Johnny went directly to the switchboard in the lobby. He looked at his watch as he approached it. Sally Fontaine's face lighted up when she saw him but Johnny hurried to get in the first word. “Do me something, ma. It's only an hour to daylight. Cut out of here an' shoot over to the apartment. An' listen. I've got a bag in the cloakroom. Tan, with no ticket on it. Take it with you. If anyone asks you when I leave here what this conversation was about steer him into left field. Anyone, y'hear? I'll see you at the apartment in thirty minutes.”
“But Johnny, I'll have to get someone to relieve-”
“Get Marty,” he cut her off. “He's finished his transcript by this time. An' hustle it up, ma. Tell 'em you got the gallopin' wobblies an' got to get home.” He walked away from her before she could protest again.
Out on the street he turned west as he had a few hours before. Quite a bit had taken place in those few hours. He walked lightly, out toward the curb. He watched the doorways. He watched his reflection in the windows across the street. No one stepped suddenly from a doorway. No one came up on him from behind. His eyes raked the street. Since the advent of Carl Thompson that afternoon someone was taking a sudden and unhealthy interest in Johnny Killain.
At Eighth Avenue he turned right and in the middle of the block saw the green-neoned outline of the crude boulder advertising Mickey Tallant's Rollin' Stone Tavern. The sky was streaked with gray and Johnny realized that the temperature had dropped considerably. New York in October wasn't going to stay warm. He wondered if he had a coat at Sally's apartment.
At the tavern, he pushed inside through a heavy plate-glass door and advanced on a red-faced Irishman behind the horseshoe bar. Mickey Tallant was a beefy man with short, thick arms and big-knuckled sledgehammers attached to the ends of them. He had no hair at all, a ravaged kewpie-doll face, and a cauliflower ear. A damp white towel encircled his ample girth. At sight of Johnny he reached behind him on the back bar for a bottle and then caught himself. “Even for you I'm not blowin' my ticket, man. Whyn't you get around before closin'? I'm just about to put up the shutters.” His voice was a surprising tenor.
“I don't want a drink, Mick. You got any money?” The Irishman lifted his apron to get at his hip pocket. “Money,” Johnny said with emphasis.
“Oh. Okay.” The tavern owner turned and started to waddle up the duckboards to a door at the end of the bar marked OFFICE.
“An' Mick, where can I get a coat?”
Mickey Tallant halted in his tracks. “For Christ's sake, did your room burn up? You got more clothes 'n the Salvation Army.”
“I don't want to go back to the room.” Although he'd seen no sign of a watcher, Johnny reflected.
The Irishman nodded wisely. “Money, an' a coat. You're runnin'. From the cops? You belted one, maybe?”
Johnny shook his head. “I got a look at a hole card in a fresh game, Mick.”
“No kiddin'?” The tavern owner looked eager. “I could stick my old lady behind the mahogany here an' go with you. Could be you'll need someone knows how to throw a punch, man.”
“Then I'd rather have your old lady.”
“Is that so?” Mickey Tallant began indignantly, and foundered on Johnny's grin. “What are you up to? Are you bein' followed?”
“If I am it's a good job. How about that coat?”
“You haven't got a prayer. Coat sizes to include a twenty an' a half inch neck an' a fifty inch chest don't grow on trees.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I've got a leather jacket out in back you could probably get into, though.”
Johnny looked at the beer barrel upper body of the man behind the bar. “Fetch it out with the geld, Mick.”
“Sure.” The Irishman was back in two minutes and handed Johnny an expensive-looking black leather jacket studded with silver trimmings.
Johnny looked at the gaudy ensemble. “You in your second childhood? Where's the motorcycle goes with this thing?”
“I just happen to like it,” Mickey Tallant said placidly. “Don't you let nothin' happen to it. I paid a hundred forty fish for that jacket.”
“Then you're out of your damn mind.” Johnny tried it on. It was a little short in the waist but the shoulders were all right. And it was fleece-lined and warm. He removed it and put his suit jacket back on. “Okay. You sold me. Where's the lettuce?”
“In the jacket. I stuck it in an envelope.”
