Doom Service

CHAPTER I

In the cloakroom behind the bell captain's desk in the Hotel Duarte, Johnny Killain straddled a suitcase leisurely, leaned back and, propping his shoulders comfortably against another bag, elevated his feet. He removed his cigarettes from the breast pocket of his uniform, shook one free from the pack and lipped it up into his mouth. Beyond the cloakroom, through the intervening closed door, he was aware of the familiarly hushed after-midnight sounds of a big-city hotel.

In the flare of his lighter, his face was almost forbidding. High cheekbones jutted boldly beneath deep-set pale eyes and tufted blond brows, and the craggy features dominated by a several-times-broken nose were bronzed to an extent suggesting prolonged exposure to a tropical sun. The mouth even in repose was a hard line, and the close-cropped unruly hair was the kind that sturdily resisted comb and brush.

He looked up inquiringly as the cloakroom door was thrust open and Paul Sassella looked in at him. Paul, a stockily taciturn middle-aged Swiss, was Johnny's right-hand man on the hotel midnight-to-eight shift. “Booth phone, Johnny. Second from the end.”

Johnny grunted acknowledgment, then looked up sharply in the act of swinging his feet to the floor and stubbing out his scarcely begun cigarette. “Booth phone? How come-” But the door had closed again behind Paul; Johnny rose reluctantly, snapped off the cloakroom light and walked out into the lobby in its customary early-morning half-darkness. He bulked hugely in the sheath-fitting blue-gray uniform with its neatly gold-lettered Bell Captain over the breast pocket, and his purposeful walk across the marbled lobby floor was a shambling, bearlike shuffle created by nature's overendowment of chest and shoulders.

In the booth phone he picked up the dangling receiver, and in the glassed-in airless confinement his voice was a basso rumble. “Yeah? Whatchawant?”

“Mickey Tallant, Johnny. Your kid's got his belly up against my bar down here.”

“He's not my kid, Mick. Bounce him.”

The Irish voice reproached Johnny. “Would I be callin' you if it was only a brannigan? Come down an' get the lad.”

“Why the hell should I?” Johnny said.

“If you don't know, sure then I can't tell you.” The brogue lowered itself conspiratorially. “He's talkin', Johnny, talkin' wild, an' folks are beginnin' to listen. He's pure out-of-his-mind spoilin' for trouble, and he's carryin' a wad you couldn't jump over. Did you see the papers?”

“I saw them,” Johnny replied grimly.

“Then hear me now-another fifteen minutes an' they won't need this investigation they're talkin' about. The drink has the lad's tongue hinged in the middle, an' it's kerosene he is, just waiting for the match. The wrong word, even-”

“I'll be down, Mick,” Johnny interrupted.

“Do that. An' hit just a few of the high spots on the way.”

“Mick-” Johnny cleared his throat. “Thanks for not calling through the switchboard.”

“It's not a fool I am, I hope,” the brogue replied in injured dignity.

“How cold is it out?”

“I'll have your antifreeze set out on the bar. You're leaving now?”

“Right now. Start pouring.” Johnny left the booth and recrossed the lobby in his light-footed shuffle, avoiding Sally Fontaine at the switchboard behind the little wooden gate at the end of the registration desk. In front of the foyer's glass doors he waited impatiently for the elevator indicator to return to street level, and he leaned into the cab as Paul threw open the shining bronze doors. “Sally's brother is down at the Mick's, Paul. Stoned.”

The stolid Paul nodded. “Lucky he didn't try to come in here to see her.”

“Burn a little incense for small favors,” Johnny agreed.

“I'm goin' down to get him. If he should happen to get past me, don't let him near that switchboard. She's doin' enough worryin' already.”

“I could put Dominic on here,” Paul suggested, “and go along with you.”

“No need, boy. I could drop-kick the little bastard that far.”

“The papers tonight-” Paul began, and hesitated.

“The papers were right,” Johnny said brusquely. “He tanked it. They're only hintin' now, but there's gonna be one hell of a big stink over that fight. Throw me that old trench coat out of the cloakroom, will you?”

“It's way too small for you.”

