Dead of Night

by Stewart Sterling

  “Marge—Mrs. Lanerd—was here. Over there, I mean.” She pointed toward the MM suite. “This afternoon. She raised hell. Told off our Mystery Miss, but good. You could hear ’em clear out in the corridor.”

  “You could?” Then it hadn’t been her first time with her ear glued to the panel, a few minutes ago. “What’d you hear?”

  “Names. Threats.” Suddenly the secretary seemed miserable. “You can’t blame Marge. Dow’s always—” apparently she realized for the first time she’d been using her employer’s first name, was confused for a moment, “getting tangled up with skirts—and having trouble getting untangled.”

  “Way it goes. What time was this?”

  “Around five. Mister Lanerd wasn’t here then.”

  “He know his wife came to the hotel?”

  “I don’t think so. Marge didn’t wait for him. Or leave any message. She didn’t know I was here, either.”

  “The threats, now. They what you meant by Miss Millett’s having another reason for running away after the show?”

  There was a knock on the living-room door. She hurried out of the bedroom.

  I called, “Come in.”

  A tall, wedge-shouldered, ruddy-faced individual in full tails and white tie smiled affably at me, at Miss Moore.

  “We’re waiting for our principal speaker—”

  The secretary stepped in. “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, Mister Yaker. Mister Vine, Mister Yaker.” She made the introduction with nice timing that didn’t allow for either of us to learn anything except the other’s name. “But I’m afraid Mister Lanerd won’t be able to make the banquet.”

  “Oh, now!” The Yaker person smoothed back short, sandy crew-cut hair which needed no smoothing; he screwed up his pleasant, weather-reddened features into a grimace of disappointment. “I’ve been holding those hundred and fifty men to their chairs on the strength of Mister Lanerd being able to—”

  “He’s so distressed about it.” Ruth Moore made him feel she was distressed, too. “He asked me to have you extend his personal apologies to everyone at the dinner and to say that if he is asked again he will certainly be delighted to make up for the—”

  I left her soothing him. The phone was burring. When I picked it up and said, “Hello,” the earpiece replied:

  “How y’ doin’, lovey-duck?” An oddly agreeable, throaty, feminine drawl.

  “Just fine.” If she didn’t recognize it wasn’t Lanerd on the line, she couldn’t know him very well.

  “This is Edie, honey-pie.”

  “Good ole Edie,” I said brightly. “What’s th’ good word?”

  “You know what the good word is, shugie.” The throaty voice giggled. “Cash is th’ bes’ word there is.”

  “Might have something there, Edie.”

  “I’ll have it when you give it to me. That little matter’s been taken care of. When do we talk payment?”

  “Any time at all.” I knew of only one piece of recent business concerning Dow Lanerd that a canary like this might be interested in, but, of course, I didn’t know all of Lanerd’s current doings. By any means. Ruth Moore was still pouring syrup on the disappointed Crew Cut. “Come on up.”

  “No, ’deed. You come on down here. I want to get this deal closed right hasty.”

  “Where you now?”

  “High in the saddle, down here at the Steeplechase. C’mon down an’ take a hurdle with me.”

  “Be along in a minute.”

  “Don’t make me wait, sugar-pie.” She hung up. Before I did, Ruth Moore was hanging on my arm. Trying to get the phone away from me.

  Chapter Nine: PLUSHY COUPLE

  “IT’S MY JOB TO HANDLE HIS PHONE CALLS.” Ruth Moore was disturbed. “Who was that?”

  “Not your boss. Or his wife.”

  “Tildy?” The cat-green showed in her eyes.

  “No.” Seemed to me, no matter how private a secretary she was, there’d be no need for her to know about a call like that. “Why’d Crew Cut have to call in person? Couldn’t he have phoned?”

  “Roy Yaker?” She gestured, annoyed. “That false alarm! He’s staying here—floor below, I think. He said he had telephoned from the Crystal Room but there was no answer. He thought Mister Lanerd might have been—taking a shower—so he came on up here.”

  I wondered, out loud, who Yaker was.

  “Secretary of this new association; he’s only using Mister Lanerd as bait to get members to his dinner. I told him the boss was unavoidably detained—crucial conference.”

  She dismissed Yaker with a second gesture. “Was that call for Mister Lanerd?”