“Today I'm allergic to envelopes all of a sudden.” Johnny removed the envelope from the jacket and the money from the envelope and spread a sheaf of bills on the bar. “What the hell?” he said as he saw tens, twenties, and hundreds. “How much is here?”
“About three thousand. If you run short get on the phone-”
“Three thousand? You lunatic, all I need is about three hundred. Here-” Johnny tried to separate some of the bills.
Mickey Tallant caught his wrist. “Take it,” he said brusquely. “You don't know what you'll need. Jesus, I'd give a farm to be goin' with you. I wouldn't give a damn if it was to Australia.” He looked at Johnny hopefully. “All I'd need would be twenty minutes to get the old lady over here an' I'd be on my way.” He wadded up the money and thrust it at Johnny.
“Man, you're three-to-five to win the Poorhouse Derby in a pulled-up trot.”
“Shut up. I owe you a favor, an' if I've got to stand around here listenin' to my arteries harden at least I can finance a little action.”
Johnny put the roll in his pocket and raised his hand in a half salute. “Well, keep punchin', Mick.”
“You keep punchin'. An' if you run into a buzzsaw you call the Mick.”
Johnny left the tavern with the silver-studded leather jacket on his arm. He walked over to Broadway and caught a south-bound cab to the apartment. Full dawn was not far away when he let himself in quietly. His eyes felt as though they had been sandpapered.
Sally was asleep sitting up in a living-room chair. She was in robe and slippers and Johnny's bag lay open at her feet. Johnny picked her up and sat down in the chair with her on his lap. Her eyes flew open. “Johnny, why are your clothes in that bag? Are you going somewhere?” she began immediately.
“Not if anyone asks you, ma.”
“Does Dr. Randall know about it?” Her brown eyes probed at him. “You know he prescribed a rest. What-”
“I'm restin', an' I'm not married to Doc Randall. Have I got any clothes over here?”
“I'll look. There's pajamas, I know.”
“Pajamas I got no time for.” Johnny dropped his head and lipped at her neck. “Ever.”
“Stop it, Johnny.” He could feel the little shiver that rippled through her. The slim body moved uneasily on his knees. “I don't think you ought to be going anyplace. You're barely out-”
“You're outvoted, ma, two forty to a hundred. Pounds. How about the clothes?”
She slid from his lap and caught sight of the jacket Johnny had dropped on a couch. “What in the world is that?” She picked it up, held it up by the shoulders an instant, and slipped it on over her robe. The bottom hit her at the knees and the sleeve-ends hid her hands completely. Johnny burst out laughing at the small-featured bright face above the huge jacket as she pirouetted before him. “What's so funny? What is it, a disguise?”
“For you it would be, sure as hell.” Johnny rose and captured the jacket, swinging Sally off her feet and up into his arms. He carried her into the bedroom and stood her up in the center of the bed while he removed the jacket.
“I haven't looked for your clothes,” she murmured as her robe followed the jacket.
“F-forget it.” He picked her up by the elbows and set her down on the floor. “Maybe I could use this.” He whisked her nightgown up around her shoulders.
“Johnny!” she cried out, her voice muffled as he pulled it over her head. He dropped the nightgown, boosted her slender whiteness aloft and tossed her onto the bed. Before she had bounced twice he was beside her. She snatched off a slipper and flailed away at him. “You-big-walrus!” she panted, and yelped as he inserted a finger in her ribs. “Johnny! No tickling!”
“Say somethin' now, ma,” he said deeply as he tucked her down beneath his weight. “Say somethin' now.”
A long-drawn, hissing inhalation was his only answer.
There was no further conversation in the bedroom.
Late afternoon sunlight bathed the Albany terminal as Johnny alighted stiffly from a Greyhound Scenicruiser. He had been awake for twenty-four hours, and he felt it. He could have gone straight on to Jefferson in the same bus but he had decided against it. No one should be looking for him in Jefferson, but if they were the bus terminal would be watched.
On the ride up he had dozed fitfully without getting any real rest and thought his way around in circles. The role of Micheline Thompson bothered him. The timing of her call to him and the call to the police bothered him. Was it possible she'd known all the time that her husband was already dead? Johnny didn't like to think so.
