Stab in the Dark (2 page)

K
NOX WAS
conscious of Beeker looking curiously at him and he shrugged. “Hell of a way to die,” he said in explanation. It was lame but the news had hit him too hard for him to have the control he should.

“Yeh.” Beeker turned to the doctor. “Got it wrapped up yet?”

“I’ll guess,” the doctor said. He was a young man, a little nervous appearing, but when he started talking he sounded competent enough. “He hasn’t been dead two and a half hours nor less than an hour. That’s a guess, but after I whittle on him, I’ll bet I don’t change my mind by fifteen minutes.”

Beeker looked at his watch. “It’s four now. That means between one-thirty and three, if you’re right.” He pulled at his lower lip.

Knox calculated back. He and Auffer were to have met at five. But he couldn’t see how anyone could have known about that. It was absurd to think Auffer had been killed to keep him from making his contact. As far as Knox knew, this didn’t even have a connection with the case. That was as far as he knew; it had no relation to the way he felt. The way he felt, there was a connection.

Then there was the other operative, D-13, whoever that might be. Auffer’s first contact was to have been with D-13, and then he was to bring the results of D-13's work plus his own and hand everything over to Knox. That was to be the end of Auffer and of D-13 as far as this case was concerned. Sometimes Knox regretted the way World-Circle worked a big case like this, splitting the work and the information until it was almost time to close in. Usually it worked very well but its weakness was obvious in times such as this.

Knox thought angrily, “So now I don’t know a damned thing more than I arrived with.”

He was conscious of Beeker’s stare again, “Anyone tagged for it yet?” he asked casually.

“Nobody.”

“Who found him?”

“A maintenance man,” Beeker said. “He came down to get a chair for one of the lobby secretaries. Her’s broke. He found it and reported in—let’s see, about forty-five minutes ago.”

“What was Auffer doing down here?”

Beeker glared at him. “You’re the bright boy. You tell me.”

Knox felt as if he had been spit on. He merely shrugged and stepped aside. Beeker started out and he tagged along. One of the fingerprint men said, “If there’s anything here; we haven’t found it. There’s too much and that’s mostly old.”

“How about the floor?”

“Nice dust for footprints,” the man said, “but there’s too much there too. A lot of elephants have been tramping around in here.”

Beeker ignored him and plowed straight across the hall. The door there was closed. He opened it and reached in, flipping on the light. Knox was looking into a room almost filled with tables. They, like the chairs, were of all sizes and shapes, stacked one on top of the other whenever it was feasible, making except for some access lanes, a room solid with tables.

A lone one not far from the door caught Knox’s eye. It had a protective pad on its top and that was pushed back so that half of the surface was exposed. Conspicuous on the shiny top were a pair of what looked to be very expensive, very fancy with lace trim, step-ins. On the floor beside the table was a fifth of medium priced bourbon.

“Empty,” Beeker said.

“Both of them,” Knox observed dryly. “Fresh empty?”

“The fifth is. I can only guess at the other.”

“Why show me this?” Knox asked.

“The letter you got says to give you cooperation. I’m cooperating. What have we got here? Maybe some punk working for the hotel with a dame. He’s real busy and Auffer walks in. He gets panicky like some guys will. Auffer winds up dead.”

They went out. Knox followed Beeker until they were in the corridor leading to the lobby. Then Beeker stopped. “How about you going in and telling Maddy to come here. And the manager, if you can find him. Too many cops in the lobby’ll start someone talking.”

Knox let his eyebrows go up. “Another hush-hush one, huh?”

“Where the Winten is concerned, we keep it that way if we can.”

It was better for Knox too. He nodded and started for the lobby. They wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet long, of course. The newspapers were too sharp for that. And then as soon as they started asking questions, someone would begin to figure things out. But the longer they kept it under wraps, the easier it would be both on the police and on the hotel.

Knox delivered his message to Keehan and then sought the manager in his office behind the desk. It was a nice cubbyhole, done in opaque glass and filled with modernistic furniture. The manager was a tall man with a face like an injured spaniel. He looked sadly at Knox.

“Lieutenant Beeker wants you to meet him in the back hallway.”

“I didn’t get the name,” the manager said.

“Knox, I’m a guest here.” He added what was no secret, since it was on his registration card. “I’m also an investigator for World-Circle Agency.”

