A Key to the Suite

Nine

As soon as Dave Daniels came sagging back down out of the wildness, back to awareness of himself, back to the ability to identify this time, this place and this woman beneath him, he pushed himself away from her and stood up in the dark room, his heart still hammering, his breathing still ragged.

He squatted and fumbled at his discarded clothing and found his cigarettes and lighter. He lit a cigarette and walked to the terrace door, slid it open and stepped out onto the tiny triangular terrace. There was a slight breeze in the humid night, and it felt more pleasant against his sweaty flesh than had the air conditioning in the room behind him, where the woman lay.

He perched one hip on the rough texture of the concrete wall and, as the heart beat ever less rapidly, he looked at another angle of the hotel, at the few rooms where he could see in, where people moved and talked in their little bright boxes. It made him feel remote, wise and powerful to be naked and unseen in the darkness and look at people who could not know he was there. Below him were the areas of brightness and shadow, tinted spots on the palm trunks, twisted shadows of tropical plantings, the bright outlines of the lighted pools. He heard the merged sounds of many kinds of music and the gutturals of the sea and the constant soft alto of city traffic, pierced by a yap of car horn, a far siren, a woman’s bright tipsy laugh from the shadows far below him.

He knew he was still a little bit drunk, but not very much, because the prolonged strenuous taking of the woman had boiled it out of his blood. He felt tired, calm, wise and agreeably wicked. The bitch had been a disappointment. After fighting him so explosively, she had been stubbornly inert, but he had built himself to such a peak of wanting her that her reactions were not truly important.

Daniels scores again, he thought. Daniels never misses. Sometimes it is damned close to what they call rape, but they usually find out it’s exactly what they want. Twice it didn’t work out just right and it was expensive to settle it quietly. But not with this one. Not with a girl on call.

He snapped his cigarette out into the night and went back into the room, half expecting her to have gone into the bathroom, but she was as he had left her, tumbled and spread diagonally across the foot of the bed she had been in when he had come into the room, her head over the edge. He could just make her out in the small light that filtered into the room.

He stood near the foot of the bed and said, “You’re not that worn out, cutie.”

He reached down to touch her in a hearty, familiar, casual way, put his hand against flesh, snatched it away, backed slowly until his shoulders touched the wall. He stood there breathing through jaws held wide.

After a long time he found the energy to go draw the draperies and turn a single floor lamp on and look at her. “But I didn’t hit you that hard!” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have got loose and run for the door. You shouldn’t have done that, damn you!”

He wanted a drink desperately, and at the same time was glad there was no liquor in the room, because he knew he was going to have to start thinking very soon, thinking with great care and caution. Because now, unless he was very careful, everything could go whirling down the drain. He wanted to cover the body so he could stop looking at it, but he knew he should take no meaningless action. It was like being in a pit with a poisonous snake. If you moved perfectly, you were home free. If you did the smallest thing wrong, you were dead.

He went into the bathroom, turned on the cold white blaze of fluorescence, filled the basin with cold water and sloshed his face and head, snorting and snuffling. As he dried himself, he remembered the night bolt on the room door and fixed it.

After making certain there was no gap in the closure of the draperies, he turned on every light in the room. He paced back and forth, glancing at the body, accustoming himself to it, because he knew he would have to touch it sooner or later. He hummed to himself. He beat his fist into his palm. He cheered himself by thinking, I have been in a hundred jams. I have gotten out of every one. I can get out of this one.

He sat on the other bed, facing her, and her upside-down face was close enough to touch, her eyes partially open. He got up quickly and checked the room for her possessions, found clothes, purse, swimsuit, bathing cap.

The big limiting factor was how much Floyd Hubbard might remember. There was too good a chance he would remember giving the room key to Daniels. That seemed to eliminate the chance of leaving her just as she was, or dressing her and dumping her over the edge of the terrace railing.

He hit himself over the ear with his clenched fist, shook his head violently, and went over it again. Any look of murder would result in a more careful investigation than he could stand. There was a subtle, sickening exaggeration to the angle of her head. The backhand blow had snapped her neck just before he had caught her up and tumbled her back onto the foot of the bed. There was a faint blue bruise on the delicate line of her jaw.