“It'll do. I'm in a hurry.” He pulled the semistiff material over his shoulders, cape-fashion. In the foyer he could feel the first onslaught of the cold outside; he parted the outer doors and stepped out onto the scraped-bare sidewalk beneath the marquee and looked up and down Forty-fifth Street at the multi-colored neon refraction of light from the three inches of freezing slush in the street. Instinctively he glanced upward at the patch of night sky visible between the canyon-like buildings; it had stopped snowing, and the stars were out, but the icy wind nipped at his ankles. He jammed his hands deeply into the inadequate uniform pockets and trotted heavily toward Seventh Avenue.

The loose ends of the coat flapped wildly about his knees as the cold bored at him relentlessly; he jumped a puddle in the gutter at Broadway and felt his foot slip in a pile of slush. A cold trickle oozed down into his shoe, and he shook the foot disgustedly. It was one hell of a night to be out doing missionary work.

And two days ago no one could ever have convinced you that missionary work for this boy would be needed, Johnny reflected. If ever a kid had it all in front of him… Charlie Roketenetz, the small-town boy, Sally Fontaine's kid brother. Not clever, not too fast, but a punch. What a punch! Twenty fights he'd had, maybe, but he was on the way; some imaginative sportswriter had tagged Charlie Roketenetz as The Rockin' Horse, and The Rockin' Horse had rocked them. Until that fight last night…

At Eighth Avenue Johnny turned north and immediately saw the green-neoned outline of the unlifelike boulder that proclaimed Mickey Tallant's Rollin' Stone Tavern. A babel of sound replaced the shrill bite of the wind in Johnny's ears as he pushed open the wide door with its heavy plate-glass center section; as befitted a sporting gentleman, the Mick never lacked for sporting customers, even on a night like this. The booths along the far wall were crowded, and the dog-leg bar swarmed three and four deep.

Johnny savored the rush of heat a moment as he surveyed the familiar scene, and then Mickey Tallant bustled down the bar toward him, his red face anxious as his wet hands automatically rearranged the dampened semiwhite apron about his ample girth. “Glad you made it this quick,” the bar owner muttered in a fervent undertone. “Yonder he is. First time he's shut up since he come in here.”

Johnny turned in the direction of the Irishman's nod and did a double take at sight of the slim figure in the short-sleeved sport shirt propped up on his elbows at the end of the bar closest to the door. “He's on the street like that on a night like this?”

“He don't know is it Sunday or Tuesday,” Mickey Tallant said flatly. “An' don't bother lookin' at me like that, because he didn't get it here.” The red-faced man looked unhappy. “Did he dump the fight, Johnny?”

“You saw it. You need to ask?” Johnny said, shrugging out of the trench coat.

The tavern owner sighed deeply. “An' him a punchin' fool at the weight,” he mourned. “Rougher'n an unplaned two-by-six, by God, an' a left hook can cut a man in two at the middle. So he has to throw fights. You drop a bundle?”

Unheeding, Johnny wormed his way through the rear ranks at the bar and eased in alongside the sport-shirted figure slumped over the bar, head nodding. “Charlie,” Johnny said softly, and dropped a hand on the nearer shoulder.

The towheaded crew cut came up slowly as Charlie Roketenetz straightened and turned to blink unsteadily at Johnny. “'Lo, big man,” he said thickly. “Have a li'l drink wi' The Rockin' Horse?”

Johnny stared down into the ashen features. He knew the boy fought as a welter, but he never looked that big. His face looked doubly white against the background of the stitched-together raw scars above his brows, making slits of his eyes. Johnny experienced a sudden sense of uneasy doubt. If you were going to bag a fight, Killain, couldn't you find an easier way? Ahh, stop it, he told himself impatiently- you watched it happen. His hand tightened on the shoulder in his grasp. “We're gettin' outta here, Charlie.”

“Like it here,” the boy said obstinately. “Rockin' Horse likes it fine.” He looked up into the back bar mirror as though reassuring himself where he was, then turned to look at Johnny. “Wassamatter 'th you?” he demanded plaintively. “Wy you lookin' at me li' that?” He ran an exploring finger along his stitched brows and grimaced. “Oh. The fi'.” He wrapped his arms about himself as though unexpectedly cold; his slitted eyes peered upward at Johnny and his thickened voice suddenly gained strength. “How much you lose, big man?”

