Dan Marlowe: Killer with a Key

Sally moved down to the switchboard, and Paul again circled behind the counter and picked up his phone. Vic stood, motionless, and stared off into space. Johnny made the last entry in the logbook, closed it and returned it to the bell captain's desk. He ran back over the routine in his mind-that should do it. Ellen Saxon could now properly be accounted for so far as the hotel and the police were concerned, and he would not be held up by tedious executive office and police inquiries about a registry irregularity in his own effort to find the murderer of Ellen Saxon.

He drew a deep breath, and his hands clenched. He felt as though he had been running down a long, dark street. He looked down at his hands, and with an awkward movement forcibly relaxed their knotted rigidity. He turned away from the desk.

Paul was hanging up his phone as Johnny returned to him. “Okay?” Paul nodded silently. “Good. Keep an eye on the switchboard a few minutes, will you? I need to talk to Sally.”

He continued on down to the little gate. “Let's go upstairs a minute, Ma. You might have the answers to a coupla questions I need answered.”

She slipped off the headphone and stood up. He held the gate open for her and followed her across the lobby onto the service elevator. “Johnny-” she began tentatively, and he shook his head.

“Post mortems upstairs, Ma,” he said, and his mouth twisted at the unintentional double entendre. He shot the cab aloft in a silent rush.

Johnny closed the door of his room behind them, and Sassy advanced from under the bed in a ludicrously stiff-legged prance, the small ears alertly cocked.

Sally stared. “Johnny! Where on earth-”

Johnny introduced them. “Sassy, this is Sally.” He sat down in his armchair as Sally knelt and reached out a hand and drew the kitten to her. Sassy eyed her carefully, but made no protest, and Johnny shook his head. “How the hell do you like that? She like to ate me, horns and all, the first time I went near her.”

“You're beautiful,” Sally crooned to the kitten, and Sassy's head bobbed in complaisant agreement as she busily rough-tongued Sally's bare forearm. “Did you say 'her'?”

“Yeah. She's my new bodyguard.”

“Where did you get her, Johnny?”

“Ellen.”

“Oh.” Reminded, Sally shivered. She put Sassy down and sat down on the arm of Johnny's chair. “I still can hardly-believe it. Why Ellen?”

“I've got some better 'whys' than that.” Johnny stared across the room morosely. “Why did Ellen come here at all? Why wouldn't she tell me why she was so scared? Why did Vic go up to that room? Why can't I get it through my thick skull how the murderer could find her in an unregistered room?” He crouched forward in the chair, feeling driven in his impotence, then snorted impatiently and sank back. “Fix me a drink, Ma. Somethin's got to start the wheels turnin'.”

“Do you think you should?” she asked doubtfully. “You've got to talk to the police, you know.” She rose resignedly, however, and went to the wall cabinet and took down a bottle of bourbon and two three-finger shot glasses. She made a little face and returned one of them. “Why you can't use a civilized glass like ordinary people instead of these ten gallon hats you have here-”

“A slight exaggeration, Ma,” he told her as she poured. “An' bring the bottle back here with you.”

He accepted the brimming shot glass from her and tossed it off in a long, hard swallow. He waited for the impact, shuddered, took the bourbon bottle from Sally's hand and splashed a thimbleful more into the glass and chased the first load down. He refilled the shot glass again, and set glass and bottle down on the table beside the chair.

Sally broke the little silence. Her voice was quiet, but there was a note of constraint in it. “I realize how this must have shaken you, Johnny.”

“Shaken me?” His lips drew back mirthlessly from his teeth. He picked up the refilled shot glass and gulped half its contents, then looked up at Sally on the arm of his chair. “You're the only one in the world who knew how I felt about that kid. I never blamed her for rackin' up on me when she did. I was a hard rock still livin' too close to those days overseas, an' she just couldn't understand. I hadn't seen her three times in the last five years, but it wasn't ever any different with me.”

He stared down moodily into the half empty glass, lifted it suddenly and drained it. His hand closed tightly around the solid-feeling thickness of the glass, and his voice hoarsened. “So tonight she's in some kind of trouble, and she comes to me. To me, mind you. And what do I do for her? I get her killed.” He bounded to his feet from the depths of the chair, furiously driven by the impotent anger bubbling in his veins, and his voice soared. “I'll tell you one thing. I'll find the guy that did it if I have to live to be a hundred and four. I'll get him. For sure I'll get him, and when I do I'll feed him to the crows a very small piece at a time. I'll get him, damn him-”

He whirled on the balls of his feet, and Sally gasped and smothered a scream as his arm rose and fell in a whiplash motion. The heavy shot glass exploded in a starburst of glass fragments in the center of the big dresser mirror, which vanished in a crystal spray. Johnny stood, half-crouched forward from the violence of his follow-through, his ears still filled with the soul-satisfying smash.

He straightened slowly; on the arm of the chair Sally was crying. He patted her head awkwardly, then walked over to the wall cabinet and removed the other shot glass. Back at the chair he poured himself another drink, the bourbon sloshing over the glass rim and running down his wrist and fingers.

“You'll be supposed to make s-sense when you talk to the police,” Sally said disapprovingly, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Make as much sense as usual.” The phone rang, and he reached for it. “Yeah?”

“They're on the way up, Johnny.”

“Thanks, Paul.” He replaced the phone, looked at Sally and tried not to see the tear-streaks. “The constabulary, Ma. You got to run.”

She scrubbed openly at her eyes with her hands, stood up and walked to the door. “Promise me you'll keep your temper, Johnny?”

“Yeah, yeah, Ma. Sure.” He closed the door behind her and looked around the room. He picked Sassy up and carried her into the bathroom; he put her down in the tub as she blinked her disapproval. He closed the bathroom door and returned to the chair and his refilled glass. He sat down again and waited.

Trailing fingers of blue smoke swirled and drifted about the walls of his room; he sat and tested in his mind the cumulative questions and answers of the past two hours. He was tired of questions and answers. He looked at the eddying haze in the room; he ought to stir himself and open a window, he supposed. He sat where he was.

He looked up sharply as his door opened and the smoke gusted violently; Detective Cuneo walked directly to the straight-backed chair in the room's center and sat down astraddle it, facing front-to-back. His folded arms rested upon the upper back rest, and his chin rested upon his arms.

After two hours Johnny felt that he knew this man rather well. A quick, incisive man; a lean six-footer with a hatchet face and large-pupilled eyes. The mouth was snug and the lips thin; the jawline slanted to a sharp chin. Detective Cuneo entering a room looked like a detective entering a room.

“About Barnes-” the man in the chair said abruptly, and Johnny looked at him. “We're taking him in. He doesn't talk here maybe he'll talk over there.”

“He didn't do it,” Johnny said.

“I didn't say he did,” Cuneo replied sharply. “I do say that he's not telling us what he knows. When he does-” He broke off as the door opened again, and he twisted to look at the slender, sandy-haired man who entered the room and closed the door again. “Hi, Jimmy. How'd you make out?”