by Wolfe, Gene
The elderly couple were much too well bred to notice anything; they walked by chatting of something neither would be able to recall five minutes afterward. Their bellman, however, smirked and offered Barnes a congratulatory wink.
When the elderly couple and their bags had disappeared into a room beyond the witch’s, Robin asked breathlessly, “Shouldn’t you at least tell me why you did that?”
“I don’t know,” Barnes said.
“Well, it was—different.”
“For me too.” Slowly, arm in arm, they walked back toward the elevator. “If you really want to know, it was because you said what you did. About going up to your apartment and having dinner. For my whole life I’ve been waiting for you to say that to me; and now that you have, I know someway that something’s going to take it away so it won’t ever happen, we won’t ever go there and eat that dinner.” He pushed the button.
“You’re a little frightening, Osgood. Do you know that?”
“Ozzie. Anyway, I wanted to get a piece of paradise, sort of a sample I could carry around for the rest of my life, before that something came along and took the rest.”
The elevator doors slid back.
“You are frightening, in a nice way. I feel—I don’t know—as if all of a sudden I’ve got this pet panther. But, Ozzie, it’s going to be just like I said. In fact, it’s going to be wonderful—we might not order the food at all.”
He grinned at her as they stepped out into the lobby. A man in a worn check suit was waiting near the registration desk. When he saw the suit, Barnes trotted over and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around; he was long and lean, and at least half a head taller.
“Hello, Reeder,” Barnes said. “Put them up. I wouldn’t want to cold-cock you.”
“Shipmate! Hell, I’ve been looking all over for you. I want to give you your stuff back.” He fumbled in the pockets of the suit.
“Put ’em up,” Barnes said again. Robin Valor and Little Ozzie looked from one man to the other.
“Wallet,” Reeder mumbled. “Locker key.”
He held them out and Barnes slapped his hand, knocking them to the floor. Then he slapped Reeder with a quick forehand-backhand, the two slaps coming so close together they sounded like one.
“Don’t do that,” Reeder said. He lifted his fist and Barnes hit him under the jaw, sending him reeling against the registration desk. Joe the bellman, who had been in the act of picking up a guest’s luggage, dropped it and jumped between them. Barnes hit him with his left just above the belt, his fist driving into the cheap red uniform to the wrist. Joe doubled over and collapsed, his legs turned to rags.
Reeder hit Barnes on the cheek with a left and over the eye with a right, his fists flying like pistons. Barnes ducked and bored in with the hard, quick, smacking sounds a butcher makes tenderizing meat. Reeder staggered back, but the desk would not let him fall. For a moment Barnes’s fists fell against him like rain. His face seemed to melt under the blows, growing soft and darkly crimson as the skin washed away. Then he slipped down, and two burly men in dark suits grabbed Barnes’s arms from behind.
“Hotel security,” one of them told him; Robin Valor chopped the speaker’s thick neck with the edge of her hand. He turned slowly, as though half stunned, and she kicked him in the groin. Barnes whirled on the other man, landing a punch in the belly and getting a round-house right on the ear that knocked him to the carpet.
He bounced up like a superball and came at the house dick like a power saw. The dick made the mistake of reaching toward his hip pocket for a sap. Before he could get it out, his head snapped back and he fell stiffly, as a tree falls.
The other dick was still doubled over with pain. His fists still up, his good eye nearly closed, Barnes glared at the male guests and their wives, the desk clerks, and a couple of watching bellmen. Francisco, who was one of the bellmen, touched his cap in a gentle mock salute. “Buenas noches, Señor,” Francisco said.
“Good night to you too.” Barnes let his hands drop. The knuckles of the pigskin gloves were bright with blood.
Robin took his arm. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
He nodded reluctantly, looking at the felled house dick. “Blow me down,” he said. “He had a real punch.”
“The police will be here any minute.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n, sir. Where’s Swee’pea?”
“I’m Olive, remember? I’ve got his hand. Come on now.”
