Johnny looked at him over his shoulder. “If I'm under arrest, boy scout, pull your gun an' hope it works. Otherwise shut up.” He picked up the receiver. Cuneo glared at him and looked hopefully at Dameron. The lieutenant made no sign. “Hi, ma,” Johnny said into the phone. “What's all the excitement?”
“Oh, Johnny, I've been trying to call you everywhere!' The night switchboard operator's voice pushed into an upper register. Sally Fontaine was a slim* brown-eyed girl with whom Johnny had a long-time, comfortable understanding. “I tried to get you at Mickey Tallant's, at the apartment, at the poker game-” Her tone turned curious. “Say, how did you get rid of them so soon?”
“The constabulary? I didn't. They're breathin' hard on the back of my neck. What happened?”
“Oh. One of the uniformed men said there'd been a phone call. The lieutenant and that man Cuneo were in the lead. Cuneo didn't seem to want to believe Tommy Haines when Tommy told them you'd been in the bar for four hours until just ten minutes before they got here. Johnny, who was the-”
“Get me later, ma.” Johnny hung up and looked from Dameron on the bed to Cuneo at the door. “If four hours gets me an alibi he must've been killed just before you got here, right, boys? I always knew your pigeon service was the best, Joe, but are you wired right into the gunners now? The kid says you were here first.”
“The message to the stationhouse said 'Tell Dameron there is a stiff in 615 at the Duarte'.” The lieutenant's expression was bland. “Since I've been half-expecting a call like that for a long time, I thought I should take a look.” He stubbed out his cigarette without removing his eyes from Johnny. “Why would anyone line you up on the street with a silenced gun?”
“Was the man who was killed heavy-set, redheaded, with a badly scarred face?” Johnny asked innocently. He continued at Dameron's grudging nod. “Then I can tell you. That was Carl Thompson of Jefferson, N.Y.” He told them Carl Thompson's story, omitting only his prior discovery of the body. “The same people who scratched Thompson from the entries would be the only ones interested in addin' me to the score. They don't know how much he told me.”
Ted Cuneo made a loud br-r-acking noise. “What a pipe dream!” he jeered.
Johnny kept his attention on the lieutenant. “The phone call to the precinct was a little more of the same, Joe. If I got hung for Thompson, fine.”
“A phone call to me and an attempt to kill you right back-to-back?” Deep furrows etched themselves in Dameron's ruddy forehead. “That's too much of a good thing.”
“Maybe somebody got nervous. I'm tellin' you that's what happened. Get on your stick an' find out why.”
“If it's 'why' we're talking about, why was Thompson killed?”
“For Christ's sake, were you listenin' to me? He was killed to keep him from goin' on up to Jefferson an' burnin' down the barn over the heads of the outfit that gave him the goosin'.”
“You believed his story?”
“What the hell difference does it make if I believed it or not? He believed it. He was goin' back there an' shake that place to pieces. The people who ran him out knew it. They found him here an' put a stop to it.”
Lieutenant Dameron frowned. “You expect me to believe that someone in Jefferson close to the policy- making level had this ex-police chief murdered?”
“What's so hard to believe about it? They'd had him half-killed when they threw him out of office. It hadn't shut him up.”
Ted Cuneo repeated the sound he had made previously. “A man of your talents ought to be able to come up with a better story than that when a dead man's found on the floor of his room, Killain.”
Johnny rose suddenly from his chair. “All of a sudden I don't like the tone of your voice, Cuneo.”
“I don't give a damn what you don't like!” the detective bristled. Twin pin-points of high color emblazoned his sallow complexion. “All of that lip-flapping of yours gives me a pain. If I ever heard a jerked-off story-”
Lieutenant Dameron slid from the bed and interposed himself between them as Johnny started forward. Johnny's shoulder knocked him to one side. “Cut it!” Dameron ordered. “This isn't the children's hour. This idea of yours, Johnny. It just won't hold-” He turned his head at a knock on the door. Cuneo shifted from his hands-raised, glowering regard of Johnny to look inquiringly at the lieutenant, who nodded. The detective opened the door. Over his shoulder Johnny could see Chet Rollins' round face and gold-rimmed glasses.
