Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Black said gloomily, “Big John’s been in town five days. Probably just vacationing, because he hasn’t had any conferences with local shots insofar as I could learn. Bix Lawson lives at the Park Plaza too, you know, but he hasn’t been to Quinnel’s suite or Quinnel to his, though they’ve had a few drinks together in the bar. The only visitors to Quinnel’s suite have been a succession of dolls. Usually in groups of three. Quinnel brought two bodyguards with him, and they’re all shacked up together in the same suite. It cost me twenty bucks to the bell captain to pry that much out. You can add it to my next pay check if either of us live till next payday.”

“See either of the two bodyguards?” Ross asked.

Black shook his head. “The bell captain told me a party had been going on in the suite since noon. Usual intimate size. Big John, the two bodyguards and three babes. Lieutenant Redfern and Sergeant Morton interrupted it for a time shortly before I got there, but were only upstairs about fifteen minutes. And nobody stirred out of the suite while I was there.”

Ross frowned at him. “Didn’t you ask the bell captain for descriptions of the two bodyguards?”

“Yeah, sure,” Black said reluctantly, and when Ross merely waited with patience, added in a resigned voice, “One of them is pale and skinny and answers to the name of Bugsy. But he’s registered as Earl Windt. The other is a tall, sunburned guy with a missing right earlobe. But his name’s not Larry Eaton. It’s Larry Horton. Probably a coincidence. There must be hundreds of tall, sunburned guys with missing earlobes.”

“No doubt,” Ross said, smiling slightly.

But there was no humor in the smile. It struck his assistant as anticipatory, and Black was afraid he knew what the gambler was anticipating.

“Listen,” Black said. “Benny was a nice guy. I liked him. But he was only here a month and he wasn’t much more than an acquaintance to either of us. If somebody bumped me, or Oscar the headwaiter, or one of the old-time housemen, I’d expect you to get mad. I’d get mad myself. But this is silly. Quinnel’s only got two guns with him, but just by lifting a phone he could probably have a hundred more in town within hours. We can’t fight a whole syndicate.”

Rising, Ross switched off the TV set. “Might as well get some sleep,” he said mildly. “Probably have a tough day tomorrow.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” Black said. “You’ve got a head like a brick. See you in the morning.”

By “morning” Black actually meant the next afternoon, as Club Rotunda didn’t open till four p.m., and the assistant manager customarily arrived only an hour beforehand. He had finished his usual check of the kitchen, bar and dining room before Clancy Ross came downstairs at a quarter of four.

When the gambler announced that he was going out and didn’t know when he’d be back, Sam Black went to the cloakroom and returned with his hat.

“I won’t need you,” Ross said.

“The hell you won’t,” Black told him. “If you insist on committing suicide, I want to be around to claim your body.”

“I’m only going down to police headquarters.”

“I’ll still go along. Maybe I’ll apply for a job on the force. Even big-time racketeers like Quinnel think twice before they bump cops.”

Lieutenant Niles Redfern was working the four to midnight trick and had just arrived at his office when Ross and Black walked in. He told them that the lab report on Benny Stoneman showed five thirty-eight-caliber bullets in the stomach, all spaced so closely together a palm could cover them.

Ross asked, “Get anything from Quinnel?”

“I talked to him,” Redfern said. “He, two other guys and three women were having a party in his suite. They all swore it had started the previous noon and none of them had been out of the suite since. Which gave everybody alibis.” Neither Ross nor Black made any comment.

Lieutenant Redfern said he had also talked to the murdered bookkeeper’s widow, who was as beautiful as Ross had indicated. As a routine check the lieutenant had asked for an accounting of her movements, and her only alibi was that she had been home alone all evening.

The gambler asked, “Any suggestions from her about who might have gunned Benny?”

“One,” Redfern answered laconically. “She says he had a mistress.” Both Ross and Black looked surprised.

“Benny?” Black asked incredulously. “A dream of a wife and a mistress? Why the guy was at least forty-five and looked like Ichabod Crane.”

“He must have had something,” Redfern said. “His wife doesn’t know who the mistress was, but she’s sure he had one. From little bits of evidence like lipstick on handkerchiefs, always the same shade, and blonde hairs on his coat lapel. The wife’s a brunette.”

As this seemed to be all the information the lieutenant had, Ross and Black left. Outside, Black climbed into the right-hand seat of Ross’s Lincoln and watched with a scowl as his employer started the car.

As they crossed the lobby of the Park Plaza toward the elevators, Ross and Black spotted two men and a woman coming from the bar. Both the men were huge without being fat. One, a stranger to Ross, was at least six feet four, with thick shoulders and a broad chest. He had a square, strong-jawed face with a blue-black chin, hairy eyebrows and thick, oily black hair.

The other man, nearly as tall and thick-chested, was Bix Lawson, local political boss and ruler of most of St. Stephen’s rackets. The woman, a sizzling brunette in her late twenties, looked vaguely familiar to Ross, but he couldn’t quite place her.

“Think that man with Lawson might be Quinnel?” he asked Black.

Black looked that way and shrugged. Just then a thin, pale-faced man who had come from the barroom a step or two ahead of the others and had paused to give the lobby a quick onceover, circled the group and placed himself protectively at the tallest man’s rear.

“It must be Quinnel,” Ross decided. “Paleface answers the description you got of his bodyguard Bugsy.”

“I guess,” Black said without enthusiasm.

They watched as the quartet crossed the lobby toward the main entrance to the hotel. When Ross made no move to intercept them, Black looked at him questioningly.

“It’s the other bodyguard I want to talk to,” Ross said. “Since Bugsy seems to be on duty, maybe he’s still up in Quinnel’s suite. If Quinnel and Bugsy take off somewhere, it will give us a clear field.”

Bix Lawson separated from the others at the door after bowing to the woman and giving his huge friend a comradely slap on the shoulder. He started back toward the bar while the others went on out, the pale bodyguard going first.

Ross moved on toward the elevators and Sam Black gloomily trailed him.

As Ross had hoped, they found the second bodyguard alone in suite seven-o-seven. The man with the missing earlobe looked a little startled when he saw Sam Black, then shifted his gaze to Clancy Ross.

“I’m Clancy Ross,” the gambler told him. “You’ve met Sam Black and know he could blow your alibi for last night higher than a space ship. Let’s have some conversation.” The sunburned man considered things only a moment before stepping aside and holding the door wide open. Ross and Black walked into a large room furnished with a sofa, several easy chairs, a television set and a small portable bar. Other rooms gave off it on either side.

Ross selected an easy chair, sank into it and lit a cigarette. Black dropped his hat on an end table and seated himself in the center of the sofa. The sunburned man remained standing, his back to the door.