Johnny thought he had never heard a feminine voice so metallically hard. He rushed off the elevator. In the corner of the room Jim Daddario cowered away from Micheline Thompson standing in front of him threatening him with a needle-like stiletto. His hands and arms sought to protect his face and neck, but a bright red line on his throat oozed down onto his white shirt. Neither of them noticed Johnny.
“I'll ask you once more, Jim,” Micheline Thompson grated in the strange-sounding voice. Her face was like chalk. “Where is she?”
“I told you I don't know!” the politician babbled. “She was gone when they brought me to. I didn't see-don't!” he screamed, and half fell trying to get away from the sudden movement of her arm. He slammed heavily into the wall, his mouth wide open and his eyes staring as the stiletto cut him again. “I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!” he yelled.
“He honest-to-God doesn't, Micheline,” Johnny said.
At the first syllable she whirled, catlike, the stiletto extended. She had to re-focus her eyes to take him in. Her arm dropped to her side as she recognized him. “He said you'd been here,” she said dully. “I didn't believe him.” Behind her, Jim Daddario slumped floorward, easing himself down with his hands on the wall.
“Genevieve's safe,” Johnny said quietly. “I took-”
She came toward him with a rush. “Where? Take me to her!”
“Easy,” Johnny soothed her. “She's safe.” He glanced at the man on the floor. “What do we do with him?”
“You're not just saying she's safe?” she pleaded. “You didn't tell me when you knew Carl was-” She failed to complete the sentence.
“I'll take you right to her,” Johnny assured her.
“What happened to your face?” she began, and turned at a sound from the elevator. The blonde telephone operator wobbled uncertainly into the room. “Why, Esther!” Micheline exclaimed in surprise.
“I brought her up with me to keep her from makin' a call,” Johnny explained.
“I thought he was going to k-kill you,” Esther said to Micheline in a dry voice. “He looked so-terrible.”
“Esther called me this morning and said all hell had broken loose here,” Micheline said to Johnny. “I didn't trust Jim and I'd arranged with Esther to keep me posted.”
“I thought she was workin' for him,” Johnny said with another look at the blonde who was staring in fascination at Daddario. He pointed with a thumb. “Did he kill Carl?”
“No!” Daddario blurted from the floor. He sat up, but made no move to get to his feet.
Johnny looked at Micheline. “He didn't do it himself,” she said. “He was never out of my sight after he trapped me at the Taft. Which is to say I was never out of his.”
“I figured that knife job for Savino,” Johnny said. “All except-” He frowned and shook his head. “Well, what do we do? In this town we don't call the police to come an' get him.”
“Esther,” Micheline said. The telephone operator started. “Take the elevator down and go back to work. Keep everyone away that you can. If anyone persists, ring us here when they start up.” The girl nodded and departed. Micheline looked at Daddario and raised the stiletto she had concealed in a fold of her skirt while the blonde was in the room. The politician shrank away as she bent down over him. His lips made a bubbling sound as he tried to say something. She wiped the stiletto on his shirt and straightened up with a smile on her face. It was quite a smile, Johnny thought. “Tie him up,” she said. “Until I see my daughter unharmed I want to know where he is. For a week I have promised myself-”
“Yeah. Sure. I'll tie him.” Johnny strode into a bedroom and stripped off the bedding. He tore a sheet into long strips and went back into the other room. “Is there any other way down from here?” he asked Micheline.
“We can walk down a flight and get the regular elevator.”
“Okay.” He reached in his pocket and tossed a heavy-bladed knife to Micheline. “Pull the penthouse elevator back up here. Pry open the little door you'll see head-high at the front an' take out the fuses. That'll leave it hung at this floor. I'll gag this monkey an' that'll leave him incommunicado here till we're ready to come back an' rack him up.” He prodded the politician with his toe. “Stretch out there, buster, an' make it easy on yourself.”
He knelt and went to work.
