“Yair. So Walch drinks and thinks a while, decides to go up to Lanerd’s suite, get Yaker’s key. About that time you were straightening up in 21CC, getting ready to leave. This next part is pure conjecture, but until we get a complete confession from Walch, it’ll have to do. I think Lanerd, coming out of his lobby phone booth, saw Walch heading for the elevators. He waited one or two cars, followed. You probably passed him, coming down as he was going up.”
She winced.
“Lanerd would have gone in his rooms with his gun ready for business. Walch was probably just inside the door. He got the gun away from Lanerd, forced him in the bathroom, shot him. I’ll gamble Hacklin never searched to see if a second slug had been fired, say, behind the lavatory bowl. After Lanerd was dead, Walch must have put the gun in his hand, pulled the trigger again, so there’d be something for the homicide boys to lean on when they claimed suicide.”
“I guess it doesn’t make any difference now, but I’m glad to know for sure he didn’t kill himself.”
“Well. Walch went to get Yaker’s key from the chocolate-cream jacket. Maybe you’d moved things around in the closet where he’d hung the coat?”
“Yes. I went through everything to see there weren’t any — incriminating items around. I shifted hangers, too.”
“That was it. He got worried for fear you’d found that 2010 key. If you had, you’d be suspicious soon’s you learned Lanerd was dead. So, after Walch chased me around Queens and Brooklyn in a taxicab—”
“He did?”
“Sure he did. Afraid I’d put pressure on Edie and dope out the significance of the key switch. I expect he simply waited for me to leave the hotel and followed me to Manhasset looking for a chance to add me to his score of two down. He beat me down to Little Syria, hunting a lead to Nikky. I heard he didn’t get anywhere with that inquiry. But he must have, because he was waiting for me when I left Narian’s with Tildy. His cab lost an argument with a fire hydrant, but he came close to putting a Vine obituary in the paper. Of course Tildy recognized him then, but she couldn’t tell me without sacrificing everything she’d been trying to save, down in Kentucky.”
“Down in the Grand Jury room, I heard him complaining to Tildy about having had to spend all Saturday night and Sunday morning bailing some friend of Lanerd’s out of trouble.”