The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Read Free Page A

sure as hell didn’t do business in the lobby. He was a pro, a guy who faded into the woodwork.”
    “A pro killed by a pro,” I said. “Except for the stiff, this room looks set for afternoon tea.”
    “Think he got sapped before he was shot?” Toots asked.
    “If he didn’t, he must have fainted.”
    Toots went back to the bathroom and checked out what was left of Fenton’s head. “On the money, LeVine,” came the voice from the john. “Evidence of swelling back here. He might have gotten it falling on the floor, but I’d bet you’re right.” I heard the water running again. It was a messy job, looking at Duke Fenton. Toots came out wiping his hands on his pants.
    “So far, I’d say there was some double-crossing in the air,” he said.
    “You might be right,” I told him casually. He was eventually going to want to know what I was doing here. Eventually was now; Toots eyed me, more quizzically than suspiciously, and finally asked, “Can you tell me why you were here?”
    “Nope. Nothing major, though, nothing that would end up in a stiff. He was shaking down somebody, but the stakes weren’t big enough for anything like this. Besides, she’s too delicate to have slugged somebody and then shot him three times, with three bull’s-eyes.”
    Toots raised his bushy eyebrows. “You free-lance dicks get all the good ones.”
    “Just in the movies, Toots. I figure Fenton was shaking someone else down, more likely a couple of people, and somewhere along the line, it made sense to put him on ice. But my case is small potatoes.”
    Toots smiled and then said something very nice: “You want to get out of here before the law shows up?”
    “It’d save me a lot of useless lying. Might even save me a punch in the mouth.”
    “I’ll call Mel and tell him to let you out. You can do me a favor sometime.”
    I stood up and shook Toots’s hand. I felt like marrying the guy. “Come over to my office sometime soon, Toots. I’ll buy you a drink out of my closet.”
    He was already at the phone, calling the desk. “It’s a deal,” he said, winking at me and patting me on the shoulder as I breezed out the door. The smell was starting to get a little thick. “Mel,” I heard him say as I started down the hall, “let the shamus out. He’s all right. Because I fuckin’ say so, that’s why.”
    The elephant who ran the elevator was waiting for me down the hall. When I walked into the elevator, he stepped far aside, like I was carrying the plague, and I stood in the back, to avoid the saltwater douse.
    “You think you can find your way down without another steam break, slim?”
    “Why don’t you chew on this, shamus?” He pointed to one of his four hundred pounds, somewhere vaguely around the middle of his body.
    “Sorry, I like my meat lean.”
    “Funny man,” he said out of the side of his mouth, turning his head a little. He spoke with a kind of dignity: a rhino coping with a gnat.
    “Just observant,” I told him. The elevator stopped in the lobby and I got out, stroking fatso on the head, “Nice boy.”
    “I’ll see you again, wiseass.”
    Mel wasn’t too happy to see me walk out the door without getting worked over. He gave me his best shark smile.
    “Thanks for everything,” I shouted over to him. “I’ll tell my friends to stay here when they’re in town.” I pushed my way out of one door just as three husky cops and a couple of detectives, one of whom, Paul Shea, I knew all too well, pushed their way in the other. Like ships in the night. Shea didn’t see me, but it was very close, too close. Another minute spent insulting a fleabag desk clerk and Shea would have had me sitting on the hardest chair in his office for a couple of hours. I would have told him I was at the Lava for the baths and he would have sipped some more coffee and asked me again what I was doing there. That’s how those things go.
    Out on the street again, I took a deep breath. The air was rank and heavy, but it