The manager said, “Oh, dear.”

“Relax,” Knox said. “I’m here on a missing persons case. As far as I know, it has nothing to do with your hotel. I’
m
just a friend of the Lieutenant, that’s all.”

The manager still didn’t look happy as they went across the lobby. Knox left him halfway and turned into the men’s room. He came out through the other door and went back to where Beeker and Keehan were waiting. He arrived simultaneously with the manager.

Beeker was saying to Keehan, “Get the meat boys down. Have them use the service entrance there. If any newspaper guy is sniffing around, stall him off. Then see if you can find out anything about Auffer’s movements. Work on the help.”

“What about the guests?”

Beeker glared at him. “In a thousand room hotel what chance do you have? Anyway, hands off until you get a good lead. Then go easy.”

You always had to tell Keehan to go easy, Knox thought. That was why he had never made it beyond detective sergeant and never would. His idea of questioning was five knuckles, of subtlety a snarled accusation. At home he was soft, a mark for his wife and kids. On the job he was bitter, almost brutal.

Keehan grunted and turned away. Beeker looked at the manager. “I don’t know any more than before. All I can say is that we’ll keep it quiet—if possible. But when it suits us to, we’ll open it up.”

“I appreciate it, Lieutenant. The less publicity, the better.”

“I’ll be questioning some of your employees. I’ll try to interfere with their routine as little as possible.”

“Thank you.”

Knox watched him go, thinking that Beeker could still be considerate after all his years as a policemen. Considerate but tough when it counted. He got more results than Maddy Keehan.

Beeker turned to Knox. “Where are you staying here?”

“Ten-zero-five. Come on up and tell me about it.”

“With that letter you got, I should say, ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Knox. Gladly.’ ”

“Go to hell,” Knox said. This time he led the way, taking Beeker up by the service elevator. Once in the room, Beeker surveyed it, grunted, and reached for the phone. He cocked an eyebrow at Knox.

“Go ahead. And when you’re through, order up something to drink.”

Beeker called his office and detailed some men to come in quietly and work over Auffer’s room. He left word where he was and then told the operator, “Send up a big pot of coffee, make it thick. Two cups.”

Knox lit a cigaret, not offering Beeker one since he didn’t smoke. “Get it off your chest, Mel. What’s with you and Keehan?”

“Maybe we’re jealous,” Beeker said. “But we aren’t. Maybe we didn’t like it when you quit the force just because you got left a lot of dough.”

“I always had dough—enough.”

“You didn’t throw it in our faces. You wore what we wore, acted like we did.”

“Is it my fault I had a rich uncle?”

“You had him before. A rich father too. But even so you were a good cop, all cop. One of the best. You’d have gone all the way up, Paul.” For the first time there was emotion in his voice, not just gravelly dislike. “And you threw it up for what—to become a playboy peeper!”

Knox grimaced. He hadn’t heard his profession dubbed that before, nor spoken of in such a nasty tone. He said, “I work for the most reputable firm of private detectives in the world.” He saw Beeker’s expression and got up, his irritation showing now in his voice.

“You don’t like private detectives; neither do I. But World-Circle is a little different, Mel. If you’d stop and think, you’d realize that. We don’t take divorce cases, guard wedding gifts, or grift for anyone. What’s wrong with it?”

“It just isn’t my idea of being a cop,” Beeker said.

There was a rap on the door and a wizened, red-headed bell-hop appeared with a large pot of coffee and accessories on a wheeled cart. Knox signed the check, dropped a dollar onto the service plate and waved the boy away. When the door had closed, Beeker said, “Sure, we get the mean and the stinking and the rotten. But it has its points. You and I, we went into this with our eyes open. We were a little idealistic, maybe, but still pretty wise. I still like to think I’m doing some good. The administration is solid. I want to help keep it that way.”

“How solid?” Knox asked.

Beeker grimaced as he poured coffee. “All right, the rats are gnawing at the foundations again. But we’ll keep them off.”

So that was part of what was bothering him, Knox thought. The old political pressures were building up as they did every few years. He said, “And you’re sore because I’m not here to help.”

“Maybe. I don’t like to think of a guy with as much as you had to offer traveling around tracing babes in mink who ran off with Count so-and-so or tracing Count so-and-so because he ran off with the babe’s jewelry. Nuts.”

