CHAPTER 5
Johnny pushed the little stack of transcript sheets, telephone chits and miscellaneous charges across the registration desk to Marty Seiden, a dapper, thin-faced youngster with a ready smile who worked as one of the day front-desk men. “This is a dirty trick, kid,” Johnny began; he nodded apologetically at the stack of paperwork. “You think you can straighten it out? Vic hadn't made much of a dent in it before they put the snatch on him. Paul posted the telephone charges, but that's about all that's been done.”
“A cinch, big man,” Marty said confidently. His oversized bow tie matched his flaming red hair; he was already rolling back his cuffs. “Don't worry about it. Did you balance his cash?”
“Me? I couldn't balance my pocket change.” Johnny pushed a key over the counter. “I locked it up. And listen, Marty. When a guy works a cash drawer, sometimes he floats a little paper against pay day. You know?”
“I know.” The redhead grinned. “If I need anything to make it right before I send it upstairs I'll let you know.” He lined up three long yellow pencils beside the sharpener before he looked over at Johnny again. “If Vic's going to be under glass on this awhile, you're going to need a pencil man nights. How about me?”
Johnny nodded. “You just graduated to sleepin' days, kid. I'll square it with Rollins right now. See you tonight.” He crossed the lobby and mounted to the executive offices on the mezzanine. Inside the first door was a double row of frosted-glass partitioned cubicles; he knocked upon the door marked auditor, and nodded to the heavy-featured man in the horn-rimmed glasses behind the cluttered desk as he entered. “Mornin', Chet. You got any objections to lettin' Marty Seiden work the night side with me till we spring Vic?”
Bushy brows behind the glasses climbed expressively.
“Marty? Might not be a bad idea. He's a good man with figures; he'll keep you afloat. He's a little flip with his tongue; don't hesitate to sandpaper him down if he gets out of line. Do him good.”
“How's Arthur J. Morrison going to take all this, Chet?”
The auditor leaned back in his chair and light glinted from his glasses. “Officially, he's going to be a little sticky. The night front-desk man up in a guest's room at three in the morning, the guest a woman, and deceased; you understand the manager's attitude has to be a little professional. Unofficially, he's already called me to ask if I thought there was anything he could do.”
“Yeah? Not bad. We'll worry about his official attitude when we get Vic unstuck downtown. You'll transfer Marty over?”
“Right now.”
“Thanks, Chet.” Johnny walked back out to the mezzanine from the office. He stopped on the landing; Mike Larsen was in the middle of the stairs on his way up, and he was coming three steps at a time. He pulled up in front of Johnny, breathing hard, and shoved a newspaper at him.
“Look at this!”
Johnny caught the blare of a headline in the paper pushed at him. “You mean we made the front page?”
“No, no.” Mike pointed. “Not here. Read it.”
Johnny looked at the black, block print. Robert sanders killed at apartment door. And in the subheading in smaller print, Prominent Public Relations Expert and Clubman Shot Four Times. The story started, “Robert Sanders, 54, 219 Cypress Lane, was shot and killed by as yet unknown assailants in the driveway of the co-operative apartment where he made his home. The body was discovered-”
Mike Larsen's voice was tense as Johnny lowered the paper and looked at him inquiringly. “Robert Sanders owned the business where Ellen and Lorraine worked.”
Johnny flattened the paper for another look. “When-”
“Sometime after midnight, it says. Body found at three-forty-five a.m. by a neighbor.”
Johnny stared at the subheading. “Four times-”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Here was a guy in a groove-four shots for Sanders, and four shots from the dark sedan. “This kind of starches things, Mike. Looks like we only had the semi-windup here; the main event was across town. You can bet me it was under the same auspices.”
“How do you figure that?”
“The batting order's got to be Sanders first, then Ellen. Ellen was over there, and if she didn't actually see it she saw or sensed enough to scare her green. Trouble was the pistol-packin' type saw Ellen, too, and followed her over here. Followed her right inside after I slowed him up on the street. A strong move. No Pollyanna, this citizen.”
“What's this about a slow-up on the street?”
Johnny explained. “The police should tie this into a pretty tight knot, Mike; the guy dug a furrow all the way across town.”
Mike looked doubtful; the yellow-flecked eyes returned to the paper. “Even supposing the time element is right, Johnny, it would still be a pretty good trick-”
“Even better than you know.” Johnny thought of the unregistered room, and shook his head. “The thing I want to know is how a guy like that could get upstairs in the place here without being seen by Vic or Paul or me. Strangers get asked questions, but nobody blew a whistle.” He looked at Mike. “What kind of a guy was this Sanders?”
“I guess I'd have to say he was a good businessman-”
“Public-relationese for a hard-nosed bulldozer?”
Mike waved a hand as he seated himself on a leather-covered bench. “Speak no evil. He was smooth, and he got along. His wife was his partner in the business, and she was every bit as good as he was. I've heard rumors it wasn't much of a marriage, but nobody could say that about the business tie-up. They were good.”
“Was Ellen running around with this Sanders?”
“No.” Mike tasted the word, leaned back and tried it again, less positively. “No. I never saw them together, and I never heard anyone say they'd seen them together-”
“But there was something?”
“All right.” Mike stood up abruptly. “I'd heard… stories.” His hand gesture was impatient. “You can always hear stories. Once in a while they might even be true.”
“You told Ted Cuneo that Lorraine Barnes wasn't running around with Sanders. That on the level?”
As suddenly as he had stood up, Mike Larsen sat down. “What made you ask that?” He spread his hands. “We live in an imperfect world, Johnny.”
“Yeah. And now we got a self-appointed critic runnin' around and leveling off imperfections. No reservations on this Lorraine Barnes-Robert Sanders menage-a-deux?”
“No reservations. Which isn't to say that there are any notarized affidavits on file-” He hesitated and ran a hand over his chin. “This stuff I just told you-”
“I'm takin' a page in the Times. You get the by-line.”
Mike's grin was sheepish. “All right, I shouldn't have said it. You going by for Lorraine?”
“Yeah. What's she like, really? I don't think I've even seen her more than three or four times, when I'd stop by to pick up Vic when we were going fishin'.”
This time Mike's grin was cynical. “How do the poets put it? Fire-and-ice. For once you're well matched. She can melt down a bronze idol with her tongue, and she's right in your class in rocketry take-off. She has a very definite mind of her own. Keep your left hand high.”
Johnny grunted, waved idly and turned to the stairs. He walked the short distance to Vic's place; it was only six blocks east and two south of the hotel, one of the occasional half-block enclaves of apartments in midtown New York's business jungle. He walked because he needed to think, and he felt that he had the germ of something that needed thinking about.
He knew now why Vic had gone up to Ellen Saxon's room. Check that, Killain-by a process of elimination you think you know. Only one thing in the world could have taken him up there.
Somehow Lorraine Barnes had known that Ellen Saxon was in the hotel, and Lorraine had called Vic. To give Ellen a message or to bring her to the phone, more likely. Wait a minute-how did Vic know where she was? He didn't even know she was there at all until Lorraine told him so.
Johnny worried it around, unconsciously walking faster. Vic had to know, somehow; it was the only thing that
