Dead of Night

Chapter six: Dead stoolies don’t sing

Ex-cops never make good house officers. In uniform, they get too used to pushing people around, can’t overcome the habit. That bulldozing approach makes ’em liabilities around a hotel. This Hacklin was demonstrating.

He wasn’t actually a blue, still he had the law behind him. But I couldn’t let him snap that Simon Legree lash at me. Not so any bellman or floor maids could overhear him; the Chinese aren’t the only people sensitive about face. So I threw the first punch.

“Don’t mind my taking that call-back from Lieutenant Weissman, when it comes?”

All I meant was to jolt him out of that browbeating frame of mind. Show him I had friends over at the precinct. What my phoney question did, though, was bring him to me, jaw a-jutting.

“You phoned Harry Weissman?”

“Why not? Harry’s handled grief like this for us before.”

We do get along with the precinct badges; hand them a pinch on a platter now and again.

“You actually speak to him?” The whites of Hacklin’s eyes looked like the bluish skin of a hard-boiled egg left too long in the icebox.

“Not yet.”

“Then don’t.” He put up his left hand to shove me, boys-in-the-back-room style.

I had to make up my mind, fast. Let him get that edge on me, or risk a real muss. If it came to a kilkenny, he’d have, say, forty pounds on me. I only pushed the pointer up to one seventy, dripping wet. Hacklin had beef on his bones. But if he got away with his rough-riding, in no time he’d be ordering me around like a headwaiter bossing a new bus boy.

I took a step back so he wouldn’t rock me on my heels, used both hands to grab the fingers of the one he pushed out at me. He thought I was trying to fend him off, kept shoving. I bent his palm back toward his chest with all the force I could get into it.

He slugged at me with his right. The blow had no force; he was pulling away from me as he punched, bending at the knees, twisting to free his hand from that leverage.

I let go before any bones cracked. You can easy snap a wrist with that judo hold. Hacklin dropped to one knee to save himself from toppling. He looked ugly enough to go for his gun, so I spoke up quick; he could have taken it for salve, if he wanted to.

“I don’t mind playing on your team, coach, but les’ save that strong arm for the other side, hah?”

He came up on both feet, red-faced, hot-eyed. All his downtown training and associations were in favor of his making something of it. I think he would have if I hadn’t pointed to the bedroom door.

“Did you spot these blood-prints, coach?”

He made that great-big-papa-bear noise, deep in his throat. His eyes still smoldered. But he moved them from me to the door. “You must have picked that grip up in a commando unit.”

That called for no comment; I didn’t make any. “Have to get you to show it to me again sometime.” He wanted me to know it was only a temporary truce. “Meanwhile, get straight. I’m calling signals on this team. Don’t notify Weissman. That’s an order.”

If it made him feel better, that was jake with me. “More gore on the inside of that door jamb.” I showed him.

“How come you were mucking around her suite, anyhow, Vine?”

I told him. About Elsie and the pillow slip. Lanerd and his automatic.

“What about the steak knife?” He puzzled over the finger marks on the door.

“Auguste. One of our room-service captains. He’s been serving up here; probably the tips are too fat to let one of his regular waiters work the suite. Tonight, after the service tables were wheeled down, the routine checkup showed one knife missing. Auguste came back for it. I did a simple sum. Four bloody fingerprints minus one knife equals somebody slashed. So I searched around.”

“Queer prints,” Hacklin muttered. “They outline the fingers. But there aren’t any whorl marks or loops, even where the blood’s drying. Maybe the boys can get an impression out of them, but to me it looks like they were made by somebody with gloves on. Your waiters wear gloves?”

“Sometimes. In summer time. Cotton whites.” I didn’t like the direction his quiz was taking. “You’re not going to dust off that oldie about an inside job!”

“Very likely,” he admitted. “We been on guard against that since we came in here.”

“I take it back. Not going to play for your team, after all.”

“Maybe we don’t want you, Vine. You a gambling man?”

“Where there’s an element of judgment involved.” I couldn’t figure what difference it made. “Any further details, see my bookie.”

“Horses, huh?” He mulled it over as if it was something serious. “You happen to read that guff about Johnny the Grocer?”

I had. “Fixer who got himself riddled in some East Side hotspot, three or four days ago?” I began to connect up his queries about gambling. “Payoff lad for a policy ring. Supposed to deliver protection lettuce to cops. Held out some green goods he’d been told to pass along. Big boys got him for it.”

Hacklin waggled his hand in derision. “That’s what the newspapers said. Fact is, Johnny’d been taking singing lessons, was all set to give a recital. He’d been through a couple rehearsals, in the Prosecutor’s office. Real performance was to have been Wednesday morning at headquarters. Rumor was, he’d finger some high-ups on the Commissioner’s Confidential Squad. Tuesday night somebody played the drum for him. Boom! Only testimony he gave was to the docs when they cut him up, on the slab.”

