Doom Service

CHAPTER XIV

The ring of the telephone aroused Johnny from a blank-eyed inspection of the wallpaper in his room. He heaved himself laboriously to his feet from the depths of his armchair and picked up the receiver from the night table beside the bed. “Yeah?”

“I want to see you, Killain. Right now.”

“Who the hell-” Johnny began, and recognized the crackling-syllabled voice of Lonnie Turner before he had completed the question. “You've got a nerve, man!”

“Don't be childish,” the staccato voice rapped at Johnny over the wire. “What's your room number?”

“You stay the hell away from me, Turner. I don't-”

“I'm not fussy about standing around down here until someone recognizes me,” the promoter interrupted. “Give me the room number, and stop being a jackass.”

“Six-fifteen,” Johnny told him reluctantly. The phone clicked in his ear, and Johnny made an effort to stir himself from the lethargic state of mind into which he had drifted before the phone's ring had jerked him awake. What could be important enough to Turner to bring him over here? Johnny shook his head; it wasn't worth the effort to force himself to think. In two minutes the answer would be on his threshold.

He opened the door at the promoter's knock and stared at the apparition he had admitted. Lonnie Turner was huddled in a shapeless coat sizes too large for him, and he had a black snap-brim hat pulled down over his eyes and a woolen scarf over mouth and chin.

“Costume party?” Johnny inquired sourly, closing the door. “Or is that your disguise when you're out hirin' murderers?”

“I see no more humor in this damned masquerade than you do,” Turner said coldly, disposing of the articles with jerky movements of his arms. He rubbed his hands together briskly, blew on them and ran them lightly over the pompadoured white hair. He paced the room in short, choppy strides as Johnny watched him, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of the expensive-looking suit.

“Light somewhere, will you?” Johnny said in disgust. “You'd give anyone the twitch, just watchin' you.”

“I want to know where I stand with you,” the promoter said, wheeling abruptly. “I suppose you blame me for-”

“You're goddam right I blame you!” Johnny interrupted truculently.

“I knew I had to talk to you,” Lonnie Turner said in a self-satisfied tone. “I don't want you going off half-cocked because of what happened.” Authority and arrogance mingled in the expressive voice. “I'll admit I might have been a little more prescient as far as Monk was concerned in view of his reaction to the girl during the period of her employment, but I refuse to concede that I contributed in any manner at all to his actions.”

“You refuse to concede-” Johnny echoed bitterly. “You're not talking to your lawyers, Turner. You threw the kid overboard!”

“She threw me overboard,” Turner corrected him sharply. “I'm not in the habit of continuing to employ help who sell me out to the other side, for reasons of romance or anything else. Keith should have told me a week ago that you'd been seeing her. She couldn't have worked for me for five minutes afterward. I hired her in the first place because I thought her lack of sophistication would prevent this sort of thing.”

“You bastard, you had an obligation-”

“Don't tell me about my obligations, damn you!” the promoter interrupted angrily. “I run my business to suit myself!” The healthily tanned features were flushed. “Obligations! What about her obligation to me? Am I supposed to wet-nurse some foolish girl who deliberately chooses up sides against me? Be yourself, Killain. And blame yourself. Don't blame me. You're of age, if she isn't.” He quieted down a little. “Of course I wished the girl no personal harm, and I certainly never dreamed that Monk would take it upon himself to go over there and act as he did, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand still and have you snatch the rug out from under me just because you in your sublime ignorance feel that I should have had more control of a situation that you yourself provoked!” His voice had risen sharply again.

“If you won't stand for it, you can sit for it,” Johnny told him, his voice hard. “You and I are through, mister.”

Lonnie Turner was plainly striving to retain a grip upon himself. “I didn't come over here to make threats, Killain. I didn't come over here to argue with you. I knew you'd react this way. Through circumstances I bitterly regret, you possess information that can inestimably damage my freedom of action if misused. I'm just asking that before you throw me to the wolves you disregard aroused emotion for a moment and realize that basically nothing has changed in our situation.”

