Ruth wanted to know what I meant.
“Walch was an old hand at traveling around the country. He’d have been used to stopping at good hotels. He knew the rules, what he could get away with — and couldn’t. Made me wonder, the first time I saw him with La Eberlein, why he was making a bluff at sneaking con girls into the Plaza Royale.”
Walch raised his head. “You lousy keyholer!”
I said, “You knew you couldn’t run those cuties into our hotel. Must’ve had a reason for wanting someone to think it might work, when it wouldn’t. Expect you meant to get the madam up in Lanerd’s suite just long enough to throw suspicion on her for the murder you were going to commit. She knew Gowriss’s friends down at the Blue Blazer. She hung around there all the time. It would have been easy for the D.A. to assume she’d been paid to put Lanerd out of circulation, since he’d been in the café at the time of the shooting, too. And might have seen Gowriss, himself. She was a good decoy. The more notice we took of her, the better.”
He came for me, lunging with the handcuffs.
I let Schneider take him.
Chapter thirty-five:
Keys and keys
The curvaceous statuette was on the ornamental table in the foyer of Ruth’s apartment when we went in. I stroked it gently.
“Nearly gave me amnesia, me proud beauty.”
Ruth fluffed her hair in front of the mirror. “What I can’t understand, why’d Keith Walch sneak in here yesterday? He couldn’t have known you were coming.”
“No.” I followed her into the kitchenette, helped with the ice cubes. “Matter of keys. Keys were the crux of it.”
“Probably make something of that if you worked at it. Crux — who stole keys.”
“I’ll take it up, next board meeting.” I told her how I figured it. “Keep in mind that Lanerd knew it was Walch who busted into the Millett suite wearing Dow’s jacket. Tildy’d have told him; they’d have talked about Walch plenty before then; her reference to calling off the elopement because of ‘the way things stood’ showed that. Whether, before she left for the studio with Hacklin, she knew or guessed that Roffis had been killed and heaved in her closet, that’s beside the point. Point is, Lanerd knew Walch was after him. That’s why he had his gun at ready when I came in the suite.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted to shoot Walch, if he knew about the boy.”
“Maybe not. Hard to say. Walch having caused Tildy so much grief. But Lanerd didn’t want to get killed. He left Tildy’s suite about five minutes before you came across the hall from his rooms. Hacklin told him to hop over to the studio to chase Tildy. Instead, he went down to the lobby, phoned MacGregory. He learned she hadn’t returned, so he phoned Nikky, found Tildy was there. She must have convinced him it wasn’t wise to let Hacklin know where she was. So he rang Hacklin upstairs, reported she was on her way home to Lexington.”
“Where do the keys come in?”
“They’re coming. Right about then you were scooting out of 21MM across to Lanerd’s suite. In a minute I followed. We talked until Yaker showed up and I got that screwy call from the sizzle sister down in the Steeplechase.” Ruth had the normal curiosity of a nice girl about how Edie and her sex-tettes operated; I sketched it out, well’s I could.
“I can’t believe Dow would be interested in that sort of — cheapie.”
“Doubt if he was. But Yaker was. Lanerd wouldn’t have objected to having the head of a group which, among other things, was responsible for rating radio programs, under obligation to him. I hustled down to the cocktail bar, soon’s I left you. Walch was there. Edie had a key in her bag. One I suppose Walch had just handed her, in the belief he was passing over the key to Yaker’s room. He’d gotten that from Crew Cut earlier in the evening, on the pretext of sneaking the con girls up there, used the room to borrow stationery, wrote a note to Tildy, poured melted wax on his finger tips.”
She curled up on the divan. I dittoed beside her.
“When Walch saw that 21MM key on the floor where I’d sort of accidentally bounced it, he knew he’d made a bad error. That was the key he’d taken from Roffis. He’d meant to leave it in Lanerd’s fancy cream-colored jacket. He still had the 21CC key with him because he’d need it to get back in Lanerd’s rooms. It must have dawned on him that the key he’d actually stuck in the chocolate-checked coat was the one to Yaker’s room. It wouldn’t do to have anybody find that, start wondering how it got there.”
“The tangled web.”
“Yair. So Walch drinks and thinks a while, decides to go up to Lanerd’s suite, get Yaker’s key. About that time you were straightening up in 21CC, getting ready to leave. This next part is pure conjecture, but until we get a complete confession from Walch, it’ll have to do. I think Lanerd, coming out of his lobby phone booth, saw Walch heading for the elevators. He waited one or two cars, followed. You probably passed him, coming down as he was going up.”
She winced.
“Lanerd would have gone in his rooms with his gun ready for business. Walch was probably just inside the door. He got the gun away from Lanerd, forced him in the bathroom, shot him. I’ll gamble Hacklin never searched to see if a second slug had been fired, say, behind the lavatory bowl. After Lanerd was dead, Walch must have put the gun in his hand, pulled the trigger again, so there’d be something for the homicide boys to lean on when they claimed suicide.”
“I guess it doesn’t make any difference now, but I’m glad to know for sure he didn’t kill himself.”
“Well. Walch went to get Yaker’s key from the chocolate-cream jacket. Maybe you’d moved things around in the closet where he’d hung the coat?”
“Yes. I went through everything to see there weren’t any — incriminating items around. I shifted hangers, too.”
“That was it. He got worried for fear you’d found that 2010 key. If you had, you’d be suspicious soon’s you learned Lanerd was dead. So, after Walch chased me around Queens and Brooklyn in a taxicab—”
“He did?”
“Sure he did. Afraid I’d put pressure on Edie and dope out the significance of the key switch. I expect he simply waited for me to leave the hotel and followed me to Manhasset looking for a chance to add me to his score of two down. He beat me down to Little Syria, hunting a lead to Nikky. I heard he didn’t get anywhere with that inquiry. But he must have, because he was waiting for me when I left Narian’s with Tildy. His cab lost an argument with a fire hydrant, but he came close to putting a Vine obituary in the paper. Of course Tildy recognized him then, but she couldn’t tell me without sacrificing everything she’d been trying to save, down in Kentucky.”
“Down in the Grand Jury room, I heard him complaining to Tildy about having had to spend all Saturday night and Sunday morning bailing some friend of Lanerd’s out of trouble.”
“Advertising his alibi. He did go to the police station to help Yaker after the big boob got suckered in by a pair of Edie’s slick chicks. But not until after he’d returned from Brooklyn and come up here to waylay you, in case you’d had ideas about that 2010 key in Lanerd’s jacket. When I came in he was hiding behind the door; after he’d bopped me, he was afraid to hang around, case one of your neighbors heard the fracas. So he beat it back to his club, where he found an urgent squeal for help from Yaker at the precinct house. Yaker was a faker — about that amnesia — because he didn’t dare break down Walch’s alibi, scared of being disgraced back home, on the rape charge. That’s why I had to hammer at Yaker there in the Jury anteroom — if he’d stuck to that blank-memory gag, it might not have been easy to break Walch’s alibi.”