“Keep it down,” Johnny said levelly. “Who said I lost?”

“How much?” the fighter repeated impatiently. The nearer hand thrust stabbingly into a pocket and emerged with a roll of bills, which it brandished fiercely. “Pay you ri' now. How much you-”

“Shut up!” Johnny cut him off fiercely as the nearer heads started to turn at the stridency in the young voice. “Put it away!”

The boy eyed him uncertainly an instant, then stuffed the money back into a pocket. “How's-Sally?” he asked raggedly, and his ashen face crumbled momentarily as though he were going to cry. It stiffened at once, though, and, without waiting for a response, Charlie Roketenetz turned and restored his elbows to the bar in front of him, slipping off again into the alcoholic no man's land from which Johnny had roused him. Johnny hesitated, then edged back from the bar, ignoring the curious glances around him. Mickey Tallant was shaking his head dubiously.

“He's not goin' easy,” the tavern owner predicted.

“He's goin', though,” Johnny promised. “I want to call Paul.” He pushed through the crowd to the wall phone in the rear and dialed quickly. Too late he realized that to talk to Paul he also had to talk to Sally; he started to hang up, and then shrugged. Couldn't be helped. “Put Paul on, Ma,” he directed her when she came on the line. “An' cut yourself out-this is man-talk.” He could hear her indignant sniff as she rang for Paul. “Paul?” Johnny began when the stocky Swiss answered, then paused. “You off the line, Sally?”

“I think she is,” Paul said finally into the silence.

“Okay. That package is a little heavier'n I figured, Paul. Grab a cab from the corner an' send him down here. In about ten minutes run the service elevator down to the basement, an' I'll get on from the alley.”

“Right now,” Paul replied matter-of-factly, and Johnny hung up. The sudden pall of silence in the room behind him brought his head around sharply, and he stared unbelievingly at the twin masked figures with exposed automatics who stood just inside the barroom door, the slow sweep of their guns menacing bar, back bar and booths.

“Holdup!” a hoarse voice breathed to Johnny's right as the taller of the two intruders turned slightly to say something to his companion, who replied briefly. The taller bandit wheeled, gun extended, and with even, deliberate steps stalked the end of the bar Johnny had just vacated. The crowd instinctively retreated, and, roughly jostled in the general withdrawal, Charlie Roketenetz raised his head again and lurched around indignantly. He glowered at the masked figure less than six feet away.

“Who you poin'in' that thing at?” the boy demanded, his voice high-pitched amid the hush in the low-ceilinged room; his feet did a boxer's shuffle to get leverage as he moved away from the bar, and the smashing left hook exploded upward and caught the gunman under the ear. The bandit staggered backward on his heels as his mask flew off, and his shoulders hit the glass center of the front door heavily. He was catapulted to the sidewalk outside in a harsh detonation of plate-glass fragments, and fifty breaths in the room exhaled noisily.

They sucked in again immediately as the boy charged the shattered door, fists cocked alertly in his mincing fighter's stance. Before anyone realized his intention he had scrambled through the broken-out glass to close with the fallen bandit.

“Behind you, kid!” Johnny yelled despairingly, and ferociously carved a hole in the crowd with his elbows. He knew he couldn't be in time-he reached the front rank only in time to see the second gunman recover from his stupor, dash to the door and fire four times into the blended figures on the ground outside, then vault over them and dart up the street.

Johnny never remembered covering the balance of the distance to the door. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself on his knees on the sidewalk, with Charlie Roketenetz's crew-cut head cradled against his thighs, and the glazing eyes under the raw-looking scars staring upward unseeingly.

The slam of a car door impinged upon his consciousness as he drew a slow, deep breath; he looked up into Sally Fontaine's white, stricken face as she knelt in the slush across from him and silently took the boy's still face in her hands.

Mickey Tallant's voice roused them finally. “Come in out of the weather, both of you,” the tavern owner ordered them gruffly. “It's no good you can do him out here.”

