

  But the gun he held pointed downward in his right hand said otherwise.

  Cybil Wade’s gun, I thought—the missing .38 revolver.

  TEN

  I said slow and careful, “Put it down, Russ.”

  “What?”

  “The gun. Put it down.”

  He squinted along the length of his arm, and his face registered confusion, as if he hadn’t known he had anything at all in his hand. A belch came out of him, an ugly sound in the stillness. Then he grimaced and threw the .38 at the couch, the way you throw something too hot to hold, or too foreign. It hit one of the back cushions and plopped down next to the overturned rye bottle.

  “It was lying on the floor next to him,” he said. “I must have picked it up. But I didn’t kill him.”

  I eased over past him, still tensed, not taking my eyes off his face, and caught up the gun by the tip of its barrel. Still warm. Dancer had not moved and he still didn’t move as I backed off again to the door, dropped the .38 into my jacket pocket.

  “What’s he doing here?” he said, meaning Colodny. He sounded amazed. “How did he get in here?”

  “Stay where you are,” I told him. “Don’t move.”

  I backed out into the passageway. The maid had not gone anywhere, nor was she alone; three other people I didn’t know, all of them gawking, were grouped at the far corridor wall. I called out to the maid, keeping Dancer in my line of sight. “What’s your name, Miss?”

  “Greta.”

  “All right, Greta. Go downstairs and tell the manager there’s been an accident in Room 617 and a man’s been killed.”

  Her eyes got even wider. I could hear her suck in her breath.

  “Tell him I’m going to call the police,” I said. I gave her my name. “But don’t say anything to anyone else; just the manager. And don’t leave the hotel. The police may want to talk to you.”

  I waited for her to hurry away. Then I went back inside and shut the door. The lock on it was a deadbolt, not one of those spring jobs with a button you can push on your way out so the door will lock automatically; you had to use a key from the outside to lock this one, or turn the handle on the deadbolt latch from inside. I turned the handle now, and then went over near Dancer again. But not too near because I had no way of knowing how he would react when he came out of his daze.

  He was no longer looking at the body; his eyes had shifted toward the bottle on the couch. “I need a drink,” he said. “Christ, I need one bad.”

  “No more drinks,” I said.

  “I’m getting the shakes …”

  “No more liquor. Sit down in that chair over there.”

  The chair was a Victorian replica; he sat on the edge of its plush seat and got a tight grip on both knees. His chest kept jumping, and his mouth worked as if he were trying not to vomit.

  hi the wall beyond him, the bedroom door stood wide open. I went over to it and looked inside. The windows in the outer wall were undraped, giving me a view of Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower; they were also closed and locked. The bed was rumpled, blankets kicked into a tangle at the foot end, but there was nothing else to see. And nothing to see in the bathroom, either, most of which was visible through another open door across the bedroom.

  One of the suite’s two telephones sat on an end table next to the couch. I sidestepped around to it and lifted the receiver and dialed nine to get an outside line. While I did that I remembered to check my watch. The time was 12:37, which put the time of the shooting at approximately 12:30.

  When I got the Hall of Justice on the line I asked for the Homicide Squad and Lieutenant Eberhardt. I had not talked to Eb in over a week—he was my closest friend on and off the force and had been for more than three decades—so I did not know if he was on duty this weekend or not. But it would ” make things a little easier for me if he was.

  And that was the way it worked o
ut. Eberhardt came on after thirty seconds, and I told him where I was calling from and gave him a quick rundown of what had happened as far as I knew it. When I was done he said angrily, as if something was biting on him, “A homicide at a pulp convention. Another one of your dillies. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s not my fault, Eb.”

  “Did I say it was? Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”

  The line buzzed in my ear. I put the receiver down and looked at Dancer. He was still gripping his knees, rocking back and forth a little now with his eyes squeezed shut and his face scrunched up tight. You could almost see the pain he was suffering, mental and physical both.

  I moved to where Colodny lay on the rose-patterned carpet, steeled myself the way I always had to do in the presence of violent death, and went to one knee beside the body. As far as I could tell without touching him, he had been shot in the heart region at close range; scorched-powder marks were mixed with the blood on his white shirt-front. There weren’t any other marks on him that I could see.