“You're a fine one to talk about throwin' to the wolves!” Johnny commented harshly. “You're also goin' to a hell of a lot of trouble, it strikes me, for a man whose only concern is standin' off a tax case he probably could beat.”

The white-haired man slapped his palms together in exasperation. “Will you kindly permit me to be the judge of my concern? I've never bothered to ask you what gives you your kick out of life, Killain. Mine happens to be the unhampered conduct of my own affairs in my own way. Once I stand a tax examination under the gamy circumstances rife in this case I've got those people looking down my throat for all time.”

Johnny needled him deliberately. “I still think you fixed that fight.”

Turner refused to rise to the bait. “So we're back at that point again? The answer is the same-I had no interest whatever in fixing it or having it fixed. I categorically deny that I had anything at all to do with it.”

Johnny shook his head stubbornly. “You'd make a good witness, mister, but what about the facts? Every goddam spoke in the wheel goes right back to you. Roketenetz, Gidlow, Hendricks, Keith, Chavez, Carmody, Munson-you pulled the strings on every single one.”

He could see the glistening shine on the high forehead. “Hendricks? If he came back to life and walked through that door I'm not sure I'd recognize the man. I may have met him three or four times, never socially. Can't you get it through your thick head that in the course of a year just about everyone in the fight game at least walks through my office?” He drew a deep breath. “We're wasting time. I want your word that the situation is unchanged.”

“You want my word!” Johnny growled. “What you'll get from me is the back of my hand, or my shoe tattooed to your tail. If you can't control Carmody, I'm supposed to believe you can control those other muzzlers you're supposed to keep off Sally's back? Grab for a bailin' bucket, buster; you're on your own. For my money you're not even capable of runnin' your own business, even if you're clear on the other, which I doubt. I don't trust you, Turner, not-” He broke off at the ring of the telephone, hesitated and shuffled over to the night table. “Yeah?”

“Dameron, downstairs. Can we come up?”

“I'm busy, Joe,” Johnny said impatiently.

“We'll be right there,” the heavy voice said blandly, and the connection was broken.

“Company,” Johnny announced, and turned to see the promoter putting his hat, coat and scarf back on.

“I won't forget this, Killain,” he said in a brittle tone. “If the day ever comes that I drop this decision, the ripples will reach you, so help me.”

“Ahhh, turn it off!” Johnny snapped testily. “You had me fooled for a while, Turner. You're like a kid playin' store, an' because you got money everyone's supposed to say 'yessir.' What you haven't got you try to buy, and what you can't buy you try to scare. The hell with you.”

The intense, furious features glared back at Johnny from the doorway. “Just keep on living until I can get to you!” Johnny started for him, but the door opened and closed, and the promoter was gone. Johnny hesitated an instant, reopened the door, looked up and down the deserted corridor and left it ajar. He walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge.

A brief tap on the door preceded the entrance of Lieutenant Joseph Dameron and Detective Ted Cuneo. The lieutenant dropped heavily into the leather armchair before the television set, picked up first one foot and then the other and studied each critically. “It's hell to get old,” he said finally, and passed a hand tiredly over his face, the apple cheeks of which were tinted nearly purple from the temperature outside. “Good thing you're on the sixth floor instead of the sixteenth.”

“Aren't the elevators running, for God's sake?” Johnny demanded.

“Just thought I'd like to see who you were shooing down the back way,” Dameron said easily.

“That's just like you, Joe, doin' it the hard way. He took the elevator down.”

The lieutenant looked at him thoughtfully as though estimating the truth in the remark; then he glanced at Detective Cuneo standing stiffly by the door. “Sit down, Ted. If everyone who didn't get along with his highness here waited for him to offer them a seat, the chair manufacturers would go out of business tomorrow.” The big man looked across from Cuneo seating himself to the bandage on Johnny's ear. “The report said that Carmody just about took that thing right off you,” he said casually. “Rogers had it that the intern was sewing for ten minutes.”

