Dan Marlowe - Killer with a Key

“Tell you later.” The slender man nodded to Johnny in his chair. “'To, Johnny. Long time.”

Johnny nodded in turn, and Cuneo looked from his partner to Johnny and back again. He couldn't keep the surprise from his voice. “You know this guy?”

“Tell you about that later, too. What's with you here?”

“I'm taking Barnes in. Completely uncooperative.” He glanced back at Johnny. “I was just getting instructed here that Barnes didn't do it.” He leaned forward over the back of the chair as the large-pupilled eyes glinted. “What makes you so sure, Killain?”

“You know why I'm sure. Ellen Saxon has a quarter pound of hair and skin under her fingernails, and there isn't even a pimple nicked on Vic. That lets him out.”

“It lets him out of a first degree charge, maybe,” Cuneo said sourly. “I still want the answers to some questions before he's out, period.” He looked at Johnny. “How about you, Killain? Take your shirt off.”

Johnny stood up slowly. “That's what I like about you types. Not 'Do you mind taking your shirt off, citizen?' Just 'Take it off'.”

The hatchet face regarded him impassively. “You don't have to like it. Just do it.”

“Sure you don't want to call in any witnesses? So I can't say I got scratched up while you were wrestlin' the shirt off me?”

Two red spots glowed dully in Cuneo's lean face. He looked, tight-lipped, at his partner, Jimmy Rogers. “Your friend's a character, I see.” He swung back to Johnny. “Personally, I can do without all the conversation. Get it off!”

Johnny slipped out of his uniform jacket and removed tie, shirt, and T-shirt.

“Over here. Under the light.” Cuneo's voice was taut.

Johnny crossed the room, and the detective looked him up and down. “The bear that walks like a man,” he said grudgingly. “You get your shirts from a sailmaker?” His knuckles thumped lightly on Johnny's chest. “Quite a rug. What's this?” An inquiring finger probed in turn each of three dimpled indentations scarcely visible under the curling hair.

Johnny looked down at the finger. “There was this guy that didn't like me.”

Cuneo grunted. “Looks like he didn't like you about three times with a thirty-eight. So?”

“So I reached him. He still doesn't like me.”

The hatchet features stiffened. “I asked you what happened!”

A faint glow began to heat Johnny's interior. “It have anything to do with what happened in Room 629?”

Scarlet flooded Cuneo's face. “Are you refusing to answer?”

“I've answered for two hours. Did you ask any sensible questions you didn't get answered?”

“Killain, you'll answer what I ask you. I'll-”

“I'll answer what I damn please,” Johnny interrupted. The faint glow flared to an open flame. He leaned forward slightly. “Do me a favor, boy scout. Drop dead.”

The tall man crouched, but Jimmy Rogers spoke quickly. “Easy, Ted. He'd like that. I know this boy.”

The dull red spots again emblazoned the pallor which had replaced Cuneo's high color. He bit his words off viciously. “If you know what's good for you you'll answer anything I ask you, Killain!”

“The hell I will. Go make your funny noises some place else.”

The lean man took a short step forward and hesitated. His tongue circled his lips almost hungrily. Jimmy Rogers moved in front of his partner and nodded at Johnny's clothes on the bed. “Button it up, Johnny. Put your clothes on, and we'll go down to the morgue and make the identification.”

Johnny drew a deep breath. “No.”

Cuneo charged back to the assault. “No? What the hell you mean, 'no'?”

“Anything the matter with your ears?”

“Listen, Killain-” Cuneo began dangerously, and Johnny cut him short.

“You listen to me for a change. You got all the identification from me you're gonna get. You know who she is.”

Jimmy Rogers' voice was patient. “We're talking about the legal, positive identification by the next-of-kin downtown at-”

“So go get her next-of-kin.”

“You're her husband!” Cuneo barked.

“Her ex-husband. No next-of-kin.”

Cuneo looked at Rogers, who shrugged, and the tall man turned back uncertainly to Johnny. “You might have to convince the D.A.”

“Send him around.”

Cuneo glared. “Let's take him down there anyway, Jimmy,” he suggested to his partner. He smiled. “The big buffalo acts like he thinks we couldn't do it.”

Johnny looked at him. “I'll give you a written contract you won't enjoy it, buster.”

Rogers cut in again quickly before his partner could speak. “You have to keep crowding, Johnny? There's an easier way. We know she was your wife. Maybe you got a right to be a little redheaded; on the other hand, your attitude wins no kewpie dolls.”

“You can't sweet-talk his kind, Jimmy,” Cuneo said tartly. “I've seen these fourteen-karat cop fighters before. Come on; let's get out of here.” He stared, narrow-eyed, at Johnny. “I'll see you later, wise guy. Don't you even think of leaving the jurisdiction.” He stamped out the door, and after a moment in which he seemed to be searching for an exit line Jimmy Rogers nodded slowly and followed suit.

Johnny stretched leisurely. He crossed to a window and opened it, and then turned to his clothes. He watched the blue haze thin out as he dressed, his mind still on Detective Ted Cuneo. Childish, he told himself. You, Killain; you're childish. From him you can get nothing but the worst of it, and still you have to needle him. You're the featherweight champion of the world in the brains department.

He retrieved Sassy from the bathroom and dropped her on the bed. He rubbed her lightly between the furry ears and teased the pink nose with a blunt fingertip. Sassy grabbed the finger in her small mouth, and Johnny laughed and then sobered. “I can take a hint, white stuff. We've got to get you straightened out in the grocery department. I'll run down to the kitchen and see what's on the menu. You take a white wine with your fish?”

Back on the service elevator he stopped the car at the mezzanine. He intended to walk down the final flight of stairs and cut back under them through the bar to the kitchen, but even before he had the cab door propped open he could hear the voices in the conversation coming up to him from the lobby below.

“-say you do know her, Mike?” Cuneo was saying.

“Sure I know her, Ted.” The voice was pleasantly well-timbred. Johnny drifted forward silently to the front of the mezzanine. By leaning forward slightly he could see the three men in the lobby below him, a little back from the projecting edge of the balcony. He straightened; he didn't want to be seen because he wanted to hear. His one quick glance had taken in Cuneo and Rogers; the third man was Mike Larsen, a broad-shouldered husky with dark, wavy hair. Even in the stagnant heat of the early morning he was dressed neatly in slacks, a long-sleeved sport shirt with a button-down collar and a carefully knotted tie. Mike Larsen was a permanent at the hotel, a free-lance newspaperman who did special articles, and he was a friend of Vic's and Johnny's. Mike Larsen sounded disturbed.

“-tell me what's going on around here?” he was asking when Johnny picked up the thread of the conversation. “Paul tells me you crated up poor old Vic Barnes and shipped him in. You guys must be crazy. Vic couldn't have had any more to do with this thing then I did; he's not the type. You better let him out. I've got a fishing date with him Thursday.”

“Another comedian,” Cuneo said disgustedly, and Mike laughed. He had a nice laugh.

“Another? Who? Don't tell me. Let me guess. Johnny. You been on the Ferris wheel with Johnny?”

“That about covers it,” Cuneo admitted. “He needs a manager.”