Johnny deliberately folded and creased the paper and slipped it into a pocket. He looked at the lawyer. “You know that the kid had a manager? Isn't he the one to see?”
“I'm tellin' you he's got an appointment with Miss Fontaine!” Monk cut in.
“An' I'm tellin' you… shut up!” Johnny told him grimly, and returned his attention to the lawyer. “Well?”
“Why, ah-I was-it was said-” His high-pitched voice hesitated. “I'm to represent Miss Fontaine.”
“Not today, Hartshaw.” The tall man looked incredulous, and Johnny raised his voice. “Rack it up and drag it outta here, man. You're not representin' anyone. Blow.”
Mr. Hartshaw closed his slightly gaping mouth and stalked off injuredly in the direction of the elevator, turning once to look back over his shoulder en route.
“Now just a minute, damn you!” Menace hung heavy in Monk's rasping tone; his hands were bunched massively as he advanced gloweringly upon Johnny.
“You come right ahead, Monk,” Johnny invited him, moving away from the wall.
The mention of his name stopped the squat man. He licked his lips rapidly. “You know me, hah?” he mumbled. He stood stiffly, obviously reviewing his instructions; then he sullenly unbundled his fists and tramped to the elevator in the wake of the lawyer. Johnny followed him.
“These two are just leavin', Carlo,” he said to the slim, dark-haired operator when the doors opened. The boy looked surprised at the sight of Johnny; he looked hurriedly at his passengers as they entered, and the look changed to apprehension.
Johnny reached in and casually removed a folded bill from the small breast pocket of the operator's uniform. “A five spot,” he said musingly. “You buy cheap, Carlo.” He smiled into the cab at the boy; deliberately he tore the bill into confetti. “Easy come, easy go, huh, kid?” Suddenly he leaned in again toward the good-looking boy, who backed away guiltily, and his voice hardened. “The next time you let someone con you into takin' 'em up here without goin' through the switchboard first, I'll hang you out to dry. Understand?”
The boy swallowed hard. “S-sure, Johnny. Sure.”
“Then run these rats outta here. Hose down the lobby afterward an' cut down on the smell.”
Above the faint hum of the descending elevator Johnny could hear Monk's furious bark. “What in the hell is his name?” Johnny doubted somehow that another five-dollar bill went with the answer. It looked like a poor day for Carlo.
Johnny glanced up at the lobby clock as he pushed his way in through the foyer doors, and his attention was distracted at once by the sight of Detective James Rogers standing, overcoat on arm, to the left of the newsstand. From behind a half-raised paper, he was unobtrusively studying the passengers entering and emerging from the elevators. The detective laid the newspaper down on the counter as Johnny approached him. “Been watching for you, Johnny.”
Johnny's grunt was pure skepticism. “Among others?”
The detective's smile was unabashed. “There's Gidlow. He hasn't shown yet. Otherwise, I'm just practicing.”
“Your no-good partner home feedin' milk to his ulcer?”
“My partner,” Detective Rogers said crisply, “is out on a job of work.”
“Good for him. What's his beef with me, Jimmy?”
“Could it be that he feels you have no respect for authority?”
“I should change the spots on this leopard just to humor him? Him and Dameron. May their tribe decrease.”
“Speaking of-angels-” the slender man remarked, and cut his eyes toward the lobby chairs. Johnny turned in time to see Lieutenant Joseph Dameron's bulk propel itself upward from the depths of the largest chair and walk toward them.
“Morning, Johnny,” the lieutenant rumbled in a powerhouse boom that turned heads in the lobby. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with apple cheeks and iron gray hair that nearly matched the frosty tint of his eyes.
“Mornin', Joe,” Johnny acknowledged; neither man offered to shake hands. He nodded down at the black blare of the headline at the newsstand counter: fighter slain in tavern holdup. “This little caper got the brass out plowin' up the streets, too?”
“There's a couple of things,” the big man said vaguely. He gestured in the direction of the elevators. “Can we talk upstairs?” Johnny motioned them into an unoccupied cab and took the controls himself. In the elevator the lieutenant spoke again, in dry tones, with the fluid lingual grace of the polished public speaker. “I'd have had Jimmy ask you to drop by the station house, but I thought he might need a warrant if you were having one of your bad days.”
“He has any other kind?” the detective asked solemnly.
The ruddy-faced lieutenant's smile was wintry. “I decided I'd be better off coming over myself.”
Johnny looked over his shoulder as he halted the cab at the sixth floor. “That's a switch, Joe, your bein' able to decide somethin'.” He winked at Detective Rogers. “You always used to have such a hard time makin' up your mind. Like the time we was holed up for three days in an ice storm in a cottage in the Pyrenees, an' you couldn't decide whether the mother was better than the daughter.”
The apple cheeks darkened, and the lieutenant's stare passed from Johnny to the wooden-faced detective. “Officially you never heard that, Rogers,” he growled.
Johnny led the way to 615 and unlocked the door. “The trouble with your job nowadays,” he needled, “is that you do too much pitchin' an' not enough catchin'. You ought to drop around more often an' slop a little swill with the rest of us hogs.”
The lieutenant was silent; inside he eyed with grudging appreciation the attractively furnished oversized bed-sitting room, with its wall-to-wall deep pile carpeting and the three-quarter-sized refrigerator tucked neatly in a corner. “Damned if I don't like this a little better each time I see it,” he said gruffly. He ran an appraising eye over the gray-green Segonzac on the opposite wall, and the corners of his hard mouth turned upward. “I'm a cinch to outlive you, Johnny, the way you pace yourself. Why don't you will this to me, the same way Willie Martin left it to you?”
“An' give you a motive for gettin' rid of me, along with an inclination? I might not fit in a round hole, Joe, but I'm not that square, either. I don't own nothin' here yet, anyway; the new owners have gone to court over that clause in the will.”
Lieutenant Dameron raised an eyebrow. “I thought Willie went to a little trouble to plug that loophole?”
“That's why these corporations have lawyers.” Johnny nodded at the leather-covered armchairs. “Park it, you guys.” He seated himself on the edge of the bed. “These people caught the estate lawyers so hungry for a buyer they agreed to a transfer without prejudice as to the clause favorin' me, which meant they were entitled to go into court an' try to tip it over.”
“And you've got the expense of fighting it?”
Johnny shook his head. “Willie even thought of that. If it's contested, my legal expenses come right off the top of the estate, just like the room and the furnishings here.” He looked over at the two men in their chairs. “They'd have held still for the furnishings-it was the room that bugged them. Nobody ever heard of a hotel room bein' willed to someone before. They can't find any precedents.”
“They haven't tried to buy you off?” Detective Rogers asked.
“They tried,” Johnny admitted. “I blew that fuse for them, fast. If Willie wanted me to have this place, nobody's gonna muscle me out of it.”
Lieutenant Dameron looked around the room reminiscently. “You and Willie,” he said softly. “God help me, the gray hair you two gave me. In an operation that above all things demanded discretion-” He shook his head in remembered disbelief.
“Discretion didn't always get the job done, Joe,” Johnny replied. “Which brings us up to right now. What you bein' discreet about these days?”
“This business this morning-”
“Before we get into the double talk,” Johnny interrupted, “just what do you think actually happened over at the Rollin' Stone?”
“The newspapers had a rather full account, I thought. A bit sensationalized, but of course that's what sells newspapers.”
“Joe, this is Johnny. You don't believe the newspapers, or what the hell are you doing sittin' here?”
