The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (2 page)

“805.”

“You’re a credit to your profession,” I said and walked off, already unhappy about the whole set-up. And even less happy when the elevator operator surveyed me with beady eyes the color of sewage. He easily weighed four hundred pounds and had a fan mounted directly next to his head which blew the sweat off him in sheets. Whoever was dumb enough to stand next to him got sprayed. I was dumb enough. It wasn’t anything like walking on the beaches of Cape Cod. He stopped at five. The baths were on five.

“I got to pick up a package,” he grunted. “Be right back.” He kept the door open with a stop, so that the steam seeping out of the baths could fill up the elevator. The temperature must have been 105 and my shirt was a sponge. I could make out some pale, naked bodies moving around through the window on the door leading into the baths but the elevator jockey had somehow vanished into the gray mist.

Ten minutes later, as I was considering whether or not to pass out, he returned.

“Where’s your package?” I asked.

He said nothing, but kicked out the stop and shot us up to eight. His uniform was soaked. I got out.

“Keep your nose clean, shamus,” he croaked, closing the doors, “or I’ll sit on your face.”

A sweetheart. The place was filled with them. After the impromptu steambath on five, the eighth floor felt like a refrigerator car. A cleaning lady was airing out 801, letting in some fresh soot, and two doors down was 805. I’m not an investigator for nothing: show me 801 and I’ll find 805 two times out of three.

I knocked on Duke Fenton’s door and stared at my feet, waiting. No answer. I knocked again, a little harder, and drew another blank. When I tried the door, it was unlocked so I pushed it open with all due caution, my right hand tickling the Colt I keep in my jacket pocket. The room was yellow, small, and perfectly quiet. Some dirty white curtains were billowing inward ever so slightly. There was a suitcase propped open on a chair and a white shirt on the single bed. It was just back from the laundry. Except for the pair of Florsheims sticking out of the bathroom, and except for the dead man inside them, everything was as it should have been. Forget the “excepts”: the way this case was shaping up, everything was in order.

I
T WAS A PRETTY JOB:
two in the chest, one in the temple. I turned Mr. Mortis a little on his side and found his wallet. It was empty of cash but full of identification. Carl Fenton, Carl Fenton, Carl W. Fenton, and one card in the name of Fenton W. Carswell. Cute. So far I was definitely getting my twenty bucks’ worth. I turned the late Fenton back to where I had found him and washed my hands, then crept over to the door and slipped the Do Not Disturb over the knob. I knew Fenton wasn’t in any hurry to have his bed made, and it would take the cleaning lady a good long time to get that bathroom floor in shape.

Fenton’s suitcase looked untouched. I opened the latches and went through his possessions. I carefully lifted his boxer shorts and undershirts, only to find more shorts and a couple of ties. I liked the one with the little cocktail glasses on it. He had two pink shirts, a black shirt, and a white shirt. Underneath a towel he had stolen from the Hotel Metro in Pittsburgh I discovered cologne, socks, and an unopened box of condoms. Poor bastard: it told the whole story of his stay in the big city. Almost the whole story; that hole in his head added a nice touch.

My search of Fenton’s effects kept me occupied, but I hadn’t found anything useful and I had the nagging feeling that I wasn’t about to. The room was as spare as a monk’s, with its one dresser, one closet, single bed, and two-by-four throw rug. Hunting through it was as easy as it was futile. Satisfied that the law wasn’t going to find Kerry Lane’s Oscar-winning performances, I picked up the telephone.

“Yes?” It was the shark at the main desk.

“Get me the police.”

There was a silence you could have driven two Packards through.

“Perhaps the house detective may be of assistance.”

“Okay, sure. Tell the house dick that there’s a man wearing three bullet holes who’s modeling them on the bathroom floor in room 805 and he’s been holding his breath for a long, long time. It’s a hot day, so if your man wants to figure out what happened, he better do it fast or else the smell is going to put a real crimp in your afternoon business. Johns are nervous enough without dead guys checking in and out. The cleaning lady is in 804 right about now; if you want, I’ll ask her to dispose of the body. Unless, of course, you’d prefer me to throw it directly out the window and claim suicide. The
Mirror
will love it: ‘MAN SHOOTS HIMSELF THROUGH CHEST AND HEAD, LEAPS FROM HOTEL LAVA.’ Or maybe, in a pinch, you’ll connect me with the police.”

“You being funny, mac, or what?” I was now addressing the house detective.

“Come up to 805, the laugh’s on me.” I hung up, walked over to the door, and removed the Do Not Disturb. The cleaning lady was backing out of 804 across the hall, pulling a wagon loaded with gray sheets and cleansers. She turned and saw me.

“Morning,” she said in an accent that surprised me: Cockney. “You with the party in 805?”

“No, and you’d better stay out of 805 for a while. There’s been a little accident.”

She peered in. With the door open, there was a cross breeze that had the curtains floating almost horizontally across the little room. She saw the black shoes sticking out of the bathroom.

“Oh, dear,” she said, with no more emotion than if she had just dropped a can of Dutch Cleanser. Probably less. “Is he dead, then?” I nodded and she just shook her head. “I’d better go into 806 and clean up there, don’t you think, until this gets cleared up?” I agreed and she pulled her wagon to 806.

“He didn’t look too nice,” the cleaning lady said, opening 806. “That one in 805. Looked like a bad sort.”

“Did you notice any visitors here?” She just looked at me. Something in her brain had flashed COP and I had lost my chance to have a little chat.

“No, no. Nobody,” and she was inside 806.

