Night Extra

He sat down and called the paper, but Karsh wasn’t in. His secretary told him he was at the game. The Game. Terrell had forgotten; Dartmouth was playing and Karsh was there with a party of friends. It irritated Terrell; it seemed incongruous and silly to think that twenty-two young men were now engaged in what they believed to be a struggle of life or death significance; that eighty thousand persons were crowded into the Municipal Bowl to cheer one side or the other; that drunks were waving pennants and that women in fur coats and stadium boots were leaving their lipstick on countless cardboard cartons of coffee. While Caldwell was in jail, and the truth couldn’t be told...

Terrell stood and looked around, frowning again; something was wrong. The dirty breakfast dishes, the unmade bed — that was wrong. She wouldn’t leave without tidying up. Terrell looked at the note he had dropped on the coffee table. That was genuine. His heart was beating faster. He was suddenly hoping that she had walked out on him. That she had left of her own free will.

He sat down and dialled her hotel. When the clerk answered, Terrell said, “Is Connie Blacker there?”

“She’s checked out, sir.”

“When was this?”

“Let me see — that was around ten this morning.”

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

“Just a second — no, I’m afraid not.”

“Was she alone?”

“Sir, I can’t tie up this phone indefinitely. I—”

“Was she alone?” Terrell repeated sharply.

“No, sir — there were friends with her. Two gentlemen.”

“Was Frankie Chance there?”

“There’s a call waiting, sir. If you could stop by—”

Terrell put the phone down and picked up his hat. He went downstairs to get a cab; with the game traffic in town there was no point in taking his car. She’d walked out on him, he was sure of that; when she’d looked the situation over with a cold, little eye, she had seen that it wasn’t for her. Heroics, sacrifices — hardly her dish. These thoughts flicked through Terrell’s mind as the cab took him across town to her hotel. But they didn’t ease the unpleasant tension in his stomach.

At the hotel Terrell talked to the desk clerk, a plump little man with an air of nervous efficiency about him. The clerk described the men who had been with Connie: one was large, with dark skin and hair and the other was sharply dressed, with light hair and thin features. The big man sounded like Briggs, Cellers’ bodyguard.

“Would you give it to me in order, please?” he said. “They came in together, the girl in the middle, the men on each side. The big man came to the desk with her, and the smaller man waited a little behind them. Is that right?”

“Yes, Miss Blacker asked for the key and told me she was checking out.”

“They all went upstairs together?”

“Yes, that’s correct. She must have packed in a hurry. They were down in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Did you hear any of their conversation? I mean, do you have any idea of where they were heading?”

The clerk smiled in a manner that suggested a philosophical approach to life. “People come and people go. That’s the story of a hotel.”

“Did she seem reluctant to leave? Worried or anything like that?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say, sir.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

Terrell went outside and stopped on the busy sidewalk, wondering what to do next; for a moment he was completely at a. loss, unable to think or act. He was caught between two fears, the first that she had walked out on him, and the second that she had been picked up by Ike Cellars’ hoodlums. The first fear was selfish, but the other thing was a matter for the police or FBI — but he had no proof beside his illogical conviction that she wouldn’t have run out on him. He had nothing. He couldn’t alert the FBI because a girl had checked out of a hotel with a couple of men.

Terrell went back to his apartment and called Karsh, but the maid told him everyone was still at the football game. Karsh’s son was in with a group of friends, she said, and everybody was coming back after the game for a buffet dinner and some drinks. She’d been working all day on it, she added in tones of happy martyrdom. She liked working for Karsh, Terrell thought, as he put down the phone. Everybody did.