Richard Deming - Tweak the Devil’s Nose

He stared at me. “What?”

“He was well enough acquainted with Fausta to know her favorite drink is rum and Coke, but not well enough to know she never drinks in the morning.”

Day’s expression turned disgusted. “That narrows it down to the fifty thousand people who have stopped at El Patio sometime or other and may have seen her order a drink at the bar.”

“I was thinking of Barney Seldon,” I said. “The only time he ever sees her is in the evening.”

Fausta said, “Barney Seldon is a love in my life. He would not hurt a hair of my head.”

“He’d rub you out without batting an eye if he thought you were a witness against him,” I said brutally. “Get it in your head your pretty boy friend is a hood.”

“A jerk too,” Mouldy offered brightly. “Hey, Fausta?”

Fausta did not even look at him.

“There must have been some reason the Sheridan was picked,” I said thoughtfully. “The killer would want to make the meeting place somewhere plausible so that Fausta wouldn’t question it, and she might have if a bar had been picked neither of us ever went to. We know the killer was here last night when we were, because he killed Knight. Possibly he saw us then, and assumed it was a regular hangout of ours.”

“Your friend Isobel Jones was here last night,” Fausta put in. “Also she sat next to me at the bar and saw I drank rum and Coke.”

I looked at her. “This was a man. Isobel could hardly pass herself off as somebody named Mr. Moon. Anyway, she’s in jail.”

“Maybe she has an accomplice.”

“If she has, she couldn’t have passed along the information that you like rum Coke,” I said. “She’s been in jail ever since last night.”

“Go ahead,” Fausta said unreasonably. “Defend her just because you have the mistaken idea she is beautiful.”

I changed the subject by telling Warren Day about the blue sedan and my heavy-set, flat-faced abductor.

“So that’s where you were,” he commented. “Riding in the park while I rushed to the rescue of your girl friend.”

I forbore reminding him Fausta’s drinking habits had saved her, and not the inspector’s rushing, as he would have been about ten minutes late had she accepted the drink. “I don’t pretend to understand it,” I said. “But the news about Fausta being in a killer’s trap changed the guy’s mind about me entirely. All of a sudden he just seemed to lose interest and took off for the Sheridan.”

“Nobody with a flat face turned up here,” the inspector said. He looked at Mouldy Greene. “Nobody I didn’t know, anyway.”

Fausta said, “I do not know anyone of that description.”

“Me neither,” Mouldy injected. “A guy as ugly as you describe, you’d be bound to remember him.”

Beyond taking down the names of the remaining customers and questioning hotel employees in the lobby in an effort to discover if anyone had noticed a man hanging around the entrance to the cocktail lounge — which none did — there was nothing more Day could do at the moment. I went off with Fausta and Mouldy, leaving the inspector staring dourly at the sheet-covered corpse.

It was not until we were nearly to my Plymouth that I remembered my parking ticket. Mouldy held open the car door for Fausta, but instead of climbing in the driver’s side, I slipped the ticket from under the windshield wiper, said I would be right back and returned to the Sheridan Lounge.

Thrusting the pink card at Warren Day, I said, “I got this when my gun-happy abductor forced me over to the curb into a loading zone.”

Day regarded it without interest. “I’m not in the Traffic Division, Moon.”

“I was on Homicide business at the time.”

“Not officially, you weren’t. It’s not my responsibility if you go tearing after killers on your own.”

“All right,” I said, withdrawing the ticket. “But I’m not going in to pay the fine. I’ll go to police court and explain right out loud why I parked in the zone. Because I was in a hurry to prevent Inspector Warren Day’s killer trap from snapping on the wrong person. The papers love little human-interest stories like that.”

He was so tired from being up all night, he didn’t even bother to scowl at me. “Give me the damn thing,” he said wearily.

Even though my car was parked across the side street edging the hotel, a full quarter block from the lounge entrance, the moment I stepped out on the sidewalk I spotted another pink ticket under the windshield wiper. My hat nearly rose off my head in rage, and I literally ran to the loading zone.

It was not until I had reached across the hood and jerked loose the pink slip that I realized it was paper instead of cardboard. Examining it, I discovered it was not a parking ticket at all; it was only an out-of-date bus transfer.

I glanced through the windshield at Fausta and Mouldy. Fausta’s face was perfectly expressionless, but Mouldy was slapping his leg in a convulsion of glee.

I did not run Fausta and Mouldy back to El Patio immediately. It was noon when we got away from the Sheridan, and the three of us stopped for lunch at a Johnson’s restaurant a few blocks beyond the Sheridan.

During lunch I firmly instructed Fausta concerning her immediate future.

“You’re not playing hostess at El Patio until this killer is laid by the heels,” I told her. “Wandering around among two hundred diners every night, any one of which might be the killer, would be sticking your head on the block. You’ve got two choices. You may go to jail for protection, or have me move in as a bodyguard.”

“Move in?” she asked interestedly. “In my apartment?”

“Strictly as a business arrangement. The day bed in your front room will suit fine. But I want you to understand ahead of time, it’s going to be up to you to arrange your life to suit mine. I’m on this case and I can’t drop it in order to follow you around. You’re going to have to follow me. Every day, all day long, until I tuck you in at night. You’ll have to forget managing El Patio.”

“I can run the joint,” Mouldy said.

Fausta looked at him. “It will run itself for a few days,” she said firmly. “You just stick to your regular job.”

“Then you agree to those terms?” I asked.

“It will be interesting to have you around twenty-four hours a day like an unemployed husband. Maybe I will become bored with you and begin to appreciate Barney Seldon more.”

After lunch I drove over to my apartment, packed a weekend bag and strapped my P-38 under my arm.

Then the three of us rode out to El Patio and I moved into my new home.

As soon as we arrived Fausta had to make a tour of the place to inform her various employees they would be on their own for the immediate future. Mouldy took over my job of bodyguarding to conduct her on the tour while I unpacked my small bag, found some sheets in Fausta’s linen cabinet and made up the day bed in the front room.

I had just finished when Fausta came in alone. She looked at the made-up day bed in surprise.

“This is not going to be very comfortable,” she said, poking at it tentatively.

“It’ll do. I probably won’t spend much time in it anyway.”

“No?” she asked, elevating her brows. “Work to do,” I explained. “Can’t spend all my time in bed.”

She frowned at me. “You are an exasperating person, Manny Moon. With any man but you in the front room, I would move a chaperone into my bedroom. But with you I know I am safe.”

Walking into her own room, she slammed the door. Almost immediately it opened again and she said distinctly, “I would not let you in my bedroom if you begged on hands and knees, but you do not have to make a girl feel so Goddamned safe!”