It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was.
It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course between a receivership and a bad name at Headquarters. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. Too much smoke hung below its low beamed lobby ceiling and too many grifters bummed around in its worn leather rockers.
The blonde who looked after the big horseshoe cigar counter wasn’t young any more and her eyes were cynical from standing off cheap dates. De Ruse leaned on the glass and pushed his hat back on his crisp black hair.
“Camels, honey,” he said in his low-pitched gambler’s voice.
The girl smacked the pack in front of him, rang up fifteen cents and slipped the dime change under his elbow, with a faint smile. Her eyes said they liked him. She leaned opposite him and put her head near enough so that he could smell the perfume in her hair.
“Tell me something,” De Ruse said.
“What?” she asked softly.
“Find out who lives in eight-o-nine, without telling any answers to the clerk.”
The blonde looked disappointed. “Why don’t you ask him yourself, mister?”
“I’m too shy,” De Ruse said.
“Yes you arc!”
She went to her telephone and talked into it with languid grace, came back to De Ruse.
“Name of Mattick. Mean anything?”
“Guess not,” De Ruse said. “Thanks a lot. How do you like it in this nice hotel?”
“Who said it was a nice hotel?”
De Ruse smiled, touched his hat, strolled away. Her eyes looked after him sadly. She leaned her sharp elbows on the counter and cupped her chin in her hands to stare after him.
De Ruse crossed the lobby and went up three steps and got into an open-cage elevator that started with a lurch.
“Eight,” he said, and leaned against the cage with his hands in his pockets.
Eight was as high as the Metropole went. De Ruse followed a long corridor that smelled of varnish. A turn at the end brought him face to face with 809. He knocked on the dark wood panel. Nobody answered. He bent over, looked through an empty keyhole, knocked again.
Then he took the tabbed key out of his pocket and unlocked the door and went in.
Windows were shut in two walls. The air reeked of whiskey. Lights were on in the ceiling. There was a wide brass bed, a dark bureau, a couple of brown leather rockers, a stiff-looking desk with a flat brown quart of Four Roses on it, nearly empty, without a cap. De Ruse sniffed it and set his hips against the edge of the desk, let his eyes prowl the room.
His glance traversed from the dark bureau across the bed and the wall with the door in it to another door behind which light showed. He crossed to that and opened it.
The man lay on his face, on the yellowish brown woodstone floor of the bathroom. Blood on the floor looked sticky and black. Two soggy patches on the back of the man’s head were the points from which rivulets of dark red had run down the side of his neck to the floor. The blood had stopped flowing a long time ago.
De Ruse slipped a glove off and stooped to hold two fingers against the place where an artery would beat. He shook his head and put his hand back into his glove.
He left the bathroom, shut the door and went to open one of the windows. He leaned out, breathing clean rain-wet air, looking down along slants of thin rain into the dark slit of an alley.
After a little while he shut the window again, switched off the light in the bathroom, took a “Do Not Disturb” sign out of the top bureau drawer, doused the ceiling lights, and went out.
He hung the sign on the knob and went back along the corridor to the elevators and left the Hotel Metropole.
6
Francine Ley hummed low down in her throat as she went along the silent corridor of the Chatterton. She hummed unsteadily without knowing what she was humming, and her left hand with its cherry-red fingernails held a green velvet cape from slipping down off her shoulders. There was a wrapped bottle under her other arm.
She unlocked the door, pushed it open and stopped, with a quick frown. She stood still, remembering, trying to remember. She was still a little tight.
She had left the lights on, that was it. They were off now. Could be the maid service, of course. She went on in, fumbled through the red curtains into the living room.
The glow from the heater prowled across the red and white rug and touched shiny black things with a ruddy gleam. The shiny black things were shoes. They didn’t move.
Francine Ley said: “Oh—oh,” in a sick voice. The hand holding the cape almost tore into her neck with its long, beautifully molded nails.
Something clicked and light glowed in a lamp beside an easy chair. De Ruse sat in the chair, looking at her woodenly.
He had his coat and hat on. His eyes shrouded, far away, filled with a remote brooding.
He said: “Been out, Francy?”
She sat down slowly on the edge of a half-round settee, put the bottle down beside her.
“I got tight,” she said. “Thought I’d better cat. Then I thought I’d get tight again.” She patted the bottle.
De Ruse said: “I think your friend Dial’s boss has been snatched.” He said it casually, as if it was of no importance to him.
Francine Ley opened her mouth slowly and as she opened it all the prettiness went out of her face. Her face became a blank haggard mask on which rouge burned violently. Her mouth looked as if it wanted to scream.
After a while it closed again and her face got pretty again and her voice, from far off, said: “Would it do any good to say I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
De Ruse didn’t change his wooden expression. He said: “When I went down to the street from here a couple of hoods jumped me. One of them was stashed in the car. Of course they could have spotted me somewhere else—followed me here.”
“They did,” Francine Ley said breathlessly. “They did, Johnny.”