Micheline returned and handed Johnny his knife. She stared down at his packaging job, her mouth a thin line. “I hoped you would turn stubborn when he had me call you and you tried to speak to me in French. I had nowhere to turn. With Genevieve in his hands I was-frantic.”
“How'd lie find you in New York?” Johnny asked, ramming a yard of sheet into Daddario's mouth.
“Dick Lowell's brother Toby called him from Washington and wanted to know why Carl was in your hotel room with some wild story. The girl in Dick's office was on Jim's private payroll and she at once called Jim. That was the first news either of them had had of Carl since he'd disappeared from Jefferson. Jim had Dick Lowell under control but he was deathly afraid that Toby Lowell would appear on the scene here before he could consolidate his new position. Jim, Kratz, and Savino flew to New York. Kratz hung around your hotel until he saw Carl and followed him back to the room we had at the Taft. When Carl went out, Daddario moved in on me. Then I learned he actually had Genevieve in his apartment, and I didn't know what to do. I was sure he'd stop at nothing to protect his political position.”
“He's at the end of the line now,” Johnny said, rising to his feet. “Call your girl an' have her get us a cab.” He waited till she returned. “All set? Let's go.”
She led the way to an exit sign and a flight of stairs beyond a door. On the landing she turned to look at him. “How did you come to force your way in here this morning?”
“I just found out for the first time you had a kid. It all of a sudden made sense to me that Daddario could push you around. I didn't expect to find the little girl; I was just gonna bounce Daddario around till he told me where she was.” On the stairs he thought of something else. “How did Daddario find out Carl was dead?”
“I'm not sure. I think now that he knew it before he had me call you at the Duarte. Savino had come in shortly before and there had been an intense conversation that sounded almost like a quarrel. Then they all put their heads together and Jim came over to me and told me to make the call to you.”
“Yeah,” Johnny grunted. He held the door for her and she walked quickly to the elevator and pushed the button. “They didn't know what your husband had told me. I didn't let on to them, though, so I'm damned if I can see why they were spooked so bad they tried inside an hour to get me twice-” He thought about it on the way down in
the elevator. In the lobby he stopped at the blond girl's little switchboard booth. “If anything pops around here, call us at Edison 7-9490.”
“Surely.” She wrote it down. “I hope you find everything all right. Your cab's outside.”
He was silent in the cab on the way over to Jessamyn's, adding and subtracting in his mind. Beside him Micheline rode with her hands in her lap and he could see the whitened knuckles. It must have been a hell of a week for her. His thoughts returned to New York. “Was Riley at the Manhattan?” he asked her abruptly.
She looked surprised. “No. When I saw him he was-”
“Did he know that you saw him?” he pressed her.
“Of course. Why?”
“Nothin', I guess,” he said vaguely. “For a minute there I just had a feelin'-ahh, I don't know. He's been hustlin' me to find you for him an' I can't figure out why.”
“For him?”
Johnny nodded. “The only thing I could figure was that he was plannin' to throw the switch on Daddario, but where would he get the nerve?” He looked out the window as the cab turned the corner. “Here we are.”
He could feel the tension in her as she waited for him to pay off the driver. She walked quickly beside him through the lobby and down to the door of 2-A. She stood with her hands knitted in the strap of her bag as Johnny identified himself to Jessamyn. When the door opened Jessamyn took one look at her face and pointed silently to the bedroom. Micheline flew to it and opened the door. “Hi, mommy,” they heard a drowsy young voice say. “Don't you think it's lots nicer here?” They had a single glimpse of Micheline's radiant face before the door closed.
“I'm sick to think I helped to do that to her,” Jessamyn said in a low tone.
Johnny looked at her. She had dressed, but she still wore the dark glasses. “No one tried to get in?”
“Dick Lowell called on the phone,” she remembered. “He's crazy to talk to you. Said he'd been calling all over town. I didn't know what to say to him so I finally said you might come by here later. In case you wanted to call him.” A hand brushed absently at her swollen cheekbone. “He insisted that you call as soon as you get here.”