He looked at his upper arm, near his shoulder, at the three deep parallel gouges her nails had made as she had gotten away from him the second time. They could check the meat and blood under her nails, type it.

The plan was vague at first, but as he went over it in his mind it became ever more specific. The single crucial factor was the night bolt and chain. He turned all the lights off and went out onto the terrace again. The vertical sawtooth construction made it impossible to reach the terraces to the right or the left. When he was certain he was not being watched by anyone, he stepped over the railing, stood on a narrow edge of concrete, crouched and, holding onto the railing, looked down onto the terrace directly below. The room was dark. It would be a simple matter to lower himself, hang from the edge on which he stood, swing in and drop onto the terrace below. He had always been a good athlete. He trusted his body to perform as he wanted it to, without fear or hesitation. It was unlikely that the terrace door below would be locked on the inside. It could be forced if it was. And if the room was empty, or if people were asleep there, in either case he would go quickly and quietly through the room and out into the seventh floor corridor.

He went back into 847 and turned the lights back on. He wiped his hands on his thighs several times before he could force himself to touch the small body, so eerily still, so oddly flattened. Once he had begun, he worked steadily and quietly.

He did not know how long it took. When it was done, he tried to look at the scene the way a policeman might. They would have had to use nippers on the night chain. They would find both beds neatly made, her clothing laid out on one of them. They would find one lamp on in the bedroom, and the room key on the desk. They would hear the sound of the shower, and when they opened the bathroom door they would find her sprawled halfway out of the shower, the glass shower door open. She would have her swim cap on, and she would be belly down across the raised sill of the shower stall, the damp cake of soap inches from her outstretched hand. (And they would not guess how he had gagged as he had cleaned the nails of that outstretched hand.)

Because they would have to cut the chain to get in, they would not be suspicious. And he knew he could not take the risk of leaving by way of the room door. He had not been seen entering, he knew.

He dressed quickly, put one shoe in each side pocket of his jacket, took a long, slow look around, then went through the orange-yellow draperies and out onto the terrace and eased the glass door shut behind him. He was glad to see that very little light came through the draperies — not enough to silhouette him in any dangerous fashion.

Once again he looked for a long time in all possible directions. He could not see down into the shadows of the pool area. Somebody could be down there, staring up at the sky. It was a risk he would have to take, a minor one compared to all the others.

When he was quite ready, he rehearsed in his mind the moves he would make. He straddled the railing, found the small edge with his stocking foot, swung the other leg over and crouched as before. The terrace wall was pierced with ornamental holes which provided safe, sturdy hand-holds. When his hands were secure, fingers locked on the inner edge of two of the lower holes, he lowered himself carefully until he was extended at full length, his legs dangling. It brought his eyes below the level of the cantilevered slab which formed the deck of his own terrace, the one he was leaving. The railing of the terrace below was about a foot below his toes. He decided that rather than risk the noise of swinging in and dropping, he would be able to reach the railing with his toes if he took a second hand-hold on the narrow edge on which he had previously braced his feet. He brought his left hand down first, clamping his fingertips on the edge, then slowly transferred his weight to his left arm. The strain on his fingertips of his left hand was great, but he knew he could endure it for the small part of a second it would take to slide his right hand down to the same small edge, and then his toes would reach the lower railing.

In the instant he let go with his right hand, he felt the small edge crumbling under the fingers of his left hand, powdering away. He spasmed his body inward, dropped the few remaining inches and landed on the railing, in precarious balance for one moment of triumph and gladness, and then he was tilting back, flailing his arms, barking the skin off his knuckles on the cement overhead. As he knew he was going, he tried to squat and catch the edge of the railing he was on, but all he was able to do was flick his fingertips against the outer edge of it. He went down, and all the lights were going around him in a huge slow wheeling. He filled his lungs with the moist air that was rushing by his face and gave a great despairing roar which ended when the small of his back smashed the ornamental iron fence which separated the pool area from one of the service areas. A woman began a metronomic screaming, becoming perceptibly more hoarse with each earnest effort.