  When I straightened again I made an automatic inventory of the room. No indication of a struggle; nothing out of place and no damage except for the whiskey spilled over the couch. There was another door in the inner wall opposite the entrance, which figured to be a connecting door with the adjacent suite. Ozzie Meeker’s? I moved over there to have a look at it, and it was locked. I could tell that without touching the knob, by peering into the crack between its edge and the jamb: parts of the bolts were visible in there—two of them, one thrown on this side and one thrown on the other side, both deadbolt locks similar to the one on the entrance door, except that you couldn’t open it from the other suite with a key.

  Dancer made a funny, low, keening sound, and I looked over at him. He had quit rocking and was sitting motionless, staring at nothing; a line of spittle dribbled from one corner of his mouth. He made the sound again, kept on making it, and I realized that it wasn’t keening at all—it was a familiar, tuneless singing..

  “No tengo tabaco, “No tengo papel, “No tengo dinero— “Goddammit to hell…”

  I went over to him and punched his arm. The chanting cut off in midverse; his eyelids fluttered and his eyes focused again, slowly, as if he were coming back from a long way away. His gaze settled on my face and clung there, moist and pain-edged.

  “Talk to me, Russ,” I said.

  “Talk?”

  “What happened in here?”

  “I don’t know,“he said thickly. “Don’t know.”

  “Tell me what you do know.”

  “Nothing to tell. Loud noise woke me up. Then more noises. I came out here, there he was. Lying there with the gun next to him. I thought it was booze at first. DT’s. Things crawling out of walls. Jesus.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t let him in here?”

  “No. Wasn’t me.”

  “Then how did he get in?”

  “Must’ve got a key somewhere.”

  “How long ago did you come up here?”

  “Don’t remember. Right after Benny and I got back from the bar. Goddamn Bloody Marys hit me hard.”

  “Who’s Benny?”

  “Convention guy.”

  “You came up here alone?”

  “Yeah. Alone. Must’ve passed out.”

  “And stayed passed out until you heard the noises?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen to me, Russ,” I said. “I heard the shots too; I was right out in the hall. Nobody left this suite afterward, and there wasn’t anybody in here but you when I came in. The hall door was locked, probably from the inside; the connecting door is locked on this side and on the other side too; and even if it were possible for somebody to get in or out through the bedroom windows, which it isn’t, they’re all locked. You tell me how somebody else could have killed Colodny.”

  “Don’t know.” He grimaced and jammed the heels of both hands against his temples. “Jesus, my head’s coming apart.”

  “This is only a sample of what you’ll get from the police.”

  “I didn’t do it; how many times I have to tell you? Maybe he did it himself. Shot himself.”

  “Sure. In your room instead of his own. And in the chest, not the head like most gun suicides. And with a gun stolen from Cybil Wade because it was easier than taking a bottle of sleeping pills, say, or throwing himself out a window.”

  “Cybil?” Dancer said. “Sweeteyes with a gun?”

  “You don’t know anything about that either, huh?”

  He made an anguished sound that turned into a half-cough, half-retch. “Leave me alone. Leave me the hell alone, will you?”

  Somebody started banging loudly on the hall door. Not enough time had passed for it to be Eberhardt, so that meant the hotel manager. I crossed to the door and asked who was there, and a voice said, “Security officer. The manager’s with me.”

  I unlocked the door and let them in. The security officer looked about as much like an old-fashioned hotel dick as I did like Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; he was a neat, dapper little guy with graying hair and delicate-looking hands, dressed in an expensive Wilkes-Bashford suit. The manager, on the other hand, looked just as you’d expect the manager of a Victorian throwback like the Continental to look: tall, prim, reserved, and right now wearing an expression of fluttery horror. His name was Mr. Rigby, and his prominent Adam’s apple never did stop bobbing up and down his neck like a yo-yo on a string. The security officer’s name was Harris.

