The Fatal Frails jk-4 Read online

  He was scowling up at the ceiling when Sally emerged from the bathroom, dressed. He rolled up on an elbow to look at her. “You wouldn't happen to remember the names of any of Claude Dechant's steady telephone customers, would you?” he began abruptly. “People he called a lot?”

  “I can see you never heard Mr. Dechant make a telephone call,” Sally said. “His calls might as well have been in Morse code. First names only, and a twenty-second call was overtime for him. He'd call Max, or Jack, or Madeleine, or Harry, or Gloria, or Jules, or Ernest, and he'd say: 'I'll meet you at such-and-such a place.' And hang up. Once in a while someone would try to say something to him, and he'd cut them right off. 'Tell me when you see me,' he'd say. He could be really nasty on the phone.”

  “A Gloria I know,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “An Ernest, too. Reel off the rest of 'em for me again, ma.”

  “Max,” she repeated. “Madeleine. Harry. Jack. Jules.” She thought a moment. “That's the crop, I think.” She came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why are you interested?”

  “Friend of mine was askin',” he replied vaguely.

  “Asking what?” She jogged his elbow at his silence. “Asking what, Johnny? What are you getting into now?”

  “I have to be gettin' into something?”

  “I know you, buster. Too well I know you.” She stood up from the bed. “I'll siphon you later. I've got to run. Please stay out of trouble?”

  He grunted disparagingly as she blew him a kiss from the door.

  Johnny ran lightly up the indented stone steps of the station house in the warming sunlight. The first person he ran into in the long corridor was Detective James Rogers. Johnny drew him aside. “That redhead over at the place last night, Jimmy. Where's she work?”

  “You wouldn't rather have her home phone?” Detective Rogers ran an appraising eye over Johnny's gray slacks, maroon sport shirt and tan jacket. “So seldom I see you out of uniform it's a wonder I recognized you. You going courting?”

  “In all that piece of jazz I didn't seem to catch the address, Jimmy.”

  The sandy-haired man looked bleak. “No information, Johnny,” he said brusquely.

  Johnny bristled. “What the hell you mean, 'no information'?”

  “You came over here last night and ruffled the man's fur. I'm giving you the payoff. Cuneo and I got the word. For Killain: nothing.”

  “Don't work too hard at bein' as stupid as your boss,” Johnny told him in heat. “I know Faulkner's a lawyer. If I look him up in the book an' go over to his office, how long you think I've got to hold him by his heels out the window before he tells me where I can find the girl?” He grinned at the detective's level stare. “But I'm always in favor of the short cut. I'll trade with you, Jimmy. You give me the address, an' I'll tell you somethin' I forgot over at the place last night.”

  “Why does there always seem to be something you forget?”

  “Cynicism ill becomes you, boy. We got a deal?” Silently Rogers took his notebook from his pocket and flipped pages. He stared off down the corridor as Johnny squinted at the opened page. “Spandau Watch Company,” Johnny murmured. “Room Eighteen-oh-eight, Two-twenty-two Maiden Lane.” His grin renewed itself. “Nine will get you five an' your nine back, Jimmy, that the gal's no maiden.”

  “You shock me.” The notebook closed with a snap. “So what did I buy?”

  Johnny ran through for him quickly Claude Dechant's reaction to the one letter in the stack of mail. “When he came in that front door I'll bet he didn't have any more idea of jumpin' overboard than you do right now. He didn't get any phone calls, either. Was I you, I'd take a look for that letter.”

  Rogers nodded grudgingly. “We'll look. Not that it'll make any difference.” He looked at Johnny. “What'd you do to the man last night to get him up on his ear?”

  “He's just a bleedin' heart. We was still speakin' when I left here. He must've had a bad dream.”

  “If he did, you were in it, in Technicolor. As a direct result of which, I'm taking an official interest in you.”

  “Official, Jimmy?”

  Detective Rogers paused as though mentally reviewing his orders. “Perhaps not official,” he conceded. “But an interest.”

  “Should I move a spare cot into my room for you?”

  “Never mind trying to be a bigger wise guy than nature made you, either.”

  “The redhead an' the lawyer showed yet?”

  “Left twenty minutes ago,” Rogers announced with satisfaction.

  Johnny glanced up and down the bustling corridor. “Where's your crabby partner, Cuneo? Already out on the corner waitin' for me to leave so he can tail me?”

