The Little Sister

on the street outside. It was time to go home. Whistles blew. Motors raced. Old brake linings squeaked. There was a dull steady mutter of feet on the sidewalk outside. It was just after five-thirty. I finished the coffee, stuffed a pipe, and strolled a half-block back to the Van Nuys Hotel. In the writing room I folded the orange camera-shop check into a sheet of hotel stationery and addressed an envelope to myself. I put a special-delivery stamp on it and dropped it in the mail chute by the elevator bank. Then I went along to Flack’s office again.

Again I closed his door and sat down across from him. Flack didn’t seem to have moved an inch. He was chewing morosely on the same cigar butt and his eyes were still full of nothing. I relit my pipe by striking a match on the side of his desk. He frowned.

“Dr. Hambleton doesn’t answer his door,” I said.

“Huh?” Flack looked at me vacantly.

“Party in 332. Remember? He doesn’t answer his door.”

“What should I do—bust my girdle?” Flack asked.

“I knocked several times,” I said. “No answer. Thought he might be taking a bath or something, although I couldn’t hear anything. Went away for a while, then tried again. Same no answer again.”

Flack looked at a turnip watch he got from his vest. “I’m off at seven,” he said. “Jesus. A whole hour to go, and more. Boy, am I hungry.”

“Working the way you do,” I said, “you must be. You have to keep your strength up. Do I interest you at all in Room 332?”

“You said he wasn’t in,” Flack said irritably. “So what? He wasn’t in.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t in. I said he didn’t answer his door.”

Flack leaned forward. Very slowly he removed the debris of the cigar from his mouth and put it in the glass tray. “Go on. Make me like it,” he said, carefully.

“Maybe you’d like to run up and look,” I said. “Maybe you didn’t see a first-class ice-pick job lately.”

Flack put his hands on the arms of his chair and squeezed the wood hard. “Aw,” he said painfully, “aw.” He got to his feet and opened the desk drawer. He took out a large black gun, flicked the gate open, studied the cartridges, squinted down the barrel, snapped the cylinder back into place. He unbuttoned his vest and tucked the gun down inside his waistband. In an emergency he could probably have got to it in less than a minute. He put his hat on firmly and jerked a thumb at the door.

We went up to the third floor in silence. We went down the corridor. Nothing had changed. No sound had increased or diminished. Flack hurried along to 332 and knocked from force of habit. Then tried the door. He looked back at me with a twisted mouth.

“You said the door wasn’t locked,” he complained.

“I didn’t exactly say that. It was unlocked, though.”

“It ain’t now,” Flack said, and unshipped a key on a long chain. He unlocked the door and glanced up and down the hall. He twisted the knob slowly without sound and eased the door a couple of inches. He listened. No sounds came from within. Flack stepped back, took the black gun out of his waistband. He removed the key from the door, kicked it wide open, and brought the gun up hard and straight, like the wicked foreman of the Lazy Q. “Let’s go,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Over his shoulder I could see that Dr. Hambleton lay exactly as before, but the ice-pick handle didn’t show from the entrance. Flack leaned forward and edged cautiously into the room. He reached the bathroom door and put his eye to the crack, then pushed the door open until it bounced against the tub. He went in and came out, stepped down into the room, a tense and wary man who was taking no chances.

He tried the closet door, leveled his gun and jerked it wide open. No suspects in the closet.

“Look under the bed,” I said.

Flack bent swiftly and looked under the bed.

“Look under the carpet,” I said.

“You kidding me?” Flack asked nastily.

“I just like to watch you work.”

He bent over the dead man and studied the ice pick.

“Somebody locked that door,” he sneered. “Unless you’re lying about its being unlocked.”

I said nothing.

“Well I guess it’s the cops,” he said slowly. “No chance to cover up on this one.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him. “It happens even in good hotels.”

11

The redheaded intern filled out a DOA form and clipped his stylus to the outside pocket of his white jacket. He snapped the book shut with a faint grin on his face.

“Punctured spinal cord just below the occipital bulge, I’d say,” he said carelessly. “A very vulnerable spot. If you know how to find it. And I suppose you do.”

Detective Lieutenant Christy French growled. “Think it’s the first time I’ve seen one?”

“No, I guess not,” the intern said. He gave a last quick look at the dead man, turned and walked out of the room. “I’ll call the coroner,” he said over his shoulder. The door closed behind him.

“What a stiff means to those birds is what a plate of warmed-up cabbage means to me,” Christy French said sourly to the closed door. His partner, a cop named Fred Beifus, was down on one knee by the telephone box. He had dusted it for fingerprints and blown off the loose powder. He was looking at the smudge through a small