Blondes are Skin Deep (7 page)

T
HE
CRISP
night revived me a little. I drove slowly, the windows down, getting all of that air I could. When I parked, I stayed in the car for a while. I needed time to put things together.

I had lied to Nelle, if only by inference. No matter how she acted or what she said, I hadn’t changed toward her. There wasn’t anything that could change the way I felt. It was down too deep. And it made me feel as if my insides had been run through a mowing machine. Because I didn’t know—if it came to a showdown—whether I would turn Johnny in or do as Nelle wanted.

I was getting no place. Leaving the car I went into the hotel. There were two cops in the lobby when I got there. They stood to one side, not doing anything, apparently not intending to do anything. I could see Quist at the desk, his broad fat face glistening with sweat as usual. Neither Chimp nor Les Peone was around.

Quist smiled, showing his ugly teeth, and I went up to him. The cops made no move at all. I was sure they knew me, at least by sight. Most of the force did.

“Hall nearly got his,” Quist said, and added his fat chuckle.

“You stinking rat,” I said. I saw Quist’s little, red-veined eyes squeeze up in fear.

“I don’t get what you mean, Nick.”

“I’m talking about Johnny,” I said.

“Hell, Nick, a guy has to take care of himself.” His breath had that sweet stink of fortified wine on it. He was seldom without the stuff; it was all he had left to live for. Once I had felt sorry for him because he was a virtual slave for Hall. He worked for practically nothing: for his room and meals and enough to buy a little wine now and then. He was a three-time loser and Hall had the evidence to put him away for the fourth time. A small matter of forgery, but it was enough to keep him locked up for the rest of his life.

I didn’t feel sorry for him any more. “I’ve heard your crummy philosophy before,” I told him. “Now I want some answers.”

“Ask Powers,” Quist said. “He’s up there.”

“Where’s Tien?”

“Up there, too.”

“Where was she when it happened?”

Quist shrugged fatly. His shiny suit bulged out over his stomach and stretched across the fat of his legs and arms. “She didn’t tell me,” he said.

“Where’s Chimp?”

“Up with Tien. So is Peone.” He laughed. “Me I was sleeping. I got an alibi.”

I said, “Where’s Edna Loomis?”

Quist stopped laughing, and the fat pouches of his face drooped to cover whatever expression he might have shown. He sucked at his rotten teeth and looked at me in silence.

I glanced at the two cops. They were leaning against the wall, yawning. I knew the routine too well to be fooled. Their interest in this was in inverse ratio to the way they appeared. I turned back to Quist and showed him my tightly balled fist. I didn’t have the strength to punch tissue paper, but I hoped he didn’t know it.

He squinted over my shoulder and grinned a little.

“Answer that one!”

Quist shrugged.

“They won’t be around all the time,” I said. I raised my fist a little.

“Don’t,” Quist whined. “You done that too many times, Nick.”

“Never unless you earned it,” I said. “Where-is-Edna-Loomis?”

“Who’s Edna Loomis?”

I lifted my fist again. Quist said jerkily, “She ain’t come in.”

“How did you know that she was out?”

“Chimp told me. She carried you outa here didn’t she?”

“When did she check in?”

He answered me by turning around the room register. She was on there, over a week before; her name was the last one. I said, “How many empties you got?”

“About the same as usual,” Quist said. “Ten or twelve.”

“And nobody checked in since she came?”

I wondered how Quist ever kept anything from Hall. He was a lousy liar. I was working on a hunch, compounded half of reasoning and half of knowing the way Johnny Doane’s mind worked. It paid off. Quist said, “Nobody,” and started to sweat.

I said, “Who checked in lately?”

“No one, Nick. I told you …”

“You’ve got thirty rooms besides the permanents,” I said. “Shall we start checking them off?”

Quist’s eyes, sinking into fat too quickly, gave him away. I said, “Johnny?”

“Listen, Nick …”

“Does Hall know?” I demanded.

“I never got around to telling him,” Quist whined. He was sweating more than before.

I swore under my breath, but at Johnny Doane. It was like him to try a stunt such as this. I had to admire him, though. This was about the safest place in town—so long as Hall didn’t know.

“Does Chimp …” I began.

Quist interrupted me with a negative shake of his head. He looked scared. “Please, Nick …”

“You let him in here without telling anybody?”