  The sandy-haired man eyed Johnny coldly. “My partner's minding his own business, which is more than I can say for some people I know.” Detective Ted Cuneo, who had a phobia about Johnny Killain, was a sallow-faced six-footer with large-pupiled pop eyes.

  “You guys are as transparent as glass, Jimmy.”

  “You're not so damn opaque yourself.”

  “Clear-As-Crystal Killain, they call me,” Johnny agreed. “I guess I should sign that statement now. I wouldn't want Ted to get chilled standin' around waitin' for me.”

  He moved up the corridor, ignoring Rogers' stare.

  Johnny had covered the best part of three blocks outside, and had just begun to think himself mistaken about Ted Cuneo's activities, when he suddenly picked out the tall detective's lean figure across the street. Johnny stopped and waved. “Hey, Cuneo! Come on over!” Detective Cuneo crossed the street after an irresolute moment. He stepped up on the curb and looked Johnny up and down balefully. Two bright red spots bloomed in the saffron features. “How about splittin' the cab fare downtown?” Johnny asked him. “I like to keep down expenses.”

  “Wise guy,” the tall man gritted. “A continental wise guy.”

  “No originality,” Johnny said sadly. “Rogers already used up that line. Well, you comin'?”

  “I'll just call that bluff,” the detective decided after a moment's debate with himself. Johnny lifted his arm to a cab that darted into the curb.

  “Two-twenty-two Maiden Lane,” Johnny told the driver as he preceded Cuneo into the back seat.

  The tall man jerked to a stop halfway in. “Where'd you get that address?” he demanded.

  “From the lawyer, Faulkner,” Johnny said innocently. “Why? You guys forget to muzzle him?”

  Cuneo pulled himself in the balance of the way. He sat in compressed-lip silence the entire trip. In the lobby of the office building he watched, his mouth a thin, hard line, as Johnny gravely ran a finger down the “S's” on the wall directory. “Spandau,” Johnny said aloud. “Eighteen-oh-eight.”

  “And just what do you think you're going to do up there?” Cuneo's voice was acid-tipped, but Johnny thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it, too.

  “Who the hell knows?” Johnny responded. “I play these things better by ear. You still aboard? Let's go.” Cuneo followed stubbornly to the elevators, but hesitated just outside as Johnny stepped on. Johnny needled him. “Come on, man. You think I got time to wait while you thumb through the manual lookin' for a paragraph to cover you? The man said report, didn't he? How the hell 're you gonna report if you're not with me?”

  Ted Cuneo burst onto the elevator as though goosed from behind. The large-pupiled eyes were narrowed to slits. “Goddam you, Killain, I'll-”

  “Temper, temper,” Johnny said soothingly. To himself he thought that about one more jab of the spurs and Detective Cuneo would be out of the saddle completely on this trip.

  Johnny was interested to note, beneath the block-lettered Spandau Watch Co. on the frosted glass of 1808, a smaller J. Tremaine, Representative. J. Tremaine. The “Jack” of Dechant's phone calls? Or the “Jules”? Johnny tapped once and entered, with the now obviously reluctant Cuneo still tagging doggedly along.

  The redhead from the previous evening looked up inquiringly from behind a neat, small desk. Th
e room was small, too, and a little on the shabby side, Johnny thought. The girl was alone, but the door to an inner office was at her back. Johnny was relieved to discover that he had made no mistake in judgment last night. Even in the less flattering daylight, this was an exceptional specimen of the genus female.

  “May I help you, gentlemen?” the girl asked as Cuneo remained a discreet half pace behind Johnny.

  “Sure you can, Gloria,” Johnny told her. He leaned down over her desk, resting his weight on his big-knuckled hands. Gloria Philips glanced fleetingly at the hands, longer at the breadth of chest and shoulders above them, longer still at the rough-hewn, craggy features thirty-six inches from her own. “Tremaine around?”

  “Who wishes-” The redhead nodded to herself. “I place you now. You were in the room last night when we found Claude.” She inspected Johnny coolly from beneath long lashes. “You have business with Mr. Tremaine?”

  “Oh, boy, do I have business!” Johnny replied cheerfully.

  Her eyes slid off to Cuneo. “And this one?”

  “Oh, he's just a cop,” Johnny said disparagingly. “Just taggin' along. I can't get rid of him.”