“A slight exaggeration,” Johnny told him. “How's the ticket read on Carmody, by the way? Nothin' trivial, I hope?”

“Nothing trivial,” Dameron agreed. “And if it weren't due to the circumstances, we'd-”

“Lay off me, Joe,” Johnny told him tightly. “You got a fairly good idea of what was due to happen if I hadn't happened to be there?”

“In the confusion we didn't seem to get it on the record just how you did happen to be there.” The lieutenant's tone was mild. When Johnny failed to answer he continued. “You don't consider it a little bit thick that the girl should be Turner's receptionist?”

“If you've got anything to say, Joe-” Johnny bit off the words-“say it fast.”

Lieutenant Dameron leaned forward in his chair. “Why were you in that girl's apartment?”

“Why, Lieutenant!” Johnny mocked him. “I thought you were a gentleman.”

“What was the information you wanted out of Turner's office you felt that she could get for you?” the big man persisted. “I know you far too well to imagine that it was an accident that you were dating that pipe line.”

“She's a nice kid,” Johnny said quietly. “She's goin' back home, where she belongs.” He stared at the man in the chair. “You've talked to her, Joe. She told you all that. Didn't she tell you what I wanted out of Turner's office?”

The apple cheeks darkened. “She's too damned innocent to know what you were after!” the lieutenant snapped. “And what a wolf like you does with a lamb like that is beyond me!”

“Dear me!” Johnny murmured. “Don't tell me she's going to prefer charges?” He laughed at the big man's irritation.

“He probably made a deal with Turner,” Cuneo threw in coarsely.

Johnny looked at him, then back at Dameron. “Deal? With Turner? You boys don't sound too bright, Joe. Turner's a wheel. He'd make a deal with me?”

Lieutenant Dameron studied Johnny for several seconds, settled back more solidly into the depths of the armchair and folded his arms across his chest. He stared at a point on the wall above and behind Johnny, and when he spoke again his voice was almost neutral. “Ed Keith committed suicide this afternoon,” he said.

Johnny whistled. “On the level? With him I'd have bet it would take someone pushin' the hand that held the razor. So you never know.”

“You never know. He left a couple of notes. He confessed to killing Gidlow.”

“He confessed to killing Gidlow?” Johnny could hear his own voice soaring ridiculously.

“You sound surprised,” Dameron said softly. “You had a candidate?”

“My candidate sure as hell wasn't Ed Keith,” Johnny said emphatically. “Just Gidlow? Not the kid, or Hendricks?”

“Just Gidlow. Keith did it, too.” The lieutenant stopped as though waiting for Johnny to challenge the statement, and when no challenge came he continued. “He wrote it all down very neatly. He lost money he didn't have on that fight, and he went to Gidlow to try to borrow. Gidlow laughed at him. The crusher for Keith was when Gidlow received a call that Keith interpreted as meaning Gidlow had been in on a double cross. He accused Gidlow, who denied it so unconvincingly that Keith lost his head and throttled him. Keith was a big man; when he came out of the fog Gidlow was dead. Keith then did a couple of things rather clever for an amateur. He rigged up the camera, to throw sand in the air, and he called Lonnie Turner and said he'd just walked in on Gidlow's body and that he was getting the hell out of there, and that if Turner had anything of his over there he'd better get it out. He reasoned quite correctly that no one would ever suspect the murderer of making such a call.”

“Who'd he make the other call to?” Johnny asked quickly.

“Other call? What other call?”

“You took the telephone chits outta the hotel,” Johnny reminded him impatiently. “Didn't you even bother to check them?”

“There was no other call of interest,” Lieutenant Dameron said levelly.

Johnny threw up his hands in disgust. “He must anyway have called the police commissioner to establish an alibi, the way you guys are coverin' up.” He thought it over a moment. “I don't get it. He was in the clear on Gidlow, so far anyway, an' he'd finally borrowed the money he needed. Why chuck it now when he'd bridged the gap?”