Outside, snow was falling once more. The soft flakes sifted into Robin’s furs and settled on Barnes’s black and shining hair. “I’ve lost me cap,” he said.
Little Ozzie held up the homburg. “I got it.”
The gray car waited at the curb a few steps away from the bright lights of the entrance. As Barnes settled the stolen hat on his head, they heard distant sirens. “Hurry up!” Robin snapped.
“They’ve been running all night because of the blackout,” Barnes said. “I doubt if they’ll send the Swat Team to a fistfight. Little Ozzie, when you got my hat for me—thank you very much—did you by any chance also get that wallet he tried to give me? Or the key?”
The little boy shook his head.
“Pull up in front of the door,” Barnes told Robin. “I’ll be right back.”
Before she could stop him, he was sprinting for the entrance. He leaped a stack of luggage and burst through the inner doors while Francisco and the Agatha Christie fan were still applying water-soaked towels to Joe. The house dick Robin had kicked was nowhere to be seen, but the other dick was on his feet again, grasping Reeder by the arm. “I dropped a brown wallet and a key,” Barnes told him. “I want them back. Now.”
The dick only glared at him. Barnes began poking around the floor, kicking at disturbances in the thick carpet that he thought might conceal the locker key. He found the dick’s sap, tossed it in the air, then dropped it into his own pocket. A white-haired woman guest discovered his wallet and handed it to him with a disconcerting look of hero-worship.
Francisco called, “Paging Meester Jeem Stubb!”
The sirens died away beyond the doors, and two policemen came in. Barnes walked into the street-level bar where Candy and Stubb had ordered a final drink. He was tempted to stop for a quick one, but it could only be moments before someone told the policemen what had happened and pointed to the bar.
Outside, the gray sedan still waited, its rear bumper nearly touching the front bumper of the squad car. Barnes got in and saw that Little Ozzie was already sleeping, stretched out on the back seat. “I thought they had you,” Robin said. “God knows what I would have done.” She put the sedan out into traffic.
Barnes shrugged. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“I have friends around town. I could have phoned some of them.”
“Sure.” Barnes patted his pockets. “Don’t give me a cigarette. I’m trying to quit.”
“Good for you. But you’re frisking yourself for one right now.”
“That’s okay, I know I don’t have any.”
She laughed. She had a good, throaty, big-girl laugh, Barnes thought. It made you want to make her laugh again. He said, “I might have a cigar.”
This time it was more of a chuckle. “Look in my purse.”
It was between them on the seat, and he looked. “What are you doing with cigars in your purse? Good ones, too.” Each was cased in its own aluminum tube. Barnes opened one, sniffed the cigar, and pushed in the dashboard lighter.
“Light one for me, will you?”
“You smoke cigars?”
“Where’d you think I got these dark good looks? I’m half Spanish, mi amigo. All us Spanish ladies smoke cigars—it’s sort of a family tradition.”
Barnes drew on the cigar until it was evenly lit, then passed it to her. “You said you were at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I thought maybe you were part Indian.”
“No, it’s just that I had an affair with an Indian once. Chief Smoke Eater—he was a fire chief.”
>
This time it was Barnes who laughed. “I notice you’ve got a little gun in there too,” he said.
Chapter 45
DETECTIVES
“Paging Miss Cathy Garth!”
“For me?” Candy looked at Stubb.
“That’s what the man says.”
“Should I answer it?”
He tried—quite successfully, since Candy was in no condition to be minutely observant—to appear not to care. “Up to you.”
“I guess I better.” She waved at the bellman as he passed. “Right here. I’m Cathy Garth.”
“House phone three, Ma’am.” The bellman pointed. “Thank you very much,” Candy said. Stubb walked her over to it, and she asked him, “What’ll I say?” whispering as though the other party could hear her already.
“‘Cathy Garth,”’ he told her.
“Cathy Garth,” she repeated, and picked up the telephone. “Cathy Garth speaking.”
