Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

“Occasionally even a new one needs an adjustment,” Manny wedged into the roar of the waterfall. He looked at the watch-a Medallion. Another Medallion. He looked at the blonde and remembered. She had bought it last week. On Medallions this morning they were in a rut so deep it was a trench. He turned back to the big man. “If you will kindly permit our watchmaker to-”

“Will you listen to me?” He had never heard such a voice, Manny thought. If crystalware had been on display, it would surely have been shattered by now. “I know they need adjusting sometimes. When Nora told me she was having trouble with it I thought I'd save her a trip across town. Took it to my own man, and when he looked at it he said it's got a movement he can buy for two dollars and a half.”

“Impossible,” Manny said at once. He made sure that his voice was polite but firm. He toed the buzzer for Max and handed over the watch when the stooped little watchmaker appeared. Max fumbled uneasily with his leather apron; he always looked uncomfortable in the front of the shop. He listened to Manny's quick explanation, automatically inserted his loupe in his eye and delicately unscrewed the back of the case. His head came up at once.

“The watch came from here?” he asked carefully, and the blonde fumbled in her bag and produced a sales' slip which she waved at him.

“I remember the sale,” Manny said. He thought that his voice sounded a little faint; he tried to strengthen it. “Distinctly.”

Max cleared his throat. “It is not a Medallion movement.”

Manny stared at him, and the man in the dark suit spoke for the first time. Manny observed now that he had a hard, authoritative face. “You got any more of these watches here?”

“No,” Manny began, then remembered the lovelorn suitor.

“Wait. We do have.” He opened the drawer. “Here.”

“Open it up,” the man in the dark suit said to Max. His tone was brusque. Manny found himself leaning forward on tiptoe to see more clearly, and when the back came off the case and he saw the look on Max's usually stolid features he felt as though his own stomach had turned over.

The man had seen the look, too. He took both watches back from Max and removed from his pocket a leather billfold, which he opened. Manny caught the flash of metal.

“D.A.'s Racket Squad,” the man said curtly. “You the owner here?”

Automatically Manny's eyes went aloft. “No. Mr. Stone-”

“Let's all go upstairs and see Mr. Stone, boys.”

Johnny glanced at the clock over the bell captain's desk in the recessed niche between the elevators as he emerged into the semi-darkened lobby. Five after three. He crossed directly to the marbled registration desk.

His final try upstairs had been unable to get a word out of Ellen. She had sunk bonelessly upon the bed in the room to which he had taken her and had turned her face to the wall. Please, she had said in reply to all his prodding. Please. Not now. Let me rest. Let me think. Please.

A hundred irritated questions had crowded up behind his teeth, but he had kept the teeth locked. Let her settle down. It had better be soon, though; whatever it was that had scared her was no damn joke. Four slugs in the door against which they'd been standing was no joke at all.

He leaned over the registration counter, craning to look for Vic Barnes, the night front-desk man. He slapped an open palm down on the smooth surface. “Vic!”

“Yo, John.” Vic ambled up from behind the cashier's wicket, threading his way along the narrow aisle which separated the rear of the counter from the mail rack. He looked at Johnny inquiringly. Vic was a stocky, middle-aged man in a clerk's black alpaca jacket; he had a smooth, round face and pink cheeks with a glossy sheen upon the skin that made it seem waxed. He had sparse sandy hair rapidly turning gray, combed straight back from a high forehead, and he wore steel-rimmed spectacles low on the bridge of his nose. It was an easygoing face; Vic was an easygoing man.

“Couldn't see you back there,” Johnny told him. “Listen. Block out 629 for me.”

Vic pursed full lips. “Fun and games again? When you gonna grow up, John?” He shook his head doubtfully, but he was already reaching for the room rack, pencil in hand.

“I'll have her out of there by daylight. Are we going fishing Thursday morning with Mike? He's already asked me three times.”

“Tell him yes, then,” Vic replied promptly. “It's his gas he's going to burn.” He reached for his phone as it rang. “Front desk, Barnes. Oh, hello there. Still up? You should — who? Why, no, I don't-”

Johnny turned away and walked back to his bell-captain's desk. He removed his big flashlight from the lower drawer and re-crossed the lobby to the telephone switchboard at the far end of the registration desk. He leaned his elbows on the little gate that set the board off from the lobby proper and looked in at Sally Fontaine, its headphoned night operator. “Hi, Ma.”

His voice brought her head up, and she smiled out at him. She nodded at the light in his hand. “Prowling again?”

“Yeah. Paul go out?”

“Just for coffee.”

“Tell him where he can find me when he gets back.”

She inclined her head as the board buzzed. She pulled a plug and the buzzing stopped, and she looked out at him again. She was a small girl, almost painfully thin. She might have been thirty. Her nose was short and tiptilted, and her brown hair was an indeterminate shade very nearly justifying the adjective mousy. The brown eyes and the too generous mouth smiled easily and warmly.

Johnny spoke softly into the lobby's hush. “You comin' up in the mornin', Ma? Business meetin'.”

“A likely story, Johnny Killain.”

“Surest thing you ever heard. Business meetin' to consider the settin' up of a joint venture, the deal open only to the subscribin' partners.” He grinned at her. “Who're you 'n me. You a customer?”

“Any capital required?”

“You're totin' your assets, kid.”

“I am? What's the valuation?”

“The assessor's report isn't in yet, but I got a feelin' it's high grade ore. You gonna see me in the mornin', Ma?”

She smiled, and the severe planes of the narrow face lightened remarkably. She looked like a different person. “A girl could get a reputation, seeing you in the mornings.”

“She could earn it, too.”

“You don't seem to manage your business affairs very discreetly. With a new manager around here-”

“Hell with him. You be there.”

She smiled again, and waved as he turned. He walked across to the wide flight of marbled stairs leading up to the mezzanine and started up. The hotel had a night watchman, but he was not a hotel employee; he was from a protective association, and he had other stops in the block. Years ago Johnny had formed the habit of making a swing himself around the mezzanine and the ground floor, usually around three in the morning when things had quieted down. Once in a while a drunk fell asleep upstairs in the lounge, or one of the stores on the mezzanine forgot to lock up at closing time.

It was not a large hotel; four hundred and twenty-five rooms, give or take a few always in the process of redecoration. It was not a new hotel; a slightly shabby comfort had its own attraction for a number of people who preferred a certain quiet dullness to a bright and shining newness with its accompanying sharp edges. The hotel was understaffed, like most such, particularly on the night side. Johnny, Vic, Paul, and Sally had had it to themselves as a regular crew for seven or eight years, with occasional and inconsequential help from part-time bellboys and elevator operators.

A good many years ago it had been a first-class hotel, but the neighborhood had changed and the theatrical people who had once patronized it extensively had now moved across Broadway. Because of its midtown location it still had a steady businessman clientele and a number of permanents, some of whom had been there for years.