Blondes are Skin Deep (4 page)

“It isn’t Johnny,” I said angrily. “Johnny’ll come out of this clean.”

“Then why is he hiding out?”

I had an answer to that one. I had spent some time building it up; it was a good answer. “You know cops. What chance would he have if he let them get him. In a strange town. Does he say he’s working for Kane Hall and tip the whole racket? Hell, no. Johnny’s not that kind. He takes a breeze and lays low. So would I. So would you.”

I felt better after that, even though it apparently made no impression on Hall. “Two weeks,” he said, “and all you did was smell around for Johnny Doane. What about my hundred thousand?”

He wasn’t greedy; I couldn’t see why he was making such a point of it. Principle again, I supposed. I had mine, too. “Because,” I said, “Johnny Doane is more important to me than your dough.”

“I hired you to protect me,” Hall said in a too-soft voice. “Not to protect your partner.”

“I will; I always have.”

Hall laid down his fork and pushed his plate aside. His thick, beautifully kept hands reached out and selected a cigar. He lit it carefully, making sure it was burning evenly. The fragrance was rich, not like Chimp’s soggy two-fors.

“What if Johnny did it?” he asked, still talking softly. “What do you do then, Nick?”

I heard a noise and saw Tien standing by the kitchen door. She was watching me with the same expression a police dog would show an interloper. I looked back at Hall.

It was pretty plain now. This was the nub of the thing. Hall thought it was Johnny, and he thought I thought so, too. His reasoning was good enough. If I had my choice between helping him and helping Johnny, Hall would be out.

“I don’t think it is Johnny,” I said.

“That’s no answer.”

I tried my coffee. It was almost cold and slightly bitter. Now my hand was shaking. I set the cup carefully back. Hall was watching me; so was Tien. They both knew I had never welched on my word.

I thought about Johnny and his monkey grin, his quick, damned impetuousness that constantly put him on the edge of trouble. And I thought of Nelle and how it would hurt her if it was Johnny. How much more it would hurt her if I turned him up.

And while I was thinking that, I still couldn’t push out a picture of Considine hanging over the drawer of a filing case, a big hole in his head. Was it Johnny, the guy he had entertained, the guy who had escorted his daughter around; was that the reason for the surprise on his face because it was Johnny Doane leveling a gun at him?

I thought, too, of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Johnny had always played it straight before, but that was a lot of cash. It would buy a lot of things. But it was dirty money. Johnny would know how dirty. If he had reached for it then he was done; he had taken the first big step. Even torivate cops have a standard of decency. And if Johnny had taken that dough, had shot Considine, then he was out of bounds.

“If it is Johnny,” I said to Hall, “I’ll turn him in. I’ll get your dough back and then the cops can have him.”

“Not the cops,” Hall said. “He’d sing. I want him.”

It was his only way of protecting himself. I sucked on my cigaret and it was old and dry. “All right,” I said.

Kane laid down his cigar and leaned back a little. Tien came softly from the kitchen and got my coffee cup. “I’ll get you some hot, Nick,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. “I could use some coffee.”

I thought about the character who had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.

“W
HILE
you’ve been visiting,” Hall said without rancor, “I got a few more facts. Pipelines,” he added.

He had the kind of pipelines that it takes big money or big influence to get. I just nodded.

“Considine did make a killing. His fifty thousand went onto his books. The hundred-grand share I was supposed to get …” He blew a cloud of thin smoke. I got the idea.

“No trace?”

Hall smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant expres sion. “The day after you left for L.A. a woman checked into the hotel. She hasn’t left her room since. She takes her meals up there, and she pays her bills by check.”

I could feel myself rising to the problem. Hall always did, do that to me. “Go on.”

“She deposited the money in a checking account the day she came. I had—a friend at the First State Bank do a littld looking after she paid her first bill. Her account started ag something over a hundred thousand dollars.”

My mouth was dry again. “Go on.”

“The name she uses,’ Hall said, “is Edna Loomis.”

That was no surprise; but the way Hall handled it was. Building up to something wasn’t his customary approach. I had a feeling he wasn’t through. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I demanded.

“You were busy hunting for Johnny,” he said as if that explained it.

Tien came in, bringing my coffee and a fancy looking dessert for Hall. She smiled her faint smile at him as she set down the dessert and removed his omelette plate. Her hand hovered near his, touching it ever so lightly. He pulled his arm aside in a sudden, obvious gesture. Tien’s smile left her; she turned to me.

“Can I get you anything else, Nick?”

“No,” I said. “This is fine.” To hell with it; I had enough on my mind without worrying about Hall and Tien.

