A door grated open far down at the other end of the passage and a grizzled old man in overalls looked out at her. Instinctively she reached behind her, pulled shut the door of the room from which she had just come, so he couldn’t look in if he should pass by. “Oh, Mr. Hoff, did the boys — did the rest of the crew leave already?” she faltered.
He shrugged as he shuffled down the passage toward her. “If they ain’t in there, then they must have gone. I tell you one thing. I be glad when they go undt never come back. Such noise! What the landlord was thinking about to rent them a room down here. With three doors in between I still heard it.” He was opposite the closed door now and she was standing in front of it, as though to prevent him from going in. She was loyal to the men she worked with. This was a matter that concerned the entire orchestra. She had to find the others first, consult them, before she let a stranger—
“Have you got a cigarette, Mr. Hoff?”
Her bag was somewhere inside there, with a package of cigarettes in it, but she couldn’t bear the thought of going back in again — and facing that — to get it. He gave her a loose one from his overall pocket, scraped a kitchen match down the brickwork. The cigarette shook pitifully in her hand and kept on shaking even after she had it lit and between her lips.
“Yah, look at you,” he said disapprovingly. “Fine life for a young girl, shtaying up all night banging and hollering with a bunch of drunk musickaners! You bet if you was my daughter—”
He’d often said that to her, but today, for the first time, she was inclined to agree with him.
“I’d like to give it up myself,” she said sickly.
He trudged on up the passage toward his daily chores and disappeared around a corner. She threw down the cigarette she had just lit, tried the door to make sure it was securely closed, then fled up the passage in the other direction. She opened a door, ran up a flight of basement steps, came out at the rear of the ground-floor hallway of the cheap “residence club.” that was just a rooming-house under another name. A couple of the orchestra members had rooms here in the building.
She ran around to the front, up the main stairs to the second floor — the place had no elevator — and knocked briefly on a door near the head of the stairs. She threw it open the knock was just for propriety’s sake — and looked in.
Fred Armstrong, the outfit’s clarinet-player, was lying soddenly on his back on the bed, mouth open to the ceiling, the gin bottle he’d brought up from downstairs still clutched in his hand, as though it were too precious to let go even after everything it had had in it was inside him instead.
She shook him fruitlessly a few times, tried to rouse him by calling “Fred! Fred!” urgently in his ear. His mouth didn’t even close. He’d be that way for hours, she realized. She turned and ran out again, closing the door after her.
Halfway to the stairs again she stopped short in her tracks, turned aside. There was a little enamel sign sticking out at right-angles to the wall — Bath. A flicker of motion from the partly open door had caught her eye. She pushed it open and saw a pale-faced youth her own age, standing there looking at her. Strings of damp hair straggled down over his forehead. His coat-collar was turned up around his neck, and he had a black eye.
“Frankie!” she breathed. “What are you hiding out like this for up here?”
He had to swallow a couple of times before he could get his voice out. “I’m not — hiding out. What’s the matter, Billie?”
“Hal Thatcher’s dead down in that room in the basement where we have our jam-sessions! I woke up just now and — he was right there in front of me, hanging from the pipes.” She stared at him. “Frankie! Pull yourself together. Didn’t you hear what I just said to you?”
He held up three fingers, looked at her with fear-dilated eyes.
She seemed to understand what he meant by the gesture. “Yes, it looks like we’re jinxed. But if we once let ourselves believe it, then we are jinxed for fair.”
“I’m going to get out of this crew,” he stammered. “I’m... I’m quitting right now. I’d rather be out of work than... than—”
“This is no time to talk that way! We can’t let Dusty down now, of all times. This is when we should stick by him. Don’t be a welsher, Frankie. You haven’t told me yet why you were skulking up here, peeping out through a crack in the door at me.”
His eyes dropped before her scrutiny. “I wandered up here when the session wound up. I tried to get some sleep curled up in the bathtub. It was the only thing I could find for a bed.”
“How’d you get your hair all wet like that?”
“My head was splitting. I ran some water from the shower on it just now when I woke up, trying to get it down to its right size again.”
Her eyes sought the nickeled dial of the shower fixture. It was dry as sandpaper. Not a drop clung to it. She didn’t say anything.
“What’re you asking me all kinds of questions for?” he flared out suddenly, nerves on edge.
“Try to pull yourself together, Frankie,” she said coldly, turning away. “Run out and drink some black coffee. I thought I was shot, but I’m all in one solid chunk compared to you.”
He took out a pocket comb, ran it through his hair. “What’re you going to do?” he asked her apprehensively.
“Where did Dusty go? We’ve got to get hold of him and tell him.”
“Back to his hotel, I guess. Or maybe to a Turkish bath.”
“If I can’t reach him, I’ll have to notify the police on my own.”
He dropped the comb, picked it up again, blew through its teeth. “It’s not going to look so hot for me, y’know.”
“Why should it look bad for you? I suppose you mean because he gave you that shiner last night. What do you suggest we do, not notify the police? Bury him under the cellar floor or something?” She dropped her voice and tapped his shirt-front with one finger. “I don’t like the way you’re acting, Frankie. Before I ring anyone else in on this, you’d better tell me — do you know more about this than you’re letting on? Did you know it had happened before I came up and told you just now? Had you already seen him like that? Is that why you ran and hid up here?”
His weak, chalky face twitched spasmodically. His hand started toward her arm, appealingly, then he dropped it again. “N-no,” he said, “I didn’t.”
The girl gave him a skeptical look. “I hope for your own sake that’s on the level,” she said. “Here goes for the cops.”
Chapter Two
Two Out of Three
A detective named Lindsey was the first one to get there, even before Dusty Detwiller, the band-leader. She’d put in her call direct to headquarters, without bothering to send out for a neighborhood cop. They’d been through this twice before, and she knew by now the policeman was just an intermediate step. Headquarters was always notified in the end anyway.
She was holding the fort alone, down in the jam-session room, when he got there. Armstrong was still stupefied up in his room, Frankie was around the corner trying to steady himself on coffee, Detwiller was getting an alcohol-rub downtown at the Thebes Baths, and she hadn’t been able to locate Kershaw, the fifth member of the Sandmen. Her nerves were calmer now, she didn’t mind going back in there as much as at first. Besides, she wanted to make sure that nothing was touched. They always seemed to attach a lot of importance to that, though of course that was in cases of murder. This was plainly a suicide.
She had had no reason to like Hal Thatcher while he was still alive, so she couldn’t really feel bad about his going. She wondered what had made him do it. She sat with her back to him, on the piano-bench, looking the other way. She kept her face down toward the floor. It was pretty horrible when you looked squarely up at him. It was bad enough just to see his long attenuated shadow on the basement floor, thrown by the light coming in more strongly now through the sidewalk-vent.