Opposite the restroom and the janitor’s closet, in the little side corridor, was an open doorway screened for tonight with a large grey cubicle partition on wheels. At other times, the cozy room beyond might serve to house small gatherings of men and women whose decisions would be blazoned in large black letters in the next day’s newspapers. Tonight it was a storeroom, holding extraneous potted plants and sidetables which would have gotten in the way of the festivities in the main assembly room.
The room was lit only by what seeped in from the party. Matt raised a hand to the wall but found no light switches. While he was at it, he realized that his other hand was still holding the paper plate he had unconsciously rolled into a tube while watching Ada Silberwetter. He looked down at it, remembered her face, and then wadded it into a ball.
His guide, meanwhile, was looking around the room in some confusion. “I asked him to wait for you here, sir. Wait one moment, if you please. I will go find out where he might have gone.”
Matt nodded and the waiter went out. Spying a wastebasket, Matt strolled over to toss the balled paper plate away.
The wastebasket was tucked next to three stacks of chairs and a big tree in a pot that was too small for it. It needed water, too. Beyond these, up against sliding doors that led out to the snowy balcony, sat a grand piano.
Looking around at the other supplies stacked here, Matt spotted a yellow telephone on a small table. Maybe the message was from Mother, or, worse, some doctor in the emergency room. He strode over to the table and lifted the receiver. A dial tone told him the phone was hooked up, so he squatted low enough to read the numbers.
He had punched in the first two when he heard something move. Turning and straightening up in one motion, he watched a figure emerge from behind the piano.
This apparition wore a brown coat that brushed the floor. It did not coordinate well with the blue and white ski mask that hid all of the face but half-closed eyes. Matt did not study the eyes; the outfit was accessorized with a large black gun.
This gun was up where Matt would be sure to see it. The fingers of the ungunned hand made a gentle caressing downward motion. Matt understood, and set the phone receiver down, just a little behind where it belonged. He hoped this phone was like other City phones.
For Matt’s brain was racing. Worry always made him freeze up, but a gun was nothing to worry about. A gun was something to be afraid of. Fear drove out worry.
This had to be Miss Skull. Matt tried to see a skull pattern on the blue and white facemask, and failed. He did make out the letters LUTH on the forehead, but this meant nothing to him.
The gun pointed at his stomach. The empty hand beckoned. Matt moved forward slowly, raising his hands to shoulder level. How long was sixty seconds? Would the waiter come back first?
Miss Skull was considering that same point. A thumb on the free hand jerked impatiently at the glass door. Marr looked outside and then down, as she reached out and slid the door open half a foot. Then this WAS Miss Skull, and this was murder, not robbery. Between ice and wind, she might not even need to shoot, though a bullet would make matters certain.
Matt took a deep breath. This HAD to be sixty seconds now. She couldn’t shoot him before he was out on the balcony, or she’d have his body to carry. And she wasn’t that big. She was about the same size as….
“BEEE-up! BEEE-up! BEEE-up!”
Miss Skull jerked toward the phone as it complained about being left off the hook. Matt pounced, smashing a hip on the keyboard of the piano. His hands plunged and twisted. Miss Skull kicked, but whether it was that which nearly tripped him or the foot hitting the piano leg. But the gun had changed owners.
Jabbing an elbow against the piano, Matt pushed himself up and back. Miss Skull obligingly fell back herself, clutching a twisted wrist against the front of the coat. Rain and ice slashed in at her face mask. The eyes behind the eyehole were wide.
Matt, meanwhile, had things to worry about again. He had the gun: now what? In five summers as a bouncer at his father’s bar, he had learned to handle guns. But “handle” meant only “take away so the customer can’t play with it.”
Here there was no manager calling police. He couldn’t toss the gun under the bar and go back to work.
The combatants looked each other over. The height, the way Miss Skull stood, some fragrance: there was something familiar here. Matt knew he ought to know. That hand now resting on the edge of the piano: he’d seen a hand resting that way more than once. On a desk? On a file cabinet? On the buffet?
Miss Skull blinked, and that hand swept up against stacks of cheap tinfoiled ashtrays. Matt couldn’t keep track of three things at once. His main goal was to keep the gun quiet and what attention he could spare from that went into dodging apparently metal projectiles. When he had attention to spare for Miss Skull she was around the piano and out of the room.
Matt rushed after her, stumbling as his feet crushed the low-bidder ashtrays. At the door he pulled up short, remembering the gun. That would NOT be tolerated at a City party, and there was no sense giving people the wrong idea. He slid it gently into his jacket pocket.
One glance at the main assembly told him she hadn’t gone that way. There would be more excitement, more turned heads, if anyone in a long brown coat and ski mask gone running through.
There were other possibilities. Licking his upper lip, he pushed through the door of the Men’s.
“Ow! What thif…get outa the way!”
The man who had been on his way out tried to keep going out, stomping down hard on the big shiny shoes Matt tried to pull out of the way. This raised a flag. The last time Matt ran into someone so intent on smashing all his toes, he’d been on the bus and cost him his wallet and checkbook. He slapped a hand down over his wallet pocket.