Hall sat placidly, dipping a spoon into his dessert and eating appreciatively. “That isn’t all of it,” he remarked.

“Give me the rest,” I said. I was feeling brittle now, my face stiff as if I’d been facing a high wind for hours. Hall was building again and I was afraid of what might come out next.

“I didn’t think much of it,” Hall said. “Not until two days ago. The name Loomis didn’t mean anything to me.”

The hell it didn’t, I thought. Hall checked every guest in the hotel. None usually came in, as a matter of fact, without his okay. His or Chimp’s. The Oxnan was a refuge for well heeled guys waiting for the heat to come off them. Hall always knew who was in his hotel.

“Then,” he said, “day before yesterday she cashed her first check to pay her bill.”

“Get to it.” I got the coffee cup to my mouth and the contents half drunk. It took some doing; my hand was shaking.

“I still wouldn’t have thought much about it except that she had a visitor,” he said. “Just the one—once.”

The one—once
echoed in my mind. Chimp was efficient at his lobby post. If he said one—once, he meant just that.

“Nelle Doane,” Hall said. His voice had flattened out.

“And that’s why you called me back?” I managed to ask.

“In part,” Hall said. He finished his dessert and picked up his cigar. “But mainly because the—my friend at the bank called me this morning. After making a check on the Loomis account for me he thought I might be interested in the ten-thousand-dollar deposit she mailed in yesterday. It was a check, made out by Nelle Doane.”

I said, “Nelle hasn’t got ten thousand dollars. She hasn’t got anything but her lousy salary.”

“She deals at the First State, too,” Hall said. His voice was implacable. He had me crowded in the corner and he was swinging. “She drew out ten thousand. That left her a balance of slightly over fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Loomis, twenty-five thousand,” I thought. A note in Johnny’s suit. I could feel it burning in my wallet now. And a card that Nelle “discovered” later. The card that sent me on a ten-day goose-chase to L.A.

Hall was staring at me. “You may not like to hear it, Nick. But it’s a lead.”

“It might be
the
lead,” I said. I got up; I was restless. But prowling didn’t help. “I’ll get on it,” I said. The anger was gone. Even though I saw how Hall had boxed me into making a decision before springing this angle, my anger was all used up.

“Edna Loomis is in room three-twelve,” Hall said.

“Is that all the information you have on her?”

“That’s all,” he said. “I told you I didn’t even think much about her until yesterday. Now it’s in your lap.”

Like hell he hadn’t thought about her. I wondered just why Hall would take the trouble to lie to me.

‘I’ll need some money,” I said.

“It is that time of the month,” Hall agreed. He pressed bell and Tien came into the room. “Write Nick a check,, he ordered. He put his hands on the edge of the desk. “Make out two. He’ll need one for expense money.” He sounded amused. “Nick used up his expense account chasing Johnny.”

“You’re going to bed now?” Tien asked.

Hall said, “Yes,” and pushed at the desk with his hands. His chair wheeled backward over the rug. He turned it and rolled toward his bedroom door. A blanket covered him from the waist to the feet. I wondered what being crippled did to the mind of a man as violent as Kane Hall. He was at least fifty and Tien had once told me he became paralyzed over twenty years before. Twenty years was a long time to live in a wheelchair, to know that your brain could do everything but move your legs.

I said, “Anything else for me, Kane?”

Hall laughed. “Don’t sound so bitter, Nick. It isn’t my fault.” He stopped laughing. “Just keep going, and check on Edna Loomis—and why she’s hibernating.”

“Shall I come and read to you?” Tien asked him.

Hall swung his head as he started through the door. “I prefer to be by myself,” he answered shortly.

I said, “Damn him!” as the door shut.

Tien was behind the desk, drawing out the checkbook. “No,” she said. “He’s bitter at his own helplessness. He doesn’t like to have anyone think he needs waiting on.”

“He doesn’t have to take it out on you,” I said. “You came here as a secretary, not a nursemaid.”

“If I’m willing,” she said gently, “then it’s all right, isn’t it?”

I had no answer to that. Tien had known Hall for ten years, twice as long as I had. If she chose to be his valet as well as his secretary, then—as she said—it was all right.

I took the checks she handed me, my salary and five hundred for expenses. Tien accompanied me toward the door, her laughter soft as she put a hand over mine.

“Cheer up, Nick.”

“After what I just heard?”

She took her hand away, letting me open the door. “It may not be so bad.”

“You know what he said?”

“Yes.”

“And the way he said it?”

She said again, “Yes. Kane likes to hurt people.”