The chubby auditor bustled into the room, unconscious of the tension. “They called me at home,” he said to Johnny. “Ed's at a hotel supply convention in Philly.” Ed Carrolton was the Duarte's manager. Rollins looked curiously at Dameron and Cuneo before glancing worriedly around the room. “You get him out? Hell of a thing for the hotel.”
“It didn't do him much good, either,” Johnny said. He introduced the auditor to the others.
Rollins turned back to Johnny after the double handshake. “Nobody downstairs seemed to know who he was. Was he a friend of yours? Did he get killed trying to save your money? All the way over in the cab I kept thinking it mightn't have happened if I hadn't sent that damn envelope upstairs.”
“Money?” Cuneo asked alertly.
“Sure.” Chet Rollins looked surprised. “Wasn't that how it happened?” He looked at Johnny. “It's still here?”
“I haven't had a chance to look.” Johnny could cheerfully have throttled the little auditor. He knew how this was going to look to Cuneo.
“I'd like to hear about this money,” the detective said unpleasantly.
“Well-” Rollins stared uncertainly from Cuneo to Johnny and back again. The atmosphere was beginning to get through to him. “I sent an envelope up to Johnny this afternoon by one of the bellboys. It contained wages I'd been holding for him in the safe.”
“Cash?” Cuneo demanded. Rollins nodded. “How much?”
“Nine hundred and thirty-nine dollars.” The auditor said it almost apologetically.
Cuneo stared. He turned abruptly to Johnny. “Is it here?” Johnny went to the bureau and opened and closed drawers. When he closed the last one he faced about silently. No words were necessary.
“Where was it when you last saw it?” Cuneo pressed him.
“On top of the bureau,” Johnny admitted reluctantly.
“A thousand bucks right on top of the-” Cuneo waggled his head in amazement. “And this Thompson was supposed to be cracked?” He looked at his superior. “I like the sound of this a hell of a lot better than that jazz we heard before. This poor bastard Thompson probably caught a hotel thief right in the act.” He swung back to Rollins. “Who'd you send up here with the money?”
“Richie Gordon, one of our regular boys.” Rollins said it defensively.
“Did he know what was in the envelope?”
“He could have.” Rollins looked unhappy. “He was in the outer office when I was talking to the bookkeeper about getting it out of the safe.”
“Better have a talk with this Gordon, Ted, and find out how much broadcasting he did about his errand,” Dameron said.
“Right,” Detective Cuneo said briskly. He looked at Johnny, solemnly tapped a finger to his forehead three times, and left the room.
“I'll-I'd better check around downstairs,” Chet Rollins said uneasily. When no one said him nay he departed hurriedly.
“You guys are foulin' off the pitch, Joe,” Johnny began as the room emptied. “This Richie Gordon's a good kid.”
“Good kids talk, too.” Lieutenant Dameron plucked a loose thread from the sleeve of a tan suit very similar in color to Johnny's. “How come we didn't hear about this money before? Are you going to try to deny it makes more sense than what you were peddling?”
“The hell it does. I heard Thompson's story right out of the horse's mouth, Joe. You didn't. All right, I forgot the envelope on the bureau an' it's gone. What I'm sayin' is that if the money hadn't been missing something else would have been gone. The closet would've been stripped if nothing else offered. Whoever did the job wanted it to look like a room robbery walked in on by Thompson.”
“You've been watching too many late, late shows. Be over at the station in the morning to sign a statement.” Lieutenant Dameron settled his expensive-looking dark brown fedora more firmly on his head and started from the room.
“Goddammit, Joe-” Johnny tramped to the door after him.