  “For me,” I lied. “Let’s get back to Mrs. Lanerd. You’re not suggesting she murdered this Roffis in order to get in to see the Tildy gal?”

  “Oh, no! I don’t know how to put it—”

  “Put it straight.”

  “I thought perhaps the guard, after hearing Marge threaten Miss Millett, offered to keep quiet about her and Dow—Mister Lanerd—if he, the guard, I mean, could—” She made a show of being confused.

  “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a picked man from the Prosecutor’s office would try.” I had the feeling she was fumbling around for anything that might distract me from Lanerd. “You ever take tips from strangers?”

  “Not generally.” She was wary.

  “Make an exception.” I patted her arm to show no hard feelings. “A pack of bloodhounds’ll be sniffing all over this floor in a few minutes. If there’s anything here—stuff in the closets or bathroom, you know—anything that might cause Mister Lanerd—or his secretary—hm, embarrassment—be a good thing to see to it, hah?”

  She relaxed enough to crinkle up her eyes. “You’re not my idea of a house dick at all.”

  “That’s the trick. Not to be like one.” I squeezed her arm, went out.

  The corridor was empty. 21MM was quiet.

  With the Prosecutor’s office trying to keep the police in the dark, there were various possibilities. All bad. The Plaza Royale, specifically, the security staff, could easily get in the middle, wind up being booted by both sides.

  Tim Piazolle was at the report desk in my outer office when I got down to 303. I looked over his shoulder as he manhandled the typewriter.

  8:47 p.m. Ordered two debewtants off the mezz: had spotted them dropping cig. ashes on heads of lobby crowd below. Said they knew manager, would have me fired.

  “That does it.” I sighed. “You’re fired.”

  Tim grinned, his homely, raw-hamburg face shiny with sweat. “Fine work for an able-bodied citizen. Shooing schoolgirls off a balcony.”

  “You want excitement? We have a coffin case in the house.”

  That pricked up his ears. I briefed him on the doings up in 21MM, meanwhile flipping through the personnel file for Auguste’s card. “Hacklin and Company will try to pin this on one of our employees. I’d guess Lanerd figures Tildy Millett was the killer. Ruth Moore’s afraid Lanerd did it. She probably imagines the guard caught Mr. Giveaway with his pants down, was knifed because Lanerd feared blackmail. But the secretary did her best to sick me onto Mrs. Lanerd’s trail.”

  “Tildy Millett!” Tim couldn’t think of the others; her name dazzled him. “Holy crys! Saw her ’n the moom-pix, only couple months ago. What a zizzer! A real zizzer. Why, that chick did tricks on skates I couldn’t of done if I’d—”

  “—been on skates. What you know about this, Timothy?” I showed him the card.

  Fessler, Auguste SS No. 624/4019 Plaza Royale No. 688

  Age… 54 Nat. Hungarian (Nat. Cit. 1927)

  Address: 734 E. 82nd St. Phone: LO 6-2118

  Married. No c. Local 901, H&RWs. U.

  Previously Employed:

  Murray Hill Hotel, 1924-8 (Henri)

  Hotel Lafayette, 1928-39 (Gregoire Munck)

  Remarks: Munck says honest and excellent waiter.

  Would not have let him go except for fight with meat chef.

  Investigated by: Sam Kernsr />
  Employed: Jan. 7,1940 Terminated …

  “I dunno.” Tim shook his head. “That was Sam’s report. Sam’s on vacash.”

  “You’re a big help. Ever hear talk about Auguste?” We don’t run one of those back-of-the-house spy setups where each employee is suspicious of every other one, afraid of being reported to the front office. But word does percolate, if a man’s been with the hotel ten years, as Auguste had.

  “Now you mention it,” Tim closed one eye, screwed up that side of his face, “seems I recall hearing about his having’ some mix-up with one of our roast chefs, too. Shindig with a cleaver.”

  “Look into it.” If Auguste was the quarrelsome type, it wouldn’t do to carry the assumption of his innocence too far. “Get Auguste up here. Hold him till I get back. Those Homicide Harris’s like nothing better than to give him the full treatment.” Put a pair of fallen arches like that through the bright-light routine in the back room, the old guy’d be apt to confess more butcheries than Swift and Amour.

