Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

I stared at my drink. “That Red Cannon — she must have really messed him up. He gave us one hell of a look.”

Charley smiled thinly. “She did mess him up, believe me. He almost flipped. Red’s not too well, you see — got all shot up in the service — head wound. Seems it left him deaf for about two years, and even after he got okay again his nerves were pretty well shot. He had a pension, so he took it easy. He isn’t much of an artist, I guess, but he seemed happy enough.” He laughed dryly. “Until he fell for Evelyn, that is.”

“Who’s number one man now, Charley?”

“You want to apply for the job?”

“Nope. Just curious.”

“So far as I know, she’s playing the field. She came down here originally to get a divorce, and this morning her settlement came through. Ten grand. I was passing her room and she called me in to tell me about it. I guess she just wanted to gloat, or something, but anyhow she showed me the money.” His voice was edged with bitterness., now, I noticed. “She always was one to show everything she had. Maybe she got a bang out of needling me with the fact that she had money — when she knows I don’t — and reminding me that she’s going back to the States tonight.”

I drained my glass and studied him. He wasn’t kidding me. He was carrying a torch for her as big as a house.

“Funny about women like her,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself. “They like to rub it in. I told her she’d better put that ten grand in the hotel safe until she left, but she just laughed at me. She kept fanning it out before my face and asking me to look at it. ‘Ten thousand dollars,’ she’d say. ‘I just got my check cashed. Couldn’t we have a wonderful time on ten thousand dollars, Charley?’ And then she’d laugh and riffle through the money again.”

It was getting embarrassing. I hated to see an old friend as troubled as Charley obviously was, but there was nothing I could do for him. The only thing that would help Charley was time, and a lot of it.

I got up and moved to the door. “I’ll see you later on, Charley,” I told him. “Right now I’m going to get some shut-eye.”

He nodded. “See you later.”

I lay down on the bed in my room without bothering to take off my slacks and sport shirt. I meant only to rest a while and then go out to dinner. But I must have really been dead for sleep, because the next thing I knew, there was a loud knocking at my door and Charley’s voice was calling my name.

I opened the door to let him in, but he shook his head and motioned for me to follow him. I went along the corridor behind him and he opened the door of the room next to mine and said, “In there.”

I went in and Charley came in quickly behind me and shut the door.

She was curled up on the bed exactly as if she had lain down to take a nap. She was still wearing the blue halter and shorts and her face was still very beautiful. But now only the hair near her forehead was that pure butter yellow. The rest of it was red. On the floor beside the bed was a heavy bronze book-end, the mate to the one on the shelf at the head of her bed, and along one edge of the book-end there was a thick dark smudge with a few yellow hairs adhering to it.

Behind me, Charley Boxer’s voice was toneless, almost inaudible. “I got to wondering why she didn’t check out,” he said. “I called her room, and when she didn’t answer I came up.”

I turned and looked at him. “You said she wasn’t going to check out until tonight,” I said slowly. I hated to think what I was thinking, but there was no way around it.

His eyes looked sick. “It is night,” he said. “My God, it’s damn near midnight!”

I must have been half asleep, because until that instant I hadn’t realized that the large rectangle of the window was black and all the lights in the room were on. I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-forty.

Charley shook his head slowly. “I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t.”

I studied him a long moment. “Have you called the police?”

He moistened his lips. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll think the same thing you did. And they’ll hear about my threatening her and—”

“Threatening her? When?”

“A couple of days ago. I lost my head, I guess. I thought maybe there was still some chance for me, and when I happened to meet her alone in the Bamboo Room I started talking about it.” He ran his hand down across his sweat-sheened face and his whole body seemed to slump. “She laughed at me. Right in front of everybody. She laughed at me — and then I... I guess I threatened to kill her. I don’t know just what I said. I was half crazy.”

I walked over to the window and drew the blind, and then I made a quick circuit of the room. I didn’t find anything, and I hadn’t expected to find anything. I walked back to Charley.

“This is murder, Charley,” I said. “I’m a private detective, not a homicide cop. You’ll have to call the police.”

“No!”

“Damn it, Charley! Get yourself together. Don’t you realize that the longer you wait, the worse it’s going to be?”

He reached out and caught my arms just above the elbows. His eyes were pleading with me. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “It was just like I told you it was. But nobody’s going to believe me. Nobody!”

“But, Charley — what can I do?”

His voice sounded choked, as if he were having difficulty getting his breath. “You’ve got to find out who did do it,” he said. “They won’t believe I came up here for the reason I did. Once the police get in on this, I’m as good as convicted.”

I tried to read his face. I could see the fear and the sickness there — but I couldn’t see inside his brain. I couldn’t know whether he was telling the truth.

“A little while longer won’t make any difference,” he said. “Just an hour, Steve. Just an hour.”

I wanted to say no. Common sense told me to say no. But common sense wasn’t strong enough. Not when there was a chance I might help one of the best friends I ever had — a guy who, three years before, had done everything he could to help me solve one of my toughest cases.

I pushed Charley down in a chair, facing away from the bed, and started pacing the floor.

“If you called her, you must have been at the desk,” I said.

He nodded.

“Did you see anybody come in or out who might have had a reason to kill her?”

He thought a moment. “No.”

“How about the people you were telling me about? Red Cannon, and Danny Jenkins, and Danny’s girl — what’s her name?”

“Lois. But she couldn’t have done it.”

“Like hell,” I said. “Girls her age have done worse than this. And she was crazy jealous over Danny, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, but—”

“All right. So she could have. Does she or any of the others live here in the hotel?”

“Only Red Cannon.”

“Do you think she told anybody else about the money? About the divorce settlement, I mean?”

He shook his head. “I think she just saw a chance to bait me. and took it. I don’t think she’d be foolish enough to broadcast it.”

“Probably not,” I said. “And that means she must have been killed because somebody hated her. God knows there were enough of them. Red and Danny, and Lois...”

“Yeah,” Charley said. “And me.”

“And you, Charley. I’m doing this out of friendship, but I’m not blinding myself. You understand?”

He nodded.

“All right, then. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

I left him in his room and took the elevator down to the lobby.

I was within half a block of the Bamboo Room when I made out the tall, rangy form of Red Cannon coming toward me. The artist paused a moment to drop a letter in a mail box, and then came on again, and now I noticed that he was a little drunk. He glanced at me as we passed, but he said nothing and the sound of his steps never wavered.