  Rigby did not stay long. He took one blanching look at what was left of Colodny, listened to Dancer start in again with his “No tengo” chant, made shocked noises about the Continental’s reputation, and went away to do something administrative. When he was gone, Harris asked me for an account of what had happened. I gave him one, omitting the more involved details. He looked, sounded, and acted neutral and businesslike, which made him easy to deal with. He knew as well as I did that guys like us, hotel cops and private cops, were better off not trying to get too involved in a homicide case.

  But he did prowl around a little, the way I had, looking at the doors and windows without touching anything. While he was doing that, I stood off against one wall and kept an eye on Dancer. And waited. And wished to Christ I was somewhere else.

  Harris was just coming out of the bedroom when the banging started again on the hall door. He opened up, and I heard Eberhardt identify himself. Then he came trooping inside with an inspector I knew named Klein and two other plainclothesmen outfitted with a lab kit and photographic equipment.

  Eberhardt looked tired. There were puffy bags under both eyes, and the sharp angles and contrasting blunt planes of his face seemed less defined than usual, as if the features were all beginning to melt together. It made me wonder if there was anything wrong with him, or if it was just that he was being overworked again.

  He spent the first couple of minutes examining the body. Then, while the lab boys went to work and Klein started asking Dancer a few preliminary questions, he came over and glowered at me around the battered old briar clamped in one corner of his mouth.

  “You okay, Eb?” I asked him.

  That got me a sharp look. “Rum dandy. Why?”

  “You look kind of beat.”

  “Yeah, well, never mind how I look. This is business. So let’s have the details—everything you didn’t go into on the phone.”

  “Sure. But it’s a little complicated.”

  “It always is when you’re mixed up in it.”

  I went over it all step by step, beginning with Dancer’s visit to my office on Thursday afternoon and finishing with what I had done since entering this suite. Eberhardt listened without interrupting and without changing expression. “That’s all of it?” he said when I was done.

  “All of it as far as I know.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, it looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. Your boy Dancer, there, broke into the Wade woman’s room Thursday night and swiped her gun. Today he gets drunk and uses the g
un on Colodny, because of this ‘Hoodwink’ crap and because they were old enemies.” Eberhardt shrugged. “An easy one for a change.”

  Sure, I thought, an easy one. Cut-and-dried. Dancer’s been in trouble and asking for more for three days; and nobody else could have shot Colodny. He’s guilty no matter how much he protests otherwise. So what if a lot of other people might have hated Colodny enough to want him dead? So what if it doesn’t feel right? Dancer killed him and that’s that. An easy one for a change….

  ELEVEN

  Eberhardt shooed me out of there before long, with instructions not to leave the hotel for the next couple of hours in case he wanted to talk to me again. There was a uniformed cop stationed at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, and two more in the east corridor, to keep gawkers from cluttering up the area. A fourth cop somewhere near the elevators was having trouble with one citizen; I could hear their raised voices as I started up the hall.

  The citizen turned out to be Lloyd Underwood. I recognized his voice before I saw him, querulous and more manic than ever, saying, “Why can’t I see Russ Dancer? Everyone is waiting for him in the auditorium; he’s forty minutes late for his panel already. Has something happened to him? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s not my job to tell you anything, buddy,” the cop said. “If you want to wait around and talk to one of the inspectors, that’s fine so long as you keep quiet. Otherwise, back on the elevator.”

  I made the turn out of the corridor, toward where they were. Underwood spotted me immediately, waved a fistful of mimeographed papers in my direction, and ran over to paw at my arm.

  “You came from Dancer’s room, didn’t you?” he said. “What’s going on? This officer won’t tell me anything—”

  “Take it easy,” I said, “calm down.”

  “But something’s happened, I know it has.”

  “Something’s happened, all right. We’ll talk about it on the way down to the auditorium.”

  I prodded him to the elevator panel, pushed the down button. The cop watched me without saying anything; he looked more bored than anything else. A car came pretty soon, and when Underwood and I were inside, I punched the button for the mezzanine and waited until the doors slid shut and the car began to descend before I said, “Frank Colodny is dead.”