Alan Amory, the Public Relations Director of the Sultana Hotel, walked behind the bar of the Hideaway Club to make a drink for fat Captain Brewhane of Homicide, the last arrival. It was after midnight. All lights were on in the office suite, all draperies closed. Amory had the feeling it was going rather well, better than he had expected at first. There was a special protocol about these matters whenever a major hotel was involved, particularly in a resort area. The problems were delicate. You had to be particularly careful about the way things were said. Any hint of challenge had to be avoided at all costs.

One small victory had been gained already. He had stalled the members of the working press beyond the final moment for any possible inclusion in the morning papers. So, unless it turned out truly gaudy, there would be a patina of staleness which would limit coverage in the afternoon papers tomorrow.

He carried the drink back toward the quiet mumbling of male conversations at the big table in the rear of the small club room. When he put the drink in front of Brewhane, they all looked up at him. They wore the mild little smiles of poker players: Brewhane, Detective Lieutenant Al Farrier, Rick DiLarra — the convention director for the Sultana, Detective-Sergeant Milton Manning, Rice Emper, legal counsel for the hotel and Peter Lipe, an assistant state’s attorney.

Amory said, “If you gentlemen will excuse me a moment, the people in my office could be getting impatient. I don’t want them leaving. The reporters are camped out in the shrubbery.”

“Who have you got?” Brewhane demanded.

“A Mr. Frick. He’s the one who...”

“Friend of mine,” Al Farrier interrupted. “Bill, he’s the one called me early about helping him out with the drunk who fell into the courtyard.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have come around earlier,” Brewhane said.

“When I got here at ten we couldn’t find him. Fred Frick and I looked every place for the guy.”

“Who else?” Brewhane asked.

“A Mr. Mulaney, the dead man’s employer. Mr. Hubbard, who has the room where the woman’s body was found. And a Mrs. Hugh Constanto, a... friend of Mr. Hubbard.”

“Go tell them I want them to stay put, and come right back, Amory,” Brewhane directed.

Amory went to his office. Frick and Mulaney sat on a leather couch talking in low tones. Hubbard sat on a straight chair, leaning on his knees, his head lowered. Honey Constanto sat in a deep leather chair, looking half asleep.

“You’ll have to stay around a little while longer,” Amory said. “I’m sorry.”

Frick said, “Sure.” Mulaney nodded. The other two gave no word or gesture.

Amory went back to the club room and joined the group at the table. He spoke before anyone could speak to him, taking that chance to make a point in a rather oblique way. “Thank God we were able to get Daniels’ body out as quietly as we did. I don’t think there’s fifteen guests in the hotel who have any inkling anything like that happened. The girl was less of a problem, of course. We’ve had deaths in rooms before. We have a standard operating procedure for that, and we got the usual fine cooperation from the medical examiner, from the ambulance people and from your men, Captain.”

Brewhane said, impatiently, “Let’s recap this thing and find out which way we’re going. Catch me up if I’m wrong on the broad picture, Al. You were here hunting for that guy when he squashed himself in the courtyard. Milt, here, was with you. Both of you off duty, doing a favor for a friend. So while the body was being hustled away so it could be examined down at the police morgue, you started trying to find out where it fell from. In that process, you came across that room with the door chained and no answer. And that’s where you found the body of the Barlund woman.”

Rice Emper interrupted smoothly, saying, “But I think we should be careful not to jump to the conclusion that Daniels fell or jumped from the terrace of 847. There were convention parties going on in at least a dozen rooms on the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth floors overlooking the area where Daniels landed. We know he was so recklessly drunk that Mr. Frick asked his old friend here, Al Farrier, to come and help out, for Daniels’ own good. All of those rooms have terraces. He could have gone out on any one of them, feeling sick and dizzy...”

The young assistant state’s attorney, Peter Lipe, cleared his throat and said, “I suppose 847 could be checked carefully for... for any clue that that’s where Daniels was. Fingerprints or something like that.”

Brewhane glared at him. “When and if you get a file on this, Lipe, then you complain if you don’t like it. But don’t tell me how to make it up.”

“But if people were looking for Daniels and couldn’t find him...”

Brewhane leaned back in his chair, ignoring Lipe. With his eyes half shut he said, “I suppose if we didn’t have too much to do, and we weren’t short of men and time, we could make a hell of a lot of fuss about this. We know Daniels was in 847 sometime during the evening.... Correction — we know he could have been in 847, because somebody told you, Al, they had given him the key.”