Stubb listened, pretending not to listen.
“Yes? … Oh, hi! Hi, John … . I’m right down here in the lobby … . Could I ever! I’m starved! Anything.”
The bellman who had paged Candy was coming around again. “Jim Stubb! Paging Mr. Jim Stubb!”
Stubb stopped him. “Me too?”
“This is a different party, sir. He gave me a letter for you.”
Stubb took it. “Mysterious, isn’t it?”
“I guess so, sir. We haven’t had the murder yet, but when we do, we’ll call in the Yard.”
“But it will actually be solved by an eccentric peer who hasn’t done any real work since the Second World War,” Stubb finished for him.
The bellman grinned. “How about a poisoning in the Quaint?”
“Happens all the time, only they die outside.” With the feeling that luck was about to change, Stubb gave the bellman a five. “The fat girl didn’t tip you, did she?”
“Ladies seldom do,” the bellman said. “Thank you, sir.”
As he turned away, Candy seized Stubb’s arm. “Jim—” She belched softly. “Jim, you’ve gotta help me. That was a john I met this afternoon. His name’s Sweet.”
Stubb nodded encouragingly.
“He was going to the airport, see? Back home after some convention. I went with him, only it turns out he didn’t go. I guess they had more snow out there than we got here, and some flights got cancelled. Then the lights went out, same as here, and it got screwed up worse. So he said to hell with it like anybody would. He said there weren’t any cabs by then, but he hitched a ride back with a business acquaintance—that’s what he said—that lives here and had his own car.”
“Is this going anywhere?” Stubb asked. “If it isn’t, I’d like to sit down.”
“It’s there already. I mean, he’s here. I’d told him I was staying here, so the guy dropped him here and he got a room and he’s been looking for me ever since, hoping I didn’t get my flight either. He’ll be down in five minutes. Jim, how do I explain this nurse outfit?” The fat girl’s voice rose to an anguished wail. “I didn’t tell him I was a nurse!”
“You could split before he gets here. Come on, and I’ll get us into Madame S.’s room.”
“Jim, it’s dinner and at least a hundred bucks, and I’m starving and I haven’t got a dime. So what do I tell him? Do I say I’m a nurse now? You’re my friend, Jim. What do I say?”
Stubb scratched his chin reflectively. It was too warm in the lobby; he felt hot and tired. Suddenly his eyes went wide, and he nudged Candy. “My God, look!”
She looked. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
“You’re damn right it is, but where’d he get the clothes?”
“Stole ’em, I bet. But where’d he get that fox?”
They watched until Barnes, Robin, and Ozzie disappeared into an elevator. “You’re right,” Stubb said. “He must have got them in the blackout. Hey, that gives me an idea for your nurse’s clothes.”
“I stole them?”
“No. You went to a costume party. This john thought you were catching a plane, right? Why’d you go to the airport anyway?”
“Never mind, I did. What’s your idea?”
“You couldn’t get your plane, so you came back here—only earlier, and you called up a girlfriend and she told you about the party. You didn’t have time to rent a regular costume, but the girlfriend’s a nurse and she loaned you those. You were tired and the party wasn’t much fun, so you had a couple of drinks and came back here. That’ll also explain why you’re a little juiced, which you are.”
“Okay, that’s great.”
“Meaning, ‘Now be a darling and get lost.”’
“Jim, it won’t look good if he sees me talking to you.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not well dressed enough for a pimp,” Stubb said, “or the right color either.” But he was already turning away, losing himself even to himself in the crowd in the lobby. The letter felt thin and dry between his fingers; he wondered vaguely why he had not put it inside his coat. There were no statues in the Consort’s lobby, no palms or ferns, and out of long habit he did not want to open the letter where someone might read it over his shoulder. Neither did he want to remain close enough to see the man who came for Candy. With a surge of others, he entered an elevator.