His long chin moved an inch. “They piled me into a big Lincoln, a limousine. It was quite a car. It had heavy glass that didn’t break easily and no door handles and it was all shut up tight. In the front seat it had a tank of Nevada gas, cyanide, which the guy driving could turn into the back part without getting it himself. They took me out Griffith Parkway, towards the Club Egypt. That’s that joint on county land, near the airport.” He paused, rubbed the end of one eyebrow, went on: “They overlooked the Mauser I sometimes wear on my leg. The driver crashed the car and I got loose.”
He spread his hands and looked down at them. A faint metallic smile showed at the corners of his lips.
Francine Ley said: “I didn’t have anything to do with it, Johnny.” Her voice was as dead as the summer before last.
De Ruse said: “The guy that rode in the car before I did probably didn’t have a gun. He was Hugo Candless. The car was a ringer for his car—same model, same paint job, same plates—but it wasn’t his car. Somebody took a lot of trouble. Candless left the Delmar Club in the wrong car about six-thirty. His wife says he’s out of town. I talked to her an hour ago. His car hasn’t been out of the garage since noon…Maybe his wife knows he’s snatched by now, maybe not.”
Francine Ley’s nails clawed at her skirt. Her lips shook.
De Ruse went on calmly, tonelessly: “Somebody gunned the Candless chauffeur in a downtown hotel tonight or this afternoon. The cops haven’t found it yet. Somebody took a lot of trouble, Francy. You wouldn’t want to be in on that kind of a set-up, would you, precious?”
Francine Ley bent her head forward and stared at the floor. She said thickly: “I need a drink. What I had is dying in me. I feel awful.”
De Ruse stood up and went to the white desk. He drained a bottle into a glass and brought it across to her. He stood in front of her, holding the glass out of her reach.
“I only get tough once in a while, baby, but when I get tough I’m not so e
asy to stop, if I say it myself. If you know anything about all this, now would be a good time to spill it.”
He handed her the glass. She gulped the whiskey and a little more light came into her smoke-blue eyes. She said slowly: “I don’t know anything about it, Johnny. Not in the way you mean. But George Dial made me a love-nest proposition tonight and he told mc he could get money out of Candless by threatening to spill a dirty trick Candless played on some tough boy from Reno.”
“Damn clever, these greasers,” De Ruse said. “Reno’s my town, baby. I know all the tough boys in Reno. Who was it?”
“Somebody named Zapparty.”
De Ruse said very softly: “Zapparty is the name of the man who runs the Club Egypt.”
Francine Ley stood up suddenly and grabbed his arm. “Stay out of it, Johnny! For Christ sake, can’t you stay out of it for just this once?”
De Ruse shook his head, smiled delicately, lingeringly at her. Then he lifted her hand off his arm and stepped back.
“I had a ride in their gas car, baby, and I didn’t like it. I smelled their Nevada gas. I left my lead in somebody’s gun punk. That makes mc call copper or get jammed up with the law. If somebody’s snatched and I call copper, there’ll be another kidnap victim bumped off, more likely than not. Zapparty’s a tough boy from Reno and that could tie in with what Dial told you, and if Mops Parisi is playing with Zapparty, that could make a reason to pull mc into it. Parisi loathes my guts.”
“You don’t have to be a one-man riot squad, Johnny,” Francine Ley said desperately.
He kept on smiling, with tight lips and solemn eyes. “There’ll be two of us, baby. Get yourself a long coat. It’s still raining a little.”
She goggled at him. Her outstretched hand, the one that had been on his arm, spread its fingers stiffly, bent back from the palm, straining back. Her voice was hollow with fear.
“Me, Johnny? Oh, please, not.”
De Ruse said gently: “Get that coat, honey. Make yourself look nice. It might be the last time we’ll go out together.”
She staggered past him. He touched her arm softly, held it a moment, said almost in a whisper:
“You didn’t put the finger on me, did you, Francy?”
She looked back stonily at the pain in his eyes, made a hoarse sound under her breath and jerked her arm loose, went quickly into the bedroom.
After a moment the pain went out of De Ruse’s eyes and the metallic smile came back to the corners of his lips.
7
De Ruse half closed his eyes and watched the croupier’s fingers as they slid back across the table and rested on the edge. They were round, plump, tapering fingers, graceful fingers. De Ruse raised his head and looked at the croupier’s face. He was a bald-headed man of no particular age, with quiet blue eyes. He had no hair on his head at all, not a single hair.
De Ruse looked down at the croupier’s hands again. The right hand turned a little on the edge of the table. The buttons on the sleeve of the croupier’s brown velvet coat—cut like a dinner coat—rested on the edge of the table. De Ruse smiled his thin metallic smile.
He had three blue chips on the red. On that play the ball stopped at Black 2. The croupier paid off two of the four other men who were playing.
De Ruse pushed five blue chips forward and settled them on the red diamond. Then he turned his head to the left and watched a huskily built blond young man put three red chips on the zero.
De Ruse licked his lips and turned his head farther, looked towards the side of the rather small room. Francine Ley was sitting on a couch backed to the wall, with her head leaning against it.
“I think I’ve got it, baby,” De Ruse said to her. “I think I’ve got it.”
Francine Ley blinked and lifted her head away from the wall. She reached for a drink on a low round table in front of her.
She sipped the drink, looked at the floor, didn’t answer.