“Hubbard told me about ten times. He was shook,” Al said.

“But,” Brewhane continued, “we could rush around trying to add up two and two and get nine and create a hell of a lot of stir and confusion and find out in the end we just didn’t have enough to go on, and all we would succeed in doing is hurting a lot of people for no good reason. We could jump too fast at little things like Daniels not wearing his shoes, and the fresh gouges on his shoulder, and the woman’s shower cap being on backwards, and come up with some cute theory about Daniels killing her and making it look like a shower-bath accident, and then trying to leave by way of the terrace and slipping.” He turned to give Amory a prolonged, sleepy stare. “And even though we might get no place at all checking all that out, Amory, we might have to go through the motions if somebody agitates us to keep looking.”

Amory glanced sidelong at Emper, and knew this was the crucial moment. He tried to keep his tension hidden. “Mr. Daniels was a Chicago sales executive, Captain. All his friends were disturbed about his heavy drinking. Mr. Mulaney told me that Mrs. Daniels was also very upset about it. By the way, Mr. Mulaney phoned her from my office long distance and broke the terrible news to her. He said she seemed stunned, but at the same time she acted as if she’d expected something like this to happen. And certainly Mr. Daniels’ employers are not going to want to pursue this any further. I’m sure the company would be most happy to have it all handled as quietly as possible. Mr. Frick suddenly remembered Daniels complaining about feeling dizzy and nauseated earlier in the evening. I’ve always felt those terrace railings were a little too low, actually.”

Brewhane nodded. “But the woman is local. That could be something else again, couldn’t it?”

Amory spoke slowly, selecting his wording with extreme care. “I took the liberty of helping Lieutenant Farrier check her out, Captain. She was working on a freelance magazine assignment. She was a divorcée, living alone.”

“Next of kin?”

“I took the liberty of making a phone call, with Lt. Farrier’s permission. I called a woman I had reason to believe might know her. A Mrs. Alma Bender.”

The Captain’s eyes widened. “Well, well, well,” he said softly.

“Mrs. Bender says that as far as she knows there’s no next of kin close enough to have any particular interest in the Barlund woman, dead or alive. Mrs. Bender says that the Barlund woman was only a casual acquaintance, but that she would be willing to... take over the arrangements for burial and so forth, provided it’s just a routine case of accidental death. Because she was only an acquaintance, Mrs. Bender doesn’t feel that she should get involved in anything which might get too much attention in the papers. She might not even be able to identify the body, if that’s the case. She’s waiting to hear.”

Brewhane looked at Alan Amory with a small gleam of humor. “Because of this relationship with Alma Bender, which you just happen to know about, Amory, would you care to make any guess about motive — if we got all carried away?”

Amory swallowed. “I don’t know what to say. It wouldn’t be robbery. Mr. Daniels was a successful man. And it could hardly be a rape murder, could it?”

Detective Farrier said, “The thing is, Bill, nobody is going to push.”

Peter Lipe spoke in a young, petulant voice. “It’s all very neat, isn’t it? You don’t even want to find out what actually happened, Captain, do you? Maybe somebody on the newspapers will be a little more anxious to add your two and two and see what...”

“We can go into it very thoroughly, young man,” Captain Brewhane said.

Amory had the horrid feeling that Lipe had spoiled it all. Rice Emper smiled and said, “You seem to be accusing Captain Brewhane of incompetence, Mr. Lipe. There’s a formal procedure you can follow, you know. Before you embark on anything so... so very dangerous, I suggest you take it up with your superior, John Swazey. I have every confidence he will give you sound advice. He is one of my oldest and closest friends.”

“All I meant was...”

“Nobody on any newspaper is going to get eager,” Amory said. “I kid you not. They know it wouldn’t get into print. Big hotels do too much advertising, Mr. Lipe. We do a hell of a lot more local advertising than makes sense — except in situations like this.”

“In a big hotel like this one,” Sergeant Milton Manning said in a heavy self-conscious voice, “the way I see it, you got two accidental deaths in one night, right? So it’s only natural to try to tie them up in one package, and there’s maybe twenty ways you could try to do it, but where the hell would you be even if it worked? Who gets jailed? Daniels has kids and a wife. Hubbard has got a wife and kids. He’s in the clear because he was sacked up with the blonde broad while whatever was going on was going on, but he would have to be brought into it on account of the key. So you end up with a hell of a lot of fuss and heartbreak over one dead flooze. That’s the way I see it. And, like the Captain said, maybe after all the fireworks, we can’t get any place anyway, after filling up the newspapers all over the country.”

