The voice of Hoff, the janitor, sounded outside, asking questions, so she knew that her vigil was over at last. “Somebody in the house sent for you? Who? That’s the first I know about anyt’ing being wrong. Them musickaners, I bet. I knew it! I’m only surprised it didn’t happen already before now—”
The door Hung open and this detective came in, a uniformed cop behind him. She looked up relievedly, threw down her cigarette.
He wasn’t a particularly handsome individual, but she thought what a relief it was to see a man with healthy brown color in his face for a change, instead of the yeasty night-pallor she was used to. His eyes went up toward the ceiling behind her, came down again. Then they switched over to her.
“You the girl that phoned in?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Pretty cool little number, aren’t you?” he told her. She couldn’t tell whether he meant it admiringly or unfavorably. To tell the truth she didn’t care much.
“The boys’ instruments are all in here, and I thought I’d better keep an eye on them until you people got here,” she explained. “I woke up in here with him, so I didn’t think it would hurt to stay a minute or two more.”
“All right, let me have his name, please.” He took out a little notebook.
“Hal Thatcher.”
He scribbled. “You say you found him like this when you woke up, Mrs. Thatcher?”
A circumflex accent etched the corner of her mouth. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not married to him. We worked together in the same band, that’s all. I’m the canary and he played the slush-pump.” She saw his face redden a little, as if he felt he’d made a social error. “Oh, because I said I woke up— No, we were having a jam-session, and I fell asleep there at the piano, that’s what I meant. We rent this room from the building-owner, come up here after work about two or three in the morning every once in a while and play for our own amusement — you know, improvise. That’s what a jam-session is.”
He nodded almost inattentively, but she had a feeling he’d heard every word. “What went on last night, to the best of your recollection? Better let me have your name too, while we’re about it.”
“Billie Bligh. The formal of that is Wilhelmina. About last night — nothing different from any other time. The way these sessions come up is, Dusty — he’s our front man, the leader, you know — will say ‘How about having a session tonight?’ and so we all agree and have one. We left the Troc, that’s the club where we work, about three, and piled into a couple of taxis, instruments and all, and came on up. We sat around chinning and smoking for a while, waiting for the spirit to move us—”
He eyed the gin bottles meaningfully, but didn’t say anything.
“Some of the boys had a few nips to warm up,” she agreed deprecatingly. “Then finally somebody uncased his instrument and started tootling around, and one by one everyone else joined in, and first thing you know we were all laying it in the groove. That’s how those things go. In about two hours we were all burned out, they started dropping out again one by one. That’s when I laid my head on the piano and dozed off. The others must have left after that., and Thatcher stayed behind, and the willies got him and—”
“Not the willies,” he assured her.
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t act as though he intended telling her, anyway, but just then the cop who had been left outside the basement door rapped, stuck his head in, and said: “Two of the others just showed up.”
Lindsey motioned at random and Dusty Detwiller came in alone, flaring camel’s hair coat belted to almost wasp-waisted tightness around him. Tie didn’t look particularly jaunty at the moment, though.
“This is awful,” he said to Billie, shoving his hat far back on his head and holding his hand pressed to it. “What’ll we do about tonight’? Who’s this man?”
“Name of Lindsey, headquarters... No, don’t pick up any of those chairs. I want everything left just the way it is. You’ll have to stand up.”
Detwiller started unfastening his coat, then changed his mind, tightened it up again. “Hope I don’t catch cold coming out like this right out of a steam-room,” he mourned.
“Do I have to stay in here any longer?” Billie asked, with her eyes on the elongated shadow on the floor. Then she looked up, glimpsed Frankie standing just outside the door with the cop. “That’s all right,” she corrected herself hastily. “I’d better stay. You may need me, I was the only one who wasn’t drinking.”
Lindsey just looked at her, then at the doorway, but he didn’t say anything. “At what time did you leave here?” he asked Detwiller.
“A little before five. It hadn’t started to get light yet.”
“Who was still here when you left?”
“They all were. I was the first one to break away. Armstrong and Kershaw were still playing, but they couldn’t lay it in the groove much any more. Frankie was here too, but he was high on weed. Billie was already falling asleep over the piano. And Hal... Hal seemed all right. He was leaning back there, on two legs of his chair, against the wall. He had a little gin in him, but he seemed all right. He kept shimmying with his hands in his pockets.”
“You went where?”
“The Thebes Baths. I always go there after a session.”
“That’ll be all for just now. Send the other one in, Dugan.”
Frankie came in. The coffee didn’t seem to have done him much good. He looked nervous and jumpy even before Lindsey had opened his mouth to ask him anything.
“Your name?”
“Frank Bligh.”
Lindsey looked at the girl.
“He’s my brother,” she said, moistening her lips.
“You were under the influence of marihuana, I’m told.”
The pallid youth cringed. “So was everyone else except Billie. We all blazed it a little. We always do,” he said defensively. “I show it more, that’s all.”
“Did you stay on to the end?”
“Y-yeah, I guess so.”
“Just be definite about it, will you?” Lindsey said tunelessly. “Who’d already left this room and who hadn’t?”
“Dusty had left, and Armstrong had gone upstairs to his room already, and Kershaw had stumbled out by that time, too. I don’t know where he went.” His eyes traveled up toward the ceiling, dropped again. “He was still here,” he said reluctantly.
“Then you were the last one out, except Miss Bligh and the dead man—” Lindsey broke off short. “How’d you get the black eye? Bump into something while you were high?”
It was one of those verbal traps. Frankie’s head started to go up and down affirmatively.
The girl looked up suddenly from the floor. “No, Frank, don’t,” she forestalled him. “Tell him the straight of it, that’s the wisest way in the end. Thatcher gave it to him,” she said to the detective.
“Why?” the latter asked quietly.
“He’d been making passes at me for a long time. That didn’t bother me, I can handle myself. I didn’t tell Frankie. But he found out about it last night for the first time, and they had a scrap in the taxi coming up here. Thatcher hit him in the eye, but then the rest of us patched it up between them, smoothed it over. Dusty won’t stand for any quarreling in the organization. It’s bad for our work. We even stopped for a minute outside a lunchroom and they got a little piece of raw meat for Frankie’s eye and brought it out to him.” She smiled placatingly at the dick. “Frankie’s been worried about it, though, ever since he heard Hal did that to himself this morning. I told him not to—” Then as there was no answering smile, her own froze. “Why are you looking at the two of us like that?” she faltered.