Murder on the Rocks. Talmage Powell

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СКАЧАТЬ taxi stopped and took me back to Hogan’s for my car.

      At eight o’clock I was in my apartment reading a book on gems. The telephone rang and it was Artie. He had located the taxi driver who took a man generally answering Silvio’s description from the Mayflower to a dump on the east side, Chinatown. The Hotel Flora. There the desk clerk said the man spoke English with an accent and had signed the register as Samuel Cooper. He had not left his room all day.

      I dropped the book and ran for the elevator. My Olds was parked in the basement garage, and besides, a cabbie would know the shortcuts to Chinatown. I made it to the Hotel Flora in under ten minutes and Artie was outside, lounging under a street lamp trying to look casual. We walked up to the desk together. The Flora was a three-story fleabag with worn wooden stairs.

      For one dollar the snaggle-toothed clerk lent us the master key so that we could surprise an old friend. Artie and I went up the steps to the second floor, turned down a corridor lighted by a single bulb and smelling of wood alcohol, sweat, and decay. I fitted the key quietly into the lock and turned it but the door was already unlocked. The door opened inward on darkness.

      Artie’s pencil light flashed around the room, found the switch, and I turned on the overhead light.

      The room looked like a shipwreck. Bureau drawers were pulled out, one was overturned on the floor. Stuffing and feathers had been torn out of pillows and chair cushions. The tan leather bag was empty; clothes littered the room.

      The bed was an old brass four-poster with a sagging mattress. What made the mattress sag was a man lying on it. His tie knot had been loosened and the shirt collar was open. He lay on his back staring up at the ceiling and his eyes were as cold as stones.

      Above his forehead the short wiry hair curled like black caracul. The mustache was missing but the scar was there. It angled down under his left eye, nearly an inch long and almost the same color as the rest of his skin. And that was deathly white.

      Behind me Artie said, “Is that the guy you wanted?”

      I picked up the limp cold hand and said, “It was.”

      chapter 3

      ARTIE SAID, “My God, a stiff! You didn’t tell me I was heading for anything like this.”

      “Think I was keeping it a big quiet secret just for private shudders?”

      “Well, no. So what happens now?”

      “It was a fast trip around the track, Artie,” I said, and fished my money clip from my pocket. I pulled out five tens and handed them to him. “The race is over. Go buy yourself some hay.”

      “Half of that’s okay.”

      “Never argue with a man in a generous mood. Anyhow, the other twenty-five’s for walking out of here and forgetting you ever came.”

      His eyes stared at the dead body of Silvio Contreras. Wetting his lips, he said, “If the cops found out it’d be my license. Not to mention the bond. That desk clerk could have made me on the way up.”

      “He stank like a wine cask, Artie. When we leave we’ll go down together. If he says anything, the guest was asleep. Or passed out.”

      Artie’s fingers scratched the side of his chin. “Okay, if you say so. What’s here for you?”

      “Nothing, probably.” I looked around the littered room. Silvio hadn’t torn it apart, someone else had. Bending over the body, I pulled it over on one side looking for a bullet hole or a knife gash, but there was nothing. I let the body roll back. It settled like a sack of wet sand.

      Artie said, “Maybe he died in his sleep, a heart attack. It happens all the time.”

      “Not to guys his age.” I moved away from the bed, stepped over the tan leather suitcase that Silvio Contreras had carried for the last time, and walked to the wash basin. It had a single water faucet and a small eroded bar of soap, now dry. On the shelf below the cracked mirror lay a safety razor and a blue leatherette box with rounded corners. Beside it stood a small bottle with an etched glass top. The colorless liquid smelled like grain alcohol. I replaced the stopper and opened the leatherette case. Inside, on the black velvet, lay a hypodermic syringe. The plunger was at the bottom of the barrel and the syringe was empty. I lowered the top, went back to the bed, and bent over the face of Silvio Contreras. The pupils of his eyes were needle holes. One of the alkaloid drugs: morphine, heroin, or cocaine. M and H were used in an alcohol solution. One of them had killed him.

      His shirt cuffs were unbuttoned. Pulling up his left sleeve, I saw small scars dotting his arm from his wrist to his shoulder. I pulled down the sleeve and Artie said, “A hophead, huh? One of the bang boys.”

      “And a big bang kicked him off. All the way to the moon.”

      “He did it himself?”

      “I couldn’t even guess.”

      “Then let’s get going.”

      “Two minutes.”

      Working fast, I gave the room another going-over: mattress, pillows, chairstuffing, drawers, even the shoulder padding in Silvio’s coat. Mopping my face, I looked around the room for one last time. If the emerald had been there, it was gone by now. I wasn’t even slightly curious over where it might be. The question was one for the police.

      Switching off the light, I left the room behind Artie, closed the door, and polished the doorknob with my handkerchief. I also polished the desk clerk’s master key and carried it down the steps between my knuckles. Artie went out of the front door and I flipped the key onto the clerk’s ledger. Without looking up, he wheezed at me. The wine fumes were thicker than an Italian wedding.

      Artie walked beside me to the end of the block and said, “You’re walking out of it? Just like that?”

      “Any better ideas?”

      “From a pay phone I could tip the precinct.”

      “I’d rather you didn’t. I was involved in finding him because finding him was supposed to be done quietly, without publicity. And there’s also an angle you’re better off not knowing about—connected with the client’s reasons.”

      “If you say so.”

      A cab had spotted us. It veered toward the curb and slowed. I said, “If you’re worried about his family, Artie, his prints are on file and by tomorrow afternoon he’ll probably be identified. Then the story will be out. All I’m asking for is time enough to warn my client so that he can make other plans.”

      Artie said, “Don’t worry about me.”

      The cab door opened and I got inside. “University Club,” I said.

      At the Club I got out, walked down to the Statler, and took a cruising cab in case I had been tailed by anyone, which seemed all too probable. I gave the driver the address of Iris Sewall on Philips Place.

      As I climbed the brick steps my watch read a quarter to nine. It had been a long hard day and now it was quitting time. Tracy Farnham’s apartment was dark but its mate was lighted and the curtains were open. Standing in front of the door I could see СКАЧАТЬ