I heard the elevator doors open down the hall, so I went back into 805, sat down on the room’s only chair and lit up a Lucky. The shark-faced clerk and a large moon-faced man in dark, billowing slacks, a white shirt, red vest and a black, clip-on bow tie came into the room. Without knocking.

“You’re under arrest,” said the shark.

The house dick laughed and I felt a lot better. At least somebody was sane in this hotel. The dick had a brown crew-cut and a nose the size of a pear. His eyes were friendly and cynical.

“Don’t get your shit in an uproar, Mel.” He looked at me and past me, to the Florsheims resting at their forty-five-degree angles. “Call the cops, Mel.”

“There isn’t anything? …”

“Call ’em, for Crissakes!” Mel, the shark, left in a huff.

The house dick shook his head. “Don’t mind Mel. He’s just an asshole.” It was a final-sounding statement. All the credits and debits had been counted up and the verdict was in: Mel was an asshole. The house dick went into the bathroom and looked over the body, while I let the cigarette smoke skate through my lungs and out my nose. I heard the water running, and the dick came out of the john, with the bored and sardonic look of a man who had worked in cheap hotels much too long.

“A professional piece of work,” he said. “No fuss, no muss.”

“Maybe he was doped up. Doesn’t look like any struggle at all.”

He gave me a long, humorous look. His eyes were very blue and surprisingly clear, but the pallor and crow’s feet were of a man who had spent his life being baked by fluorescent lights. “You a shamus?”

“I’m Jack LeVine,” I said, like it meant something, and handed him my card. He read it over and stuck out his hand: “Toots Fellman,” and I shook that hand. He was the first decent guy I’d met that day, maybe the first one in a couple of days. You can go a long time without …

“You had business with this creep?” he asked.

“I never got the chance to find out. I knocked on the door a couple of minutes ago and there he was, smiling at me.”

“You get to know a little in this racket. When that son of a bitch registered, I knew he wasn’t in town to sell cole slaw. I told Mel I’d keep an eye on him.” He sat heavily on the bed and looked toward the bathroom. “Guess you’d say I did a helluva job.” Toots laughed and unclipped his bow tie.

I just shrugged. “You notice anything about the mug while he was in one piece? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not a thing. He played it close to the chest. Maybe people were up here, maybe they weren’t. I couldn’t sit outside his room and he sure as hell didn’t do business in the lobby. He was a pro, a guy who faded into the woodwork.”

“A pro killed by a pro,” I said. “Except for the stiff, this room looks set for afternoon tea.”

“Think he got sapped before he was shot?” Toots asked.

“If he didn’t, he must have fainted.”

Toots went back to the bathroom and checked out what was left of Fenton’s head. “On the money, LeVine,” came the voice from the john. “Evidence of swelling back here. He might have gotten it falling on the floor, but I’d bet you’re right.” I heard the water running again. It was a messy job, looking at Duke Fenton. Toots came out wiping his hands on his pants.

“So far, I’d say there was some double-crossing in the air,” he said.

“You might be right,” I told him casually. He was eventually going to want to know what I was doing here. Eventually was now; Toots eyed me, more quizzically than suspiciously, and finally asked, “Can you tell me why you were here?”

“Nope. Nothing major, though, nothing that would end up in a stiff. He was shaking down somebody, but the stakes weren’t big enough for anything like this. Besides, she’s too delicate to have slugged somebody and then shot him three times, with three bull’s-eyes.”

Toots raised his bushy eyebrows. “You free-lance dicks get all the good ones.”

“Just in the movies, Toots. I figure Fenton was shaking someone else down, more likely a couple of people, and somewhere along the line, it made sense to put him on ice. But my case is small potatoes.”

Toots smiled and then said something very nice: “You want to get out of here before the law shows up?”

“It’d save me a lot of useless lying. Might even save me a punch in the mouth.”

“I’ll call Mel and tell him to let you out. You can do me a favor sometime.”

I stood up and shook Toots’s hand. I felt like marrying the guy. “Come over to my office sometime soon, Toots. I’ll buy you a drink out of my closet.”

He was already at the phone, calling the desk. “It’s a deal,” he said, winking at me and patting me on the shoulder as I breezed out the door. The smell was starting to get a little thick. “Mel,” I heard him say as I started down the hall, “let the shamus out. He’s all right. Because I fuckin’ say so, that’s why.”

The elephant who ran the elevator was waiting for me down the hall. When I walked into the elevator, he stepped far aside, like I was carrying the plague, and I stood in the back, to avoid the saltwater douse.

“You think you can find your way down without another steam break, slim?”

“Why don’t you chew on this, shamus?” He pointed to one of his four hundred pounds, somewhere vaguely around the middle of his body.

“Sorry, I like my meat lean.”

“Funny man,” he said out of the side of his mouth, turning his head a little. He spoke with a kind of dignity: a rhino coping with a gnat.

“Just observant,” I told him. The elevator stopped in the lobby and I got out, stroking fatso on the head, “Nice boy.”

“I’ll see you again, wiseass.”

Mel wasn’t too happy to see me walk out the door without getting worked over. He gave me his best shark smile.

“Thanks for everything,” I shouted over to him. “I’ll tell my friends to stay here when they’re in town.” I pushed my way out of one door just as three husky cops and a couple of detectives, one of whom, Paul Shea, I knew all too well, pushed their way in the other. Like ships in the night. Shea didn’t see me, but it was very close, too close. Another minute spent insulting a fleabag desk clerk and Shea would have had me sitting on the hardest chair in his office for a couple of hours. I would have told him I was at the Lava for the baths and he would have sipped some more coffee and asked me again what I was doing there. That’s how those things go.