Anything But Saintly

Chapter 28

According to the sign in the center of the Leland’s lobby, which listed the scheduled events of the Tile and Plastic Manufacturers’ Convention, there had been a meeting from four to five P.M., but nothing was scheduled after that until a seven P.M. dinner. It was now five forty-five.

I checked at the desk to make sure the four-to-five meeting hadn’t run overtime, and was told it had broken up promptly at five. I took the elevator to the third floor and knocked at the door of room 318.

Harold Warner was in shirt sleeves when he opened the door. He looked surprised to see me.

“Why hello, Sergeant,” he said. “Come on in.”

I walked into the room and shut the door behind me.

“Drink?” he asked. “I have a little bourbon and I can phone for ice.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m on duty.”

“Oh? You mean this is an official visit?”

“Uh-huh. The Katherine Desmond murder. You knew she was dead, of course.”

He looked puzzled. “Katherine Desmond? I’ve never even heard the name.”

“Better known to you as Kitty,” I said. “The call girl who rolled you the night before last.”

His face assumed an expression of shock. “She’s dead?”

“It’s been in the papers and on the air for two days.”

“I haven’t been reading local papers or listening to news reports,” he told me. “I’ve been busy with the convention.”

“Not that busy,” I said. “You missed at least one of the meetings.”

He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“My partner and I stopped by here at 11:30 A.M. yesterday to return your money. There was a meeting in the Rose Room from 10:30 to 11:30, but you weren’t at it. You also weren’t in the bar or in your room.”

He flushed slightly. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Sergeant, but I’m beginning to resent your tone.”

“You’re going to like it less as time goes on,” I informed him. “How did it happen? Did you spot her crossing the lobby just as you were heading for the meeting?”

“How did what happen?”

“She was coming from a second date, in case you wondered,” I said. “She got home from yours at two A.M. and phoned in that she was available again. Her procurer sent her right back to the Leland, to a different room. This date lasted all night, because she didn’t get home until well after eleven A.M. She must have walked across the lobby just about the time you fellows were gathering for your meeting.”

He said in an angry tone, “Would it interest you to know you’re not making the slightest sense?”

“You understand everything I’m saying,” I assured him. “Naturally you couldn’t accost her in the lobby and risk a scene in front of your colleagues. So you followed her home. It was you her apartment-mate heard quietly descending the stairs just as she left.”

He merely looked at me with his lips clamped into a straight line and his nostrils flared.

“It was probably lucky for Doll the phone rang just as she got to the front door. If she hadn’t paused to see if it was for her, she probably would have run smack into you. And in your mood I suppose it wouldn’t have bothered you to knock off one extra woman. As it was, you had time to retreat down the steps and hide beneath the stairs.”

He continued to remain silent.

“This was your mistake,” I said, pulling the sympathy card from my pocket. “You had already recovered the money, because you took it from her bag after you strangled her. When I phoned you at two P.M. and you learned that I’d collected the five hundred too, it bothered you. I suppose that essentially you’re an honest man, even though you are a killer. So you went to a bank, got a five-hundred-dollar bill and mailed it along with this card to Kitty’s apartment-mate. The murder hadn’t even been reported on the air at that time, so I assume you got the girls’ names from their lobby mailbox. And of course you knew the address.”

All the time I was speaking, Harold Warner’s gaze remained fixed on the card in my hand. He finally found his tongue. “You’re throwing some awfully wild accusations, Sergeant,” he said thickly. “You’d better be able to back them up. I happen to be one of the biggest men in Houston.”

“We’ll back them up,” I told him. “You amateurs always leave a trail a mile wide behind you. And you were too drunk to be thinking clearly. You were drunker than a skunk when I talked to you on the phone. I suppose you needed a few fast ones to settle your nerves after strangling a woman.”

He said in a tight voice, “You haven’t produced one shred of evidence yet.”

“I’m getting to it. You thought that printing the address and the message on the sympathy card would disguise your hand, but it didn’t fool our handwriting expert.” Producing a slip of paper from my pocket, I threw in a whopping lie. “This is the receipt you gave me when I turned over the money. I just came from the office of Al Gould, our handwriting man. He says you printed the message on that card and he won’t have a bit of trouble proving it in court.”

That jolted him. His face turned pale.

