Most of the pages were full of unimportant stuff. Memos about appointments. Shopping lists. There were two pages of names in the back. Josie, Annabelle, Alma, Judy, Moira, and so on. The names had one, two, or three stars. Alma had four stars. The colonel’s code. I replaced this notebook, pulled the blanket down, and levered him over onto his stomach. I pried his wallet out of his hip pocket. He had sixty-three dollars, and enough membership cards to prove he was a joiner. I put the wallet back. I had just covered him up again when I heard a key in the door. Joe Gardland came in. The husky bellhop was behind him. Joe registered acute surprise.
“What the hell are you doing in here, Gevvy?”
“A friend of the Colonel’s asked me to take a look at him and see if he was all right.”
“How did you get in?”
“The friend gave me a key. Here. You want it?”
Joe took it and handed it to the bellhop. “Here you go, Willy. Leave it off at the desk.” The bellhop looked nervous. He took the key and nodded and left.
Joe shut the door. “Is he okay?”
“Except for the head he’s going to have.”
Joe stared at the unconscious officer. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Once in a long while,” he said, “a hotel owner gets a break. Not often. Just once in a while. Willy is a good boy. He decided the Colonel would like his jacket cleaned. On the way down, Willy finds a fat envelope in the inside pocket. He takes a look in the envelope and sees money. So he does the right thing. He brings it to me. Thank God he didn’t count it. If he had, I’d never have seen him again. Even a nice boy like Willy has a price. I take the envelope into my office. I start counting. Pretty soon I start sweating. I can’t get it into the safe fast enough, and I don’t even like having it there. I come to wake him up and tell him the dough is safe. What are they paying colonels lately, anyway?”
“Not that much, Joe.”
He walked over and took a close look at the body. “This bird-colonel is really a bird, Gevvy. He has a built-in wolf call. Around four o’clock he had to come back from the plant and have a chat with the police. They tied him in with the little girl who took a leap off the bridge. You know about that?”
“Yes. I knew her. Was Dolson mentioned in her suicide note?”
“No. The way I understand it, they’d been seen around. Not lately, though. They were seen in clubs and so on.”
“How did Dolson make out with the police?”
“I got a report. I have to keep in touch when there’s a chance I might get some bad publicity for the hotel. He was very manly with them. Straight-from-the-shoulder stuff. ‘Yes, men, I knew the little girl. Yes, indeed. Like a daughter to me. Lonely, you know. Took her around a bit until she got better acquainted here. Helped her morale.’ ”
“Did they buy that?”
“I guess they had to. Anyway, even if they figured he’d been jumping her, they wouldn’t want to smear up his career. I don’t like the son of a bitch, but he is decorative around here. Until tonight. It doesn’t look like he’ll wake up in a hurry, does it?”
“Not for hours.”
“I usually get along good with the military, Gevvy. Most of the brass is okay. Once in a while you get one of these. Eagles on his shoulders, and he thinks he’s the Second Coming. I’ll bet you in his home town they’d blackball him at the Lion’s Club. Then all of a sudden he’s back in uniform and he’s a social lion. Knows every headwaiter in town.”
“Will you do me a favor, Joe? He’s going to wake up and find the money missing and come yelling to you. I want you to stall him.”
“How, for God’s sake? He’ll run to the cops.”
“He might not. He might be very easy to stall. Think up some excuse. Maybe you took it to the bank for safekeeping.”
Joe was quick. “Could be the money is not the Colonel’s?”
“Could be.”
“I want to ask questions, but I can tell by that look in your eye you’re not going to answer them. Okay, I’ll do it. I’m getting soft in the head anyway. Let’s get out of here.”
We rode down in the elevator. Joe got off at the lobby. I went down the next level and into the Copper Lounge. I stood just inside the door. Hildy was singing “All of Me.” When I caught her eye, I held up a circle of thumb and finger. She nodded.
I went through the tunnel to the hotel garage and waited by the ramp until my rented car was brought down. I was too early at the plant. There were lights on in the offices. A second shift was going full blast in C and B buildings. I turned off the car lights and slouched in the seat and lit a cigarette. I was parked directly across from the main entrance. I wondered if the time had come when I should stop nosing around independently. It might be wise, first thing in the morning, to go to the regional office of the FBI and speak to the Special Agent in Charge, and give him what I knew about Acme Supply. If it didn’t fall within their jurisdiction, they could put me in touch with the right organization. Men from the General Accounting Office would come to the plant and make a complete audit of all vouchers and payments on the D4D contract. The money in Joe’s safe could be impounded, and they could ask the Colonel how he happened to have that much money in cash. Alma was dead, but Perry and I could swear to what she had told us. Perry could inform them of the missing files. And the Colonel would be soon drawing a set of coveralls from the supply counter at Leavenworth.
I was on my third cigarette when Perry came out, slim against the lights behind her, pausing at the top of the steps. I turned on the lights and beeped the horn. She came hurrying across the street, and in the slant of street lights I saw her smiling.
With Perry beside me, and the April rain dotting the windshield between slow strokes of the wipers, I drove through the center of town and out South River Boulevard. Perry sat half-facing me, her knees pulled up on the seat, and listened without interruption as I told her what had happened and what I suspected. When I stopped for a light I looked over at her. She wore no hat and her hair looked burnished and lovely.
“What do you mean, Gevan, when you talk about the whole thing dissolving?”
“I feel that the Colonel’s racket is only a part of it. Files disappear, Alma dies, the Colonel takes off. That leaves only a mail drop, and one unidentified, obscure little man. So the Colonel is caught and disgraced and imprisoned. The Army replaces him and cleans up the mess. Maybe they catch one C. Armand LeFay, and maybe they don’t. But it’s like giving the getaway car in a bank robbery a parking ticket. Lester Fitch is implicated. Niki is implicated. Mottling is implicated. I can’t see Dolson in any position of knowledge where he could drag them all in, even to save his own hide.”
“What do they get out of all this, Gevan?”
“It’s becoming obvious. They get access to the most carefully guarded secret of all — the production rate of the D4D. It gives them the chance to foul up the production program, and sabotage what we produce.”
I took a quick glance at her as we passed the glaring lights of a shopping center. Her head was tilted and she was giving me an odd, puzzled, almost pitying smile.