Killer with a Key

CHAPTER 5

Johnny pushed the little stack of transcript sheets, telephone chits and miscellaneous charges across the registration desk to Marty Seiden, a dapper, thin-faced youngster with a ready smile who worked as one of the day front-desk men. “This is a dirty trick, kid,” Johnny began; he nodded apologetically at the stack of paperwork. “You think you can straighten it out? Vic hadn't made much of a dent in it before they put the snatch on him. Paul posted the telephone charges, but that's about all that's been done.”

“A cinch, big man,” Marty said confidently. His oversized bow tie matched his flaming red hair; he was already rolling back his cuffs. “Don't worry about it. Did you balance his cash?”

“Me? I couldn't balance my pocket change.” Johnny pushed a key over the counter. “I locked it up. And listen, Marty. When a guy works a cash drawer, sometimes he floats a little paper against pay day. You know?”

“I know.” The redhead grinned. “If I need anything to make it right before I send it upstairs I'll let you know.” He lined up three long yellow pencils beside the sharpener before he looked over at Johnny again. “If Vic's going to be under glass on this awhile, you're going to need a pencil man nights. How about me?”

Johnny nodded. “You just graduated to sleepin' days, kid. I'll square it with Rollins right now. See you tonight.” He crossed the lobby and mounted to the executive offices on the mezzanine. Inside the first door was a double row of frosted-glass partitioned cubicles; he knocked upon the door marked auditor, and nodded to the heavy-featured man in the horn-rimmed glasses behind the cluttered desk as he entered. “Mornin', Chet. You got any objections to lettin' Marty Seiden work the night side with me till we spring Vic?”

Bushy brows behind the glasses climbed expressively.

“Marty? Might not be a bad idea. He's a good man with figures; he'll keep you afloat. He's a little flip with his tongue; don't hesitate to sandpaper him down if he gets out of line. Do him good.”

“How's Arthur J. Morrison going to take all this, Chet?”

The auditor leaned back in his chair and light glinted from his glasses. “Officially, he's going to be a little sticky. The night front-desk man up in a guest's room at three in the morning, the guest a woman, and deceased; you understand the manager's attitude has to be a little professional. Unofficially, he's already called me to ask if I thought there was anything he could do.”

“Yeah? Not bad. We'll worry about his official attitude when we get Vic unstuck downtown. You'll transfer Marty over?”

“Right now.”

“Thanks, Chet.” Johnny walked back out to the mezzanine from the office. He stopped on the landing; Mike Larsen was in the middle of the stairs on his way up, and he was coming three steps at a time. He pulled up in front of Johnny, breathing hard, and shoved a newspaper at him.

“Look at this!”

Johnny caught the blare of a headline in the paper pushed at him. “You mean we made the front page?”

“No, no.” Mike pointed. “Not here. Read it.”

Johnny looked at the black, block print. Robert sanders killed at apartment door. And in the subheading in smaller print, Prominent Public Relations Expert and Clubman Shot Four Times. The story started, “Robert Sanders, 54, 219 Cypress Lane, was shot and killed by as yet unknown assailants in the driveway of the co-operative apartment where he made his home. The body was discovered-”

Mike Larsen's voice was tense as Johnny lowered the paper and looked at him inquiringly. “Robert Sanders owned the business where Ellen and Lorraine worked.”

Johnny flattened the paper for another look. “When-”

“Sometime after midnight, it says. Body found at three-forty-five a.m. by a neighbor.”

Johnny stared at the subheading. “Four times-”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Here was a guy in a groove-four shots for Sanders, and four shots from the dark sedan. “This kind of starches things, Mike. Looks like we only had the semi-windup here; the main event was across town. You can bet me it was under the same auspices.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The batting order's got to be Sanders first, then Ellen. Ellen was over there, and if she didn't actually see it she saw or sensed enough to scare her green. Trouble was the pistol-packin' type saw Ellen, too, and followed her over here. Followed her right inside after I slowed him up on the street. A strong move. No Pollyanna, this citizen.”

“What's this about a slow-up on the street?”

Johnny explained. “The police should tie this into a pretty tight knot, Mike; the guy dug a furrow all the way across town.”

Mike looked doubtful; the yellow-flecked eyes returned to the paper. “Even supposing the time element is right, Johnny, it would still be a pretty good trick-”

“Even better than you know.” Johnny thought of the unregistered room, and shook his head. “The thing I want to know is how a guy like that could get upstairs in the place here without being seen by Vic or Paul or me. Strangers get asked questions, but nobody blew a whistle.” He looked at Mike. “What kind of a guy was this Sanders?”