I said, “You probably bought the sympathy card right here in the hotel drug store. The clerk will recall who bought it. And how many people do you think walk into banks and ask for five-hundred-dollar bills? You probably were the only guy in town who bought one from any bank yesterday. We’ll find the bank and the teller won’t have any difficulty remembering you. He’s bound to recall a customer who came up with a request like that.”

He blinked and licked his lips, his gaze shifting from the sympathy card to the receipt. Since they seemed to bother him, I put them back in my pocket.

“Listen, Sergeant,” he said in a suddenly earnest voice. “Couldn’t we adjust this matter in some way?”

“What way did you have in mind?”

“Well, a policeman’s salary can’t be very big. And she was only a whore. A dishonest one at that.”

I smiled at him. “It was the dishonesty that threw you, was it? You hated the idea of her making you a sucker. You wouldn’t have reported it otherwise. Most guys would have been too embarrassed and would just have taken the loss. But you weren’t going to let any call girl make a sucker out of you. You were sore.”

“Can you blame me?” he asked. “I wasn’t going to let some two-bit tramp make a fool of me.”

“You certainly didn’t,” I agreed. “But did you have to beat hell out of her and then kill her?”

His face darkened. “She laughed at me. When I demanded my money back, she told me to go to hell. Then she laughed at me. A lousy little tramp like that.”

“Terrible,” I said. “And you one of the biggest men in Houston. Let’s go.”

“Go? I was just going to write you a check. Say a couple of thousand dollars?”

“Save it for your defense,” I said. “You’ll need it. Stick out your wrists.”

I took out my handcuffs and he glared at them. His voice climbed high with sudden rage. “You’re not taking me anywhere! I’ll kill you first!”

He took a step toward me and lashed out with a right that caught me flush on the chin. It was a pretty hard blow, but I have a pretty hard jaw. It rocked me a little, but I didn’t see stars.

Dropping the handcuffs, I sank a left into his belly, then floored him with a right to the jaw. He lay on his back staring up at me dazedly.

“You’d better stick to fighting girls,” I growled at him. “You’re out of your class with men.”

I put the cuffs on him while he was still lying there.

After so little sleep the night before, I planned to hit the bed early. At a quarter of ten I had just stepped from my second shower that day and was putting on my pajamas when the phone rang. It was Jolly.

“I looked up your number in the book,” she said. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. How are you?”

“Fine. I just finished listening to the nine-thirty news. I called to congratulate you on catching Kitty’s murderer.”

“Thanks.”

“It was on about Artie and Nick Bartkowiak too. That was the first I’d heard about that, and it kind of shook me up. Wasn’t it terrible the way Artie killed Nick and then got killed himself?”

“It’s two less racketeers in the world.”

She didn’t exactly laugh, but she made a little noise signifying amused agreement. “That’s one point of view, I suppose. So Little Artie didn’t kill Kitty after all. How’d you get onto that man?”

“Luck mostly.”

“You’re being modest. Artie’s death lets me off the hook, Matt.”

“How’s that?”

“I told you about the lingerie shop I’ve had my eye on. Artie wouldn’t let me quit the racket, but there’s nobody to stop me now. Somebody will eventually take over in his place, of course, but it will take some time to reorganize, and this seems a good time to bow out.”

“It probably is,” I agreed.

“Are you glad?”

“Of course. That’s a funny question to ask.”

“Well, I didn’t know whether you’d care one way or the other.”

“I do,” I assured her. “I think it’s a wise move.”

She was silent for a minute, Then she asked tentatively, “Will you phone me sometime, now that I’m reformed?”

“Sure, if you’d like.”

“You never would have, if I had stayed in the racket, would you?”

“Probably not,” I said honestly.

“But now it can be different?” she asked in a wistful voice.

“A lot different. You’ll be a respectable businesswoman.”

She was silent again. Presently she said, “Would you like to see me sometime?”

“I’d like it very much.”

“I’m going to be home tonight. Why don’t you drop over?”

I thought of my bed and how tired I was. Then I thought of Jolly’s figure. “Um,” I said. “I might just do that.”

“Right now?”

“I have to dress. I just put my pajamas on. Soon as I can get there.”

“I have to take a shower,” she said. “I may still be in it when you get here. I’ll leave the latch off the door so you can walk right in. Apartment 2-C.”

“Okay.”

“If you hurry, you can wash my back,” she said softly, and hung up.

I hurried.