I brought the elevator up and got in. Kane liked to see people sweat, I thought, but even so he wasn’t overemphasizing the situation. He had been laying out facts; there was no reason for him to do otherwise.

Nelle Doane had sent me on a hunt to Los Angeles. I could see a reason but it didn’t fit Nelle, not the picture I had always carried of her. And Nelle had visited Edna Loomis here, in the city. Nelle lived on the small salary of a lingerie model in a downtown specialty shop. And yet she had twenty-five thousand dollars. Had had twenty-five thousand, I corrected myself. Now Edna Loomis had ten thousand of it. And over a hundred thousand of her own besides.

Also, a hundred thousand dollars of Hall’s money was missing.

And so was Johnny Doane. He knew Edna Loomis, had been with her close to the time Considine was killed.

I had to take Hall’s facts and see what they meant. It was up to me either to fit the facts to Hall’s theory of Johnny’s guilt or to use them to prove Johnny innocent. That wasn’t going to be easy, not with Nelle in the picture.

The elevator hit bottom. I went through the lobby on the double, not wanting to see Chimp or the new man, Peone. I didn’t want to see anyone or anything connected with Kane Hall again.

I
HADN’T BEEN
home in two weeks, yet when I stepped into the apartment it had the fresh odor of a recent airing. I was across the living room, almost to the bedroom door, before I realized I wasn’t alone. I had never considered myself a nervous man but the instant of shock sent me sideways, my hand clawing into my coat for a gun that was no longer there. I hadn’t carried a gun in years.

When I saw who it was I smiled.

“Just me, Nick,” Nelle said.

“I thought this was the night you worked. Or has the store stopped that?”

“I’m not working,” she answered.

She was sitting on the couch but as I approached her she stood up. The top of her head was level with my chin and the sunlight caught her hair, throwing its deep red tones into my eyes. I was reacting to Nelle in the same way I always did; it was an effort to keep from gawking at her.

“Quit, get fired, or inherit a fortune?” I tried to be light.

She stood a few feet from me, smiling with that slight, one-sided twist to her full lips, studying me with her steady, always disconcerting stare. I never could be sure of the color of her eyes; they seemed to change with her mood. Right now they were hazel. I turned aside, feeling for a cigaret. I couldn’t take it placidly, not after what I had just heard from Kane Hall.

“It was nice of you to come and open the place for me,” I said.

She still didn’t answer; I kept moving until I reached the sideboard. “Drink?”

“Yes, to welcome you home, Nick.” She paused and added, “You didn’t even write me.”

I went to the kitchen and got ice and came back. I slopped some whiskey in the glasses, added soda and the ice. “I’m not much of a hand at writing letters,” I said.

“I thought it was because you had nothing to say.”

That sounded a little coy, out of character with Nelle. It bothered me. I took her drink over, shaking my head a little. She was sitting gracefully on the couch again, her legs tucked under her. She had very nice legs.

“That L. A. lead was sour,” I said, drawing a chair near the couch. I felt rotten but I knew I had to get started on this: what Hall had told me was in my mind, digging. I had to find out.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She sipped her drink, and refused my automatic offer of a cigaret as she had perhaps a thousand times before—with a quick headshake and a smile of thanks. I was nervous, smoking too fast.

“Hall,” I said, “thinks that was a bum steer. He has the idea that you were trying to get me out of the way for a while.”

Nelle set her glass down on the coffee table. She did it carefully, adjusting the glass so that it was in the exact center of a coaster. Her head came up and her eyes met mine. “Why would I do that?”

“He thinks Johnny is guilty.”

For the first time I noticed that Nelle was nervous, too. As a rule she sat calmly, her hands idle when they were not in definite use. She never plucked meaninglessly at things, never squirmed or talked inconsequentially.

But now her fingers stroked the arm of the couch, working through the intricate pattern grooved in the wood. And I could feel her drawing away from me.

“And I’m supposed to think so, too?” she said. “And be afraid—of you? That’s it?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“If Johnny were guilty—if you found that out, you’d …” She stopped, reaching for her drink.

“What else could I do?”

She answered in an abstract voice, as if Johnny’s guilt could never be more than theoretical. “Hall can afford to lose a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Could Considine afford to lose his life?” I asked. I stood up restlessly. “I’ll go along. Because I think Johnny’s innocent.” I was talking myself into it; I was trying hard to keep on believing what I wanted to believe.

There was more I wanted to say but right then Nelle’s last words hit my mind. “How did you know Hall had lost a hundred thousand?” I demanded sharply. How could she have known?