  “A policeman? Really?” Gloria Philips' stare banked off the red-faced Cuneo back to Johnny. “Mr. Tremaine is unavailable right now. If you could give me some idea of the nature of your business… I'm Mr. Tremaine's secretary.”

  “Well, I guess if you're his secretary it's all right,” Johnny allowed grudgingly. “I come over here to blackmail him.” Beside Johnny, Detective Cuneo blanched.

  “You're joking, of course,” the girl said finally.

  “Jokin'?” Johnny repeated. “I been livin' in Claude Dechant's pocket for ten years, little sister. You don't think that qualifies me?”

  The redhead considered this for five seconds before her fascinated stare returned to Cuneo. “And in the presence of the police you mention blackmail of Mr. Tremaine?”

  Ted Cuneo emitted a strangled sound. His hand opened and closed at his sides. “Where's a phone?” he blared.

  “Where's a goddam phone? Not that thing!” he shouted hoarsely at Gloria Philips as she pushed the phone on her desk toward him. “A pay phone!”

  “None closer than the lobby, I'm afraid,” she told him.

  He whirled to the door. From its threshold he leveled a finger at Johnny. “I'll get you for this, you sonofabitch! If Dameron just gives me the word, I'll-” He growled inarticulately, and the door shivered from the force with which he slammed it.

  Gloria Philips was looking up at Johnny pensively when he turned back to her desk. “A man like you hasn't always worked in a hotel, has he?” she asked.

  She's stalling, he thought instantly. Her hands were motionless on the desk top. Buzzer under her foot, probably. Act II was due to be coming up any second now. He moved a casual step closer to her desk. “Worked? Hell, I worked at everything. I was rollin' furniture vans over the mountains between L.A. an' Houston before I was eighteen. Jimmy-diesels. Monsters. Load a mansion in one. We did, many a time. Like the time I moved the whorehouse into Silver City. Rainin' like the sun 'd gone out of style, an'-”

  The door behind Gloria Philips was flung open, and a big man charged through it with so much energy that Johnny wondered why he had bothered to turn the knob. “What is it, Gloria?” the man demanded. He had a heavy, good-looking head set squarely on solid shoulders.

  The redhead released a spatter of rapid-fire French. “This maniac speaks of blackmail, Jules. He was here with another whom he said was of the police and who has now gone to telephone. I don't understand the relationship; they were unfriendly, but the other truly looked of the police. This one works at the hotel where Claude died. Perhaps there is-”

  Johnny leaned down over her desk again and knuckle-rapped it sharply for attention. “Un de ces jours tu prendras mon cul pour une tasse du cafe,” he said energetically. “Maybe today, eh? Why guess, when I'd be happy to tell you?”

  Jules Tremaine flexed his arms and advanced deliberately from his open doorway around the end of the girl's desk. “Jules,” Gloria Philips said quietly. “Look at the neck.”

  The big man looked. He didn't appear alarmed, but he halted, a thoughtful look on his handsome face.

  “Thank the lady for doin' you a big favor, Jules,” Johnny said softly, coming down off the balls of his feet.

  Jules Tremaine looked him up and down impersonally, then jerked his head at the doorway behind him. “Inside,” he said curtly. “We can talk in there.”

  “That's the specific idea,” Johnny told him. He looked down at Gloria Philips. “You, too, little sister. I like you near me.”

  He followed them into the inner office.

  CHAPTER III

  Jules Tremaine pushed a stack of papers from a corner of his high-piled desk and settled himself upon it, a leg swinging negligently and the big body at ease. “Sit there,” he directed, and nodded at a chair that would have placed him between Johnny and the door. He paid no attention at all to Gloria Philips, who had seated herself unobtrusively in the farthest corner.

  “I'm doin' fine right here,” Johnny returned equably from where he stood, just inside the door.

  Dark, wide-spaced eyes beneath heavy lids examined Johnny carefully. The jet black hair had a thick wave in it, and the smooth, olive features tapered to a square jaw. This man must have broken a thousand hearts, Johnny decided, but he was no pretty-boy. Tremaine's manner, as well as the blunt-fingered, capable-looking hands, contributed to an overall impression of rugged competence.

  “Now let's get-” Tremaine checked himself. “Who are you?”

  “The name's Killain. Johnny.” He nodded at the redhead in her corner. “Shouldn't we stuff little sister's ears before we begin? I wanted her here to keep her off the phone.”

  “You can talk.”