Rick DiLarra cleared his throat and said uncertainly, “I may have made a terrible mistake. I really didn’t know there was any chance of it turning into some kind of an investigation. You see, I’ve had Mr. Hubbard’s things moved to a different room, and I had the woman’s things packed and sent down to the police morgue, and I told the housekeeper on eight to get some maids and clean up 847. I... I suppose they’re done by now.”

Amory managed to keep his sigh from being audible. He knew it was over. He knew by the expression on Captain Brewhane’s face. The Captain stood up and said, “We don’t have to go any further with this. I see no connection between the two accidental deaths. Amory, let’s go make a verbal statement to those reporters out there. Al, you go talk to your friend Frick and the others, tell them they’re free to go and put the fear of God into them about giving any interviews. Thanks for the drink and the cooperation, gentlemen.”

Hubbard looked up when Al Farrier walked into the office. Farrier was a burly man with small delicate features. He paused just inside the door and relighted a cigar and grinned at them.

“What’s the word, Al?” Fred Frick asked eagerly.

“Everything is all settled down nice. We got an accidental on both of them, and with the report I’ll write, the confirmation is automatic.”

“I gave him the key,” Hubbard said in a hopeless voice.

“So what? So maybe he used it. Maybe he didn’t. The thing is, she borrowed your room to get cleaned up, right? Twenty thousand people a year fall and kill themselves in bathrooms. It isn’t an unusual thing. And it’s all figured out that he couldn’t have landed where he did if he came off the terrace of 847.”

“What?” Hubbard asked. “What was that?”

“You don’t come into it in any way, Mister,” Farrier said.

“But I...”

“Shut up,” the blonde girl said. “Leave it alone. Honest to God, Floyd, for hours and hours you’ve been trying to put your ass in a sling. You want trouble? I sure don’t. I don’t want any part of anything. I want to go home. So kindly keep your fat mouth shut.”

“That’s a smart girl talking,” Fred said. “We all should leave it just the way it is. Right, Jesse?”

“Absolutely,” Jesse Mulaney said.

“Now all of you get one thing squared away,” Farrier said. “And this includes you, Fred. Anybody asks questions about this, you three men have been questioned on account of being with the same company as Daniels. Beyond that, you know nothing.”

“So what am I doing here?” the girl demanded. “I was with Floyd, that’s all. And I won’t make a mistake like that again in a hurry.” She stood up, gave a hitch to her pink dress and said, “I’m walking right out of here right now.”

“Go ahead, darling,” Farrier said.

She looked at him blankly. “Huh?”

“Goodnight and good luck.”

She hesitated one more moment and then walked out.

When they went out into the larger office, DiLarra was there, waiting for Hubbard. They went together to the main desk. DiLarra apologized for any inconvenience, told him his things had been moved to a new room, and gave him a key to 609, in the south wing.

Floyd Hubbard went to his new room. It was one-fifteen in the morning. His possessions were in good order. He had a headache. His eyes felt sandy, and his mouth tasted vile. He sat on the bed. He felt too dispirited to make the first effort toward undressing and going to bed.

After a long time there was a knock on the door. He let Jesse Mulaney in. Jesse looked big and ancient and dog tired.

“We better go over this some,” Jesse said.

“Sit down.”

Jessie sat in the armchair. Hubbard sat on the bed, facing him. They did not look directly at each other, except in fleeting glances, and never at the same instant.

“I talked to Fred,” Jesse said. “And Cass Beatty and Connie. It won’t look good to keep on being jolly for the two days left. I gave orders to close the suite. We’ll keep the exhibit going, without the twins. Dave was a pretty good boy. It wouldn’t look right to keep on with it, not this year. We’ll go to New York tomorrow, and I’ll go to the funeral in Chicago.”

“Do you want me to tell you it’s a good plan?”

“I just thought you’d like to know how things are.”

“It would be nice to find out how things are. I wish I could find out.”