Had she collaborated with Daddario to call him down to the Manhattan where he could be looked over at close range by Kratz and Savino who could then step down to the street to engineer the first attempt on Johnny's life? The possibility left a bad taste in his mouth.
He remembered Micheline Laurent in the hands of a German corporal screaming a warning to Johnny Killain to save himself. Could such a girl sell out her husband? The answer should be in Jefferson, along with the people who seemed determined that Carl Thompson's story should end with Johnny Killain.
In the terminal washroom he changed from his wrinkled suit to slacks, a wool shirt, and Mickey Tallant's leather jacket. He had already felt the nip in the northern air. Back upstairs he asked directions and caught a local bus to Jefferson.
It bumped along interminably, stopping at everyone's back door. When it finally descended a long hill Johnny could see the city in the valley below. Smoke poured from tall chimneys. There was industry in the valley. He left the bus a few blocks short of the business district and walked toward it slowly. It looked clean and had an air of liveliness although an occasional gaptoothed empty storefront indicated a worm or two in the local economic apple.
He bought a paper at a corner newsstand. He had already decided he didn't want to stay at a hotel and he was in the process of folding the paper back to the classified section when the caption beneath a front page picture caught his eye. “Mayor Richard Lowell turns first shovelful of earth in groundbreaking ceremonies for new-”
It surprised him. Lowell. Mayor Richard Lowell. And Jefferson was Toby Lowell's home town. Johnny looked closely at the picture of a big, openfaced hearty-looking man smiling into the camera, an expensive-looking shoe atop a silvered shovel. There was no resemblance that Johnny could see, but a man might go broke in a hurry bucking the odds on it's being a coincidence.
Toby Lowell. Toby hadn't said a word about a Richard Lowell. After Johnny's Washington phone call, Toby Lowell had known where to find Carl Thompson. And someone had very definitely found Carl Thompson not so long afterward. Had Toby made a call to the man who had found Thompson? Had he made another to Dameron? Something certainly seemed to have frozen the lieutenant to his hotel thief theory.
Johnny took another look at the smiling face of the big man on the front page of the paper and put the paper under his arm. He turned off the main street and walked cross-town, away from the solid business district. As soon as he nested in someplace he intended to pay a call at City Hall. Mayor Richard Lowell might be able to contribute something to the picture.
In eight or ten blocks he had moved out of the banked lineup of stores. In the new neighborhood only an occasional corner grocery appeared among houses and apartments. A sign in a downstairs window across the street caught his eye. ROOMS. He crossed the street. It was close enough to downtown without being downtown. He climbed five stone steps fronting an old-fashioned Georgian house and rang the bell.
He had to ring it again before it was opened by a thin-faced woman with a mass of red hair loosely knotted atop her head. She wasn't young but the hair looked natural, Johnny decided. She had on blue jeans and a man's white shirt. She carried a dustmop in a work-reddened hand and shrewd blue eyes took Johnny in from head to foot. Her eyes came back to the silver-studded jacket and finally to his face. “I'd like to see a room,” he told her.
She let him in. “Construction worker?” she asked over her shoulder, leading the way through the front hall.
“I've done it,” Johnny said. He followed her up the front stairs. He noticed that if her face was sharply-angled her figure was not. She moved lightly, with grace.
He set down his bag with his suit draped over it in the room to which she took him. He walked to the bed and sank both hands into it, deeply. The mattress was all right, not too soft, firm without being rigid. The room had two windows and the light was good. The carpeting was worn. The furniture was just furniture. He turned and crossed the hall to the bathroom he had seen on his way in. He looked for an outlet for his electric shaver and tested the shower. Everything looked clean. He returned to the bedroom. “How much?” he asked her.
She had been standing leaning on her mop, her eyes following his inspection. “I allow no liquor in here,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “And positively no women.” The dust mop lifted itself from the floor and pointed itself in Johnny's direction. “And if you think I'm talking just to hear myself talk you can think again.” Her glance brushed over by the leather jacket again. “Fifteen a week.”
“Twelve,” Johnny said.
“Twelve it is,” she said amiably. “I'm Mrs. Peterson.” She held out her hand.