  “Suit yourself,” Johnny shrugged. “I got something to sell, Tremaine. It takes a bankroll to buy. Dechant furnished the merchandise. You interested?”

  Heavy-lidded eyes, beneath straight black brows, stared unwinkingly into Johnny's. “In the first place, I don't believe you.”

  Johnny swept a hand in a leisurely semicircle around the disorder of the shabby office. “You don't look to me like you got enough firepower financially, what I see here,” he said critically. “I need a real money tree. If you can't weigh in heavy enough, it'd be real cozy if you'd steer me to whichever of the others figured to shower down the most. I wouldn't forget it.”

  “The others?” Tremaine's tone was sharp.

  “Sure. Max, maybe. Jack, or Harry. Madeleine, even. For the right steer I could make you a deal.”

  “Send him to Stitt,” the redhead said rapidly in Italian from her corner. “With the trouble over the symbols-”

  “Shut up!” Jules Tremaine's hard voice rapped tightly on the heels of hers, but he didn't turn to look at her. “He speaks French. Why not Italian?” The heavy-lidded eyes measured Johnny. “I think he knows nothing. He fishes in troubled waters.”

  “Trouble's the word, chum,” Johnny said in his most reasonable tone. “Since we know there's goin' to be some, I'm in favor of makin' a dollar on the prospect. Whose side are you on? The people with the money, or Tremaine's?” He reached behind him for the doorknob at the other's silence. “The hell with it. I don't like doin' business with people who can't make up their mind. I'll go it alone.”

  “Jules!” Gloria Philips exclaimed as Johnny opened the door.

  “Shut up,” the big man repeated, but not as positively as before. Johnny closed the door from the other side and walked through the outer office. He was surprised that he hadn't been called back by the time the elevator he had summoned stopped at the eighteenth floor. Tremaine either had good nerves or was slow on the uptake. Not that it mattered-there was an easy way to copper the bet.

  In the lobby he went straight to the phone booth. He found fourteen Stitts in the directory. One John, who could be Jack, and one Max. Johnny scribbled phone numbers a
nd addresses on the back of a matchbook cover. On second thought, he went back to the directory and tried Stit, with one “t.” Only three, and no Jack, John or Max.

  He referred to the directory for the third time, fished a dime from the change in his pocket and dialed the number of the Spandau Watch Co. He listened appreciatively to Gloria Philips' cool voice at the other end of the line. “'Bout time for your coffee break, isn't it, little sister?” he asked her in Italian.

  He could hear the perceptible intake of her breath. “I'm sorry I'm late. We've been busy. I'll be right down.”

  Nice to find someone with a normal quota of curiosity, Johnny thought. He strolled back to the bank of elevators to wait for her. He had a smile on his face for Gloria Philips when she stepped out into the lobby. She looked at him, a long, speculative look, and then without a word steered him to the coffee-shop door on the left and on through the cafeteria-style aisle.

  En route to a corner table behind her, with their coffees on a tray, he noted that her suit-blue, today-enhanced her ripened curves commendably. Even in daylight, the rich auburn hair had a remarkable sheen.

  “I can't understand why I feel you're not a fool,” she commented at the table as he unloaded the tray. Her glance ranged over him guardedly. “The way you blundered in upstairs was nothing short of idiotic, but-”

  Her eyes at close range were a chameleonlike blue-gray, Johnny decided, and the tiny freckles even more attractive than he had remembered. “No sugar, thanks,” she said. She picked up her cup and sipped at it, her eyes still upon him above the rim. “You could be a fool, I suppose,” she remarked as she set the cup down. “But I think I like you, anyway.” She smiled at him.

  Johnny felt his interest rising by the moment. When this girl smiled, the lights dimmed. “What's a looker like you doin' workin' for Tremaine?” he asked her bluntly.

  The smile was as cool as the voice. “I could find you a thousand girls-” she glanced at the square-cut watch on her plump wrist-“between now and lunch time who'd love to work for Jules.”

  “So he's a doll. You're not moonstruck. You reacted upstairs faster than he did.” He reached across the table to take her wrist in his hand for a better look at the watch, and small diamonds winked in the light. “About fifteen, eighteen hundred,” Johnny estimated. “If these go with the job, I take back what I said.” He released her wrist, although she had made no move to withdraw it. He must be getting old, he decided. He hadn't felt skin like that in years. “You think I should see Stitt?”