She didn’t answer me. “Johnny’s no murderer,” she said. She was rolling her nearly empty glass slowly between her palms. “They’re still looking for him, aren’t they, Nick?”

“How did you know about the money, Nelle?” I could be tough so long as I didn’t look at her.

“The police came to see me twice,” she said.

“The police don’t know. So far we think we’ve kept Hall’s connection out of it.” I went to the sideboard and freshened my drink. Without turning around I said, “You saw Johnny.”

Her voice was small. “He’s my brother, Nick. Wouldn’t he ask me for help?”

“When was he here?”

“A few days ago,” Nelle said. “Just for a minute.”

A few days ago, just for a minute, and I was in L. A. hunting for him. A few days ago, and then yesterday she had ten thousand dollars to give away and fifteen thousand more in the bank. I turned around.

“Did Johnny give you the twenty-five thousand, Nelle? And tell you to give ten to Edna Loomis? Or did she make you give her the money?”

I got no answer again. Nelle uncurled her legs and stood up. The light from the window touched her hair briefly, passed across her face as she moved toward me, and then she was in the half-shadow of the darker side of the room.

“Nick, what are you trying to do?”

She was very close. “Help Johnny,” I said. “I’m working for Hall, but I’m trying to help Johnny.”

Her slim fingers went out, touching my coat sleeve. Her face was tilted slightly so that I was looking down into her eyes. There were very deep, almost brown now, and warm.

“And help me, Nick?”

I could feel her physically. And it was strange, because she was doing it deliberately.

I heard myself saying, “That would come first, I suppose.”

“You never told me that.” Her lips curved, growing warm with her eyes.

“You never needed help—before.”

I might not have spoken, she seemed not to have heard me. “Nick, you never kissed me.” There was something breathless in her voice, something a little too breathless. “Was that why you didn’t write, Nick? Because you were afraid? Of kissing me, of letting me know how you felt?”

I didn’t like this Nelle. I said, “Yes, that’s it.”

She moved her body so that it touched mine. “Don’t be afraid any longer, Nick.”

A very few women had tried that before—more subtle women. Perhaps, even more beautiful women. I was no saint, no more of a celibate than the next man. But with Nelle it was different. With Nelle this was ugly.

“You’re just a kid!” I said angrily.

She didn’t move. Her lips were almost brushing mine. Her hand came up and tangled in my hair. “Not any more.”

I kissed her. When I thought of it later I couldn’t describe it any other way. It was just that—a kiss. Nothing more. She put everything she had into it. This was everything I had dreamed about—and now there wasn’t anything.

The revulsion hit me faster than a drink of bad whiskey. I pushed her away. “Let’s talk about Edna Loomis—first.”

Nelle stood there, where my push had put her, hands hanging at her sides, the same look in her eyes. She didn’t seem affronted. “Isn’t this more important, Nick?”

• • •

I wasn’t getting anyplace. Nelle was on the couch, with a second drink. I sat in the chair, where I could watch her. I hammered, but she was skillful. She fended me off. She had stopped using sex but she was still keeping me away.

“You think,” I said, “that I’m out to get Johnny. So you decided to do what you could to keep me out of it.”

“If you want to think that, go ahead,” she said. “Think anything you want to, Nick. It won’t change the way I feel—toward you.”

“Pretty sudden, isn’t it?”

She shook her head. “No. I just got tired of waiting.” I said, “Why did you give Edna Loomis ten thousand dollars?”

The change of pace didn’t bother her at all; it hadn’t bothered her in the two hours we had been sitting there. “That’s preposterous. Where would I get ten thousand dollars?”

“From Johnny.”

“Where would Johnny get ten thousand dollars, Nick?”

I said, “Loomis, twenty-five thousand.”

Nelle shrugged. “You’re taking Kane Hall’s word for something. And he never saw me. None of his help ever saw me.” She had a touch of the smile women get when they feel they are putting their point over logically. “You and Johnny always kept me away from your work.”

I got up, leaving my empty glass. “I’ll keep digging, Nelle. If you won’t tell me I’ll find out some other way.”

I went to the door and got my topcoat against the chill that would come with night. I turned again. Nelle was watching me, making no effort to move.

“All right,” I said. I hit each word, trying to slap her with them. “If you still feel that way—when I get back …” I stopped, waiting. She was just looking at me.

“I have some work to do,” I said. “I’ll be back later. I suggest you go home—and bring your things.”

I went out then, leaving it there for her to think about. Now maybe I could find out exactly what she did mean. But the steam was gone, my anger was gone. I was empty.