shaped blackjack games ascending in order of wealth toward the roped-off sanctum of high-stakes baccarat, where the croupiers wore black tuxedos and the reverential faces of French financial consultants.
Little Norman wasn’t in evidence in the casino, but he knew that someone would tell him. One of the unseen beings Norman kept on his personal payroll would probably be talking into a telephone right now. He made a leisurely path to the doorway of the Regency Room and slipped through the doors into the candlelit red-and-gold silence. He always had the sense that this place was insulated from the cacophony of the city by something more than walls, as though everything outside could explode into screaming atoms and you’d never know it by so much as the wavering of a candle flame. The maitre d’ conducted him to a booth in the far corner of the room, where a waiter nodded his respect for the wisdom of beef Wellington and a middle-range Bordeaux with two glasses.
He had almost finished the beef Wellington when Little Norman came in and sat down at his table. “Hello, kid,” said Little Norman. “You come over here looking for me?”
“That’s right, Norman. I thought I’d take you up on that drink. I suppose you’ve already had dinner?”
“Yeah, but since you got an extra glass I’ll help you with the wine.” Norman poured it himself, sniffed the bouquet, and said, “Not bad at all. Your idea or the waiter’s?”
“Mine,” he said and kept eating.
“Then you’ve picked up a lot since you worked with old Eddie. I always heard that travel broadens you.” He chuckled.
“I’ve always heard that too.”
“Something on your mind, kid? You’re not looking too cheerful. I mean besides the thumps on your face.”
“I’m fine. Nothing wrong that a few days of rest won’t handle. How about you, Norman? You have a hard day? Run into anybody that was nervous about anything?”
“No,” said Little Norman, and smiled. “I ran into one or two who used to be nervous, but I seem to have a natural talent for reassuring people. Should have been a psychiatrist, I guess. I’d probably have a lot more money.”
He eyed the heavy gold ring on the finger Norman had wrapped around the stem of the glass. The diamond, he calculated, was around five carats. It looked big even on Little Norman. “I doubt it,” he said.
“I guess you’re right,” said Little Norman. “White folks don’t want a big black psychiatrist, and black folks don’t have the money for one. They just have to stay crazy, like I did, and learn to enjoy it.”
He pushed his plate away and noticed that Little Norman had emptied the bottle. “Well, how about that drink, Norman? You want it here, or you want to go someplace else?”
Little Norman leaned back in his chair to let the waiter deposit the check where the plate had been. He paused to savor the last inch of wine in his glass, then said, “You know, I think you’ve been working too hard. Seems to me like you’re in a hurry all the time, like you forgot how to relax. I’m gonna have to take pity on you and remind you how it’s done.” He waited while the waiter whisked the money away. Then he stood up and said, “No sense in being crazy if you’re not gonna enjoy it.”
“I know you wouldn’t want me to learn it on the street, Norman,” he said, and got up to follow.
ELIZABETH SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed watching the forensic team going about its work. It took an extraordinary act of patience even to watch them. They crawled around on all fours, sighting along the edge of each smooth surface for latent prints, then wrote in pads, took photographs, stretched tape measures from one point to another, and made more notes.
It was already clear that they weren’t going to find anything new in the room, she thought as she watched a sergeant crawl up to the coffee table and stare at the same spot for the third time. She said to Hart, “Let’s try something different.”
“Got anything in mind?”
“How about the other rooms on this floor? Do you have the list of who was in what room? Maybe we could start with the hotel register.”
“Mistretta’s got it and he’s checking them all out now. Not just this floor, either.”
“Well, it looks as if we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns in here.” The forensics people were packing their equipment in black metal boxes and preparing to leave.
“Whew!” said the sergeant. “This has been a long day.”
Elizabeth said, “Oh?” She was still a little resentful because they hadn’t seen the importance of the absence of prints on the window.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “two murders this morning besides this one, three breaking and enterings, all within a mile or two of here.”
The resentment came back without warning. Ma’am and sir were what policemen called outsiders. Whatever sympathy she had been prepared to feel for a tired cop who’d been crawling around straining his eyes for invisible marks went out of her. But she just said, “Please have copies of those reports sent to us at the Bureau office, with the precinct log.”
“No possible connection, ma’am,” said the patient sergeant. “The other two had their skulls crushed. Nothing subtle about it. Just a gang fight in an alley. The B and E’s were all just the usual—an auto parts store, a housebreaking, and a stereo shop.”
She matched his patience. “I want them anyway. It’s important to learn everything that we can about what went on in this part of town last night.” At last she succumbed: “If nothing else, it may tell us where the squad cars were when a murderer was swinging like Tarzan from balcony to balcony on the outside of this building.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the sergeant. He picked up his fingerprint kit and stomped out the door.
Elizabeth became aware of Hart standing there watching her. She turned on him and said, “I know it wasn’t nice. But it happens to be true.”
Hart shrugged. “The local police can be very helpful if they want to.”
“So I’ll be extremely sweet to him when he gives me the logs and the investigation reports, and we’ll be fast friends forever. But the local police might not be the kind of help we’re going to need on this case. Has anybody —”
“Yes,” said Hart. “The CIA was as surprised about it as we were, and they’ve spent the day trying to match it to their standing list of possibilities, apparently without success. Mike told me they’ve probably cabled their field offices and are waiting for something that sounds plausible to come back. He also told me it doesn’t look as if anything will. McKinley Claremont was in the Senate for almost thirty years without doing anything very controversial in the area of foreign policy.”
“I suppose all we can do tonight is wait for the forensics people to work their way through the other rooms, then.”
“That and wait for our replacements to arrive,” said Hart. “As of an hour ago we’re no longer here just to establish a presence.”
“So they’ll send in the first team?” said Elizabeth. “We haven’t done so badly, considering we’ve hardly had time to begin.”
“No, we haven’t,” said Hart. “But just the same, I’m not going to do much unpacking.”
“Speaking of that, has anybody told you where we’re supposed to be staying?”
“They had our bags sent here a little while ago.” He reached into his pocket and fished out two room keys. “That way we’re easy to get hold of if they turn anything up.”
Elizabeth reached for the telephone and dialed a familiar number. An unfamiliar voice came on and said, “Justice.”
“This is Elizabeth Waring. I want to leave a message for Roger Padgett,” said Elizabeth.
“I’ll see that he gets it,” said the voice. “What’s the message?”
“I want his airline reports for last night and all day today wired to the Denver field office of the FBI. Everything within a five-hundred-mile radius of Denver. The information I requested previously I want telephoned to me at the Constellation Hotel.”
“That in Denver too?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I’ll give you a number.” She read the number on the telephone dial slowly. Then she held out her hand, and Hart placed one of the keys in it. “Room 256.”
“Got it,” said the voice. “Anything else?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “Thanks.”