Jesse stirred in the chair, recrossed his legs. “I can understand how this hit you hard, Floyd boy. I guess you got pretty close to that pretty little girl in a short time. Hard to imagine her dead all of a sudden.”

Hubbard looked listlessly at the older man, feeling no animosity. “She told me you and Fred hired her to make a damn fool of me. It would have worked, Jesse, up to a point. I mean, she would have pulled something obvious enough in some place where enough people would have seen it. But it wouldn’t have made any difference in the recommendation I’ll make on you.”

He watched Mulaney, expecting protestations of innocence. Mulaney sighed and loosened the knot of his vivid tie and said, “It was a lousy idea, I guess.”

“It certainly was.”

“When things start to go wrong, I guess your ideas get worse and worse. Funny she told you, though.”

“She wasn’t well. She wasn’t reliable.”

“I’m not trying to duck it, Floyd boy, but it was Fred’s idea to start with. And ever since I told him to go ahead with it, I’ve felt ashamed. But I wasn’t going to call it off. I have to tell you that. I fired Fred tonight. He’s always been like a part of me walking around, the part I don’t like very much. That’s why I’ve been nicer to him all these years than I would have been — if I couldn’t see part of me in him. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“He cried like a little kid. He said it wouldn’t save my job for me, by firing him. I said I didn’t mean for it to. I said I wanted to fire him before they take away my authority to fire anybody. I told him I wanted that chance. But I guess I was punishing myself.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Connie told me what you said about me. You didn’t have to say that to her. You could have said it to me.”

“I’m ashamed I said it to her, Jesse. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you told her anything she didn’t know. But I think she knows some things you don’t know. They aren’t the kind of things that you’d look for in a sales manager, but I have the idea they’re worth something.”

Hubbard stared down at the floor and said, “Did we kill her, Jesse? Did we kill Cory? You and me and Fred Frick?”

“She fell while she was taking a shower.”

“Daniels was after her.”

“And he beat it out of Fred, what the actual deal was. Funny how happy Connie was about me firing Fred. I can’t get it out of my mind. I knew she didn’t like him very much, but I didn’t know she felt that way.”

“Jesse, I keep wondering what would have happened if I’d refused to tell Daniels anything about Cory.”

“I guess he would have knocked you down, taken your room key and gone looking to see if she was in your room.”

“That’s the salesman’s knack, isn’t it? You tell people what they want most to hear.”

“You know what she was, boy. So she took Dave on and sent him on his way and then took a shower. What’s one more guy to one of those girls?”

“You’re a great salesman, Jesse.”

Jesse leaned forward. “One idea I wish I could sell you. But now you’ve got more reason than ever to throw me out. You’ve got a good personal reason now. I could stay out of the way for two years. I mean just hold the job and not get in anybody’s way. I’d even draw no pay, but nobody would have to know that. Just to keep the name, boy, until my time is up.”

“Isn’t there any threat to go with it?”

Jesse shrugged. “There’ll be rumors. I can’t stop them. Fred found you in the sack with one of the twins from our exhibit. You and Daniels were squabbling over a little whore before he fell off the hotel. You were walking around pretty tight tonight. A lot of people saw that.”

“You can’t stop them, but you could build them up a little.”

“I didn’t say that, now did I?”

Hubbard sat quietly and felt as if a hollow place in the middle of his chest was slowly filling up with molten metal, solidifying, turning at last to something so rigid and enduring it would last him all his life and serve him well. It would be there whenever he needed it. Jan would not have to know it was there. She needed no knowledge of the implacable, the merciless.

He stood up and said quietly, “What makes you think rumors like that could hurt me, you silly son of a bitch? You know how the rumors will level out. They’ll know all over the industry you tried to job me and got out-maneuvered. And they’ll have the idea I got to have my cake and eat it too. She was very good, Jesse. Very very good. Thanks for picking up the tab. The other one was nice too. I’m going to phone John Camplin. You can stay and listen, or you can leave now. It doesn’t matter to me what you do.”

When Mulaney did not move, he went around the bed and placed a call to Houston, to John Camplin’s unlisted home phone.

