Reidy didn’t care much for the way it was put to him. He looked to me for a cue. In his book I’m the guy to be giving orders when trouble is busting around the Plaza Royale. That’s how my book reads, too. But I’d been working in the dark up to then. I wanted more light before I began to throw my weight around. So I reassured Reidy.
“We’re all in a fog. But Hacklin seems to know the road. Let him drive, time being.”
Hacklin growled, deep in his throat, as if he was minded to tell me off. But he didn’t. He repeated, “Don’t call through the hotel switchboard. And don’t come back up here, or tell a damn soul what’s happened. Thanks.”
Reidy nodded dourly. “Spring four nine-one-two-one, Schneider.” He flicked me on the arm with the back of his hand, took a parting shot at the bull in the china shop. “You’re in charge, Gil.” He went away before Hacklin tried to challenge that last remark.
Lanerd began, “What, for godsake, we going to do about—”
Hacklin rubbed one hand over his face as if to shut out the whole scene — the dead man, all of us. “Tell you what you’re going to do, Mister Lanerd. You’re going to chase over to Video City, get hold of anybody who might have seen Miss Millett depart, anybody who had any idea where she went.”
“Hell, I can’t! I’m due to make a speech downstairs at a convention banquet in just about—”
“Hell with your social obligations.” None of the deference due the Great Man in Hacklin’s tone. “Get over there, find out where she went, where she is. Don’t argue. We’ve played it your way long’s we’re going to. Herb wouldn’t be dead now if we’d done if different.”
Lanerd agreed with poor grace. “I’m sorry about Roffis. Damn sorry. I’ll do what I can to find Tildy.”
“Phone me when you get to the studio.”
“Right.”
“I don’t have to ask you to keep quiet about this?” Hacklin asked wearily.
“No, no.” Lanerd seemed to be glad to get out.
On the chance the hotel’s name might somehow be kept out of the tabloids, I let Hacklin know where I stood.
“One thing sure, you don’t have to ask me!”
“Don’t I?” He had a mean glint in his eye. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m about to ask you plenty!”
Chapter six:
Dead stoolies don’t sing
Ex-cops never make good house officers. In uniform, they get too used to pushing people around, can’t overcome the habit. That bulldozing approach makes ’em liabilities around a hotel. This Hacklin was demonstrating.
He wasn’t actually a blue, still he had the law behind him. But I couldn’t let him snap that Simon Legree lash at me. Not so any bellman or floor maids could overhear him; the Chinese aren’t the only people sensitive about face. So I threw the first punch.
“Don’t mind my taking that call-back from Lieutenant Weissman, when it comes?”
All I meant was to jolt him out of that browbeating frame of mind. Show him I had friends over at the precinct. What my phoney question did, though, was bring him to me, jaw a-jutting.
“You phoned Harry Weissman?”
“Why not? Harry’s handled grief like this for us before.”
We do get along with the precinct badges; hand them a pinch on a platter now and again.
“You actually speak to him?” The whites of Hacklin’s eyes looked like the bluish skin of a hard-boiled egg left too long in the icebox.
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t.” He put up his left hand to shove me, boys-in-the-back-room style.
I had to make up my mind, fast. Let him get that edge on me, or risk a real muss. If it came to a kilkenny, he’d have, say, forty pounds on me. I only pushed the pointer up to one seventy, dripping wet. Hacklin had beef on his bones. But if he got away with his rough-riding, in no time he’d be ordering me around like a headwaiter bossing a new bus boy.
I took a step back so he wouldn’t rock me on my heels, used both hands to grab the fingers of the one he pushed out at me. He thought I was trying to fend him off, kept shoving. I bent his palm back toward his chest with all the force I could get into it.
He slugged at me with his right. The blow had no force; he was pulling away from me as he punched, bending at the knees, twisting to free his hand from that leverage.
I let go before any bones cracked. You can easy snap a wrist with that judo hold. Hacklin dropped to one knee to save himself from toppling. He looked ugly enough to go for his gun, so I spoke up quick; he could have taken it for salve, if he wanted to.
“I don’t mind playing on your team, coach, but les’ save that strong arm for the other side, hah?”
He came up on both feet, red-faced, hot-eyed. All his downtown training and associations were in favor of his making something of it. I think he would have if I hadn’t pointed to the bedroom door.
“Did you spot these blood-prints, coach?”
He made that great-big-papa-bear noise, deep in his throat. His eyes still smoldered. But he moved them from me to the door. “You must have picked that grip up in a commando unit.”
That called for no comment; I didn’t make any. “Have to get you to show it to me again sometime.” He wanted me to know it was only a temporary truce. “Meanwhile, get straight. I’m calling signals on this team. Don’t notify Weissman. That’s an order.”
If it made him feel better, that was jake with me. “More gore on the inside of that door jamb.” I showed him.
“How come you were mucking around her suite, anyhow, Vine?”
I told him. About Elsie and the pillow slip. Lanerd and his automatic.
“What about the steak knife?” He puzzled over the finger marks on the door.
“Auguste. One of our room-service captains. He’s been serving up here; probably the tips are too fat to let one of his regular waiters work the suite. Tonight, after the service tables were wheeled down, the routine checkup showed one knife missing. Auguste came back for it. I did a simple sum. Four bloody fingerprints minus one knife equals somebody slashed. So I searched around.”
“Queer prints,” Hacklin muttered. “They outline the fingers. But there aren’t any whorl marks or loops, even where the blood’s drying. Maybe the boys can get an impression out of them, but to me it looks like they were made by somebody with gloves on. Your waiters wear gloves?”
“Sometimes. In summer time. Cotton whites.” I didn’t like the direction his quiz was taking. “You’re not going to dust off that oldie about an inside job!”
“Very likely,” he admitted. “We been on guard against that since we came in here.”
“I take it back. Not going to play for your team, after all.”
“Maybe we don’t want you, Vine. You a gambling man?”
“Where there’s an element of judgment involved.” I couldn’t figure what difference it made. “Any further details, see my bookie.”
“Horses, huh?” He mulled it over as if it was something serious. “You happen to read that guff about Johnny the Grocer?”
I had. “Fixer who got himself riddled in some East Side hotspot, three or four days ago?” I began to connect up his queries about gambling. “Payoff lad for a policy ring. Supposed to deliver protection lettuce to cops. Held out some green goods he’d been told to pass along. Big boys got him for it.”
Hacklin waggled his hand in derision. “That’s what the newspapers said. Fact is, Johnny’d been taking singing lessons, was all set to give a recital. He’d been through a couple rehearsals, in the Prosecutor’s office. Real performance was to have been Wednesday morning at headquarters. Rumor was, he’d finger some high-ups on the Commissioner’s Confidential Squad. Tuesday night somebody played the drum for him. Boom! Only testimony he gave was to the docs when they cut him up, on the slab.”