Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

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.

Walter Stewart straightened in his swivel chair at the sound of the tap-tap of high heels approaching the partly opened door of his office; his blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands rapidly shuffled the cardboard folders on his desk. He was a slender man in an untidy-looking, expensively cut dark suit; he had a lean, aggressive face, and his graying hair thinned out on top to a noticeable bald spot. He glanced up at the open door with studied casualness as Florence Richardson entered.

“You're staying on this evening, Mr. Stewart?”

Her voice was low-keyed-like her personality, he thought. And her appearance. Attractive enough, with the fresh, clear complexion contrasted with the prematurely gray hair, but the severely tailored suit and the glasses militated against the masculine head-turn in a crowd, the hallmark of the man's woman.

“A few moments only, Miss Richardson.” He nodded down at the opened folders in front of him. “I have a late dinner engagement, and I thought I might use the time profitably to update one or two of these programs.”

“If there's anything I can do-”

“Nothing, thanks. I'm just noodling, actually.”

“Well, if you're sure… you'll get the safe?”

“I won't forget. I'll take care of it.”