“Nuts,” Knox agreed. “It can get boring. Waiting, watching. And it gets dirty. I meet as many gooks as you do. Some of them nastier than this town ever saw. And they’re all the same, no matter what languages they speak. They’ve got the gutter in them—the dirty ones.”

“I’m weeping for you.”

Knox thought, I need him. He needed Mel Beeker more than ever now that Leo Auffer was dead. And obviously the Commissioner’s letter wasn’t going to be enough. Beeker would give him just the bare amount of help he had to and no more. But the little things, the things in his mind, unofficial, sometimes only half crystallized, these were the things Knox wanted and had hoped to get. But Beeker wouldn’t be giving them to him, not the way he felt now.

Knox watched Beeker adulterate his coffee with three spoons of sugar. He said, sipping, “What did I do the first six months after I resigned here, Mel?”

“I heard you went big game hunting. In the Mexican jungle.”

“I’ve never seen a jungle—yet,” Knox answered quietly. He added, “I spent six months when I hardly saw the sky. Six months without a movie, a date, a drink in a public bar, a meal in a restaurant.”

Beeker grinned. “Sounds like some of the army hitches we had.”

“In some ways, the same. Anyway, listen. I applied for this job two years before my uncle died. The okay came through about the time his money did. Maybe it was all coincidence, maybe it helped. I’m a much freer agent than a man who has to depend on a salary.”

Beeker sucked noisly at his coffee. “You’re talking down the wrong end of the tube, telling me this.”

“Six months,” Knox said, “and then they put me in the open. World-Circle is careful. It trains all its operatives, but it trains some of us more than others.” He could see Beeker’s interest pick up a little. “There are those who do the straight work—the hunting for Count so-and-so that you mentioned. And then there are the others, and specially trained ones. We go where we’re sent and work for whom we’re told. We’re a private outfit but we’re about as nationalistic and private as the United Nations. With our contacts and our mobility, we can get places a lot of government agencies can’t.”

Beeker finished his coffee and stood up to pour a second cup. “What are you trying to tell me, Paul?”

Knox took out his billfold, removed a card from its holder, and handed it to Beeker. The card identified him as a licenced operative of the World-Circle Agency. The card had his picture, a good likeness, his thumb print, his name, and the address of the United States office out of which he worked.

He said, “Turn on that lamp and hold the card close to the bulb.” He heard Beeker’s snort. “It sounds like hocus-pocus,” Knox admitted, “but there’s a reason.”

He directed Beeker who held the card near the lamp bulb. When the plastic was warm, Beeker squeezed the edges of the card and one end came open. From it he drew a very thin, opaque strip of flexible material. Beeker stared at this for some time. It showed Knox’s face and print again. It gave his number, D-8, and it was stamped temporary and gave a date. Superimposed over everything was the seal of the United States and the name of its most top secret agency printed beneath it. Beeker handed back the card.

Knox replaced one card in the other and put it back in his billfold. “That’s my only protection,” he said. “Without it, I could hang for all the agency would do. Or the government, if I didn’t have it.”

Beeker looked into Knox’s face, grinning ruefully. “I’m sorry, Paul. Damn it, I made you tell me. That means you need me.”

“More since Auffer died,” Knox said. “I needed you before it happened but I need you more now.”

“The Commissioner knows?”

“Not much. Not as much as you do. He got a letter from Washington but it did more ordering than telling.”

“Me and my suspicious brain,” Beeker said. A hell of a friend I turned out to be.”

Knox realized how acutely uncomfortable Beeker was. He said, “Forget it, Mel. If you’ve had political pressure on you lately, I don’t blame you for getting sore at that letter.” He gave Beeker an understanding smile and let the matter slide.

“How much can you tell me?” Beeker asked.

“As much as you can promise to sit on—tight,” Knox answered. And there’s a favor. Whatever I do, look the other way, if you can’t, make a pretense of hauling me in I have to do unorthodox things sometimes—the fact that World-Circle operatives will risk doing the unorthodox is what makes us valuable at times. Occasionally it backfires and we pay for it.” He grimaced. “Like the thirty days I spent in the French pokey once. It wasn’t any fun but it was better than the one in Spain.”