I get a very bad feeling. Gritch is as reliable as a railway watch. I reach around and ring for a service elevator, and the doors to my left open.
“What should I do about the woman?”
I slide my milk crate backwards into the cab and press fifteen.
“Go back to the front desk. Keep her there. Tell her I’ll check things out.” I stick out my hand to keep the doors open. “Who called?”
“What?”
“Who told you I was lying in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“Okay,” I say. “Call Margo.” The doors close on his worried face, and I ride up to fifteen sitting on my milk crate with my forehead pressed against a brass panel, grateful for the cold pressure above my eyes, wondering who was worried enough to let Raymond know they had just knocked me out.
The service elevators are on the east side of the building, and it’s a long walk around to the central corridor. All the doors are closed, but I hear a few voices from inside a room, guests awakened and unable to get back to sleep. There will be some early checkouts this morning. I’m walking okay. Maybe lurching is a more accurate description. But I’m making progress. I don’t know what I look like. I check for blood, but there’s nothing sticky around the lump on the back of my head. Merely pain.
Inside 1507 there’s no sign of Gritch. Room-service coffee Thermos on the desk, no cup, two newspapers on the floor.
I cross the hall to 1502 and stand for a moment with my head against the wall. I really don’t want to go in there. I give one sharp knock for the sake of form and then use my passkey.
And it’s as bad as I feared. Jake Buznardo is on his back near the opposite wall. He’s wearing the T-shirt he had on earlier; the words Confound and Paradigm have been obliterated by deep red stains and small dark holes. Five of them. He’s dead.
Steadying myself on the back of the couch, I look down to make sure I’m not standing in blood. The Samsonite attaché case is gone, and when I turn my throbbing head, I see that the money on the desk is gone, too.
I back out of the room quietly, close the door, and make sure it’s locked. Then I go back inside 1507 and call the police.
“Hello, it’s Joe Grundy,” I say to the woman who answers, “hotel security at the Lord Douglas. One of our guests has been shot. Dead. Room 1502. Yes, I’ll wait right here. Could you tell them not to use their sirens? This all must have happened an hour ago. Yes, I’m sure he’s dead. Yes. Thank you.”
I call the desk and hear Raymond’s cautious voice.
“Is that you, Mr. Grundy? What’s going on?”
“Where is the woman now, Ray? Still with you?”
“I put her in Mr. Gruber’s office.”
“Good. Keep her there. Don’t say anything for a minute. I’ve just called the police, and there should be at least a patrol unit here in a minute. Send them up to 1507, okay?”
“Police?” He has the presence of mind to whisper the word. “Why?”
“There’s been a shooting, Ray. Did you call Margo?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for word.”
“Call her. We have a situation.”
“What about the woman?”
“Her name’s Molly MacKay. Somebody will have to tell her that her brother’s dead. But wait until the police show up, okay?”
“Really dead?”
“I’m afraid so, Raymond.”
And then I see Gritch because his leg moves and I catch the movement in the mirror over the desk. He’s on the floor between the bed and the window.
“And, Raymond?” I say. “Call an ambulance, too. I just found Gritch.”
chapter seven
First the uniforms show up. I let them into the suite. Two young men, one tall, one with shoulders like Joe Frazier. They’re wearing Kevlar and nine-millimetre Glocks. They tell me to wait in 1507. Gritch is groggy but awake when the paramedics show up a few minutes later. I have to convince them that Gritch isn’t the one who’s been shot. They seem disappointed. Gritch wants to walk out on his own two feet, but they take him away on a gurney. I tell Gritch I’ll be down to see him as soon as I can.
“I think it was the coffee,” he says.
After the paramedics leave, I lie back on the bed and feel a sudden stabbing pain when the lump on my head hits the pillow. The smell of Brylcreem. The room starts to waltz. I struggle back to a sitting position as the door opens all the way and a detective comes in, someone I know.
Norman Quincy Weed is moving towards retirement. I met him when I got shot seven years ago. He’s a sergeant of detectives now. I guess this case rates one of the big guys. He’s a heavy-set, rumpled man who wears brown shoes with a blue suit and has bad taste in ties, too. He’s wearing a wide yellow-and-green-striped job tonight, and I feel a prompt attack of nausea.
“How you doin’, Joe?” he asks. “You look like shit. Who hit you?”
I shake my head, which is a mistake. “From behind. Felt like a baseball bat.”
“That’s what I’d use on a guy your size to keep you from turning around.”
“Didn’t even hear him. I was in a hurry, banging through the doors down there, and I hit my knee. There was a trolley in the middle of the hall.”
I’m sitting on the bed and I pull up my pant leg to have a look. I must have hit something edge-on. There’s an abraded welt straight across the shinbone just below the knee.
“Paramedics didn’t want to take you in?”
“Yeah, they did. If I feel nauseous or dozy, I’ll go. I think I’m okay. Not the first time somebody put my lights out.”
“At least you had a fighting chance the other times.”
“Not against Holyfield,” I say.
“What happened to Gritch? He wasn’t drinking, was he?”
“Not a chance. Hasn’t had a drink in fourteen years. He’d just had a three-hour nap in the office, and for Gritch that’s like hibernation. He thinks there was something in the coffee.”
“That pot?”
“Yeah, the cup’s on the floor. I didn’t touch them.”
“Good. What was he doing in here?”
“Watching the door to 1502.”
“You were in there?”
“Just long enough to see the man was shot. Didn’t touch anything there, either, except the back of the sofa and the doorknob.”
“So what about this Buznardo guy?”
“He had money with him. A lot of cash.”
“Yeah, I heard. How much cash?”
“Almost two hundred and fifty thousand. All hundreds. Bank wrappers.”
I stand and fight my knees to stay that way. “Little holes in him, right?”
“Yeah,” Weed says, “five of them. Only one of them.25, maybe.32. Nothing — came out the back. Popgun bigger than that.”
“Professional?”
“Bit