“I guess I'd have to say he was a good businessman-”

“Public-relationese for a hard-nosed bulldozer?”

Mike waved a hand as he seated himself on a leather-covered bench. “Speak no evil. He was smooth, and he got along. His wife was his partner in the business, and she was every bit as good as he was. I've heard rumors it wasn't much of a marriage, but nobody could say that about the business tie-up. They were good.”

“Was Ellen running around with this Sanders?”

“No.” Mike tasted the word, leaned back and tried it again, less positively. “No. I never saw them together, and I never heard anyone say they'd seen them together-”

“But there was something?”

“All right.” Mike stood up abruptly. “I'd heard… stories.” His hand gesture was impatient. “You can always hear stories. Once in a while they might even be true.”

“You told Ted Cuneo that Lorraine Barnes wasn't running around with Sanders. That on the level?”

As suddenly as he had stood up, Mike Larsen sat down. “What made you ask that?” He spread his hands. “We live in an imperfect world, Johnny.”

“Yeah. And now we got a self-appointed critic runnin' around and leveling off imperfections. No reservations on this Lorraine Barnes-Robert Sanders menage-a-deux?”

“No reservations. Which isn't to say that there are any notarized affidavits on file-” He hesitated and ran a hand over his chin. “This stuff I just told you-”

“I'm takin' a page in the Times. You get the by-line.”

Mike's grin was sheepish. “All right, I shouldn't have said it. You going by for Lorraine?”

“Yeah. What's she like, really? I don't think I've even seen her more than three or four times, when I'd stop by to pick up Vic when we were going fishin'.”

This time Mike's grin was cynical. “How do the poets put it? Fire-and-ice. For once you're well matched. She can melt down a bronze idol with her tongue, and she's right in your class in rocketry take-off. She has a very definite mind of her own. Keep your left hand high.”

Johnny grunted, waved idly and turned to the stairs. He walked the short distance to Vic's place; it was only six blocks east and two south of the hotel, one of the occasional half-block enclaves of apartments in midtown New York's business jungle. He walked because he needed to think, and he felt that he had the germ of something that needed thinking about.

He knew now why Vic had gone up to Ellen Saxon's room. Check that, Killain-by a process of elimination you think you know. Only one thing in the world could have taken him up there.

Somehow Lorraine Barnes had known that Ellen Saxon was in the hotel, and Lorraine had called Vic. To give Ellen a message or to bring her to the phone, more likely. Wait a minute-how did Vic know where she was? He didn't even know she was there at all until Lorraine told him so.

Johnny worried it around, unconsciously walking faster. Vic had to know, somehow; it was the only thing that made sense. And because Ellen was in an unregistered room it would have complicated things for Vic to call her through the hotel switchboard. He had to go up there to deliver the message, whatever it was. And finding the body and not knowing how deeply Lorraine was involved, Vic had gone into the deep freeze rather than say the wrong thing.

How had Lorraine known Ellen was in the hotel? There was only one way that she could have known. She had to have been someplace close to whatever it was that had panicked Ellen. If it hadn't been Lorraine herself, Johnny reminded himself suddenly. He tried again to think of the figure hunched down over the steering wheel of the dark sedan. Could it have been a woman? He shook his head; he didn't know. Could Lorraine have killed Robert Sanders and followed Ellen Saxon back to the hotel to kill her, too? Possible. Not probable. For one thing, Lorraine was known to hotel personnel. Still He looked up and around suddenly. His preoccupation had carried him half a block beyond Vic's apartment, and he turned and retraced his steps. Seen in the daylight, the neighborhood and the building were depressing. A rust-streaked iron fence with blunted pikes stood sentinel across the building's frontage and on both sides of the walk to the front door. He entered the gate and strode up the narrow cement strip; once past the door the vestibule was more spacious and attractive than hinted at by the exterior.

He pressed the button beneath the neatly lettered name plate, and tried to visualize Lorraine Barnes from the few times he had met her. A no-nonsense woman, he would have summarized it. Younger than Vic. No beauty. Attractive? He tried to remember; somehow The buzzer blasted through his reverie, and he leaned into the mouthpiece. “Johnny.”

“Come right up.”

