Джон Макдональд - A Key to the Suite

He dressed quickly, put one shoe in each side pocket of his jacket, took a long, slow look around, then went through the orange-yellow draperies and out onto the terrace and eased the glass door shut behind him. He was glad to see that very little light came through the draperies — not enough to silhouette him in any dangerous fashion.

Once again he looked for a long time in all possible directions. He could not see down into the shadows of the pool area. Somebody could be down there, staring up at the sky. It was a risk he would have to take, a minor one compared to all the others.

When he was quite ready, he rehearsed in his mind the moves he would make. He straddled the railing, found the small edge with his stocking foot, swung the other leg over and crouched as before. The terrace wall was pierced with ornamental holes which provided safe, sturdy hand-holds. When his hands were secure, fingers locked on the inner edge of two of the lower holes, he lowered himself carefully until he was extended at full length, his legs dangling. It brought his eyes below the level of the cantilevered slab which formed the deck of his own terrace, the one he was leaving. The railing of the terrace below was about a foot below his toes. He decided that rather than risk the noise of swinging in and dropping, he would be able to reach the railing with his toes if he took a second hand-hold on the narrow edge on which he had previously braced his feet. He brought his left hand down first, clamping his fingertips on the edge, then slowly transferred his weight to his left arm. The strain on his fingertips of his left hand was great, but he knew he could endure it for the small part of a second it would take to slide his right hand down to the same small edge, and then his toes would reach the lower railing.

In the instant he let go with his right hand, he felt the small edge crumbling under the fingers of his left hand, powdering away. He spasmed his body inward, dropped the few remaining inches and landed on the railing, in precarious balance for one moment of triumph and gladness, and then he was tilting back, flailing his arms, barking the skin off his knuckles on the cement overhead. As he knew he was going, he tried to squat and catch the edge of the railing he was on, but all he was able to do was flick his fingertips against the outer edge of it. He went down, and all the lights were going around him in a huge slow wheeling. He filled his lungs with the moist air that was rushing by his face and gave a great despairing roar which ended when the small of his back smashed the ornamental iron fence which separated the pool area from one of the service areas. A woman began a metronomic screaming, becoming perceptibly more hoarse with each earnest effort.

Alan Amory, the Public Relations Director of the Sultana Hotel, walked behind the bar of the Hideaway Club to make a drink for fat Captain Brewhane of Homicide, the last arrival. It was after midnight. All lights were on in the office suite, all draperies closed. Amory had the feeling it was going rather well, better than he had expected at first. There was a special protocol about these matters whenever a major hotel was involved, particularly in a resort area. The problems were delicate. You had to be particularly careful about the way things were said. Any hint of challenge had to be avoided at all costs.

One small victory had been gained already. He had stalled the members of the working press beyond the final moment for any possible inclusion in the morning papers. So, unless it turned out truly gaudy, there would be a patina of staleness which would limit coverage in the afternoon papers tomorrow.

He carried the drink back toward the quiet mumbling of male conversations at the big table in the rear of the small club room. When he put the drink in front of Brewhane, they all looked up at him. They wore the mild little smiles of poker players: Brewhane, Detective Lieutenant Al Farrier, Rick DiLarra — the convention director for the Sultana, Detective-Sergeant Milton Manning, Rice Emper, legal counsel for the hotel and Peter Lipe, an assistant state’s attorney.

Amory said, “If you gentlemen will excuse me a moment, the people in my office could be getting impatient. I don’t want them leaving. The reporters are camped out in the shrubbery.”

“Who have you got?” Brewhane demanded.

“A Mr. Frick. He’s the one who...”

“Friend of mine,” Al Farrier interrupted. “Bill, he’s the one called me early about helping him out with the drunk who fell into the courtyard.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have come around earlier,” Brewhane said.

“When I got here at ten we couldn’t find him. Fred Frick and I looked every place for the guy.”

“Who else?” Brewhane asked.

“A Mr. Mulaney, the dead man’s employer. Mr. Hubbard, who has the room where the woman’s body was found. And a Mrs. Hugh Constanto, a... friend of Mr. Hubbard.”

“Go tell them I want them to stay put, and come right back, Amory,” Brewhane directed.

Amory went to his office. Frick and Mulaney sat on a leather couch talking in low tones. Hubbard sat on a straight chair, leaning on his knees, his head lowered. Honey Constanto sat in a deep leather chair, looking half asleep.

“You’ll have to stay around a little while longer,” Amory said. “I’m sorry.”

Frick said, “Sure.” Mulaney nodded. The other two gave no word or gesture.

Amory went back to the club room and joined the group at the table. He spoke before anyone could speak to him, taking that chance to make a point in a rather oblique way. “Thank God we were able to get Daniels’ body out as quietly as we did. I don’t think there’s fifteen guests in the hotel who have any inkling anything like that happened. The girl was less of a problem, of course. We’ve had deaths in rooms before. We have a standard operating procedure for that, and we got the usual fine cooperation from the medical examiner, from the ambulance people and from your men, Captain.”

Brewhane said, impatiently, “Let’s recap this thing and find out which way we’re going. Catch me up if I’m wrong on the broad picture, Al. You were here hunting for that guy when he squashed himself in the courtyard. Milt, here, was with you. Both of you off duty, doing a favor for a friend. So while the body was being hustled away so it could be examined down at the police morgue, you started trying to find out where it fell from. In that process, you came across that room with the door chained and no answer. And that’s where you found the body of the Barlund woman.”

Rice Emper interrupted smoothly, saying, “But I think we should be careful not to jump to the conclusion that Daniels fell or jumped from the terrace of 847. There were convention parties going on in at least a dozen rooms on the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth floors overlooking the area where Daniels landed. We know he was so recklessly drunk that Mr. Frick asked his old friend here, Al Farrier, to come and help out, for Daniels’ own good. All of those rooms have terraces. He could have gone out on any one of them, feeling sick and dizzy...”

The young assistant state’s attorney, Peter Lipe, cleared his throat and said, “I suppose 847 could be checked carefully for... for any clue that that’s where Daniels was. Fingerprints or something like that.”

Brewhane glared at him. “When and if you get a file on this, Lipe, then you complain if you don’t like it. But don’t tell me how to make it up.”

“But if people were looking for Daniels and couldn’t find him...”

Brewhane leaned back in his chair, ignoring Lipe. With his eyes half shut he said, “I suppose if we didn’t have too much to do, and we weren’t short of men and time, we could make a hell of a lot of fuss about this. We know Daniels was in 847 sometime during the evening.... Correction — we know he could have been in 847, because somebody told you, Al, they had given him the key.”