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.”
“Nobody manages Johnny,” Mike Larsen told him.
“No? And what the hell makes him so special?”
“Rogers here knows him; why don't you ask him? I'll give you a hint, though, since you asked me. About a month ago Vic and Johnny and I were fishing out in the Sound. I've got a big old walrus of a thirty-foot overdecked inboard, and I grounded her on a sand bar. I thought for sure we'd have to winch her off, but Johnny jumped out along the bow and got a grip under the water line, and I mean he picked us up and threw us back into Long Island Sound. His shoulders came clear through his shirt, and he was down to his calves in wet sand. You try it some time. I'll take him any day over a truck and give you the odds.”
“You his press agent?” Ted Cuneo asked acidly.
“I didn't get a chance to tell you upstairs, Ted,” Jimmy Rogers interposed, “but Johnny's the boy who went through the mixmaster overseas with the lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant Dameron?” Detective Cuneo's inquiry was sharp. “That character upstairs was part of the lieutenant's show?”
“Make it a little stronger than that.”
Hostility bristled in the thin man's tone. “You trying to tell me-”
“They were all specialists, Ted,” Detective Rogers said patiently. “Johnny, the lieutenant and Willie Martin, who used to own this hotel here. Johnny and Lieutenant Dameron mutually didn't like each other, but I've heard the lieutenant say himself that, for what they had to, Johnny was only the best. They worked a very tough street, and whenever the steaks fell into the fire Johnny pulled 'em out. The lieutenant was with him when he got those marks on his chest you were asking him about, if you're interested.”
“So he's got a few muscles,” Ted Cuneo growled irritably. “He still leaves me with an itch. A guy as hairsprung as him-”
“Could get in trouble? The lieutenant maintains that Johnny and trouble are synonymous. Tell you something else — you know that room you just left upstairs? Johnny owns it.”
“Owns it? This is a hotel, man.”
“Regardless, he owns it. Lieutenant Dameron may have felt that Johnny lacked the proper respect for authority, but that bothered Willie Martin not at all. He and Johnny got along fine. Willie brought Johnny back here with him, stuck him in a uniform and let him make a job for himself running the night side. When Willie was in town they shared that room upstairs, otherwise it was Johnny's. A few months back before you came over to this precinct we hit a real twister here and ran up a bag of six bodies in five days. The heat from downtown was enough to fry us, but we were spinning our wheels completely until Johnny aged the lieutenant a few years by strong- arming a solution when he got mad at being pushed around. The kicker turned out to be that the whole circus had been steered here by Willie Martin to darn a hole in his financial sock. By the time Johnny found it out Willie had set a new record for the running broad jump from the twelfth floor. His will left the room and furnishings to Johnny in perpetuity, even if the hotel should be sold. The legal beagles ran in circles for weeks, but it stuck.”
Ted Cuneo snorted disgustedly. “He marry anyone in your family? You sound worse than Larsen here.”
“You didn't see it happen, Ted. I did. I don't have to like what he does to like the way he does it.”
“Ahhhh, the hell with it. Do I genuflect the next time I see him? The hell with it. Let's get to business. Mike, tell me A light came on in a mezzanine office to Johnny's left and distracted him. The shade on the front door came down abruptly, blotting out all but the faintest chinks of light. Public stenographer's office-Johnny looked at his watch. Mighty early for any activity over there. Soft-footedly he eased over toward the chink of light, at the same time trying to keep tuned in on the conversation below him.
“-they did work in the same public relations office?” Cuneo's voice sounded excited. Johnny halted. Who worked?
“That's right.” Mike Larsen's voice. “Over a year now.”
“Sounds like we should have been talking to you right from the beginning,” Cuneo said crisply. “So this Ellen Saxon worked with Barnes' wife? And Barnes goes upstairs for no reason he can give us and finds her body. Very cozy. You think he was doing the tumtiddling bit on his wife?”
“Vic? Vic Barnes? Man, not a chance. Didn't you talk to him?”
“Granted he don't look it; they fool you. Why did he go up there? And why won't he talk about it?”
Mike Larsen's tone was thoughtful. “It's just possible he might think his wife is somehow concerned. Being as how he thinks the sun rises and sets for the sole benefit of Lorraine, if he thought he could save her anything you might have a little trouble with him.”
“We're having a little trouble with him.” Cuneo's voice was sharp. “I have a hunch you're right. Jimmy, what'd she sound like when you talked to her?”