He knew it was the second floor; he walked up, and she was standing in the open door of the apartment when he emerged into the hall from the landing. She stood aside to let him enter. “I do appreciate your taking this trouble, Johnny.”

He listened to the cool voice; he waited while she closed the door, then followed her inside from the short hall into a living room furnished in quiet good taste. A sofa of the type that could be made into a bed ran along the longest wall, and two comfortable armchairs were at the far end of the room facing the television set. The sofa's and armchairs' slipcovers were a flowered pastel, and almost matched the drapes. A wedding picture stood beside the percolator on the coffee table, and Johnny looked down at a younger-looking Vic and a Lorraine who seemed not to have changed at all.

“Coffee?” she asked him. “It's all ready. Sit down.”

He didn't want the coffee, but he wanted to talk. He sat down. He watched her brisk movements; he knew now that he had forgotten the details of her looks in the intervals between seeing her. And she was attractive. About thirty-five. Good figure. Very good. Hair well kept up. A detached attitude, and an expression to match.

He looked at the high neckline on her light blue sleeveless dress with its ruffled collar. Go ahead, Killain; ask her if she's scratched up under that high neckline. Sure, go ahead and ask her. This is only Vic's wife.

She served him on a small tray, bringing it over to his chair, black coffee with a tiny matched creamer and sugar bowl. As he sweetened the coffee she nodded to something back of him, and he half turned to look at the small bag on the floor. “I packed a few things for Vic I thought he might like to have.” Johnny nodded, and she continued evenly, with no particular emphasis in her tone. “Since I heard the radio this morning I'm not so sure I shouldn't pack one for myself.”

Johnny didn't pretend to misunderstand. “This Sanders thing? The police call you?”

“Not this morning.” Her lips smiled, but her eyes didn't. “I imagine they'll feel confident of getting it all at this session to which they so politely invited me. I'm afraid the whole thing could be a bit of a mess.”

He looked at her curiously. “In what way?”

“There are… ramifications. Ellen ran a bookkeeping machine over at the office. I'd been a stenographer until recently. Ellen-”

“Until recently?”

The light-colored eyes-gray? Blue-gray, Johnny decided — never wavered. “I've been acting as private secretary to Mr. Sanders.” Johnny held his tongue as her pause seemed to invite comment. When she resumed she had changed direction. “Did Ellen come directly to you last night? Or this morning, rather?”

“Yeah.” He sat up alertly. “Why?”

“Because I sent her to you.” Lorraine Barnes smiled faintly. “A fact I believe you would have deduced eventually. She refused to come back here with me, and she was afraid to go home. I finally suggested you. She jumped at it.”

“A lot of good I did her.” His voice was harsh. “Where was this?”

She turned a hand over palm down, resignedly. “Let's say in the very near vicinity of Robert Sanders' apartment.”

“Did you know Sanders was dead?”

“No. I might have managed differently if I had, but that's hindsight, of course. I only knew that Ellen had seen something that had frightened her nearly out of her mind. I couldn't get a coherent sentence out of her. We couldn't stand on the sidewalk; I put her in a cab and sent her on to you.”

“Do you know why Ellen was there, or with whom?”

“No. She would answer no questions at all. I came back here, but I couldn't leave it alone. I had to know what had frightened her, or I felt that I did. I had something at stake myself. I called Vic at the hotel and asked him to have her call me back. He was surprised; asked me why I thought she'd be there. I told him I'd sent her to you, and he said oh, yes, that he knew where she was, but why on earth he went up there-”

“He got a bad break on that.” Johnny explained about the unregistered room. “With Ellen not registered, there was no rack or phone listing for her. Vic could have asked the operator to ring an unregistered room, but since it was me that put Ellen in there he might have thought it was important to me not to have the operator know it. When he found the body he didn't know if or how deeply you were involved, so he said nothing.”

This time it was Lorraine Barnes' turn to say nothing in a pause that invited comment. While the silence lengthened she studied a fingernail's gloss and buffed it lightly on a fold of her dress. She spoke finally as Johnny was casting about in his mind for a fresh assault upon her glacial calm. “I'm not going to tell the police that I was anywhere near Robert Sanders' apartment this morning, Johnny.”

He stared at her. “That's your business, but you know they're gonna shake you to your back teeth? You think you can make it stick?”

