lowered his arms slowly. “It had aspects of a frame. Gidlow was manually strangled, and the body placed on the divan. The camera was rigged with the thread so that whoever opened the door took a picture of himself without realizing it, since there was no flash and the thread snapped after contact. Very crude.”
“What the hell was so crude about it?” Johnny demanded. “Suppose it had been me whizzed in there. I'd have taken a picture of myself in the doorway of the room of a murdered man, an' never even known it. You think I'd ever have noticed that little bit of thread left on the camera trigger? Like hell I would.”
“You'd probably only have been down to your next-to-last appeal before we noticed it, though,” Detective Rogers said cheerfully. “The truth is mighty, and will prevail, to say nothing of the New York City Police Department.” He removed a notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped open its pages. “No sign of forcible entry. We were meant to assume that entry was by key and that a death-reflexive arm movement of the corpse snapped the picture very conveniently upon the murderer's departure.”
“The kid had a key to this suite,” Johnny said slowly.
“It could have been meant for him,” the detective agreed. He looked at Johnny slyly. “Of course, with Gidlow strangled manually, someone as well-known as yourself for talking with their hands could easily have come under suspicion.”
“A situation to which he's not exactly unused,” Lieutenant Dameron rumbled. “Well, are we finished here, Jimmy?”
Detective Rogers rose and bowed elaborately from the waist. “Monsieur, we may not be finish', but we sure as hell are defeat'.”
Johnny laughed, then sobered. “I hope you guys realize both these deaths go right back to that fixed fight.”
“What fixed fight?” the lieutenant inquired blandly.
“Yeah, you're feelin' pretty brave now with no investigation testimony possible from the two principal witnesses. That could be why they're dead.”
“Does that explain the bankbook?” Lieutenant Dameron demanded sharply. He got up out of his chair. “Or why Gidlow twelve hours before Roketenetz?” He turned to the door. “Come on, Jimmy.”
Downstairs in his own room Johnny took down the bourbon bottle thoughtfully and examined the brimful amber contents of the shot glass he then filled. Well, Killain? Why didn't you tell them about finding Monk and the shyster at the door of Sally's apartment before anyone knew Gidlow was dead? Did Lonnie Turner scare you that much into believing you'd better not step on his toes?
Glass in hand, he wandered into the bathroom, and studied his hard-bitten, bronzed features in the mirror. He knew why he hadn't told him. If Turner was as tough as his reputation, it would be just as well to keep Sally out of the foreground so they wouldn't get back at her, rather than Johnny. And from the sound of this thing, Turner had something to protect.
He downed his drink and considered the empty glass. Suppose that Turner knew Gidlow was dead? Or going to be? Turner undoubtedly had a key to the suite, too. Suppose he'd send someone over to check on the cash, or even to retrieve it before Jake went over the dam? All they'd have found was the bankbook. A telephone call about that should have started Lonnie's ulcer working overtime.
A telephone call…
Johnny put down his glass and moved briskly to the phone. “Vic? Can you get me the telephone chits out of the auditor's office for the day Gidlow was killed?”
“Be no problem ordinarily, Johnny,” Vic replied apologetically, “but the police already took them out of here.”
“Okay, boy,” Johnny said shortly, and hung up. He stared at the wall. Great minds…
He sat at a small table in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted Cafe of the Three Sisters and listened to Consuelo Ybarra's professional rendition of gypsy love songs. The surprisingly deep, husky voice from the tiny bandstand did justice and a little bit more to the fiercely passionate nature of her material.
She looked the part, too, Johnny thought; the snug-fitting scarlet sheath that encased the full curves of her body matched the brilliance of her lips, the only touch of color in the pale ivory features. Her blue-black hair was drawn straight back in an artfully careless chignon upon the nape of her small neck, and in the spotlight her bare arms and shoulders were dazzling. Altogether an extremely sophisticated simplicity, Johnny reflected.
He took another swallow of the heavy dark rum in the glass on the table before him. He felt fine-light, loose, and liberal. Consuelo had commented a bit pointedly upon the array of glasses upon the table each time she returned to it, but Johnny's mood had soared too high to be blunted. It had been a pleasant evening, and he had plans for its remainder.
He glanced around the quiet room. The girl was in the final moments of her last show, and she had really enlisted her audience. The slim dark men and their women-slender and fiery or plump and placid-sat entranced. Dark heads bowed in evoked remembrance. There must be no happy gypsies, Johnny mused; the songs delivered in the throbbing voice bitterly lamented unrequited love and tearful farewell.
When Consuelo finally curtsied to the room the applause was not overloud, but on the way back to Johnny's corner the scarlet sheath was delayed at table after table for a word of commendation. Johnny was on his feet with her chair withdrawn when she reached him, and she sank into it gratefully.
“You do that well,” he told her seriously. “The accompaniment could have been a little bit better.”
“The accompaniment is as good as the voice,” she replied indifferently, accepting the cigarette he offered her.
“Who does your arrangements?”
“A legacy from my ex-husband.” She smiled, a self-mocking smile of the lips but not the eyes. “I shouldn't say it like that, really, because they're exceptionally good arrangements, and the material itself is timeless.”
“You do them well,” he said for the second time.
The full lips thinned, and he could see the line of her jaw. “Once I dreamt that I would be the best. The greatest.” She smiled, in self-disparagement. “It seems so simple when one is young. Yet I came closer than most; I had the energy, and the ruthlessness.” The smile turned wry. “I had little voice, actually, but I persevered. I found a whisky-soaked, hunchbacked wreck of a man with a genius for musical arrangement, and I married him. In more sober moments he worked with me, hand-tailoring the arrangements to what voice I had. With him I just possibly might have made it to the top, but then he discovered a girl with a real voice who challenged the drunken artistry in him-”
She spread her hands, palms up. “The story of my life, senor. He left me flat. At my age I know it should be difficult to think of myself as in a backwater, yet I find that it is so. I sing here, and I wait. I tell myself that something will happen some day that will again push me out into the mainstream of life.”
She looked over at the bar as Johnny sat in silence. “You must have charmed Manuel, that he is not here to escort me.”
“I'll deputize,” Johnny announced.
“To the tenement steps only, then,” she warned him. She looked significantly at the empty glasses on the table. “I mean no offense, but I have no need for a rum cavalier.” She rose to her feet. “I'll speak to Doug, the manager, and then we can leave.”
Johnny watched appreciatively the tic-toe of her hips beneath the tight material of her gown as she crossed the floor to the manager's office. He felt a fine inner glow, and he did not think it was rum-induced.
“There's a taxi at the front door,” she told him as she returned to the table and picked up her bag. In the cab she favored him with the same self-mocking smile he had seen previously. “This is really quite an occasion. My brother does not permit club patrons as escorts, even for a once-married sister. He is old-fashioned. You are only the second so favored. Do you know Rick Manfredi, the gambler?”
“I know who he is.”
“He impossible, I suppose, but fun, in a way. The little boy type. Difficult to explain if you don't know him. You might like him.”
“Sure,” Johnny said carefully, and they rode in silence through the narrow, dirty streets. Consuelo leaned forward to speak quickly as the cab pulled into the curb in front of the tenement. “You won't need to get out. I'll run right on up.
“I can't leave you out here on the street,” Johnny said in his most reasonable voice. “Manuel'd come after me with his dullest knife if someone jumped you on the stairs.” He handed the driver a bill. “I'll walk you up.”
