Murdock grins. “You know him?” he says.
“Never seen him in my life before,” the bartender replies.
“Sure,” Murdock says. “Have a drink?”
“In the mornings I drink gin and fresh orange juice.”
“And the rest of the day you drink anything,” I say.
The bartender grins and goes to work on his drink.
“Santell around?” I ask him.
“Mr. Santell?” he says, slicing the lemon peel. “Sure. He'll be in his office, I guess.”
I slide off my stool. “We'll be back to pick up our tab,” I tell him.
Murdock follows suit and we walk out of the bar across the lobby to the reception desk. The desk clerk is alone now but the memory of the bitchy dame and her husband lingers on in his expression. I stand in front of him. “I want to see Santell,” I tell him.
The desk clerk looks at me. “Mr. Santell's very busy,” he says.
“Too busy to come and do your job for you besides his own?”
The desk clerk practices his sneer but he picks up a phone. A second later he says, “A couple of cops want to see Mr. Santell.”
Somebody on the other end of the phone says something.
“Who?” the clerk asks, looking at us.
“Boldt and Murdock,” I tell him.
“Boldt and Murdock,” he says into the phone. There is a pause; then he puts the phone back on its cradle. “He'll see you,” he says.
I smile at him and shake my head then Murdock and I walk to the door that leads to the short corridor down to Santell's office. At the end of the corridor there is a small reception area and as soon as she sees us come through the door into the corridor, Santell's secretary gets up and opens the door into Santell's office, waiting by it, smiling, as if we're the best thing that's happened to her all day. We go into Santell's office.
If Santell ever went to college, he must have been voted the Guy Most Likely to Become a Hotel Manager. He must have looked like a hotel manager in his crib. He is the neatest man I ever saw. He's also the greyest man I ever saw. His white shirt looks a riot of color against the rest of his outfit. Even his office must have been designed by a decorator who'd lost his colored pencils. No wonder his secretary is pleased to see us.
Santell gets up and leans forward slightly over his desk and stretches out his hand in Murdock's direction. For a second Murdock is thrown but then he gets the idea and shakes hands with Santell, then Santell shakes hands with me and indicates the two chairs which have been neatly arranged on our side of the desk. We sit down, followed by Santell.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” he asks, and while he waits for an answer the secretary reappears with a tray and on the tray is a very nice coffee set. She puts the tray down and Santell reaches for the coffee pot and pours, leaving us to add our own cream and sugar. “We have a scare,” I tell him. “And we need your cooperation. We have this note, one of those threatening notes. Somebody says they're thinking of loosing off a few shots at a prominent person and, of course, as yet we've no way of knowing whether or not it's for real, but we have to check everything out. Now your hotel is well placed to cover the station frontage. Obviously, on the day in question we'll have this place staked out pretty well, have everything pretty well tied down, but we're not, of course, only interested in preventing anything happening, we'd like very much to get the guy who sent the note. And so what we'd like you to do is to let us look at your bookings for the past week and for next week and at the same time let us have any observations you may have on any of your present guests that you think might be interesting to us.”
Santell takes a sip of coffee and then shakes his head. “There's nothing for you here,” he says. “Not now at least. That I can tell you for certain. There's no one in this hotel at this time who you could possibly be interested in.”
“Well,” I say, “you're very certain. That's good because it means you keep a sharp eye on your customers, but, well, maybe there's someone who you'd never think could interest us in a million years, and, maybe, they just might.”
Santell shakes his head again. “To begin with,” he says, “there are only three singles booked in the hotel at this moment. Now none of them has a room facing front, and if they had, none of them is staying beyond the weekend. So that rules those three out. Apart from a honeymooning foursome, I would hazard a pretty fair guess that none of our remaining guests are below the age of fifty, or are other than what they appear to be: good solid citizens who are too close to cashing in insurance policies to be over-concerned about firing off rifles at other people, political or otherwise.”
“Just the same,” I say to him, “I'd like to see your register, and your advance booking list.”
“Of course,” he says, pressing a buzzer on his desk, “anything you wish.”
“I mean, even you could overlook some things. Or did you know Harold Schwarz was operating in your bar these days?”
For the first time a trace of color shows on Santell's face, but only very faintly.
“Harold Schwarz?” he says.
“Mr. Santell doesn't know who Harold Schwarz is, George,” I say to Murdock.
“Oh really?” Murdock says. “Well, well.”
Santell colors up a little bit more.
“Do you think, we ought to tell him?” I say to Murdock.
“No, better not,” Murdock says. “I'd hate to upset Mr. Santell.”
Santell's secretary comes in and Santell snaps at her to get the stuff we're asking for and it's her turn to color up. Murdock and me just sit there and wait for the girl to go out and come back again. She leaves the stuff on the desk and goes out. Santell makes no move to hand us the stuff so Murdock leans forward and begins to go through it. I take a cigarette from a box on Santell's desk and say to him, “I'll be putting a couple of men in the hotel as of today and my partner here'll be taking a room for the duration. I want him to have a room overlooking the station and I want the rooms on either side to be kept vacant. The rest of your guests I'm afraid will have to put up with a certain amount of inconvenienceâspot checks, that kind of thing, but don't complain to me; Bolan's your man or DraperâDraper's authorizing everything. Or even Mr. Florian, if you care to complain, but he won't thank you for it because this is going to be one of those nice things, leading city businessmen cooperating with the vigilant police department, and the papers will write it nice and big. So there you have it.”
Murdock says, “I can't see anything in the book, but maybe we should have a couple of these advance bookings checked out.”
“We'll have someone come over and get some copies made and hand all that over to Bolan,” I tell him.
