Dan Marlowe: The Fatal Frails

“Sure,” Paul agreed amiably, and took the second elevator. The couple at the desk followed Johnny onto the first car, and he examined them from the corner of his eye as they passed behind him.

Mr. Faulkner was a slim, tense, worried-looking man, immaculately dressed. Despite the lateness of the hour, he appeared freshly shaven. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that helped to strengthen a sensitive, mobile face. His sleek dark hair was parted with exactitude, his nose was delicately shaped, and his mouth was small and prim. The two-hundred-dollar suit Mr. Faulkner wore was a little too much of a good thing, Johnny decided. It came very close to effacing Mr. Faulkner.

The girl was a fish from another rain barrel. No clothes would ever succeed in effacing Miss Philips. She was a striking redhead, the highlights auburn and the burnished mass a deep, coppery tone. She wasn't tall, but even a side-of-the-eye inspection of the softly rounded expansive-ness displayed with assurance in a trim suit brought the expression zaftig to Johnny's mind. A tree-ripened peach, he thought. Her features were serviceable without detracting at all from her more spectacular assets, blooming with health and lightly dusted with golden freckles.

“I hope this isn't a mistake, Gloria,” Faulkner remarked petulantly as the elevator rose. Johnny thought that if the piping voice were pitched three notes higher it would be a whine.

“If there's been a mistake, it's not mine,” the girl said coolly. “I wonder if Claude can say the same.” She glanced at Johnny as Faulkner would have spoken again, and he remained silent. Johnny anchored the cab and led the way down the corridor to 1026. The importer's door was ajar, and Johnny knocked and entered, skirting the bags scattered on the floor.

“What is it?” the importer's voice called through the open bathroom door.

“Food,” Johnny announced. “An' visitors.” He moved forward to deposit the tray on a small table. From the bathroom he thought the importer said something he couldn't hear clearly. The sound of the gunshot took Johnny completely by surprise. He whirled, then reversed the movement of his arms as the coffeepot on the tray skidded wildly.

Gloria Philips reached the bathroom door first, but Johnny was a short stride behind. With the tray still in his hands he looked down over the girl's shoulder at the loosely sprawled body in the pale blue dressing gown. A black automatic lay beside an outstretched clawlike hand, and a widening scarlet pool crept over the white tile. A powder-burned hole indented a silvered temple.

Johnny pivoted again at a strangled sound from behind him. Mr. Faulkner sagged against the door frame, white-lipped and shaken as he peered down owlishly at the body on the floor.

“Snap out of it, Ernest,” the girl said quietly. “Call the police.” She moved around Johnny out into the bedroom, and he could see no change in her expression at all.

Ernest Faulkner wrenched himself forcibly from the doorway and tottered inside to the telephone.

Seventy-five minutes later, Johnny finished telling his version of the story to Detective James Rogers in the mezzanine lounge. Since he had known Rogers for some time, the telling went quickly. The slender, sandy-haired detective tapped his notebook thoughtfully in the palm of his hand when Johnny had finished. “No chance of it being anything but suicide, Johnny?”

“I heard him,” Johnny said positively. “Just before he pulled the trigger. I was closer to the bathroom door than either of the other two. You can wrap it up, Jimmy.” He looked at the notebook. “Who's this Faulkner?”

“The deceased's lawyer.”

“An' the girl?”

“Secretary to the U.S. representative of a Swiss manufacturer from whom the importer had been buying.”

“A business call? At this hour of the mornin'?”

“So the lawyer claims.” Detective Rogers shrugged. “I told him to be over at the precinct house in the morning at ten and get it on the record. Not that it really matters. You'll have to come over, too, to sign a statement.” He slapped the notebook against his palm with an air of finality and pushed it into a jacket pocket. His glance at Johnny was sardonic. “Why don't you rename this place Hacienda Dolorosa or something appropriate? We've taken more stiffs out the back door here than from any hospital the same size.”

“If you can't boost it, don't knock it,” Johnny told him as they walked to the stairs. He accelerated at sight of Paul beckoning to him from below. “See you in the mornin', Jimmy,” Johnny said, and ran down the stairs.

“Phone call for you at the desk,” Paul informed him.

“Okay. You call Dominic an' Steve?”

“They're on the way in now.”

“Put 'em on the elevators when they get here. Keep yourself available. A thing like this makes a lot of extra legwork.” He crossed to the desk and picked up the dangling phone. “Killain.”

The receiver gave him the first eight bars of Edelweiss, off-key. “Come on over, Johnny,” the phone said in his ear.

“You stripped your gears, man? At three in the mornin' you better bait that hook a little.”

The heavy voice sounded surprised. “You don't usually seed much excuse to cut out of there. This is Dameron. Come on over. You'd be surprised at the bait I've got.”

Dameron was Lieutenant Joseph Dameron of the New York City Police Department, and Detective James Rogers' immediate superior. “I know who it is, Joe,” Johnny said patiently. “No one but you could scramble sharps an' flats in Edelweiss like that. You don't need to see me tonight just because a permanent leaked his brains out on the bathroom tile with a thirty-eight.”

The voice in his ear sharpened. “My people there?”

“Come an' gone. Jimmy's got us booked for ten a.m. at your emporium. That's not why you called?”

“It's not. Come on over. I'm at the office.”

“You must've anyways raided a stag to brisk you up like this at this hour. You reviewin' the evidence?”

“Skip the comedy, Johnny. A friend of yours is here. And never mind asking who it is. I've told you three times how to find out. Too bad you don't have any curiosity.” The click of the broken connection sounded in Johnny's ear, and he grinned sheepishly as he hung up. He knew that Dameron had been perfectly safe in hanging up the phone, and he knew that Dameron knew it, too. He went to look for Paul.

Johnny knew he shouldn't leave now. It would be a dirty trick on Paul. Not that Paul wasn't used to it. The night shift at the Hotel Duarte was an elastic affair. The Duarte had no night manager or security officer. It had Johnny. The management's unspoken but tacit approval buttressed his informal regime. Over the years, Johnny had demonstrated that his operating style matched the neighborhood's. He had a free hand, and he and the management both thought well of the arrangement.

En route to the switchboard to have Sally find Paul, Johnny detoured to the registration desk. “Say, Vic-did you call Ten-twenty-six to let him know those people were on the way up?”

The round-faced Vic looked defensive. “No. You heard him say yourself to send them right on up.”

“I heard him say send someone up. I'm wonderin' if he got who he expected.” Johnny tugged at an ear lobe. Even surprised by the devil himself, 1026 would still have had to have that automatic conveniently in a dressing-gown pocket. “No, I guess not,” Johnny said vaguely, and moved on down to the switchboard. “Paul gone out, ma?”

“He's upstairs with the detective sealing up that room.” Sally's warm brown eyes rested on his face. “Was it bad upstairs?”

He shrugged. “'Bout what you'd expect.”

He could see her repressed shiver. “He wasn't a very likable man, but it's awfully-awfully sudden.”