French flicked ash into the palm of his hand and blew it off as dust. Flack went back to his chair by the window.
“Next point,” Christy French announced. “He don’t have a driver’s license or any identification. None of his outside clothes were bought in El Centro. He had some kind of a grift, but he don’t have the looks or personality to bounce checks.”
“You didn’t really see him at his best,” Beifus put in.
“And this hotel is the wrong dump for that anyway,” French went on. “It’s got a crummy reputation.”
“Now wait a minute!” Flack began.
French cut him short with a gesture. “I know every hotel in the metropolitan district, Flack. It’s my business to know. For fifty bucks I could organize a double-strip act with French trimmings inside of an hour in any room in this hotel. Don’t kid me. You earn your living and I’ll earn mine. Just don’t kid me. All right. The customer had something he was afraid to keep around. That means he knew somebody was after him and getting close. So he offers Marlowe a hundred bucks to keep it for him. But he doesn’t have that much money on him. So what he must have been planning on was getting Marlowe to gamble with him. It couldn’t have been hot jewelry then. It had to be something semi-legitimate. That right, Marlowe?”
“You could leave out the semi,” I said.
French grinned faintly. “So what he had was something that could be kept flat or rolled up—in a phone box, a hatband, a Bible, a can of talcum. We don’t know whether it was found or not. But we do know there was very little time. Not much more than half an hour.”
“If Dr. Hambleton did the phoning,” I said. “You opened that can of beans yourself.”
“It’s kind of pointless any other way. The killers wouldn’t be in a hurry to have him found. Why should they ask anybody to come over to his room?” He turned to Flack. “Any chance to check his visitors?”
Flack shook his head gloomily. “You don’t even have to pass the desk to get to the elevators.”
Beifus said: “Maybe that was one reason be came here. That, and the homey atmosphere.”
“All right,” French said. “Whoever knocked him off could come and go without any questions asked. All he had to know was his room number. And that’s about all we know. Okay, Fred?”
Beifus nodded.
I said: “Not quite all. It’s a nice toupee, but it’s still a toupee.”
French and Beifus both swung around quickly. French reached, carefully removed the dead man’s hair, and whistled. “I wondered what that damn intern was grinning at,” he said. “The bastard didn’t even mention it. See what I see, Fred?”
“All I see is a guy without no hair,” Beifus answered.
“Maybe you never knew him at that. Mileaway Marston. Used to be a runner for Ace Devore.”
“Why sure enough,” Beifus chuckled. He leaned over and patted the dead bald head gently. “How you been all this time, Mileaway? I didn’t see you in so long I forgot. But you know me, pal. Once a softy always a softy.”
The man on the bed looked old and hard and shrunken without his toupee. The yellow mask of death was beginning to set his face into rigid lines.
French said calmly: “Well, that takes a load off my mind. This punk ain’t going to be no twenty-four-hour-a-day job. The hell with him.” He replaced the toupee over one eye and stood up off the bed. “That’s all for you two,” he said to Flack and me.
Flack stood up.
“Thanks for the murder, honey,” Beifus told him. “You get any more in your nice hotel, don’t forget our service. Even when it ain’t good, it’s quick.”
Flack went down the short hall and yanked the door open. I followed him out. On the way to the elevator we didn’t speak. Nor on the way down. I walked with him along to his little office, followed him in and shut the door. He seemed surprised.
He sat down at his desk and reached for his telephone. “I got to make a report to the Assistant Manager,” he said. “Something you want?”
I rolled a cigarette around on my fingers, put a match to it and blew smoke softly across the desk. “One hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.
Flack’s small, intent eyes became round holes in a face washed clean of expression. “Don’t get funny in the wrong place,” he said.
“After those two comedians upstairs, you could hardly blame me if I did. But I’m not being funny.” I beat a tattoo on the edge of the desk and waited.
Tiny beads of sweat showed on Flack’s lip above his little mustache. “I got business to attend to,” he said, more throatily this time. “Beat it and keep going.”
“Such a tough little man,” I said. “Dr. Hambleton had $164 currency in his wallet when I searched him. He promised me a hundred as retainer, remember? Now, in the same wallet, he has fourteen dollars. And I did leave the door of his room unlocked. And somebody else locked it. You locked it, Flack.”
Flack took hold of the arms of his chair and squeezed. His voice came from the bottom of a well saying: “You can’t prove a damn thing.”
“Do I have to try?”
He took the gun out of his waistband and laid it on the desk in front of him. He stared down at it. It didn’t have any message for him. He looked up at me again. “Fifty-fifty, huh?” he said brokenly.
There was a moment of silence between us. He got his old shabby wallet out and rooted in it. He came up with
