At eight forty-five Cooky called from the lobby. I told him to come up and he said he would as soon as he checked in and got his bag to his room. He knocked on the door ten minutes later. I let him in and he handed me a tightly wrapped package a little over an inch thick. “I had to take hundreds—ten of them,” he said. “Ten hundreds, fifty fifties, and seventy-five twenties. That’s five thousand bucks.”
I handed him the envelope containing the check. “Here’s my check.” He didn’t look at it and I didn’t count the money.
“Was it much trouble?”
“I had to threaten to withdraw my account is all. Where’s the booze?”
“In the closet.”
He got it and poured himself a drink, his usual half-tumbler.
“Want some ice?”
“Takes too long. I had a very dry trip. I sat next to this pigeon who was afraid of landings. She wanted to hold my hand. She held it between her legs. She’s the secretary for a Turkish trade mission. What’s new with you and why the suspicious-looking bulge in your pocket? It ruins the drape.”
“I carry large sums of money.”
“Is Mike in a five-thousand-buck jam? That’s respectable trouble.” I turned the chair back from the window so that it faced the room and sat down. Cooky had propped himself up on two pillows on the bed, his drink cuddled against his chest.
“Mr. Burmser paid me a call,” I said. “He thinks I’m a dumb bastard. I tend to agree.”
“Did he have his boy with him—the toothpaste ad?”
“You know him?”
“We’ve met. He’s very handy with a knife. I understand.”
“It’s part of his image.”
Cooky’s private joke played around his lips. “You seem to be running with the fast crowd at the country club.”
There was a light tap at the door. I got up and opened it. Weatherby stood there, his face the color of wet newsprint. “Little early, I’m afraid,” he muttered, then stumbled into the room and sprawled on the floor. He tried to get up once, shuddered, and lay still. There was a small hole in the back of his mackintosh. I knelt quickly and turned him over. His hands were covered with blood, and when his topcoat and jacket flopped open I saw that his shirt was soaked with it. His eyes were open, his mouth gaped, and his teeth were bared in a smile or a grimace: it was hard to tell which.
Cooky said, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He must have been holding the blood in.”
I felt for the pulse in his neck. It seemed like the thing to do. It wasn’t necessary. He was as dead as he looked, as dead as he would ever be.
CHAPTER 10
I stepped back and bumped against the bed. It seemed that I should do something, so I sat on it and stared down at the sprawled body of Weatherby. I tried to think of something else to do besides sit on the bed, but nothing came to mind.
“Who is he?” Cooky asked.
“He said that he was John Weatherby and that he was British and that he used to work with government here in Berlin. He said he was going to take me to the Cafe Budapest tonight to meet Padillo. He was working for him. He said.”
“Now what?”
I stared at Weatherby some more. “Nothing. I’ll go to the cafe alone. You’d better get down to your room.”
“No cops?”
“They’ll be here soon enough after the maid comes in to turn down the bed. If Mike’s in the kind of a fix that gets people killed, he’s in a bad way. I can’t wait around. There’s not enough time.”
“I think I’ll tag along.”
“It’s not your show.”
“I’ve got five thousand invested and you might be passing bum checks.”
“Tag along and you might not get the chance to find out.”
Cooky smiled his private-joke smile. “I want to stop by my room first. Meet me there in five minutes.” He stepped over Weatherby’s legs and went out.
It was some while after Cooky left before I got up and put on my raincoat and slipped the bundle of money into one pocket and the revolver into the other. It no longer felt ridiculous. I went over to the window and stared out at the lights, and after I felt that five minutes had passed I took the elevator down to Cooky’s suite.
“A whore’s dream,” he said, opening the door to my knock. He walked over to his suitcase, which lay spread open on one of the twin double beds that took up most of the room. He took out a long, thin silver flask and slipped it into his hip pocket.
