A Key to the Suite Read Online Free Page A

phoned 847 from the lobby and was told there was no answer—which could mean that Hubbard was out or was blocking all incoming calls.
    It was eleven o’clock, too late to get in touch with Jesse Mulaney and tip him off about Hubbard. Maybe Jesse knew it anyway. But, as the local representative, the man on the scene, it was his job to keep Mulaney advised. A rich territory, but he wished to God this convention was somewhere else this time, not in his back yard. Poor Jesse, too old-time for the new hot shots.
    He walked out a side door and down an outside staircase to the pool area. The sun blazed down on the ranked battalions of sun cots, more than half of them occupied. By the cabanas the people who paid the fee for more privacy were sunning themselves. He walked to the thatched bar, sat on a shady stool, ordered a Screwdriver and felt his morale improve as he watched the bartender slice the fresh oranges. After his first deep swallow of the drink, he looked through an opening of the bamboo framework around the bar and watched a hard-faced blondewith a lithe youthful body oil herself with most tender care, then stretch out and become another anonymous sun-stricken corpse amid the acres of browning, gleaming flesh.
    Jesse, he decided, would have some operational plan. He wouldn’t tattoo a dotted line on his throat and then kneel down to make it handier for this Hubbard. Where it puts me, he thought, is right the hell in the middle. I ride with Mulaney, and I go out when he does, which could be a soon thing. If I should back off from it and Mulaney wins, then he would delight in throwing me out, because he would notice that kind of thing sooner than any man I’ve ever known. Mulaney will at least get pensioned. What the hell will I get?
    Suddenly he thought of one safe move he could make, one that might look good to Mulaney, and wouldn’t be known to anyone else. Hell, he thought, Jesse might go for it and it might work, even. He finished his drink in a hurry and went into the hotel, to the pay booths on the lower level. He looked up an unlisted number in the back of his pocket notebook.
    After the sixth ring, just as he was beginning to wonder if she was out of town, a woman answered, her voice sulky and blurred with sleep, asking an angry question which came out sounding like, “Wharrawah?”
    “Alma? Alma, honey? This is Freddy. Freddy Frick.”
    “Oh dear Jesus! ’S dawn, Freddy! Cold, gray dawn.”
    “Alma, the reason I called …”
    “Hol’ the phone a minute.”
    He held the phone a long long time. “Now what?” she asked, and her voice was clear and almost precise.
    “Jesse is coming down. To a convention. He’ll get here today.”
    “This is a reason to wake me up, for God’s sake? He’s adear man, and we’ve had our laughs, Freddy, but sleep is important.”
    “Alma, I always had the feeling you liked Jesse Mulaney.”
    “I guess I do.”
    “More than just … on a business basis.”
    “What the hell are you getting at?”
    “Alma, maybe he’s in trouble. He didn’t ask me to get in touch with you. It’s my idea entirely. I was just thinking … maybe you could help.”
    “Keep talking.”
    “There’s a lot of changes going on, in the company. There’s a man going to be at the convention, and he will maybe be making the final report that’ll tie the can to Jesse. I was just thinking that … if this man had a hell of a good time down here, and if it got to be … well, say a little bit obvious toward the end, he wouldn’t be so anxious to take the wrong kind of word back.”
    “It isn’t exactly a new problem, Freddy dear. I suppose this man would have his guard up. I mean to say that if he’s bright, which I suppose he would have to be, he might be expecting this sort of thing, and so it wouldn’t work.”
    “There’s that chance, Alma. So it would depend on the talent, I guess.”
    “It would indeed. It would indeed.”
    “On the other hand, maybe Jesse has a