  Tim nodded. “Where’ll you be?”

  “Steeplechase Room.”

  “Hahn, hanh, hanh, hanh,” Tim panted, pinching his throat between thumb and forefinger. “Need any help down there?”

  “I can do my own guzzling. Get going.”

  I talked to Mona. She sent Morry up. Br’er Musselman is a mild-mannered lad, built like a golf pro, lean and leathered. Like any pro, he knows his way around. He studied the Gowriss photo. “No.”

  “Show it to and fro.” I told him why.

  “Why wouldn’t they tip us off?” He answered himself. “Because the dopes still think of protection men as derby hats on fat heads.”

  “See what you can do without a derby,” I told him. It was five to nine when I sauntered into our photo-muraled cocktailery. A dozen people at the saddle-leather bar—about normal for during theater time Saturday night. Some were guests I recognized. One couple I didn’t know were sixtyish and gray on top; they were having a high old time, probably an anniversary of some kind. There weren’t any unattached femmes at the bar or at the tables under the illuminated pictures of jockeys being tossed off their nags’ necks or over hedges.

  Mickey came over, smoothing his black lacquered hair, patting the paunch under his starchy jacket. “Yes, sir? What’ll it be, sir?” He was careful not to recognize me until he made sure I didn’t mind.

  “Rum sour, Mickey.” I glanced down the bar at the only person in the place who didn’t seem to fit.

  She was dressed expensively enough; the demure gray dress was a neat contrast to the maroon hat and shoes; the big straw-brim item might have been a Carnegie, Hattie. There were too many diamond and emerald rings on her fingers.

  Thing that struck me most about this girl was the way she tucked her feet under the stool. Both toes hooked over and behind the rungs, crossed over each other. That plebeian grip isn’t seen much in our exclusery; more often in the dog-wagon set, where a gal gets used to catching the pillar of a counter stool with her toes.

  The man with her fitted into our horsey decor all right. He was about thirty-five, maybe younger. Deep lines slashing down at sharp angles from his long thin nose to the corners of his wide, humorous mouth, plus hollows under his eyes, made it hard to guess him closer. He had a deeply cleft chin; he was so homely he was attractive. He was balding a bit in front; what there was of his hair was rusty-iron, gray and reddish-orange mixed.

  His double-breasted gabardine was de rigueur; his gray suede shoes spoke of affluence; the single ring he wore was a star sapphire such as many racing men go for in a big way.

  He seemed to be paying more attention to his drink than to his companion. But he had her giggling at what he was saying; I couldn’t hear him.

  “Know the glitter-girl, Mickey?” I kept my voice low.

  “New to me, Mister V.” He kept his voice low.

  “Gentleman call her by name?”

  “Might have.”

  “Edie, mayhap?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s her.”

  “Know the man?”

  “Sure. Swell joe. One of the best. Name of Keith Walch. In show biz. Tildy Millett’s manager.”

  I thought the Edie person caught Mickey’s last remark, she turned, glanced up the bar in my direction. Then she nudged her companion, murmured something to him.

  He looked my way, too, gave me a cool and casual onceover.

  I assumed a look which denied the interest I had in his bar partner. Especially in the pair of gloves stuck in her handbag. Cotton gloves. Dark maroon.

  The fingers were tucked in the pocket of the bag where they couldn’t be seen.

  Chapter Ten: SPILLED HANDBAG

  RULE A IN THE MANUAL: Make no snap judgments. No Plaza Royale employee ever mistakes a United Nations delegate for a porter out of uniform. Though guests do, sometimes.

  So I wanted to be sure I had this Edie character right before I did anything about her. She looked like a Park Avenue edition of Diamond Lil. She sounded like one of those babes who think Longchamps is French for lamb chops. But she might have been the big winner in that Stack O’ Jack contest, for all I knew.

  I finished my rum sour, hunted up Zingy, told him what I wanted.

  When I went back to the Steeplechase Bar, there was a vacant stool but one removed from Edie. I appropriated it, ordered, listened.

  She was talking about someone Walch evidently knew.

  “Why, bless y’ pore ole gin-soaked gizzard, she used to work in the line out on the Coast. She’s a fair terper. An’ photogenic as Grable. But nobody could say she’s pretty.”