“I'm relieved to hear you say that it's my business. As for making it stick-why, you never know until you try.” Her voice was quiet, unruffled. Nerve, he thought admiringly. She had nerve in great, jumped-up bunches. “I believe that Ellen was the only one who saw me; I'm going to hope that she was.” Her tone was factual, with no hint of apology. “You see, Johnny, for Vic there can be no satisfactory explanation for my being in that neighborhood this morning. I wish no further involvement. Vic would want it that way.”

The hell of it is, Johnny thought, Vic would want it that way. This cool-voiced little witch might be the whore of all the world, but Vic would want what she wanted. He put down his coffee cup. “If you're not going to tell the police why did you tell me?”

She smiled, the same faint smile that was not really a smile at all. “A calculated risk. You're no fool, Johnny. Sooner or later you would have figured out what sent Vic up to Ellen's room. If you were going to tell the police everything you know, or suspect, there wasn't a great deal of point in what I was planning. I had to know where I stood.”

“What makes you think I haven't told them everything, or won't this morning? I'm under the gun downtown, too, you know.”

She considered him steadily. “I don't have to be right, but I think you're a little too primitive for that.” She removed a pair of white gloves from her handbag. “Are we ready?”

“You may think you know what you're doing,” Johnny pointed out as he rose to his feet, “but on the street where I live you'd be classified in a hurry. Fruitcake. Grade A.”

“If there's a medal goes with it I may apply later.”

“You could be forgetting one important item,” he suggested. “For my money, somebody killed Sanders, then followed Ellen across town and killed her. You were with Ellen, for a few minutes anyway. If the killer saw you too, where does that leave you?”

Lorraine Barnes drew on her gloves with a snap. “Next in line, you mean? I would very much like to see him try to kill me.”

Could that be because you know who he is? Johnny thought to himself. And have your own reasons for not naming him? Or because you're the killer and so have nothing to fear?

He stepped forward silently and picked up Vic's bag. Anyone who could follow the twists and turns in this woman could solve a couple of murders in his spare time. He followed Lorraine Barnes to the door.

The searing midday heat on the street drove Johnny along the steaming sidewalk on his way back to the hotel. The combination of no sleep, summer sun and a grueling three-hour session downtown had left him frayed. He would welcome the air-conditioned lobby.

He had lost his temper, of course. He always did. They had come at him in relays, pulling and hauling, reworking the same tired ground. In the final hour he had taken himself to his surest refuge-animal silence. They had tired of it, finally, and turned him out after he had signed his formal statement.

Lorraine Barnes was still being questioned, but Johnny felt few qualms about her. There was a woman for you. She had politely but firmly chased the lawyer Mike Larsen had sent — Mike had inexplicably not shown-and Johnny had waited beside her phone booth while she called her own lawyer and calmly instructed him that if he had not heard from her by three o'clock that he was to do whatever was necessary to release her.

He shook his head as he turned into the hotel foyer from the sizzling sidewalk. On the record today, Lorraine Barnes had more backbone and know-how than the average National Guard unit. Women-try to figure them, and lose your mind.

He could see Gus Poulles through the glass doors which separated the foyer from the lobby. Gus was Johnny's counterpart on the morning shift, the day bell captain, a pale, black-haired Greek with sunken, worldly eyes. Johnny emerged into the lobby's chill breath and walked to the desk; he and Gus had little need for extended conversation. They understood each other. Gus was a realist; he drifted through the hotel day after day fatalistically absorbing man's frailties.

The dark eyes inspected Johnny. “Bad?”

“Not good. They're still holding him.” Johnny frowned. “They act a little frantic down there. I don't get it. It can't be all that complicated, not when you can lean all over people the way they can. They seem-”

Gus held up a hand as his phone rang. “Bell captain, good morning.” He listened and looked at Johnny sardonically as the fingers of his free hand delicately pinched his nostrils. “No, sir. Not since I've been on.” He bowed to the phone, the mobile features twisted into a caricature of a sweet smile. “I'll check, Mr. Russo.” He covered the mouthpiece and called over his shoulder to the checkroom behind him. “Angelo! Anyone leave a white kitten here for Russo this morning?”

The short hairs on the back of Johnny's neck lifted; how many white kittens figured to be around this place?

“-sorry,” Gus was saying. “If it comes in I'll call you.”