“Sorry to call at such an hour, John, but we’ve had a tragedy here, and Mulaney is folding the tent on most of the AGM contingent, so I’ll fly back tomorrow. The head of the Chicago District, David Daniels, fell over a railing on a terrace on one of the upper floors and was killed. Yes, he’d been drinking heavily, but that won’t be played up. No, it’s all being handled as quietly as possible. Mulaney informed Mrs. Daniels tonight. As far as I know, there are no problems of liability involved, but I thought you’d like to get advance word on it. What was that? Oh, I’ll make a written report with my reasoning in detail, but off the cuff I can tell you that I think we should ask for Mulaney’s resignation at the first opportunity. The man is too limited for the job. No, John, I wouldn’t advise retaining him in any capacity whatsoever. There’s no help he can give us on anything. Sales needs a top to bottom housecleaning just as soon as the new man can get his feet on the ground. Okay. I haven’t made reservations yet. When I do I’ll wire Jan and have her phone in my ETA... No, I’m completely sold on conventions, John. I’ve been wallowing in bourbon and broads twenty-four hours a day. Nothing like it anywhere. See you tomorrow. ’Night, John.”

After he hung up he waited a few moments before turning to look at Mulaney. Mulaney was standing. He wore a strange shy smile, curiously boyish. It was a smile to go with a blush, but Mulaney’s face was a ghastly gray-white under the red webs of the broken veins.

“I guess that does it,” Jesse Mulaney said, moving quite slowly toward the door.

“Wait a minute, Jesse. Think of the other ways I could have done it. I could have asked you to leave before I made the call. Or, talking to Camplin, I could have played it to you, then called him back later and given it to him the way I just did. What the hell good does it do anybody to keep hope alive when there’s no hope at all? No matter what you tried to do to me, or if you’d done nothing at all to me, it would have been exactly the same.”

Mulaney frowned. “How did things get so far ahead of me? Maybe it’s all because I never could really believe in all that new stuff, son. All the cards with the little holes. All the crap about surveys and images. Limited. That’s what you told Camplin I am. When I was eighteen years old I sold a Cherokee Indian a solid gold fountain pen for twenty-eight dollars. It was a used pen and it had the wrong initials on it, and I’d bought it at a street-car company auction of stuff people had lost and hadn’t claimed. I bought it for eleven dollars, and you know something? That Indian couldn’t write. He was going to use it to sign his X.”

“Would you rather have been kidded along about this, Jesse?”

The big man rubbed his eyes. “The way I feel now, maybe. I guess I break stuff to myself a little at a time.” He moved closer to the door and turned and said, “Connie calls you the new people. I’ve kept telling her the world and human nature don’t change.”

“I was given a job to do.”

“I can appreciate that. My God, I’ve fired a lot of men. Hired a lot of them, fired a lot of them. You know the big difference between us? Never in my life did I enjoy firing a man.”

“For Chrissake, Mulaney, do you believe I enjoyed this?”

“Didn’t you?” Mulaney asked. He grinned and chuckled and winked, though his eyes looked dead. “Not any? Not at all? Not a smidgin?” Still chuckling he let himself out into the hall and closed the door quietly.

After Floyd Hubbard had called the likely airlines and set up a reservation, he undressed and went into the bathroom. There he looked at himself with a curiosity and an intensity he had not used since childhood. He put his nose close to the mirror and looked into his eyes until there was nothing left of the world but those staring brown eyes and a feeling of dizziness.

Entranced, he told himself that nothing could possibly happen to him that was of any particular importance. So it did not really matter whether Mulaney had been right or wrong. He was wrong. There had been no enjoyment. (Forget the conversation with Connie. Forget it forever.)

So leave us please drop this debilitating introspection. Personal motivation is academic. The jobs are assigned. The missions are clear. Be a hammer. Be a blade. Be a club.

If we need affirmations of existence, slugger, let us look to the simplified ones, the less bothersome ones — the command given, the task completed, the money banked, the new mouth tasted, the new thighs spread, the new suits fitted, the meat and liquor tasted — all politely, efficiently, moderately. Measure it all in terms of salivation, of tastes and juices. Measured that way, it is a short turn around the track, so be the quiet smiler, walk gently, take what you want.

As he went to sleep he reminded himself to get to the airport early enough to have time to select small gifts for Jan and the kids.