“Why, you big…calling me a pickpocket?” The little round redfaced man looked a bit like Marshall Silverwetter’s third son, the one who lost the election. It was hard to be sure: Matt had seen him only on campaign brochures, and you couldn’t expect even the photos on those to be more than approximately truthful.
The little man’s give him one hand in what was half a shove and half a punch. Matt sidestepped most of this. Glancing up, the man aimed a second shot. He stopped before it could be delivered.
“Hey, din’t I see you talking to m…Marshall Silberwetter?”
Matt, hating himself for it, simply smiled.
“Um. Stupid of me to be standing right at the door of the john this time of night.” The little man eased to one side, making himself even smaller. “Um. Making a fool of myself. I…I’ll just go do that somewhere else.”
If anyone who did not know Mashall Silberwetter met this man in the next ten minutes, there’d be trouble. Matt felt sorry for somebody, but couldn’t decide who. So he pushed on into the Men’s. No coat and ski mask waited there.
Back in the corridor, he found the waiter, rushing forward with all the desperation of someone who sees a certain tip slipping away. “I’m afraid I can’t find him, sir.”
“It was a man, then?” Matt moved directly in front of him. “What did he look like? Was it one of the guests or someone from outside?”
The waiter tipped back a little as if only now realizing how big Matt was. “Is there…a problem, sir?”
Matt shook his head. “Never mind. He told you to bring me back here?”
The waiter took two backward steps. “He was…not a young man. More than thirty. I thought he was a guest, sir, as he had on a suit, but he must have come from outside, or he could have just looked for you at the party.”
Matt slid a hand into a pocket. The waiter took another step away, turning little. Matt rattled his change in what he hoped was an encouraging way. “Did he tell you anything about his message?”
The waiter, face brightening, thought things over. “Actually, sir, he did not even mention he had a message. He said there WAS a message for Mr. Matthew Benz, and could I find him. It may be the messenger came to him, and he came to me.”
Further questioning brought Matt no ore than that: a man who was elderly (over thirty) in a suit, and maybe no more than a go-between. Matt felt this level of information merited no more than a quarter, but he raised it to fifty cents and said “If you see him again, find me and let me know.”
Not waiting to see the waiter’s opinion of a tip that did not fold, he started for the exit and elevators, waiting among the partygoers demanding to know where their hats were and didn’t they check gloves with this, refining his question. (“Did anybody check a long brown cat that might have had a ski mask in the pocket?”) He gave up and meandered back through the party: no one was going to remember a brown coat in this mob, and if they did, they would know no more than a ticket number.
Back in the dim restroom corridor, he tried the janitor’s closet. It was unlocked, shallow, and a great relief. Now there was no call for him to barge into the Ladies’ room.
The mask wasn’t there—that likely went into a pocket—but this certainly was the coat he’d seen. He started to turn up the collar to check underneath but changed his mind. Tossing the coat over one arm, he strolled as casually as he could back into the darkened room with the piano and glass doors.
He crawled around under the piano for a while without much satisfaction. “Where’s your magnifying glass?” he grumbled. He stood up before he was quite clear, and banged his head at the same time his knee scrunched something hard and angular.
Cursing, Matt rubbed his head with one hand and reached down with the other, flopping the coat down across whatever he’d hit. Pulling the coat away, he cowled at a ballpoint pen with a green fuzzy dragon wrapped around the shaft. Rising, and now rubbing his knee, he eventually added this doodad to the pocket with the gun.
The party was thinning when he returned, but far from dead. Matt studied the crowd of dedicated party animals. Ada Silberwetter was with her husband and three other appreciative men, deep in an animated discussion about which Matt had no curiosity whatsoever. Now, she had proven she could change clothes in very little….
No. Of course not. No time. And the ski mask would have mussed up that hair. That was it: Linda, Holly, and Maryann should be in the clear as well. Although perhaps the way Holly’s hair was arranged, it might be hard to tell. Matt’s expertise in female hair was minimal. Or would someone who came to a party with a gun and a ski mask have the forethought to also bring a comb and brush? Or even a wig?
Matt felt he was missing something vital, but had no idea what to do next. This was where he needed Felicia Lowe. What would her detectives, the Changs, be doing now?
There was…the police. Matt felt a little faint. Call the police to this party? Where his boss was? And his bosses’ bosses? And the bosses of the Police Department, come to that? He shook his head. Not without knowing what he was up against.
He shrugged. He couldn’t wander around the party carrying this coat. Best to get his own coat and just go home. He’d had enough party games for this year.
The line was still long at coat check, long enough for worry. Why assume Miss Skull had just one gun? Would she be waiting just outside? Maybe he could just check this coat and stay a little longer at the party. Or would Miss Skull be counting on that? Somehow he got his coat back and put it on while hanging onto the other. The elevator was packed; he nearly didn’t get on. Good place for knife work: nowhere to dodge. But they were all looking at him, so he squeezed in. On the first floor, and out on the windswept sidewalk, he stayed with them all, keeping toward the middle of the pack. He di
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