“A guy needs dough once in a while.”

I couldn’t argue that point. I said, “Maybe Hall found out. So you had to shoot him to save your own hide. Maybe you’re thinking right now about doing a better job the next time.”

Quist’s breath gushed out all over me. “No, Nick, honest. He didn’t find out. I wouldn’t do nothing like that anyway. I never carried a rod in my life. I never pack a gun, Nick.”

“Stop bleating,” I said. “Did Johnny go in and out?”

“When I gave him the all clear,” Quist admitted. “When Chimp wasn’t around.”

“I’m going up,” I said. “Keep away from that phone.”

“The cops listen to all the calls,” he said. “I won’t tip him.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Hundred,” Quist said.

A hundred bucks and he took a chance on having Hall put him away for life, or turning Chimp loose on him. But then a hundred bucks would buy a lot of wine.

“Room?” I asked.

“Two-eleven.” Quist looked as if he didn’t know whether to kill me or himself.

“Give me the duplicate key,” I said. “And don’t let those cops see it.”

He palmed the key over to me and I started for the elevator. One of the cops pried himself loose from the wall and strolled over. “I’m going up to see Powers,” I said.

“You’re Mercer,” the cop said as if it was a great discovery. “You, call the Lieutenant.”

Quist made the call. The cop went to the switchboard and talked for a minute, then nodded me on up. I got in and started for the top. Halfway up I pressed the stop button and maneuvered back down a floor. I left the elevator there and hiked down the back stairs to the second. This was one of the crummy parts with peeling plaster on the walls and a dirty runner on the spottily varnished floor. There was an ancient smell, too, that got in my teeth. A man would have to want to hide very badly to stay in a place like this.

I didn’t even rap at the door of two-eleven. I just put the key in the lock and opened up. I heard a scrambling sound. When I was in with the door locked behind me, the room was empty.

A smouldering cigaret was in an ashtray on the dresser. That was Johnny Doane. He did everything quickly, and left half of his work undone.

I said, “Come on out.”

The bathroom door opened and Johnny Doane came into the room. He might have fooled a lot of people, but he couldn’t fool anyone who knew him as well as I did. He was still thin, small, and neat. He wore an extreme style gray suit that I knew must have conflicted with his fashionplate soul as much as had the poisonous green affair he had worn the night Considine was murdered. His red hair was gone. In its place was a short-cropped thatch of gray, much like Lieutenant Powers', a gray mustache, and make-up that gave him age lines around the eyes.

I walked to the bed and laid my hand on a definite indentation there. It was warm. I crossed the small room to the one armchair and felt the seat. It was warm too. I looked around the room. The wall paper was stained, the ceiling plaster was cracked, and the whole place had the stench of the hallway. A single window looked out on an airwell.

I said, “This is a hell of a place to bring a girl.”

Johnny’s quick, easy grin was gone. He regarded me somberly. “Did Nelle tip you?”

“No,” I said. “Nelle is a clam. You can bring her out, Johnny. I won’t bite.”

He said, “All right, honey,” and a girl came from the bathroom. It was Maretta Considine and she looked just the same. She smiled a little timidly at me. She was still tiny, still exquisite, and terribly innocent looking.

What’s the idea of dragging her into this?”

Maretta said, “I insisted, Mr. Mercer.” She went up and touched Johnny’s hand.

“Protection,” Johnny said briefly. “She’s worth a lot of dough.”

I thought that over and. I had to agree with him. I took a seat on the bed. Johnny sat in the chair and Maretta perched on the arm close to him.

I said, “Johnny was at your place the night I was there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know about your father then?”

“Yes.”

She was, I thought, pretty skillful for a kid. I certainly had had no idea at the time that she knew. “Was he at your place when your father was killed?”

Johnny answered. “No. I have no alibi for that time. I walked in on Considine just after he was shot.”

“After?”

He started out of his chair, feisty as ever. “Damn it, Nick! I said after.”

“Then?”

He knew what I meant. He even grinned a little. “Then I went to Edna Loomis’ place.” He nodded toward Maretta. “She knows.”

“Was Edna Loomis home?”

“Just,” he said. “I didn’t get any information.” His voice was wry. “I tried.”

He had a lot of sex appeal. I could imagine him trying. I said quickly, “Did you clean out Considine’s files?”

