“I know it's up in Spanish Harlem,” Mickey Tallant said absently. “I can probably get it for you.” He rubbed his chin slowly. “You think the kid was killed on purpose?”
“I don't know, Mick. He could have been. An' whether he was or not, I keep thinkin' of any one of a dozen little things I could've done different that might've kept him alive. You call the hotel when you get that address. I need clothes.”
“Okay. I'll get you a cab.”
The cab driver stared at Johnny's apron-burnoose, but drove him around to the hotel, because of the one-way streets having to cover three sides of a square to do it. “I'm goin' down the alley,” Johnny told the driver at the hotel entrance. “Go inside an' tell Paul I said to pay you, then tell him to come down in the service elevator to pick me up.”
The cabbie nodded, and Johnny slipped and slid down the snow-filled alley and entered the hotel through the big iron side door. Fifteen feet inside the narrow passageway he could hear the whine of the already descending elevator, and Paul threw open the door. He shook his head gently at sight of Johnny's apron. “What happened to your uniform?” he inquired as Johnny got aboard and he started to take him directly to the sixth floor.
“Guy had hold of my collar when I let go of him.”
Paul nodded as though it were the most reasonable explanation in the world. “I've got Sally lying down up in the lounge on the mezzanine. Amy's with her.”
Amy was the tall colored girl who handled housekeeping nights. “Rogers gone?” Johnny asked.
“Just a few minutes ago. He was pretty decent. He spent most of his time here trying to locate Gidlow.”
“Tell you what you do, Paul,” Johnny said swiftly. “I've got to go out again. You run downstairs an' have Vic get Sophie Madieros in here to hold down the switchboard until the day crew comes on. Then have Amy take Sally over to the apartment and stay there with her till I get there. You and Dominic should be able to keep Vic afloat the balance of the shift if I don't get back. Got it?”
“Got it.” Paul slid the elevator door closed and descended to the lobby, and in his own room Johnny changed quickly. In the mirror he frowned at himself as he knotted his tie, and he retested the puffiness of his mouth.
“-that monkey'd known how to get his shoulder behind it he might've saved himself some splinters,” he murmured half aloud, crossed the room and picked up the phone. Vic Barnes' voice came on the line, and Johnny shook his head. They were really spread a little thin with the front desk man having to take the switchboard, too. “Get me the Rollin' Stone, Vic. Sally's got the number stuck up on the board somewhere.”
“Right,” Vic replied placidly. Johnny could hear him dialing. Vic Barnes was a placid individual, a plump man with graying hair combed straight back from a high forehead, very high color and a shiny face.
“Mick?” Johnny asked abruptly when he had the connection. “Killain. You get that address?”
“You're not goin' up there now? People sleep nights!”
“You get the address?”
“Jesus, what a one-track mind! Write it down.”
Johnny wrote it down, hung up the phone and stuffed the address in a pocket. His mind was on Manuel Ybarra. For looks the ex-fighter reminded him of the rugged fishermen on the Spanish Costa Brava, burly and capable. For an instant he thought of long-ago days under a burning sun on coastal waters edged by miles of dazzlingly white sand beaches. Then he pulled himself up sharply and left the room.
He shivered in the chill reach of the wind, which enveloped him as the taxi's headlights disappeared around the corner; he stared around him at the dingy tenement area revealed in the widely spaced streetlights, and he looked down at the slip of paper in his hand. 5-B. Fifth floor, and these old buildings obviously had never heard of an elevator. Never heard of a buzzer system for the front door, either, he decided; it opened at a touch after he walked up the slippery iron steps that led off the street.
Inside he turned to the dimly lighted stairs and climbed steadily. No heat was wasted on the hallways; the building temperature didn't seem much higher than that of the street outside, but at least there was no wind. A single naked light bulb halfway up each flight illuminated the landings dimly, leaving bulkier shadows at top and bottom. Stale cooking odors pursued him upward as he climbed.
In the poor light of the fifth floor hallway he studied drab and scarified wallpaper and cat-footedly circled doors until he found the lumpy “B” in battered tin. He knocked softly and listened in the quiet to water noises from protesting drains and the creaks and groans of the old building in the winter night. He had to knock again before there was a stirring behind the door.
“What is it?” It was a woman's hushed tone, and Johnny frowned. Before he could make up his mind to reply, he heard the door open cautiously on the chain latch and felt himself under inspection. The room behind the woman was unlighted, and he could make out only the indeterminate pale blur of her features, so far beneath his own eye level as to mark her as no more than an inch or two above five feet.
“Well?” she demanded huskily, her voice sounding young.
“I need to see Manuel,” he told her.
“Why?” she challenged immediately.
“I have to talk to him.”
“Perhaps tomorrow-” she began firmly, and from behind the door to her left Johnny could hear a hissing Spanish whisper.
“Describe him!”
“Huge,” she murmured rapidly in kind. “Hard. A crooked nose. In a gray uniform. Truly-”
“Open the door,” Manuel Ybarra said in English in a normal voice. “He was at the tavern tonight.” There was an instant of doubt as she turned to look at him. “Open the door, Consuelo,” the man repeated impatiently.
At the rattle of the chain latch Johnny moved forward a bit hesitantly; there was still no light in the room. He was still at the threshold when, to his left, Manuel turned on a lamp. The thick-shouldered man, in underwear and socks, was calmly returning a switch-blade knife to the lamp table's drawer.
In the same instant, at the other side of the room, Johnny caught a flashing glimpse of skimpily nightgowned femininity before a blanket swirled and descended serape-fashion, eclipsing the vision from neck to toe. Small she might be, Johnny reflected, but never petite; the curves were full-bodied.
“Dios!” the girl exclaimed indignantly, with a toss of a blue-black mane. She glared at Manuel. “You have to shame me?”
The dark man paid no attention. “You mus' have much impatience,” he said softly to Johnny. As an afterthought he gestured at the blanket. “My sister, Consuelo.” He shrugged broadly. “My penance.” He glanced at her, eying Johnny speculatively. “This is the big Johnny, from the hotel. The one of whom the Senor Mick is a compadre.”
Johnny stared frankly at the creamily oval face, classically Castilian in depth from brow to chin. Her nose and mouth were small, but very well made, and her lips provocatively full. She might have been twenty-five. The firm set of her chin and her wide-spaced dark eyes warned of an independent nature, and he extended his hand gravely. “This penance of which your brother speaks,” he said to her in Spanish, then, shifting to English, “it should happen to me.”
The soft ivory of her face bloomed with a tinge of added color as she retrieved her hand from his, but she looked up at him squarely. “If I'd known you knew Spanish, I hope you believe I'd not have said that about the nose-”
“Nicest thing's been said about it for years,” he assured her. He turned to Manuel. “Thanks for the welcome, amigo. I'll make it short. The two men in the tavern tonight-”
“What two men in the tavern?” the girl interrupted.
“Be quiet, girl.” Her brother said it almost absently as he studied Johnny. “The little fighter was a friend of yours?”
“You can make it stronger than that.”
Manuel nodded soberly. He knuckled his chin reflectively, the rasp of his beard plain in the quiet. “A very good left hand, for his weight,” he said after a moment. “Very good.” He pursed his lips. “You had a question?”
“When they came in, they spoke to each other. I'd like to know what they said.”
The dark man inclined his head slightly. “I heard what they said. The Senor Mick asked idly, to no purpose, and I denied it, because I do not wish to speak for the world to hear.” He considered Johnny carefully for a moment, then nodded again as if to himself. “They came through the door together, the tall one on the left-so.” Manuel positioned a hand in the air. “When he had looked around the tall one said quickly to the other 'Es este el hombre?'