Johnny gave her twelve dollars. “Johnny Killain,” he said before he thought. He shrugged mentally. It probably didn't make too much difference. He took the paper from under his arm and showed her the picture on the front page. “I used to know a Lowell in Washington whose home town was Jefferson,” he said casually.
“Dick's got a brother in Washington, but he's a big shot in the State Department.” Mrs. Peterson's intonation clearly expressed her belief that Johnny couldn't be expected to know a big shot in the State Department. “Dick's not the man Toby was, or their father, either. It's probably just as well old Mr. Lowell passed on.”
“Actually I came up to visit your chief of police, Carl Thompson,” Johnny said.
“You must have been out of touch, Mr. Killain. Carl hasn't been chief for four months. They ran him-” She hesitated. “I think he's left town,” she finished lamely.
“That's too bad. He told me once he'd put in a word for me around here if I thought I needed it.”
“A word from Carl Thompson in this town wouldn't get you far.” The statement was positive.
“Yeah? Carl's in trouble, huh? Sorry to hear it. I like Carl.”
“I like him, too.” Mrs. Peterson paused as if considering the admission. She sat down on the bed and lowered her hands to half-mast on the mop handle. “It's kind of unfashionable to like him around here right now,” she confided. “I think he got a raw deal. Not that Carl was any angel. My husband was a sergeant under Carl and he used to tell me things sometimes-” She shook her head. “Charlie-my husband-was killed in a holdup stake-out three years ago.” Johnny nodded sympathetically as she continued. “This is a queer kind of town, as you'll find out if you stay.”
“Oh, I guess every town's got its dirty washing,” Johnny suggested.
Mrs. Peterson's mouth drew down at the corners. “God help 'em if they're as dirty as this place,” she said grimly. “The mayor shacked up with his girl friend for anyone to see who's got eyes, the president of the city council throwing over his fiancee to chase after the ex-police chief's wife, the biggest lawyer-”
“Thompson's wife runs around? Hell, I thought they got along.”
“She seems to get along with anyone who wears pants.” Mrs. Peterson bit the words off viciously. She rose to her feet. “I talk too much. Stop off in the kitchen and I'll find you a key.”
“Sure thing.” When the woman had gone Johnny mulled over her information. One bit he should be able to use. He dumped the contents of his bag into a drawer and a half of the bureau and descended the stairs. He found his way to the kitchen in back and his landlady handed him a front door key. “This fiancee of Jim Daddario's,” he asked her. “Was her name Gilmore?”
“No,” she answered, surprised. “It was the assistant librarian, Jessamyn-” Her mouth snapped shut. “Daddario's name wasn't mentioned upstairs. You seem to know a lot for a stranger in town.”
“I don't like him, either,” Johnny grinned.
“If you're egging me on, you can have your twelve dollars and the back of my hand,” she warned him. “I can't stand that man expecting everyone to kiss his foot. I remember him when-” Her mouth closed again, this time with finality. “I said it before. I talk too much.”
“Not for me,” Johnny said as an exit line, and departed. He ran down the front steps and headed downtown. It was no problem to locate his target. The Jefferson Public Library was a long, low, fieldstone building on an expanse of green lawn in the city square. Inside, Johnny walked to the central check-in desk. “The assistant librarian, Jessamyn-” He snapped his fingers at his forgetfulness.
“Miss Burger?” the girl behind the desk asked brightly. “I believe she's in the rear.”
Despite his best effort to walk quietly Johnny's footsteps echoed in the hushed atmosphere. Two or three people in the magazine room appeared to be the only seekers after knowledge. At the far end of the vaulted arch, so low it barely left room for a mezzanine, Johnny stopped at a table presided over by a gray-haired woman in a severely tailored suit. “Miss Burger?” he asked, instinctively throttling down his heavy voice.
The woman looked over her shoulder to an alcove behind her. “Jessie? Are you in there?” She spoke in a normal tone that to Johnny sounded distressingly loud.
“Up in the stacks,” a hidden voice replied.
