The rush was not on.
A tall slender man in a white short-sleeve shirt and bolo tie stood behind the desk at left; his hooded eyes were a gun-metal blue with heavy black circles, his black hair going white — pushing sixty, he had a weather-beaten handsomeness like the first mate on a ship considering mutiny.
“Welcome to the Coral Court.” The voice was a mellow baritone with a sandpaper edge. His smile was slight but it hung around.
I nodded, flicked a smile. “Glad to be here.”
We went through the check-in ritual — it was a reasonable $8.50 a night and $39.50 for a week, and I took the latter. I signed my name in the register, but he said, “Thank you, Mr. Heller,” without glancing at it.
“How is it you know me?” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Sure you have,” he said.
That damn almost-smile kept at it.
“Okay,” I admitted. We were skipping a round or two in the game. “Only you weren’t working the desk when I checked in, five years ago.”
“No, but nothing goes on at the Coral Court that I don’t know about. Nothing important, anyway. I own the place — Jack Carr.”
He offered a hand.
I took it. “Pleasure, Mr. Carr.”
That was a working man’s hand, as dry and callused as his attitude.
But his tone couldn’t have been more casual. “I could put you back in your old room — 50-A, if you like.”
Now he was just showing off.
“Not necessary,” I said. “I’m not terribly sentimental when it comes to kidnapping cases, especially when they lead to child murder. But I would like to ask you a few questions.”
He shrugged, then nodded toward the coffee station. “Okay. Care for some joe?”
“As in Costello? Is that who called you and said I’d be coming? He’d have been told by Barney Baker, who was real casual about asking me where I’d be staying.”
The gun-metal eyes were sleepy but they didn’t blink much. “So, then, no coffee?”
“Wouldn’t wanna be up all night. It’s been a long day.”
“Nightcap, maybe? What’s your poison, Mr. Heller?”
“Any rum, Mr. Carr. Bacardi, if you’ve got it.”
“I do, and I’ll join you.” He gestured vaguely. “Have a seat. I’ll switch off the vacancy sign and then be right back.”
As he disappeared through the private door behind the counter, I selected one of two seats at a round low table with Holiday magazines fanned out.
I was just starting to wonder about how long putting together a couple of nightcaps could take when he emerged with two motel water glasses with several fingers of rum in each. He held both glasses out to me, to make the choice mine — maybe he thought I suspected he’d brought me a Mickey Finn-laced nightcap. I took the one in his left hand, and he sat. His smile was something a guy with no sense of humor had learned to do.
“Mr. Heller, this — right here, right now — is your opportunity to talk to me. I am a busy man. I do my own books. I oversee this property, work the desk myself at times, and do all the landscaping.”
“Landscaping, huh? You do a nice job of it.”
He nodded modest thanks. “Every bush, every tree, is my personal doing. Most guests think I’m the gardener. I find it relaxing. I like creating a pleasant atmosphere for my guests. What I don’t like to do is talk.”
“That may be the case, but you seem to be doing your share right now.”
The smile increased a few millimeters, then settled back down. “You mentioned Joe Costello. We’re old friends. We have a few common business interests. But we aren’t in business together. He has his cab company. And I have the Coral Court.”
“I appreciate your frankness.”
“I have the kind of establishment that requires discretion. At one time I did have a more serious business relationship with Joe and also with Buster... Buster Wortman? I have a certain capability with figures. With numbers. I did their bookkeeping for a while, until the Coral Court became so successful I didn’t need outside work.”
“This capability with numbers of yours?”
“Yes?”
“Would one of those numbers be three hundred thousand? And would that be the number allowing you to stop doing outside work?”
The slight smile stayed right where it was. Behind that face with its black-rimmed Cabinet of Caligari eyes and that fucking facsimile of a smile, wheels were turning.
“The feds took this place apart,” he said. “It was a fool’s errand — that money was like most of my guests — just passing through. The Coral Court’s walls aren’t stuffed with money, Mr. Heller. Get that out of your head.”
“What do you think became of it? The missing half a ransom.”
“I wouldn’t know. And I don’t care.” He stood. “Now, I hope you enjoy your stay. Speaking as one well-seasoned individual to another, I would suggest that while you’re in the St. Louis area, you ask your questions, get what information you can, and then get the fuck out before you get yourself killed. Oh. One more thing.”
“What would that be, Jack?”
“You’ll need your room key.”
He got back behind the desk and I wandered over to my side of the counter. He handed me the key. The smile grew just enough to show me an edge of teeth.
“You’ll get a kick out it,” he said. “It’s what we call the Red Room. Honeymooners love it. Great for Valentine’s Day. And if you act fast enough, before it dries and goes brown, no blood stains.”
I pulled the Caddy into the nearest of the side-by-side garages separating the two rooms making up my building. When I entered from the mini-garage into the unit itself, I was indeed in a red room. Not the walls — those were cream-colored — but the furnishings: red bedspread, red vinyl couch, red vinyl-upholstered armchairs, pink-shaded nightstand lamps, red-and-black broadloom carpet, red-framed modernistic St. Louis cityscape over the bed.
My bag went on the wooden luggage rack and I tossed my suitcoat on a chair, got my tie off, and kicked off my shoes. Padded into the red-and-black-and-white tiled bathroom, threw water on my face, dried it off while the mirror told me I looked every one of my years at the end of a long day. Went back out and flopped on my back onto the red spread. A Beautyrest beneath me, I’d bet. I placed my nine millimeter Browning on the nightstand next to the paperback of Compulsion by Meyer Levin (a bit of a busman’s holiday, I grant you). Thought about the people I hoped to interview tomorrow and considered catching the last half of Jack Paar on the tube when somebody knocked on the door.
Carr?
Or somebody Carr had called in who might not be friendly? It sure as hell wasn’t room service.
I got the nine mil and held it, barrel high, as I answered the second round of knocks. Cracked the door.
My caller was female, to say the least — tall with black hair in a Gwen Verdon pixie cut, her voluptuous shape wrapped up in a red-and-white striped short-sleeve shirt (smokes in the pocket) and black capris. Tucked under one arm was a quart of Seagram’s and under the other a big bottle of Seven-Up; one hand held a hotel-room ice bucket to herself, the other made a fist in mid-knock. Maybe this was room service.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Sandy O’Day said. The wide mouth, lipsticked candy-apple red, mocked me. She looked younger than her nearly forty years — probably rough years at that. Wearing flats, she could damn near greet me eye-to-eye.