The clerk had seen cards like those before, but cops carried them, and I got the eyes again because he had figured me first for one thing, now he was trying to make me for another and it didn't jell. I put the card on the counter facing him. 'Recognize him?'
He didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't, either. Finally he nodded. 'Room 417.'
'There now?'
'Came in earlier. His face was swollen and he was all bloodied up. What'd he do?'
'Nothing that would interest you.'
'Listen, Mac ... we're trying to stay clean. This guy never gave us no fuss so why are you guys ...'
I grabbed his arm. 'What
'There was another one before. Another cop. He wanted him too.'
'Cop?'
'Sure. He had one of these mug cards.'
Pat might have made it. One of his squad just might have gotten a lead and run it down. Enough of them had copies of the photos and one way or another Beaver could be nailed.
'You see them come out?' I asked him. 'Naw. I don't watch them bums. You think I ain't got nothin' better to do?'
'Yeah, I don't think you have. Just one more thing ... stay off that phone.'
A swamper in filthy coveralls was oiling down the wooden steps, so I pushed the button beside the elevators instead of walking up. The ancient machinery creaked and whined, finally groaning to a halt. The door slid open and two drunks were arguing over a bottle until one behind them pushed through with a muttered curse, almost knocking them down. He looked familiar, but I had seen too many lineups with these characters playing lead roles, so any of them could be familiar. The other two guys that pushed their way through were Vance Solito and Jimmy Healey, a pair of the Marbletop bunch who ran floating crap games on the side. I shoved the two drunks out to do their arguing and punched the button for the fourth floor.
Outside 417 I stopped and put my ear to the door. No sound at all. I slid the .45 out, thumbed the hammer back and rapped hard, twice. Nobody answered and I did it again with the same result. Then I tried the knob. The door was locked, but with the kind of lock it only took a minute to open. When I had the latch released I stepped aside and shoved it open and stared into the darkness that was intermittently lit by the reflected glow from a blinking light on the street below.
I waited, listening, then stepped around the door opening inside, flipped the light switch on and hit the floor. Nothing happened. I stood up, put the .45 back and closed the door. Nothing was going to happen.
Beaver was lying spread-eagled on the floor wallowing in his own blood, as dead as he ever was going to be, his stomach slit open and a vicious hole in his chest where a knife thrust had laid open muscle and bone before it carved into his heart. There were other carefully planned cuts and slices too, but Beaver had never made a sound through the tape that covered his mouth. His face was lumpy, bruised from earlier blows, with nasty charred and blistered hollows pockmarking his neck from deliberate cigarette burns.
But this was different. Woody had taken care of the first assault, but he hadn't gotten around to killing him and when the break came Beaver had dumped himself out of his chair, broken loose and gone through the window while all the action was going on. But this was different.
No, this was the same. It had happened before to Lippy Sullivan.
I took my time and read all the signs. It finally made sense when I thought it out. Beaver's break wasn't as clean as he had figured. He had been tailed to his safe place, hurting bad and terrified as hell. And when the killer finally reached him he couldn't run again. He was supposed to talk. He was tied up, his mouth taped while the killer told him what he wanted and what he was going to do to him if he didn't talk and just to prove his point the killer made his initial slashes that would insure his talking.
Except Beaver didn't talk. He fainted. There were more of those nicely placed slices, delivered purposely so the pain would bring Mm out of the faint. But Beaver didn't come out of it . . . there had been too much before it and he lay there mute and 'unconscious until the killer couldn't wait any more and made sure he'd never talk to anybody else either. And when he was done killing he had torn the room apart, piece by piece, bit by bit.
I followed the search pattern looking for anything that might have been missed, fingering through the torn bedding, reaching into places somebody already had reached into, feeling outside around the window ledges, going through the contents of the single dresser whose drawers were stacked, empty, along one wall.
Beaver wasn't a fashion plate. He only had two suits and two sport jackets. The pockets were turned inside out and the coat linings ripped off. On the floor of the closet was a bloodstained shirt and a crumpled red vest with more blood, stiff and dried, staining the fabric.
I took another twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing I had missed and finally sat down on the edge of the bed, lit up a cigarette and looked at the mutilated body of Beaver on the floor.
I said, 'You weren't lucky this time, chum. That red vest didn't bring you any luck at all, did it?'
Then I started to grin slowly and got up and went back to the closet where the red vest lay in a crushed lump. It wasn't much. It was old and worn and it must have been expensive at one time because it still held its color. Beaver had thrown it there when he took off his bloodied clothes, hurting and not caring about his lucky charm. It was too carelessly tossed off and not much for the killer to search because it didn't even have pockets.
But it had been Beaver's lucky charm once and a place to hide all his luck, something that was always with him and safe.
I found where the hand stitching was around the lower left hand edge, picked at the thread and pulled it out of the fabric. The sheet of onionskin paper folded there slid out and I opened it, scanned it slowly, then went to the phone and gave the desk clerk Eddie Dandy's number.
He said he knew how he could give his watchdogs the slip, but if he did that was the end of him in broadcasting, in life, in anything. He had been given the word strongly and with no punches pulled. He wanted to know if it was worth it.
I told him it was.
CHAPTER 12
I let him vomit his supper out in the toilet bowl and waited until he had mopped his face with cold water and dried off. He came back in the bedroom, trying to avoid the mess on the floor, but his eyes kept drifting back to the corpse until he was white again. He finally upended one of the drawers and sat on it, his hands shaking.
'Relax,' I said.
'Damn it, Mike, did you have to get my ass in a sling just to show me this?'
I took a drag on my cigarette and nodded. 'That's right.'
Very slowly his face came out of his hands, his eyes drifting up to mine, fear cutting little crinkles into the folds of skin at their edges. 'You ... did you ...'
'No, I didn't kill him,'
Bewilderment replaced the fear and he said nervously, 'Who did?'
'I don't know.'
'Shit.'
I went and got him a glass of water, waited while he finished it, looking out the window at the glassy-wet tops of the buildings across the street. Down below a police cruiser went by slowly and turned north at the corner. 'Quiet out,' I said.
Behind me, Eddie said softly, 'It'll be a lot quieter soon. Just a few more days. I don't know why I was worrying about coming here at all. What difference can it make?'
'It hasn't happened yet.'
'No chance, Mike. No chance at all. Everybody knows it. I wasted all that time worrying and sweating when I could have been like you, calm as hell and not giving a damn about anything. Maybe I'm fortunate at that. In a few days when the lid comes off and the whole world knows that it's only a little while before it dies, everybody
else will go berserk and I'll be able to watch them and have an easy drink to kiss things goodbye.' He let out