“Russo,” Johnny said thoughtfully as Gus hung up. “Ed Russo. Edmund Russo, Esquire. Public stenographer's office on the mezzanine. A wheel. A big, round wheel. He wanted information from me about a guest once; surprised as hell when he didn't get it. A roughrider. Wears his spurs twenty-four hours a day.”

Gus nodded, dark eyes amused. “Chapter and verse.”

“Yeah.” Johnny straightened. “A self-appointed hard guy. And now he's interested in white kittens? Somehow I don't think he's the type. Not the type at all. I think I'll go see.”

“Hey-” Gus's voice trailed off behind Johnny, already moving in the direction of the stairs. Russo's query could be a coincidence, and again it might not. Johnny climbed the stairs; in motion he felt loose and easy, freed from the burden of doubt and self-blame he had felt since the first moment he had seen Ellen's body.

The shade on the door of the public stenographer's office was still drawn securely, as it had been earlier that morning. Johnny didn't bother to knock when the doorknob responded to his inquiring rotation; the tiny outer office was dark as he entered. The chair usually occupied by the vividly blonde Miss Mavis Delaroche had been pushed neatly beneath her kneehole desk. A voice cleared itself and addressed Johnny raggedly from the interior. “Sorry. We're closed.”

Johnny walked over to the door which led to the larger back office; Ed Russo sat behind his own desk, the top of which was furnished solely with a bottle and glass, each half empty. He looked up impatiently as Johnny's shadow fell across his desk. “Sorry.” He took another look and obviously disapproved of what he saw. “Oh. Outside, Killain. I'm busy.”

“You look busy.” Johnny estimated him; Edmund Russo was a slim, usually polished individual right now in need of a little refurbishing. The narrow face needed a shave, the suit was rumpled, the tie loosened, the collar wilted, the eyes bloodshot.

Russo half rose in his chair at Johnny's steady regard. “Get out of here, will you? We're closed. Come on-blow.”

Johnny sat down leisurely in a chair opposite him, and Russo's knuckles whitened as he leaned forward over his desk. “You hear me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Get out!”

“This a public stenographer's office?” Johnny inquired mildly. “I want to send a letter.”

“You never sent a letter in your damn life. I already told you we're closed. Do you see Mavis out there? Now rack it up and drag.”

Johnny settled more solidly in his chair. “This letter is about a white kitten.”

Russo stared; he sat down slowly. “What do you know about-” He chopped off whatever he had been about to say and reached blindly for his glass. He swallowed lengthily and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He glared at Johnny, and his voice was stronger. “Beat it. Right now. Or I call the manager's office, wise guy.”

“Let's take it a little slower, Russo.” Johnny's voice hardened. “When I roomed Ellen Saxon last night she had a white kitten for you. Did you go upstairs to get it?”

The slim man slumped in his chair; the bloodshot eyes stared at Johnny. Then he seemed to re-cock himself joint by joint as reaction came to him. “Wise guy!” he sputtered again as he surged erect; his hand closed on the neck of the whisky bottle, and in one blurred, sweeping movement he fired it at Johnny's head. Johnny's instinctive move to the side got his head out of line, but not his shoulder; the bottle hit him heavily, bounced off and smashed on the parqueted floor.

Ed Russo had continued on around his desk in a stumbling run; Johnny was still only two-thirds of the way upright after the impact of the bottle when the flailing hands were pounding at his face. For an instant he absorbed the tattoo, then impatiently locked his hands together under Russo's chest and shoved. The man staggered back, and Johnny straightened up and moved away from the chair that hampered him. When Russo regained his balance and charged again, head down, Johnny sighted down the angle and put his shoulder behind the hard right-hand smash that caught the incoming jawline and blasted it floorward in a careening arc. Ed Russo slid on past into the corner and stayed there, and Johnny experimentally fingered a tingling spot on his own cheekbone.

He flexed his right hand and looked down at Russo and at the puddle of whisky and glass fragments on the floor. “Quite a reaction,” Johnny told the unconscious man aloud.

“I'd have to say you act like a man with something on his mind.”

He walked around behind Russo's desk and, after considering a moment, jerked open the center drawer. He didn't know what he expected to find, but he blinked down at the newspaper folded to the black headline proclaiming the death of Robert Sanders.

He stood, looked at the far wall and silently slid the drawer shut. Robert Sanders. Ellen Saxon. Edmund Russo. Now what kind of a round robin was that? He groped around in his mind for a hook, a possible connection. He sighed, finally; he needed to do some thinking.

He left the office without a backward glance.