a handful of currency and spread bills out on the desk, sorted them into two piles and pushed one pile my way.
I said: “I want the whole hundred and fifty.”
He hunched down in his chair and stared at a corner of the desk. After a long time, he sighed. He put the two piles together and pushed them over—to my side of the desk.
“It wasn’t doing him any good,” Flack said. “Take the dough and breeze. I’ll remember you, buddy. All you guys make me sick to my stomach. How do I know you didn’t take half a grand off him.”
“I’d take it all. So would the killer. Why leave fourteen dollars?”
“So why did I leave fourteen dollars?” Flack asked, in a tired voice, making vague movements along the desk edge with his fingers. I picked up the money, counted it and threw it back at him.
“Because you’re in the business and could size him up. You knew he’d at least have room rent, and a few dollars for loose change. The cops would expect the same thing. Here, I don’t want the money. I want something else.”
He stared at me with his mouth open.
“Put that dough out of sight,” I said.
He reached for it and crammed it back in his wallet. “What something else?” His eyes were small and thoughtful. His tongue pushed out his lower lip “It don’t seem to me
“You could be a little wrong about that. If I have to go back up there and tell Christy French and Beifus I was up there before and searched the body, I’d get a tongue-lashing all right. But he’d understand that I haven’t been holding out just to be smart. He’d know that somewhere in the background I had a client I was trying to protect. I’d get tough talk and bluster. But that’s not what you’d get.” I stopped and watched the faint glisten of moisture forming on his forehead now. He swallowed hard. His eyes were sick.
“Cut out the wise talk and lay your deal on the deck,” he said. He grinned suddenly, rather wolfishly. “Got here a little late to protect her, didn’t you?” The fat sneer he lived with was coming home again, but slowly, but gladly.
I killed my cigarette and got another one out and went through all the slow futile face-saving motions of lighting it, getting rid of the match, blowing smoke off to one side, inhaling deeply as though that scrubby little office was a hilltop overlooking the bouncing ocean—all the tired cliched mannerisms of my trade.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll admit it was a woman. I’ll admit she must have been up there while he was dead, if that makes you happy. I guess it was just shock that made her run away.”
“Oh sure,” Flack said nastily. The fat sneer was all the way home now. “Or maybe she hadn’t ice-picked a guy in a month. Kind of lost touch.”
“But why would she take his key?” I said, talking to myself. “And why leave it at the desk? Why not just walk away and leave the whole thing? What if she did think she had to lock the door? Why not drop the key in a sand jar and cover it up? Or take it away with her and lose it? Why do anything with that key that would connect her with that room?” I brought my eyes down and gave Flack a thick leaden stare. “Unless of course she was seen to leave the room—with the key in her hand—and followed out of the hotel.”
“What for would anybody do that?” Flack asked.
“Because whoever saw her could have got into that room at once. He had a passkey.”
Flack’s eyes flicked up at me and dropped all in one motion.
“So he must have followed her,” I said. “He must have seen her dump the key at the desk and stroll out of the hotel and he must have followed her a little further than that.”
Flack said derisively: “What makes you so wonderful?”
I leaned down and pulled the telephone towards me. “I’d better call Christy and get this over with,” I said. “The more I think about it the scareder I get. Maybe she did kill him. I can’t cover up for a murderer.”
I took the receiver off the hook. Flack slammed his moist paw down hard on top of my hand. The phone jumped on the desk. “Lay off.” His voice was almost a sob. “I followed her to a car parked down the street. Got the number. Christ sake, pal, give me some kind of a break.” He was fumbling wildly in his pockets. “Know what I make on this job? Cigarette and cigar money and hardly a dime more. Wait a minute now. I think—” He looked down and played solitaire with some dirty envelopes, finally selected one and tossed it over to me. “License number,” he said wearily, “and if it’s any satisfaction to you, I can’t even remember what it was.”
I looked down at the envelope. There was a scrawled license number on it all right. Ill-written and faint and oblique, the way it would be written hastily on a paper held in a man’s hand on the street. 6N 333. California 1947.
“Satisfied?” This was Flack’s voice. Or it came out of his mouth. I tore the number off and tossed the envelope back to him.
“4P 327,” I said, watching his eyes. Nothing flicked in them. No trace of derision or concealment. “But how do I know this isn’t just some license number you had already?”
“You just got to take my word for it.”
“Describe the car,” I said.
“Caddy convertible, not new, top up. About 1942 model. Sort of dusty blue color.”
“Describe the woman.”
“Want a lot for your dough, don’t you, peeper?”
“Dr. Hambleton’s dough.”
He winced. “All right. Blonde. White coat with some colored stitching on it. Wide blue straw hat. Dark glasses. Height about five two. Built like a Conover model.”
