“No use handing you a lot of horse, Vine.” Now he was giving with the man-to-man approach. No more winning grin. Just a good, honest scowl. “I don’t like this business one damn bit.”
“Makes us even.” I wasn’t certain we were talking about the same thing.
“Suppose not. Well, you may know I have something to do with certain television programs.” He kept his face toward me but his eyes were cocked up at a corner of the ceiling, the way people do when they’re trying to hear a sound behind them.
“Practically subsidize the networks, don’t you?” The bleached-wood top of the coffee table was clean as a hound’s molars. The blood hadn’t come from that.
“Putting it a bit strong.” His smile registered appreciation. “Our clients have several of the high-rated programs. This Stack O’ Jack simulcast which’ll come on here in a second is rather outstanding among audience-participation shows, one of the most popular our agency has developed.” He talked at me but turned his head to one side. His ears would have to be better than mine, to hear anything out in the corridor, over the whoopdeedo booming from the loud-speaker — a blare of trumpets and an announcer who sounded as excited as if he was describing a knockdown in a heavyweight championship:
“Hear-Ye... See-Ye... Whee-Ye!... It’s Stack... O’ Jack... time!”
On the screen, a banner waved sequin-spangled letters:
The banner lifted to reveal thick packets of bills, tall piles of silver ducats, a water cooler packed to the spigot with half dollars, a plastic sack big enough to hold a bushel of wheat but crammed full of quarters. All coyly labeled to goose the imagination: $10,000, $7500, $5000, $2500.
It occurred to me I might have grabbed hold of the set during our disarming act. “Never happened to catch your show, Mister Lanerd. Conflicts with the fights.”
He gave out with a prop ha-ha. “You’d get more attractive odds on Stack O’ Jack than at the Garden.” He wondered why I was examining the set, but didn’t ask.
There wasn’t any blood on the cabinet or the carpet around it. “I’ve heard about it. You put on some guess artist, keep him hidden from the audience, but let ’em hear his voice or see the back of his haircut, then pay off if the party you call long distance can identify. That the setup?”
“Guess artist? Very good. Yes.” He did hear something out in the hall then; his hand slid down into the pocket where he had the gun. “Yes. Not quite as simple as that, perhaps. If you watch here for a minute—”
I only half paid attention to the luscious creech who appeared on the screen in close-up, pulling on a pair of gloves, caressing the fingers the way dames do. She had a sensational pair of shoulders; that was about all I noticed because she sat with her back to the cameras, in front of a dressing-table with one of those trick mirrors, counting the reflections; forty snugly gloved fingers frolicked around while some syrupy announcer drooled:
“To you who already appreciate the incomparable luxury of Smoothskin Handwear — to you who plan to compliment your sense of well-being when next you need fine gloves — the Kobler Glove Corporation offers truly the chance of a lifetime — the opportunity to win twenty-five thousand dollars in cash: Twenty... Five... Thousand... Dollars!”
Generally, when people come up with those impressive figures, I listen. Often as not here in the Plaza Royale they actually have that kind of corn and aren’t just blowing Broadway bubbles. But I couldn’t keep my mind on what the spieler was selling; I’d just remembered what it was I’d touched. The door. The door or the jamb leading from the living-room into Miss Marino’s bedroom and bath.
I went to it while violins began to moan about those Pa-a-ale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar.
The hand that had touched the inside of that door hadn’t been so pale.
No doubt about its being a hand; marks of the fingers were still there, sticky-thick crimson blotches on the inside of the French-gray door. Four fingers of a right hand, the marks weren’t large enough for me to be sure whether they’d been made by a man or woman.
There were only those four prints, about a foot above the lock. And on the edge of the door, where it fits the jamb, the thumb had left another smear. That had been before the door had been closed; there was a corresponding streak on the metal jamb. The mark I’d gotten on my hand had come from that edge of the door, where I’d pushed it open a little.
When I turned around Lanerd was watching the screen, but standing so he could have seen me peer around the door, at the jamb.
“This is what I want you to see, Vine.” He beckoned, as some ill-mannered guests do to a bellman.
I didn’t move. I could see all I wanted from where I stood.
On the tube, another cutie was playing a piano, the camera shooting down on the keyboard from above so only her hands and forearms showed. Not even the shoulders, this time.
I don’t know enough about ivory technique to tell whether she was good or not, but her playing was brisk and full of spirit.
The tune was We Won’t Go Home Until Morning; but the words some baritone was enunciating carefully weren’t the ones I knew:
The camera pushed right down close on the hands. The hands and keyboard vanished. A huge question mark took the center of the bulb.
“You understand now, Vine?” Lanerd gave me the chummy, confidential tone, the buddy-to-buddy lift of the bushy gray eyebrows.
“No.” I took a step away from the bedroom door, but stopped, hearing the soft snick of a key in a door lock close by.
“The Stack O’ Jack secret.” Apparently he hadn’t heard the key. “The answer to the twenty-five-thousand-dollar question.”
“Oh.” The door from the corridor to the bedroom began to swing. I stepped into the living-room where I couldn’t be seen, but could peek at reflections in the bureau mirror.
“Miss Marino.” He was beginning to be irritated. “She’s Miss Hands! We’ve been working our tails off to keep her under cover. All sorts of crackpots try to find out who she is — where she lives — so now you see—”
What I saw was a black jacket, a starched shirt, a thin, pale face — in the mirror. I stepped back into the bedroom.
The weak, watery, china-blue eyes of Auguste, our senior room-service captain, opened very wide. Auguste was around fifty; he must have been carrying a napkin over his arm most of his half century; he had all the professional deformities — stoop shoulders, flat feet, an expression of weary disillusionment.
“Mister Fine! Ah, hello — Mister Fine.”
“What you after, Auguste?”
He wiped the back of his left hand with the long, thin bony fingers of his right. “Nozzing of importance, Mister Fine.”
“No?” I went up to him. He still held the pass key between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand; it wiggled while he massaged the knuckles of the other hand. “You usually bust in a suite like this without knocking?”
“I had been told; Miss Marino told me, there would be no one here at this time. So I do not bozzer to knock.”