Sally rose like a sleepwalker with the Irishman's hand on her arm; Johnny gently eased the body back down and straightened up slowly. He stooped again to brush absently at the sodden knees of his uniform, and his eyes slid off to the second still figure on the sidewalk.

“Come in, man, will you, now?” Mickey Tallant barked from the doorway, then saw Johnny's gaze riveted on the gunman lying sprawled on his back. “Broke his damn neck goin' through the door, an' good riddance,” he announced firmly.

Johnny's eyes returned to Charlie Roketenetz's quiet face; in the intermittent flashing of the electric display overhead he studied the alternately dead white and pale green features. Then he finally followed the tavern owner inside. The crowd had withdrawn from the bar section nearest the door in deference to Sally, who was standing there wooden-faced, staring off into space, a filled double-shot glass at her elbow.

The crowd seemed to have diminished by about a third to Johnny's eyes, but the remainder showed no intention of leaving. A shrill note of excitement prevailed throughout the general buzz in the big room.

“Get that drink into her, will you?” Mickey Tallant urged Johnny in an undertone. “She's in shock.”

The Irishman slipped through the hinged section at the end of the bar, and Johnny picked up the shot glass and handed it to Sally. She took it obediently, swallowed once, shivered and finished it off. Tears came into her eyes, whether from the potency of the drink or the state of her emotions Johnny wasn't sure. He ached to say something violent and tender, but the words weren't in him. He took her hand silently, and the planes of her small features crumpled like wet cardboard as the tears spilled over.

She drew a long, shuddering breath, and her cold little hand clamped down convulsively upon his. “Oh, Johnny!” she got out in a strangled whisper; then she choked up completely. Sally Fontaine was a tiny girl, almost painfully thin. The small face was usually pleasantly unbeautiful, with a gaminlike quality emphasized by the generous, smiling mouth and the large brown eyes. “I knew s-something was wrong when he didn't c-call me after the fight,” she said drearily, and the tears started anew. “Johnny, what h-happened?”

He knew she didn't really expect an answer; he stood uncomfortably beside her and welcomed Mickey Tallant's approach upon the other side of the bar as the Irishman slapped down another glass, overfilled it and pushed it toward Johnny. Sally still clung to his right hand, and he waited patiently for her to release it.

“The boy shouldn't have done it,” Mickey Tallant said explosively, a patent need to say something plain upon the concerned red face. “Hell, I'm insured. I've been held up before. Those damn murderin'-” he leaned forward over the bar, to their left. “Manuel, you was closest when they come in… what'd they say to each other when they looked around?”

Johnny turned quickly to look at the thick-shouldered, dark-faced man at whom the question had been directed. The very first glance showed that the dark man himself had been no stranger to the fight game-scar tissue over the eyes, thickened ears and battered features visibly proclaimed it. It seemed to Johnny that the man hesitated fractionally before replying. “Nothing I hear, Senor Mick.”

Mickey Tallant shrugged off his disappointment. “Probably wouldn't have meant anything,” he said to Johnny, and, in answer to Johnny's inquiring look, lowered his voice. “You don't remember him? Manuel Ybarra. Fought as Indian Rivera. No champ, but a good, tough boy. Retired-eye trouble.”

Johnny nodded slowly, and, as Sally released his hand to open her handbag, he reached for his drink. He had it halfway to his lips when a jeering voice raised itself stridently down the bar. “-gotta give the kid credit for one thing… at least his last fight wasn't fixed!”

Instinctively Johnny glanced at Sally. She had turned a yellowish-white, and her small face looked pinched; she reached unsteadily for the bar to support herself. Grimly Johnny set his drink down, untouched. Blindly he turned in the direction of the voice, all the bitterly subdued emotion he had felt since arising from his knees on the sidewalk outside fused in a thick rage that swelled his throat.

“Johnny!” Sally's half whisper, half plea drifted after him.

Unheeding, he shouldered customers aside, sifting faces, and beside him the voice laughed raucously as a big man with a florid face jabbed his drinking companion in the ribs. “You hear what I said? I said at least the kid's-”

Johnny spun him around, and the big man's drink went flying over his shoulder to smash on the floor behind him, spraying neighboring cuffs and ankles. “I heard what you said, Jack. I didn't like it.”

