“No complaints about the sheets now?”
“Don't-talk-” she murmured huskily. The brown eyes were enormous. “You're so-good for me. You're- oh!”
“What was that last remark, ma?”
“Mmmmm!”
Johnny eased back down under the covers and handed Sally one of the cigarettes he'd lighted. The brown eyes examined his face. “You definitely bring out the worst in me, man,” she complained.
“Let's keep it like that, ma. I couldn't handle the best.”
“That's not what I meant!” A sharp-knuckled little fist thumped against his ribs for emphasis. “I'm shameless. I have no pride.”
“Praise Allah.” He grabbed for the small hand as it punched him again. “For the small economy size, ma, you pay off at a hundred cents on the dollar.”
She stubbed out her cigarette after two quick drags, snuggled down alongside him for a moment, then half sat up with a sigh. “I've got to get out of here.” She winced at the onslaught of room temperature on her bare shoulders. “Goose bumps, here I come again.”
“It's warmer in the bathroom, ma.”
“I'll be a stalagmite before I make it,” she gloomed. She descended under the covers again. “I haven't any will power, Johnny. You'll have to push me out.”
“Why, sure. Glad to oblige.” He pinched her, and Sally bounded upright in the bed with a shrill yip. He pinched her again, strategically, and she thumped to the floor, trailing covers. She bounded erect with a stifled yell at the impact of the cold, whizzed across the room to scoop up her clothes and zoomed into the bathroom.
“I'm coming back with the biggest thing I can find full of water,” she announced from the doorway.
“You better find yourself a suit of armor before you try it,” he warned her, and she ran out her tongue at him before she closed the door. Johnny leaned back in the bed and folded his hands beneath his head. He stretched luxuriantly, arching his chest until he heard a muscle in his back pop protestingly. The quicksilver moments in life made all the rest of it worth-while. A man didn't have to be a philosopher to appreciate them. A man just had to be alive.
He was scowling up at the ceiling when Sally emerged from the bathroom, dressed. He rolled up on an elbow to look at her. “You wouldn't happen to remember the names of any of Claude Dechant's steady telephone customers, would you?” he began abruptly. “People he called a lot?”
“I can see you never heard Mr. Dechant make a telephone call,” Sally said. “His calls might as well have been in Morse code. First names only, and a twenty-second call was overtime for him. He'd call Max, or Jack, or Madeleine, or Harry, or Gloria, or Jules, or Ernest, and he'd say: 'I'll meet you at such-and-such a place.' And hang up. Once in a while someone would try to say something to him, and he'd cut them right off. 'Tell me when you see me,' he'd say. He could be really nasty on the phone.”
“A Gloria I know,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “An Ernest, too. Reel off the rest of 'em for me again, ma.”
“Max,” she repeated. “Madeleine. Harry. Jack. Jules.” She thought a moment. “That's the crop, I think.” She came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why are you interested?”
“Friend of mine was askin',” he replied vaguely.
“Asking what?” She jogged his elbow at his silence. “Asking what, Johnny? What are you getting into now?”
“I have to be gettin' into something?”
“I know you, buster. Too well I know you.” She stood up from the bed. “I'll siphon you later. I've got to run. Please stay out of trouble?”
He grunted disparagingly as she blew him a kiss from the door.
Johnny ran lightly up the indented stone steps of the station house in the warming sunlight. The first person he ran into in the long corridor was Detective James Rogers. Johnny drew him aside. “That redhead over at the place last night, Jimmy. Where's she work?”
“You wouldn't rather have her home phone?” Detective Rogers ran an appraising eye over Johnny's gray slacks, maroon sport shirt and tan jacket. “So seldom I see you out of uniform it's a wonder I recognized you. You going courting?”
“In all that piece of jazz I didn't seem to catch the address, Jimmy.”
The sandy-haired man looked bleak. “No information, Johnny,” he said brusquely.
Johnny bristled. “What the hell you mean, 'no information'?”
“You came over here last night and ruffled the man's fur. I'm giving you the payoff. Cuneo and I got the word. For Killain: nothing.”
“Don't work too hard at bein' as stupid as your boss,” Johnny told him in heat. “I know Faulkner's a lawyer. If I look him up in the book an' go over to his office, how long you think I've got to hold him by his heels out the window before he tells me where I can find the girl?” He grinned at the detective's level stare. “But I'm always in favor of the short cut. I'll trade with you, Jimmy. You give me the address, an' I'll tell you somethin' I forgot over at the place last night.”
“Why does there always seem to be something you forget?”
“Cynicism ill becomes you, boy. We got a deal?” Silently Rogers took his notebook from his pocket and flipped pages. He stared off down the corridor as Johnny squinted at the opened page. “Spandau Watch Company,” Johnny murmured. “Room Eighteen-oh-eight, Two-twenty-two Maiden Lane.” His grin renewed itself. “Nine will get you five an' your nine back, Jimmy, that the gal's no maiden.”
“You shock me.” The notebook closed with a snap. “So what did I buy?”
Johnny ran through for him quickly Claude Dechant's reaction to the one letter in the stack of mail. “When he came in that front door I'll bet he didn't have any more idea of jumpin' overboard than you do right now. He didn't get any phone calls, either. Was I you, I'd take a look for that letter.”
Rogers nodded grudgingly. “We'll look. Not that it'll make any difference.” He looked at Johnny. “What'd you do to the man last night to get him up on his ear?”
“He's just a bleedin' heart. We was still speakin' when I left here. He must've had a bad dream.”
“If he did, you were in it, in Technicolor. As a direct result of which, I'm taking an official interest in you.”
“Official, Jimmy?”
Detective Rogers paused as though mentally reviewing his orders. “Perhaps not official,” he conceded. “But an interest.”
“Should I move a spare cot into my room for you?”
“Never mind trying to be a bigger wise guy than nature made you, either.”
“The redhead an' the lawyer showed yet?”
“Left twenty minutes ago,” Rogers announced with satisfaction.
Johnny glanced up and down the bustling corridor. “Where's your crabby partner, Cuneo? Already out on the corner waitin' for me to leave so he can tail me?”
The sandy-haired man eyed Johnny coldly. “My partner's minding his own business, which is more than I can say for some people I know.” Detective Ted Cuneo, who had a phobia about Johnny Killain, was a sallow-faced six- footer with large-pupiled pop eyes.
“You guys are as transparent as glass, Jimmy.”
“You're not so damn opaque yourself.”
“Clear-As-Crystal Killain, they call me,” Johnny agreed. “I guess I should sign that statement now. I wouldn't want Ted to get chilled standin' around waitin' for me.”
He moved up the corridor, ignoring Rogers' stare.
Johnny had covered the best part of three blocks outside, and had just begun to think himself mistaken about Ted Cuneo's activities, when he suddenly picked out the tall detective's lean figure across the street. Johnny stopped and waved. “Hey, Cuneo! Come on over!” Detective Cuneo crossed the street after an irresolute moment. He stepped up on the curb and looked Johnny up and down balefully. Two bright red spots bloomed in the saffron features. “How about splittin' the cab fare downtown?” Johnny asked him. “I like to keep down expenses.”
“Wise guy,” the tall man gritted. “A continental wise guy.”
“No originality,” Johnny said sadly. “Rogers already used up that line. Well, you comin'?”
