Riders on the Storm
- Автор: Горман Эд
- Серия: Sam McCain #10
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Pegasus
- ISBN: 978-1-60598-625-8
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Riders on the Storm». Краткое содержание книги:
I told her about the image I’d had of him — the legend — and how he turned out to be. “There’s an old Hollywood saying, ‘Never meet your heroes.’ You know, because you’ll be disappointed in some way. And that sure was true about meeting him. But there’s something sort of sad about him, too. He’s just sort of this dumpy guy who obviously has a great brain for this business.”
She touched her napkin to her perfect lips. “Well, I need to get the girls ready for the parade. It starts at nine thirty. I don’t suppose you’re going.”
“I doubt I’ll have time. I’m going to Niven’s hotel. I want to check on some things.”
She came over to me and tilted my head up and kissed me with erotic tenderness on my mouth. “Needless to say, I had a great time last night.”
“Needless to say, I did, too.”
“The girls really like you. Especially Kate.”
“She’s better than any show on the tube.”
Then I pulled her to me and pushed the side of my head into her breasts. She laid her hand on the side of my head and embraced me even tighter.
We stayed exactly like that until Kate ran in and said, “Mommy, can I wear my red socks? Nicole says my yellow ones’d look better.”
Home life; home life.
The Royale boasts that such presidents as Herbert Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower all stayed there when they came here to campaign. True enough, but there was no alternative. The somewhat artistic but talentless son of a hotel magnate thought he’d show the old man how he could duplicate a New York or Chicago hotel right here in Iowa. He had impregnated a freshman girl at the university and wanted to be near her.
You want splendor, he gave you splendor, right down to the giant sculpture of a giant male archangel swooping up a female archangel right in the lobby. Neither happened to be clothed. You want classical music, he gave you classical music by busing in musicians from Iowa City four nights a week. You want gourmet dining, he gave you chefs from the major American cities and one from Paris. Their cuisine was fine but I always wondered how the locals took to it.
In 1952, after being spurned by his third wife, the somewhat artistic son of the magnate hurled himself off the sixth-floor veranda of his hotel apartment. The magnate took over the hotel, stripped it of its too, too finery and ran it, for the first time, at a profit.
This morning I walked into the lobby with two tens and two twenties in my pocket. I went immediately to the head bellboy. He had a very bald head, a rangy body, and eyes that appeared to have knowledge of every sin ever committed by mankind. His nametag, hanging on the breast pocket of his blue-and-white uniform, read: CHARLES.
“Help you, sir?”
“You didn’t happen to work last night, by any chance?”
We stood to one side of the main desk. Two female clerks in blazers were saying how much they’d wanted to watch the parade, which was starting in less than an hour.
Charles said, “Yesterday was my long day. I worked until about eleven last night.”
“You see anything odd going on? Maybe somebody who looked like he might be trouble?”
“Well, I saw the guy who had some drinks with Mr. Niven in the bar. If that’s what you’re wondering about.”
“What time was this?”
“Later on. Nine thirtyish. He didn’t look right to me.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The way he looked. A lot of our traffic is salespeople. We have a nice-sized ballroom for small conventions. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Suits, ties, suitcases, briefcases. Business guys. This guy — six-two, maybe up to six-four. Tan suede suit coat which is two hundred a pop easy. Brown sports shirt under it. Brown slacks. West Coast kinda look, if you know what I mean. And he walks in and the look he gives me. I’m a piece of shit. You ever get a look like that?”
“Maybe once or twice.” Or three or four hundred times.
“He walks like he’s gonna attack somebody.”
“Lot of black curly hair?”
“How’dya guess?”
“Lucky, I guess. So then what happened?”
“He goes in the bar and maybe an hour later he comes out with Niven. They walk over to the elevator and that’s the last I see of them.”
“You remember Niven’s room number?”
“Three twenty-six.”
I gave him one of the tens.
I rode to the third floor with a pair of older salesmen who were blaming the decline in their business on hippies. From what I could tell they sold shoes wholesale.
“They don’t even take baths that often. Why are they going to give a shit about shoes that really support their feet?”
“I just wish I was getting as much sex as those bastards get.”
“I just wish they were wearing out shoes when they were getting it.”
When the doors opened to the third floor a man smiled at me and I smiled at him. It was Chief You-Can-Call-Me-Paul Foster.
As soon as the doors closed behind me, he said, “Let me see if my psychic powers are working today. You’re here to check out the room of a man named Niven. I believe the first name is Gordon.”
“A legend in my business.”
“Would that business be lawyer or investigator?”
“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”
“The hospital tells me that he’d suffered a stroke a while back. This sure as hell couldn’t be any good for him.”
“He’s a nice guy. And I wasn’t exaggerating about him being a legend.”
“I see. I’m told that Mr. Niven has been in town for two days. I assume you ran into him?”
“Excuse me.” A man approached, checking his watch, his sweaty face suggesting that he’d overslept. He moved us aside and then practically dove onto the elevator when it opened up.
After the doors closed again, I said, “Yeah, I did run into him.”
“A prominent private investigator comes to our little community at the same time one of our most prominent citizens is murdered. Am I wrong in seeing a possible connection?”
“He was here before Donovan was murdered.”
Then he struck. “You really piss me off.” The anger came on like summer heat lightning; a flare in the eyes and now pure hot fury in the voice. “You should have called me and told me about Niven. I’ve given you some leeway here because I expect you to keep me informed.”
He was cop with all cops’ privileges and powers. I told him most of the truth. “He wouldn’t tell me why he’s in town but it is peculiar that he got here right before Donovan got murdered.”
“You’ve got quite a vocabulary, McCain. ‘Peculiar’ doesn’t cover it and you know it.”
Niven could still have been tailing Valerie Donovan for reasons having nothing to do with her husband’s murder. I didn’t believe that and Foster wouldn’t either. But I wanted to keep the photograph to myself.
“He was supposed to die. Niven. The way he was worked over.”
We stood aside for more folks in need of the elevator.
When we were alone again, he said, “We now have two people in the hospital.”
“I thought of that myself.”
“According to you, two people who are completely unrelated to Donovan’s murder.”
“I didn’t say that. Exactly.”
“He’s coming around. Your friend Cullen.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Chiefs of police they keep informed. Not private investigators.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“The shrink is saying possibly later this afternoon. He emphasizes ‘possibly.’”
“As his lawyer, I’d like to be there if you interview him.”
“Comes in handy, doesn’t it? The P.I. gets to sit in on the interrogation because he’s a lawyer. But I don’t have to allow it.”