“From what I read, nobody saw who gunned him.” The picture was beginning to take shape in my mind, a little blurred. “Or was that more newspaper mahooley?”

“Yeah.” Hacklin took out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth at an angle like a schooner’s bowsprit. “I got to tell you this so you’ll see why it was prob’ly an inside job.”

I said I wouldn’t guarantee to go along on that.

“You’ll go along — or come along, don’t worry about that.” He flexed the fingers I’d punished. “It was given out officially that nobody saw the actual shooting or the crut who used the gun. But there was one witness.”

“Tildy Millett.” I’d seen that coming.

“Yeah. Johnny Scaluck was drilled in one of two phone booths that stand right adjoining. He got it through the glass, while he was gabbing. Waiters rushed to the booth but the gunman ducked through a fire door. Nobody remembered seeing him. But after the commotion was over, Herb hustled over to quiz around for the Prosecutor’s office. He found Miss Millett had been in the next booth only a few seconds before Johnny got his. She’d seen the murderer but had been too scared to say so ’til Herb dragged it out of her.”

“How’d she happen to be in a dive like the Blue Blazer, anyway?” That wasn’t the question I really wanted an answer to: What if this killer was still roaming our corridors?

“Lanerd was with her. They didn’t want to go to the class joints, afraid she’d be recognized.” Hacklin tongued the unlighted cigar around. “After she identified this chopper, ordinarily we’d have turned her over to the police, protective custody. But the Prosecutor didn’t want any more mortalities among his witnesses. Johnny the Grocer’d been dropped because he was going to incriminate some high-placed cops. So we didn’t even tell the Centre Street people about her, or let on she’d seen the murderer.”

“You didn’t even tell the security office.” No matter what he thought, that had been dumb.

He didn’t bother to answer. “We had a conference with Lanerd and her agent. They told us Miss Millet was under ironclad contract to appear on this Stack O’ Jack show until somebody guessed her identity. They were ready to tear the Criminal Courts building down, brick by brick, if we tried to keep her from appearing on the show.”

“This killer—” I realized why Lanerd had found that gun so comfortable, nestling in his pocket — “this murderer knew she’d seen him at the time of the shooting?”

“Sure. He warned her to keep her mouth shut or he’d get her, later.”

“Then, supposedly, he’d tell his friends on the Confidential Squad about her, wouldn’t he?”

“He might.” Hacklin spat out a shred of leaf. “Or he might not. He wouldn’t know she’d picked his picture out of the Gallery. ’Course we don’t know for positive any of the force was connected with Scaluck’s wipe-out. But the idea was not to take any chances. That’s why I don’t go for your talking to this lieutenant pal of yours.”

“So you let Tildy Millett stay here. Knowing her being here put other people in danger.” I was beginning to stew about what a killer like that would do if he was cornered in a hotel.

“Either Herb was with her or I was with her all the time. Herb had the noon to midnight tour; I came on at twelve and stayed till noon. I suppose you could have done more than we did!”

“Goes without saying. Two of you. Eight hundred hotel employees. But that’s locking the stable. How about letting us have photos of this killer so we can watch for him?”

“He’s Al Gowriss. Two-time loser. A morphy, besides. Stop at nothing when he’s geared up.” Hacklin took a police flyer out of his pocket, unfolded it.

The muddy photo showed a lean, mean face with narrow-set eyes menacing out of deep-shadowed sockets; I’d never have forgotten features like those, if I’d seen them. “New to me.” I glanced at his record. Al Gowriss, alias Al Gorce, Al Manning, etc., etc. Two convictions. A dozen arrests for armed robbery, atrocious assault, manslaughter. Warning: dangerous, likely to be armed. “Sweet boy.”

“Most likely he wouldn’t have tried to crash in here; he’d be as out of place as a crocodile in a pansy bed, around a swankery like this. He’d hire somebody who could get into her room with no trouble.”

“That ‘inside job’ is a fixed idea of yours.” I smelled cigarette smoke, strong cigarettes, probably British.

A wavery wisp of gray drifted in under the corridor door — there’s a quarter-inch space above the sill so floor patrols can check for fire at night. Our air-conditioning pulls a slight draft in under all the doors.

Hacklin was puzzled by my going toward the door. “Gowriss would have had enough dough to hire a dozen room-service waiters.” He eyed my movements suspiciously. “What’re you—”

I jerked open the door before he unwittingly warned the smoker.

The blonde must have had her ear smack against the panel; she sprawled into the room.

When I caught her, to keep her from falling, she didn’t try to free herself. Instead she looked at me, eyes swimming with tears.

“Let me see him,” she whispered. “Please let me see him before they take him away!”