The door beside the coffee shop said it was the entrance to the dentist and the beauty shop. It also said there was a wig store and a lawyer on the third floor. Parker went in and up the stairs. Mal might be coming out right now, while he was on the stairs.
He went up the stairs mad and came to the landing. Dentist to the right, beauty parlor to the left, frosted glass in the upper half of the doors. There was light against the glass of the beauty parlor door. He knocked, clenching his other fist impatiently, and after a minute a shadow showed on the glass and a woman’s voice called, “Who is it?”
“I’ve got the coffee.”
After a puzzled second, she said, “What coffee? I didn’t order any coffee.”
“From the shop downstairs,” he said. “The boss said the beauty parlor.”
“But I didn’t order any coffee.”
“Lady,” he said, “they give me the order for the beauty shop.”
She opened the door to argue with him, a small woman with too much makeup on, and as her eyes were widening he clipped her, base-joint knuckles against the tip of her chin. Her eyes rolled back and she fell like glass.
He went in, closing the door fast, stepping over her. It was an anteroom. A gooseneck lamp lit the money on the desk. She’d been counting the day’s take.
He went through the other door to the darkened room where all the machinery was, the dryers looking like big-headed praying mantises. He looked down through the word Beauty on the window. Nothing was happening. Maybe Mal came out while he was on the stairs. All right, he’d be back before morning.
Maybe that Outfit girl was for him. Maybe he wouldn’t be going out at all. All right, all right, he had time. He had nothing but time.
In the dark, he unplugged two dryers, ripped the cords loose at the bases, carried them back to the other room. The woman hadn’t moved. He used one cord to tie her hands behind her, the other to tie her ankles. He found scissors in a desk drawer next to an inhaler, snipped off part of her slip and used it for a gag. She had good legs — But not now. After it was over, after Mal was dead, he’d want somebody then.
He went back to the other room, dragged a chair over to the window, sat down and smoked. People went in, people went out.
It was a bad position. If Mal came out and flagged a cab, then what? He might have to wait a few minutes for the cab, time for Parker to get downstairs, but maybe not. If he came out and walked, that would be better. If he didn’t come out at all, that would be worse.
There had to be a way in there. The hotel wasn’t right on the corner. There was a slender office building next to it on that side. Another hotel on the other side. The Oakwood Arms went eleven stories, the hotel on its left only nine. The office building went twenty-some.
In from the roof? Then he’d have to get down to the third floor. He didn’t like that way. But if nothing happened before two o’clock, he’d have to try it.
People went in, people came out. He recognized one guy; he’d seen him around Chicago. An Outfit man. But no Mal.
He finished his last cigarette, and that made him nervous. He didn’t want to leave the window, but he did. The woman’s purse was on the desk, shoved back out of the way of the money. She had half a pack of filters. He slipped them in his shirt pocket.
He looked over at her; she was still out. That bothered him. She was on her side, her face in shadow. He went over and looked more closely, and her eyes were bugged halfway out of their sockets, her throat and face bluish red and mottled. He remembered the inhaler that had been in the drawer with the scissors. She’d had sinus trouble or something like that, and her nose clogged up.
It was stupid. He didn’t like it, it was stupid. There wasn’t any reason for her to be dead. There wasn’t any reason for a gag across the mouth to make her dead. Angry at the stupidity, he went back into the other room and sat down at the window again. He smoked the filters, but they were too mild. He couldn’t taste a thing, so he dragged too deeply and smoked too frequently and his throat got sore. And it waq getting close in there.
He waited and he watched. And no Mal. At two o’clock, there was one Newport left. He left it in its crush-proof box on her desk, with the money. His prints were all over everything. Ronald Casper, the vag who killed the guard out in California, had killed again. It wasn’t worth it to try to wipe all the prints away. If they ever got him, the California guard would be enough. They wouldn’t need this broad with congestion trouble.
He went down the stairs to the street, and into the coffee shop. They were just closing up; a colored boy was mopping the floor, the chairs were all upended on the tables.
The owner was behind the counter now, two customers sat on stools. Parker said, “A pack of Luckies, and eight coffees to go. Five regular, two with sugar, one black.”
“You just made it,” the owner told him. “I’m just closing up. Two o’clock — closing up.”
“If you got a little cardboard box,” Parker said, “it’ll be easier to carry than a bag.”
“Five minutes later,” the owner told him, “you’d of been out of luck.”
He opened the Luckies right away and lit one. Then he paid for the coffees, which were in a shallow gray cardboard box, and the owner held the door open for him.
He went diagonally across the street to the office building. If Mal came out right now, it would be another stupidity. He would see Parker, and duck back inside and stay there. And make the whole thing tougher.
But Mal didn’t come out. And the office building on the corner was open twenty-four hours. That meant there was an employee on all night to run the elevator and open and shut the door for late-working tenants. Watching from the beauty shop window, Parker had seen three men come out of there a little after midnight and the employee lock up again after them. And on a few floors there were still lights on.
There were four glass doors in a row. Looking through them, he could see two elevators and a guy in a gray uniform sitting on a kitchen chair beside a wooden podium with a sign-in book on it. The guy was reading the
