She had a bag with her, a train box I believe they call those things that are too small for a suitcase and too big for a handbag. She and Tildy liked each other; Fran didn’t seem to mind when I told her she was in for the night.
“Bring those sleeping-pills?”
“Phenobarbs. Yessir.”
“Take a couple, Tildy,” I told her. “Whether you want to or not. Understand?”
“Where you going?”
“Plaza Royale. See you at breakfast.”
She threw her arms around me and kissed me; none of that cheek-against-cheek routine, either. Fran made big eyes and a round mouth at me, behind Tildy’s back. I went away.
Zingy saw me the second I came through the Fifth Avenue door. He touched his index finger to his forehead. The head man, that meant. “They’re all up on the twenty-first, Mister V. Want you right up there.” They were in the 21CC living-room. Tim, Reidy, Hacklin, Schneider, another eager beaver from the Prosecutor’s homicide detail. They were all solemn and brooding; Tim and Reidy because Lanerd’s death meant the worst possible break for the house, the others because an important witness in the Roffis matter had been demised right under their noses. Hacklin, especially, was a very subdued man.
Tim took me in to see the body. It was in the bathroom opening off the room with the ticket-littered twin beds.
Lanerd lay on his side beside the bathtub, as if he’d been sitting on the edge of it when the bullet went into his right temple. There was very little blood. The gun wasn’t there. His face was gray and drawn beneath the once-radiant tan; the carved-marble hair looked like wet ashes in the snow. The fingers of his right hand made a claw. He didn’t have that Man of Distinction look, there with his head beneath the wash basin. The resemblance to the Mr. Giveaway on the cover of the magazine was still there, but the contrast with the flood of cars and washing machines and money was pretty pitiful.