“The stairway on your left,” the gray-haired woman said to Johnny. He climbed a short, spiraling flight of iron steps and moved tentatively down a narrow passage that bisected row upon row of shelved books. An unshaded light bulb at the far end drew him onward. In the last row a heavy work-table nearly blocked the right-hand passage. Armsful and boxes of books were dumped on it indiscriminately. Beyond the table a girl trotted up a short ladder and deposited books on the top shelf over her head. In the process her skirt ascended enough to reveal very good legs. “Miss Burger?” Johnny asked again.
“Yes, it is.” She turned on the ladder to look down at him. She had a pretty face, round, with dimples. Her hair was dark and fluffed out about her small head in a short bob curled at the ends. Johnny could see that despite the good figure, the dimples, and the round face, Jessamyn Burger was no longer a girl. He decided that maturity hadn't hurt her a bit. “May I be of help?” she asked when he showed no sign of saying anything. She came down the ladder and reached for more books.
“Let me do that,” Johnny said. “Those boxes goin' up there?” He hoisted one up to his shoulder. “Clear the gangplank.” From the top of the ladder he looked down at her. “Any place in particular?”
“Just push it to the rear of the top shelf, but you really shouldn't. You might-”
“Nothin' to it.” He tossed two more boxes of books aloft, made piles of the remaining loose ones and disposed of them in two more trips. “There,” he said, dusting off his hands.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “You're certainly energetic, aren't you? And strong.” Cool gray eyes took him in, lingering on his leather jacket. Her eyes left him at the sound of voices approaching in the outside corridor.
Two men in coveralls entered, a short, wiry man in the lead. He looked blank at sight of the empty table. “How in the hell-? Excuse me, Miss Burger. I hope you didn't move those books yourself. I went to get Billy here to help with the boxes.”
“Help arrived from an unexpected source,” Jessamyn Burger said.
The wiry man glanced at Johnny. “He put 'em up there by himself? Naah, I packed those things myself. I know what they weighed.” He took another look at Johnny. “He really did?”
“He really did, Fred. Thanks just the same.”
Fred and his helper shuffled out. In the doorway, Fred turned for another look before he left.
“You know you've really spoiled his day,” Jessamyn Burger smiled. “I really do thank you, Mr.-?”
“Killain,” Johnny supplied. “Did you know Carl Thompson is dead, Miss Burger?”
Her smile vanished. “Dead? Where? When?”
“He was killed in my hotel room in New York. A thousand dollars of my money is missing. I'm tryin' to get it back.”
“Wait,” she said quickly. “Wait. You're going too fast for me. Carl Thompson killed? In your room? Why was he there?”
“Oh, he'd come lookin' for help on some crazy scheme he'd cooked up,” Johnny said indifferently. “I didn't pay too much attention. I came back to the room an' found him dead an' my money gone. He claimed he'd been tossed around by someone up here. I figured if the people he was afraid of gave him the big bounce they had my money. I want it back.”
“But why on earth come to me with such a-such a wild story!” Her expression was one of wide-eyed vacuity. “I simply don't understand.”
“I met Jim Daddario a couple of blocks away from my place last night. I'm curious about him. I heard you could tell me about Jim Daddario.”
The wide-eyed expression had vanished as quickly as the smile had previously. “You really do have more than a fair share of nerve, don't you, Mr. Killain?” Icicles sprinkled every syllable. “There is nothing I care to discuss with you, now or later.”
“Look at it this way-you know somethin', I know somethin',” Johnny suggested. He watched her full lips purse doubtfully. “I know you can't talk to me here but how about dinner tonight? I wouldn't be dressed like this.”
She looked at him as though unexpectedly seeing him in another dimension. “Really-” Even white teeth gnawed at her pouting lower lip. “I don't know-I don't see-are you sure you want to?”
He gave her a big smile. “You damn right I'm sure.”
“Well-” She appeared to be trying to get herself organized. “Would eight o'clock be too late?”
“Just tell me where I meet you,” Johnny said promptly.
“I think right at the restaurant would be best,” she said hurriedly. “Mollinson's. The food's quite good.”
“Mollinson's at eight.” He smiled at her again. “Wear something pretty. Not that you need it.”
Down the spiraling stairway and out through the hushed main floor he carried in his mind the picture of Jessamyn Burger's high booming color. The dinner would be no hardship.