  Walch rattled ice in his highball glass. “Lanerd said so.”

  “That’s what always threw me, sweetie. Never could figure how she hawgtied him. Sucker could have his pick of the flock.” She motioned to Mickey for a refill. “She must have something.”

  Walch inspected her sardonically. “Nothing you haven’t got.”

  “Should hope not.” Edie raised her tone on the last word.

  “Only she doesn’t pass it around like canapés at a cocktail party.”

  She thought that very comical.

  The page boy came along. “Mista Walch—Mista Walch—”

  Walch called, “Boy.”

  The page boy turned. “Mister K. Walch? Long-distance for you, sir.”

  “Sure it’s for me? Walch with a c?” The manager was puzzled. “Where’s it from?”

  “Operator didn’t say, sir. Out at the public booths, sir. Ask for Operator Nine. Thank you, sir.” He pocketed his two bits, vanished.

  Walch said, “Might be Nature’s gift to the shemale sex. Maybe he’s passed up the idea of a party, gone home.” He got off his stool.

  Edie wriggled in aggravation. “I’m one party he better not pass up.”

  When Walch had gone, I gave her the look. “Hi.”

  “Hello.” No encouragement.

  I moved over one stool. “Remember me, Edie?”

  “No.” She was estimating what my suit had cost, how much I’d paid for the Countess Mara tie, so on. I must have come through her coin-biting test all right, for she melted enough to add, “I guess you’ve lost a little weight since I saw you, maybe.”

  “What a memory! Only a quarter of an hour ago you were honey-pieing me all over the place!”

  She twittered her eyelashes. “Some mistake, lovey-dove.” She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder. “My friend’ll be back in a minute—”

  “No mistake. On my part. But about that arrangement with Mister Lanerd—” I shook my head. “That’s sour.”

  That touched her where she was sensitive. “I don’t take any crap from a lousy errand boy! If Dow thinks he can give my girls the brush like that, he’ll find out it’s damn costive to cancel on Edie Eberlein!” She tossed her head so the big hat brim jiggled indignantly, flipped open her handbag, fished around for a compact. “I’ve gone to all that expense—he needn’t think he’s going to get off for free.”

  �
��He wouldn’t let you hold the bag on that.” I couldn’t see any more of the gloves, but my preliminary size-up seemed to have hit it pretty close. Obviously she was one of those conventioneer madams who arranged for the cute little well-groomeds who were occasionally sneaked into better hostelries under the guise of “entertainers” for tired tycoots.

  Having verified my guess that her cash deal was simply payment in advance for the “entertainers,” the routine would have been a flat “no dice.” But there was a key in her handbag. A Plaza Royale suite key.

  She wouldn’t be registered. None of those alleged “agents” who furnish con girls ever check in; a group of those babes in a suite would be as noticeable as a Swede at a Senegambian wedding. So someone had given her the key. I couldn’t read the number on the square brass tag we use for double-letter duplexes, but I thought about the key Roffis would have had on him.

  When Lanerd attempted to search the dead man’s pockets, I’d stopped him with that crack about police being touchy if anyone handled a cadaver. But since I’d had to unlock that closet the guard’s body was found in, I knew then that the key wouldn’t be on Roffis—unless it had been Tildy Millett who’d murdered him. Anyone else would have had to take the key from the corpse’s clothes, lock the door, and take the key away.

  Edie snapped her bag shut. “I don’t want a lot of git-gat-giddle from you, errand boy. All I want is somebody to sing that old Yale song: ‘Moola, moola… moola, moola…”

  “Mickey,” I called. “Repeat the prescription.”

  “Right with you, Mister Vine.” He didn’t stop the rumba of the shaker.

  “On the line,” Edie emphasized. “But quick.”

  Walch returned, forehead furrowed, eyes resentful. “Nobody wanted me.” He stared as if I was something oozing out of a crack in the sidewalk. “I don’t understand—”

  “I don’t, either,” Edie snapped. “This wisehead claims Dow isn’t interested in—my arrangements.”

  “Is that right?” Walch didn’t seem disturbed at the news. “How would you know, buster?”

  Mickey brought two drinks. I reached for one, to slide it over to Edie.

  “Thanks, Mickey.” I grinned across at him.