The Guilty Are Afraid

“Do they know who killed him?” he asked after he had taken a healthy gulp at his drink.

“If they do, they haven’t told me,” I said, then went on, “Did you see the girl he went out with?”

Greaves nodded.

“I saw her.” He produced a crumpled pack of Luckies, offered me one and lit up. “The cops in this town only cooperate with the dicks of the big hotels. Little guys like me they ignore. Okay, that’s no skin off my nose. If that city slicker Rankin had talked to me, I could have told him something, but no, he has to talk to Brewer. Know why? Because Brewer can just afford to buy himself a silk cravat. That’s why.”

“What could you have told him?” I asked, sitting forward.

“He asked Brewer for a description of the girl,” Greaves said. “That shows you the kind of cop he is. All Brewer saw of her were her clothes. I was watching her. I could see she was wearing that outfit because she didn’t mean to be recognized again. The first thing I spotted about her was she was a blonde. She was either wearing a wig or she had dyed her hair. I don’t know which, but I know she was a blonde.”

“Why are you so sure?”

Greaves smiled sourly.

“By using my eyes. She had short sleeves and the hairs on her arms were blonde. She had a blonde’s skin and complexion.”

I wasn’t particularly impressed by this reasoning. The hair on her arms could have been bleached by the sun. I didn’t say so because I didn’t want to discourage him.

“I’ve been trained to look for the little giveaway habits people have and she had one,” Greaves went on. “She was in the lobby for five minutes. All the time she was playing the piano on her thigh.” He stood up to demonstrate. “With her right hand, see? Moving her fingers against her thigh like this.” He went through the motions of playing a scale. “All the time, and that was a well-developed habit. It wasn’t a stunt: she didn’t know she was doing it.”

I took a drink while I considered this information.

“The police would have quite a job looking for a girl who had that trick, wouldn’t they?” I said.

Greaves sneered.

“You’d have to get close to her first. But it would clinch it if they thought they had found her and weren’t sure.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right. From what you saw of her, what line do you think she was in?”

He lifted his heavy shoulders.

“Hard to tell. She could have been in show business. I don’t know: a model, a singer or an actress. She wore her clothes well and she had plenty of style.”

“Are you telling Rankin all this?”

Greaves killed his cigarette, then shook his head.

“He wouldn’t listen even if I could be bothered to take a trip down to headquarters. He has no time for small guys like me. The hell with him.”

“Any idea how the guy who searched Sheppey’s room got in?”

“He used Sheppey’s key. Sheppey took it along with him: forgot to hand it in. It’s my guess the guy who killed him found the key, hotfooted back here, walked up the stairs, let himself in and took the room to pieces. It needed nerve, but he was safe enough. We’re understaffed and at that hour of the morning there wouldn’t be anyone up here.”

I decided it was time to let him know I was more or less in the same line of business as he was. I took out my card and handed it to him.

“I’m not asking questions for the fun of it,” I said.

He read the card, frowned, rubbed his fat nose and handed the card back to me.

“Was he your partner?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always wanted to get into your racket. There’s a lot more money in it than mine. How are you doing?”

“I can’t grumble until this happened. Now I’ll have to shut down until I find the killer.”

He stared at me.

“That’s police work. What do you think you can do?”

“It’d look good, wouldn’t it, if I went back to Frisco and carried on as if nothing had happened? What sort of advertisement would it be if I didn’t do something towards tracing the killer? Besides, Jack was my best friend. I couldn’t sit still and let the police handle it.”

Greaves pulled a face.

“Then watch out. Rankin isn’t so bad: he’s a reasonable cop, but Captain Katchen is in a class all by himself. If there’s one thing he hates more than a hotel dick, it’s a shamus. If he gets the idea you are poking around on his territory, you’re in for trouble, and I mean trouble.”

I finished my drink, then wiped my wrists with my handkerchief.

The room temperature was up in the eighties.

“What kind of trouble?”

“There was a private eye who came here from Los Angeles to check on a suicide case. The widow was convinced it was murder so she hired this guy to poke around. Katchen warned him off, but he still kept trying. One day when he was out driving, a prowl car slammed into him, wrecked his car, put him in hospital with a broken collarbone and when he came out he got six weeks for drunken driving. He swore the cops had poured half a pint of whisky over him before taking him to hospital, but no one believed him.”

“He sounds a nice type. Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep clear of him.”

Greaves finished his drink regretfully and put down the glass.