“And who the hell are you not to like it?” the man demanded, and unloaded a line-drive right-hand smash that landed high, flush on Johnny's mouth. The big man stepped back expectantly, but Johnny's neck shrank itself into his shoulders as his chin came down on his chest. His open hands, hooked like curved claws, came up waist-high as he shuffled closer. The big man, recovering, slammed a left and right to the diminished target and then grunted loudly as the reaching hands clamped down on him laterally on thigh and shoulder. The man's surprised yell was breathlessly hoarse as he went effortlessly aloft, and Johnny straightened with the man overhead to find Mickey Tallant opposite him, hopping up and down with arms frantically outstretched.

“Not behind the bar, Johnny!” the Irishman yelled at the top of his lungs above the pandemonium around them, and Johnny pivoted as the man in the air struggled to get a hand in Johnny's hair and the other in the neckband of his uniform collar. The customers scattered wildly as Johnny came out of the pivot and slung the big man explosively at the wall a dozen feet away. Intervening tables and chairs splintered like kindling as the heavy body crashed through them, and Johnny straightened from the soul-satisfying effort to find that seventy-five per cent of his uniform jacket, shirt, and undershirt had made the trip to the wall with the big man. Impatiently he stripped off the rags still clinging to him.

“Throw me an apron, Mickey,” he called to the tavern owner without turning around. Then he ran a hand lightly over his swelling mouth and looked impassively at the blood upon it.

In the second it took sound to return to the room, the shattered outer door opened and two slender men huddled in dark overcoats entered briskly. They came to a dead stop just inside the door as their eyes took in the tableau at the other end of the room, and the nearer dark overcoat shook its head disparagingly as it looked from Johnny to the man crawling along the base of the wall like a wingless grub. “I must say it looks natural,” Detective James Rogers announced in his usual imperturbable tone, “but is it legal?”

Hands in pockets, Detective Ted Cuneo in the second dark overcoat sauntered over to the wall. After a sharp glance at Johnny he leaned down over the man sitting up dizzily, the official voice solicitous. “You like to sign a complaint, citizen?”

From behind the bar Mickey Tallant made an angry sound. “He ain't signin' no complaint, Cuneo. He's been livin' too long now on borrowed time with that unzippered bazzoo of his. He's just lucky he don't wind up plenty shortweight on the scale.”

The slender Detective Rogers removed his hat and tossed it onto a nearby table; he ran a hand lightly through his sandy hair. “Is it official that he hasn't?” he asked mildly, and walked over to Johnny, who was unfolding the apron that had been tossed him. The detective placed a stiffened forefinger amid the ridged scars prominent on Johnny's bared chest. “Every time I see you, Killain,” he began thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I imagine we could always charge indecent exposure.” He looked from Johnny to his partner, who was still talking urgently to the big man on the floor, and he raised his voice. “The sidewalk affair does seem to have priority, Ted,” he suggested, and Detective Cuneo straightened reluctantly. He was a lean six-footer, hatchet-faced and sallow-complexioned, with overlarge eyes that seemed perpetually outraged.

He removed a notebook from an inside breast pocket and walked quickly to the bar. “All right, Tallant,” he said snappily. “You got so damn much to say let's hear something now. Let's not keep the first editions waiting.”

Detective Rogers nodded at Johnny, swathed in wraparound fashion in his apron. “Don't hurry off, chum,” he said softly, and turned to the bar to join in the questioning of the tavern owner.

Neither Rogers nor Cuneo had noticed Sally's presence, Johnny reflected, but that wouldn't last long. Silently he made his way through the crowd back to the end of the bar and took up his position beside her. She slipped her hand back into his, her eyes on the big man, who had made it up to a chair and was cautiously flexing arms and legs. Her expression was unreadable.

With his free hand Johnny picked up his previously neglected drink. He swallowed it at a gulp, winced as the alcohol burned his torn mouth and set the empty glass down on the bar.

He waited for their turn at questions-and-answers, the seething boil and bubble of his overheated blood ebbing gradually to a liquid simmer. He felt almost ready when Detective Rogers turned suddenly at the bar and looked in their direction, then detached himself and walked rapidly toward them.