He got off at the seventh floor. No one answered when he tapped at the door of the witch’s room. He stood for a moment and listened, fearing that Barnes had taken his tall brunette there. No sound came through the thin panels, and there was no answer when he tapped again, positioning himself before the peep-hole.
The room had not been occupied since he had searched it with the witch that morning. The big bed where she had slept was still smoothly covered by its quilted spread. The drapes he had opened then had been drawn again—that was new. A chaise had replaced the other bed.
He switched on all the lights and checked the bottom of the table, the television, and all the lamps again, then slipped out of his trenchcoat and jacket and threw them on the bed. The room seemed warm. He had tossed the envelope onto the table when he came; now he picked it up, peering at it through his thick glasses, fingering it, pushing back his hat.
I should have asked that bellboy questions, he thought. That’s what comes of stopping at the Irishman’s to drink with her—I’m a little bombed myself. He must have had a good laugh out of me. Man’s writing, only one sheet inside.
He tore open the envelope.
Jim—Need you on a case. This is a tough one, but the sky’s the limit. $200/day & exp., could be a long one if you set yourself up right with the client. Call me PDQ. I’m in 877.
Cliff
Stubb smiled to himself, picked up the telephone and dialed. A moment later he could hear it ringing in the room directly overhead.
“Room eight seventy-seven.”
“It’s Stubb, Cliff.”
“Jim! This is great. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get hola of you.”
“How did you know I was in the hotel?”
“I didn’t, not for sure, but I’ve been asking around for you, and Iran into Bill Kramer. You remember Bill? He’s the security chief here now.”
“Big guy, crooked nose.”
“Hell, Jim, everybody’s big to you. My height, maybe two hundred pounds.”
“So you ran into him. Your wife throw you out of the house or something?”
“Would I stay here? Listen, Jim, you’re getting pretty damned independent. The last time you called me you were begging for work.”
“I’m not begging any more. I’ve got something.”
“You called me just for old times’ sake?”
“Right.”
“Jim, you’re not licensed.”
“I didn’t say I had a client. Just a little job for an old friend. I told you. How about finishing the story? You ran into Bill Kramer.”
“I said, have you seen Jim, and he said, yeah in the coffee shop this morning with another guy and two gals—”
“He said ‘
gals’?”
“All right, so Bill’s not a very bright guy. If he was he’d be working for me. Yep, he said gals. You and two women and another guy in the coffee shop. He said after that he checked to see if you were registered and you weren’t, but he figured maybe you were shacking it with one of the women.”
“He’s running a riding academy now, huh?”
“Jim, every place’s a riding academy now. Nobody gives a shit unless you rip the sheets or wake up the couple in the next room. Where are you?”
“In the hotel.”
“Hell, I know you’re in the God-damned hotel, you just told me. What’s your room number?”
“That’s confidential, Cliff. You know how it is.”
“By God, you’re getting cocky. This afternoon you were begging me for a job.”
“Yeah, and you wouldn’t give me one.”
Stubb hung up. Leaving the spindly chair beside the telephone stand, he kicked off his shoes, threw himself into a larger, more comfortable chair, and put his feet on the bed. Smoothing the note, he reread it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. A smile crossed his waxy face. He stretched, went into the bathroom and relieved himself, washed his hands, then sat down at the telephone again and dialed.
“Front desk? My name’s Jim Stubb. Am I being paged?”
“Yes, sir.” The clerk paused. “We’ve been having a little disturbance here, but I believe you are.”
“What’s the message?”
“I don’t know, sir. You can find out by calling the bell captain, sir. One nine.”
“I can find out from you too—” Stubb began, but the clerk had hung up. Fuming, Stubb banged down the handset, picked it up again, pressed one nine, and identified himself.
“The message is call eight, seven, seven, sir.”
“I thought it was. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time with this Mickey Mouse.” Stubb cradled the handset a second time and grinned, then pressed the number.
“Hello? Eight seventy-seven.”
“It’s me again, Cliff. You’ve got the kid hollering for me, and I’m getting sick of tipping him.”