“I took some stuff,” Johnny admitted. “What I wanted was already gone.”

“What stuff?”

Maretta said, “He took the records that would implicate Dad and Mr. Hall in that business.”

“Where is it?”

“Nelle has it,” Johnny said. “But it’s no good. No help.”

“I suppose it went up with the green suit,’ I said.

“Yes.”

“Were you the guy who ran out when I went in?” I asked.

Johnny said, “Yes,” again. “I went back after leaving Edna Loomis.”

“You took a hell of a chance.”

“I know,” he said. “That was when someone spotted me.” The paper had claimed he was seen shortly after the murder, but I knew that was often the way of things—time was telescoped when it was convenient to do so.

I said, “That note saying, ‘Loomis, twenty-five thousand,’ did that go up with the green suit, too?”

Johnny got up and crushed out the butt of the smouldering cigaret. He lit another from the pack he took from his pocket. He didn’t offer me one. Which told me where I stood.

“I thought you might get more out of Loomis than I did,” he said. “It was a plant.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Then you sent me to L.A.”

Johnny shrugged. “I wanted room to work without you in the way. What the hell, it’s a good town to visit.”

I said, “It was your gun, Johnny.”

“It was lifted off me,” he said. “I lost it in Portland.”

His whole story had made some kind of sense up to then. Sense to me, though it might not have to a cop. But that broke it down. I must have shown my skepticism.

He said, “I think Edna Loomis took it. I keep checking back and that’s the only time I could have lost it.”

“No cop will swallow that.” I added, “Not even after seeing Edna Loomis.”

“She’s the kind that makes a guy forget things,” Johnny said. Maretta smiled faintly, as if she weren’t going to worry over that kind of competition. Johnny added, “Because the cops won’t swallow it is one reason that I’m here—like this.”

“Did you shoot Hall?”

“No. I was here, in the room.”

“I can vouch for him,” Maretta said.

That was a wonderful alibi. I said, “Who did shoot him?”

“If I knew,” Johnny said, “I’d know who shot Considine and I’d be out of this stinking hole.”

“Hall thinks you’re trying to cut a big slice of the cake,” I said.

“It looks to me as if that’s what he’s supposed to think,” Johnny said. “That’s the way the whole thing was set up all the way through.”

Or, I thought, Johnny set it up that way and figured he could wriggle out from under later. “Hall thought you were going after him,” I said. “He told me so today.”

“That fits, too,” Johnny said. He started prowling the room. He never could sit still very long at a time. He looked at me and his eyes were bleak. “Listen, Nick. Take off. You work for Hall.”

“So do you.”

His grin was mirthless. “Not any more.”

“I quit, too,” I said dryly.

It didn’t even seem to register. “You take off,” he repeated. “Let me run this my way. Get out of my hair. Forget me.”

“And see you go up for murder?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You never have before.”

“I will this time.” He wasn’t even going to argue the point. “Now get out.”

I said, “Why did Nelle give Edna Loomis ten thousand dollars?”

He looked blank. “Did she?”

I knew Johnny and I knew that I was about at the end of my string. Besides, Powers would be hunting me before long. I went to the door. “If you have any evidence to help yourself, you’d better give it to the cops quick,” I said.

“I haven’t,” he said. “I haven’t a damned thing. The whole works is aimed straight at me. Now get out, Nick.”

I hoped that it was just circumstantial evidence. I hoped that it wasn’t all aimed at him because that was the way it had happened. Even after talking to him I wasn’t sure.

I said, “Besides wanting me to get out you tried to have me played for a sucker. I didn’t think much of that.”

Johnny looked blank again. I said, “I listened in on your phone call to Edna Loomis.”

He surprised me. “Which phone call?”

“The one when you told her to get what she could out of me.”

Johnny took out another cigaret, lit it from the butt of the one he had smoked, and crushed the short one in the ashtray. “That call,” he said, and shrugged.

I said, “Did she pay you twenty-five thousand for something, Johnny?”

He didn’t say anything. Maretta, silent for some time, got to her feet. “Please trust him, Mr. Mercer.”

I wished I could have had as much trust in him as she did. It stuck out all over her. I said, “I’m going to keep working on it. If it’s a frame, there’ll be a hole somewhere.”