Dead of Night

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.

“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.

“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.