I light my cigarette and then I pick up my coffee cup. Santell watches me drink then says, “With or without a bath?”
“What?”
“The room for your partner. With or without a bath?”
“Oh, with,” I tell him. “Us dirty pigs got to bathe all the time. Like the niggers, we got to take care of our stink.”
Santell doesn't say anything else. Murdock puts the stuff back on the desk and the two of us stand up.
“Thanks for your time,” I say to Santell, but this time he doesn't get up and give us the treatment.
Murdock and I leave the office and go down the corridor back into the lobby. I start to make it back to the bar.
“Where you going?” Murdock says.
I turn around. Murdock has stopped by the reception desk.
“I'm going to pay the bar tabs,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“One more guy on our side.”
I turn and go back into the bar. The bartender takes up his position. I sit down on a stool and I say to him, “You want to be of some assistance to the Police Department?”
“That depends,” he answers.
“On what?”
“On whether or not I have a choice.”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think I'm going to be helping the Police Department.”
“That's right,” I tell him. “Now, all I want you to do is, the next time I come in, to tell me about anybody who has come in here you think I'd be interested in. And I mean anybody. Particularly anybody staying in the hotel.”
“Well,” he says, “that's fine. I can do that for you, but I'm not really sure of what you have in mind. It'd be easier if I knew what kind of person you were thinking of.”
“Yes, I know it would,” I tell him. “But if I had an idea of who I was looking for then I wouldn't be asking bartenders to work on my behalf. Just anybody, when you look at them you get a kind of feeling... I don't know, they could be capable of anything. Loners, mostly, I guess.”
“Well maybe you could tell me what exactly they're most likely to be capable of.”
“Assassination.”
The bartender strokes his throat with his forefinger. I nod.
“Yeah,” he says. “Well, if anybody comes in with a hunting rifle, I'll let you know.”
“I'd appreciate it,” I tell him, and put some money on the bar. “The change is yours. And also there'll be more for information leading to an arrest.”
“You know, I suppose, that I'm already being paid for information of a different kind?”
“Who by, Lambert?”
“That's right.”
“So?”
“So if you see him, tell him about your request, would you? Mr. Lambert's a man who likes to know what's going on.”
“Yes, I know that,” I say. “I'll pass on the news.”
I get off the stool and go out of the bar. Murdock is still waiting by the reception desk only now he's looking at a girl who's impatient for the clerk to show up. I don't blame her, and I don't blame Murdock either because the girl is without a doubt the most beautiful girl in this part of the city. She's probably around twenty-one or -two and although her clothes are casual, they've been bought at the most expensive stores. She's wearing a pink voile shirt with a long collar and puffed sleeves and over it a V-neck sleeveless pullover. She's also wearing white oxford trousers with deep cuffs and two-tone round-toe shoes. Her hair is very, very black and it's long, falling right to the waist of her pullover. She jams her hand down on the buzzer and leaves it there for a minute or so but still nothing happens. “The clerk's in a mood,” I tell her. “He thinks the manager doesn't understand him.”
She turns her head slightly, and it seems that's all it takes for her to take stock of who's talking to her because immediately she turns back to her previous position, not saying anything.
“If you like I could get the manager,” I tell her.
This time she turns fully and although her eyes hardly move I get the impression I'm being flipped over the way a good dealer flips over a playing card.
“I'm sure you could,” she says. “But if I wanted him, I'd be quite capable of getting him myself. Like I'm capable of making my own pick ups. But if, on the other hand, you'd like to earn a dollar, you could always hang around and take my luggage up to my room.”
“Maybe I'll do that,” I tell her. “But don't you think that might be a little risky?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Not at all.”
I shrug. Murdock chips in, “Come on, Roy. No risk, no excitement. Took me eight years with my old lady to find that out.”
“Oh, I don't know,” I say. “The excitement might be in finding out if she means what she says.”
“And pigs always find out, don't they?” the girl says.
I smile at her. “We have our ways, but obviously you already know that.”
“Everybody does,” she says, and just then the desk clerk appears and she turns away again. Murdock and I walk across the lobby and out of the hotel. As we walk back to the car Murdock says, “Well, it's a shame, but I have to say that was one you lost.”
“It's a shame all right,” I agree. “You don't see many like that in this town.”
“Still,” Murdock says as we get in the car, “you might bump into her again when we come back.”
“Yeah, and next time I'll wear a mask.”
“On the other hand,” I say, “I hope I don't.”
“What?” Murdock says, starting up the engine.
“See her again. I like to sleep nights.”
“Yeah,” Murdock says. “And by the way, thanks. That was a nice play about the room.”
“Draper's got to think everything's nice this week.”
Murdock takes a left down the side of the hotel complex and we drive slowly east through the factory area. The day is duller now and noon traffic reflects the neutral color of the sky.
“No need to worry about this part of the route,” I say to Murdock. “Bolan'll station observation points and he'll check out the area all through the day. There's nothing here for us.”
We're now nearing the end of the industrial complex and we're running into a small urban area with an edge-of-city intersection which forms the center of this dead, characterless suburb. There are the usual blocks of stores and business premises and a couple of bars and garages and very little else. The area has a neutral feeling, as if the people around are only there briefly to make some kind of transaction, and the minute it's been made, they'll disappear back where they came from, quick. The place has only one establishment that makes the neighborhood any different from a hundred others and that is a place called Clark's. It's right at the intersection, down about fifty-sixty yards where the stores begin to straggle out to nothing.
“Why don't we call in at Clark's?” I ask Murdock.
“Why don't we?” Murdock replies, slowing down for the red. “There's always somebody willing to help us in Clark's.”
“Yeah,” I say. Murdock takes the right and a couple of seconds later pulls into the curb outside Clark's.