A big negro in stained coveralls came out rubbing his eyes, then his face split in an enormous grin.
“Hello, there, Mistuh Malvu’n. You kinda restless tonight?”
Malvern said: “I get a little wild when it rains. I bet my heap isn’t here.”
“No, it ain’t, Mistuh Malvu’n. I been all around wipin’ off and yours ain’t here aytall.”
Malvern said woodenly: “I lent it to a pal. He probably wrecked it...”
He flicked a half-dollar through the air and went back up the ramp to the side street. He turned towards the back of the hotel, came to an alley-like street one side of which was the rear wall of the Carondelet. The other side had two frame houses and a four-story brick building. Hotel Blaine was lettered on a round milky globe over the door.
Malvern went up three cement steps and tried the door. It was locked. He looked through the glass panel into a small dim empty lobby. He got out two passkeys; the second one moved the lock a little. He pulled the door hard towards him, tried the first one again. That snicked the bolt back far enough for the loosely fitted door to open.
He went in and looked at an empty counter with a sign: “Manager” beside a plunger bell. There was an oblong of empty numbered pigeon holes on the wall. Malvern went around behind the counter and fished a leather register out of a space under the top. He read names back three pages, found the boyish scrawclass="underline" “Tony Acosta,” and a room number in another writing.
He put the register away and went past the automatic elevator and upstairs to the fourth floor.
The hallway was very silent. There was weak light from a ceiling fixture. The last door but one on the left-hand side had a crack of light showing around its transom. That was the door — 411. He put his hand out to knock, then withdrew it without touching the door.
The door-knob was heavily smeared with something that looked like blood.
Malvern’s eyes looked down and saw what was almost a pool of blood on the stained wood before the door, beyond the edge of the runner.
His hand suddenly felt clammy inside his glove. He took the glove off, held his hand stiff, clawlike for a moment, then shook it slowly. His eyes had a sharp strained light in them.
He got a handkerchief out, grasped the door-knob inside it, turned it slowly. The door was unlocked. He went in.
He looked across the room and said very softly: “Tony... oh, Tony.”
Then he shut the door behind him and turned a key in it, still with the handkerchief.
There was light from the bowl that hung on three brass chains from the middle of the ceiling. It shone on a made-up bed, some painted, light-colored furniture, a dull green carpet, a square writing desk of eucalyptus wood.
Tony Acosta sat at the desk. His head was slumped forward on his left arm. Under the chair on which he sat, between the legs of the chair and his, feet, there was a glistening brownish pool.
Malvern walked across the room so rigidly that his ankles ached after the second step. He reached the desk, touched Tony Acosta’s shoulder.
“Tony,” he said thickly, in a low, meaningless voice. “My God, Tony!”
Tony didn’t move. Malvern went around to his side. A blood-soaked bath towel glared against the boy’s stomach, across his pressed-together thighs. His right hand was crouched against the front edge of the desk, as if he was trying to push himself up. Almost under his face there was a scrawled envelope.
Malvern pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.
“Tailed him... woptown... 28 Court Street... over garage... shot me... think I got... him... your car...”
The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was on the floor. There was a bloody thumb print on the envelope.
Malvern folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his wallet. He lifted Tony’s head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony’s soft dark eyes were open and they held the quiet brightness of a cat’s eyes. They had that effect the eyes of the new dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.
Malvern lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly, his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked straight and his eyes hardened.
He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the floor outside.
He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his coats on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the transom, heard it tinkle inside.
He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blaine. It still rained. He walked to the corner, looked along a tree-shaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Malvern wiped his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.
Going back to the Carondelet he didn’t meet anybody. The hard slanting rain still pounded down into the empty streets.
7
There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Malvern knocked lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind the wood of the door.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Ted Malvern, angel. I have to see you. It’s strictly business.”
The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara had been rubbed into the skin. The girl’s strong little hand twitched on the edge of the door.
“You,” she said wearily. “It would be you. Yes... Well, I’ve simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Malvern asked casually, but his eyes were very sharp on her face.
She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the basin.
He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to nothing, emanating from nowhere.
He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a snubnosed automatic out of a suit-case and held it in his hand for a minute staring at it. Then he put it back in the suit-case, lit a cigarette and smoked it through.
He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.
The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut the door, went on into the living-room and looked at Jean Adrian.
She was sitting on the davenport, with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness gives to the very young.
Malvern said: “Drink?”
She gestured emptily. “I suppose so.”
He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.
“Are they keeping Targo on ice?”