De Ruse looked back at the blond man. The three other men had made bets. The croupier looked impatient and at the same time watchful.
De Ruse said: “How come you always hit zero when I hit red, and double zero when I hit black?”
The blond young man smiled, shrugged, said nothing.
De Ruse put his hand down on the layout and said very softly: “I asked you a question, mister.”
“Maybe I’m Jesse Livermore,” the blond young man grunted. “I like to sell short.”
“What is this—slow motion?” one of the other men snapped.
“Make your plays, please, gentlemen,” the croupier said.
De Ruse looked at him, said: “Let it go.”
The croupier spun the wheel left-handed, flicked the ball with the same hand the opposite way. His right hand rested on the edge of the table.
The ball stopped at black 28, next to zero. The blond man laughed. “Close,” he said, “close.”
De Ruse checked his chips, stacked them carefully. “I’m down six grand,” he said. “It’s a little raw, but I guess there’s money in it. Who runs this clip joint?”
The croupier smiled slowly and stared straight into De Ruse’s eyes. He asked quietly: “Did you say clip joint?”
De Ruse nodded. He didn’t bother to answer.
“I thought you said clip joint,” the croupier said, and moved one foot, put weight on it.
Three of the men who had been playing picked their chips up quickly and went over to a small bar in the corner of the room. They ordered drinks and leaned their backs against the wall by the bar, watching De Ruse and the croupier. The blond man stayed put and smiled sarcastically at De Ruse.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said thoughtfully. “Your manners.”
Francine Ley finished her drink and leaned her head back against the wall again. Her eyes came down and watched De Ruse furtively, under the long lashes.
A paneled door opened after a moment and a very big man with a black mustache and very rough black eyebrows came in. The croupier moved his eyes to him, then to De Ruse, pointing with his glance.
“Yes, I thought you said clip joint,” he repeated tonelessly. The big man drifted to De Ruse’s elbow, touched him with his own elbow.
“Out,” he said impassively.
The blond man grinned and put his hands in the pockets of his dark gray suit. The big man didn’t look at him.
De Ruse glanced across the layout at the croupier and said: “I’ll take back my six grand and call it a day.”
“Out,” the big man said wearily, jabbing his elbow into De Ruse’s side.
The bald-headed croupier smiled politely.
“You,” the big man said to De Ruse, “ain’t goin’ to get tough, are you?”
De Ruse looked at him with sarcastic surprise.
“Well, well, the bouncer,” he said softly. “Take him, Nicky.”
The blond man took his right hand out of his pocket and swung it. The sap looked black and shiny under the bright lights. It hit the big man on the back of the head with a soft thud. The big man clawed at De Ruse, who stepped away from him quickly and took a gun out from under his arm. The big man clawed at the edge of the roulette table and fell heavily on the floor.
Francine Ley stood up and made a strangled sound in her throat.
The blond man skipped sidewise, whirled and looked at the bartender. The bartender put his hands on top of the bar. The three men who had been playing roulette looked very interested, but they didn’t move.
De Ruse said: “The middle button on his right sleeve, Nicky. I think it’s copper.”
“Yeah.” The blond man drifted around the end of the table putting the sap back in his pocket. He went close to the croupier and took hold of the middle of three buttons on his right cuff, jerked it hard. At the second jerk it came away and a thin wire followed it out of the sleeve.
“Correct,” the blond man said casually, letting the croupier’s arm drop.
“I’ll take my six grand now,” De Ruse said. “Then we’ll go talk to your boss.”
The croupier nodded slowly and reached for the rack of chips beside the roulette table.
The big man on the floor didn’t move. The blond man put his right hand behind his hip and took a .45 automatic out from inside his waistband at the back.
He swung it in his hand, smiling pleasantly around the room.
8
They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz came the smell of food and cigarette smoke and perspiration. The balcony was high and the scene down below had a patterned look, like an overhead camera shot.
The bald-headed croupier opened a door in the corner of the balcony and went through without looking back. The blond man De Ruse had called Nicky went after him. Then De Ruse and Francine Ley.
There was a short hail with a frosted light in the ceiling. The door at the end of that looked like painted metal. The croupier put a plump finger on the small push button at the side, rang it in a certain way. There was a buzzing noise like the sound of an electric door release. The croupier pushed on the edge and opened it.
Inside was a cheerful room, half den and half office. There was a grate fire and a green leather davenport at right angles to it, facing the door. A man sitting on the davenport put a newspaper down and looked up and his face suddenly got livid. He was a small man with a tight round head, a tight round dark face. He had little lightless black eyes like buttons of jet.
There was a big flat desk in the middle of the room and a very tall man stood at the end of it with a cocktail shaker in his hands. His head turned slowly and he looked over his shoulder at the four people who came into the room while his hands continued to agitate the cocktail shaker in gentle rhythm. He had a cavernous face with sunken eyes, loose grayish skin, and close-cropped reddish hair without shine or parting. A thin crisscross scar like a German Mensur scar showed on his left cheek.
The tall man put the cocktail shaker down and turned his body around and stared at the croupier. The man on the davenport didn’t move. There was a crouched ten sixty in his not moving.