“He had other troubles, he felt. I told you he left two notes. In the second one he mentioned that he and Dave Hendricks had both bet money on that fight. It was incidental that they didn't have the money they bet; the point was that it was against the rules of what appears to be a little syndicate to which they belonged. It was supposed to be handled centrally, but he and Dave got hungry. When they lost, their scramble to produce the money they needed resulted in their position becoming rather generally known and open to certain interpretation. If not the pattern, certainly the knowledge of the fix was being disclosed by them. Keith felt that Hendricks was killed by the fixer because of this, and that he was next. His nerves were so bad he jumped rather than waiting for the push.”

“Jumped literally?”

“No. Sleeping pills.”

“The easiest suicide to fake,” Johnny remarked cynically.

“There's no question but what it was suicide,” the lieutenant said patiently. He paused for emphasis. “We're back to Turner now.”

“Did Keith name Turner in the note?” Johnny asked instantly. The big man examined him woodenly, and Johnny snorted. “You'll never change, Joe. You think it's Turner, an' you're afraid to go up against him because he's got a couple of dollars.”

“I can do without those wise remarks,” Dameron said coldly. “There were no names mentioned in the note, but I think you'll agree Turner's not the least likely prospect.” He paused again, as though searching for the right words. “We have a little chore for you.”

“I knew damn well you didn't come over here just to sit and gas,” Johnny said with satisfaction. “We gettin' down to the dirt now?”

The lieutenant was leaning forward in his chair again. “Ted's been over talking to the Ybarra girl.” Johnny's glance darted off to Ted Cuneo, who stared back at him impassively. “She claims an insufficient knowledge of English to be able to understand or respond properly. She asked for you as an interpreter.”

“You must have told her you had a dozen at the station,” Johnny said cautiously.

“She made it dear she's not coming to the station, voluntarily. For the time being, at least, we'd prefer to handle it on a co-operative basis.”

“You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Joe. She doesn't know her brother's business.”

“It's always possible she knows more than her brother realizes. The doctors won't let us talk to him just yet, so we'll have to settle for next best. I think this interpreter thing is a stall. You might tell her it's the last stall we're prepared to go along with. She'll talk at our convenience, if she misses this boat.”

Johnny sat irresolutely a moment. The only way he could figure it was that Consuelo at least thought she knew what she was doing. He shrugged, rose and walked to the closet for his coat. “On this you're gonna draw a big, fat zero, Joe,” he predicted.

The big man's smile was wry. “In that case we'll be right in step with the whole operation. Are we ready? Fine.” He pushed himself up on the arms of the chair and glanced from Johnny to Cuneo. “You can reach me at home if you should happen to need me, Ted.”

Detective Ted Cuneo turned to Johnny in the back seat of the cab, after the first fifteen blocks of the ride to Spanish Harlem had been covered in silence. His tone was puzzled. “You're quite a ladies' man, Killain. This Spanish girl-”

“I know her brother,” Johnny cut in.

“-and Turner's receptionist,” the detective continued, unheeding. “You know her brother, too?” His teeth showed whitely against his sallow face. “I might have to ask you for the formula. I haven't seen two back to back like that in years.”

The balance of the ride was made in silence. They pulled in behind another cab in front of the dingy tenement, and Johnny looked out at Rick Manfredi, who was turning from halfway across the sidewalk to study them. The gambler had a long box under his arm, and his eyes flicked from Cuneo to Johnny. His expression darkened angrily, and he strode toward the cab as Johnny got out on the street side and walked around it. “I don't want you around here, Killain!” he said sharply.

“He's here because I brought him here!” Cuneo bristled immediately.

Manfredi shifted his attention to the detective. “I already told you I don't mind your scratching over my back yard, Cuneo, but I don't want you bugging the girl.”

“What the hell are you, a protective association or something?” the detective demanded.

The gambler shifted his box from one arm to the other, ignoring Cuneo's remark. “I'll go with you,” he said flatly.

“You're not going anywhere!” Cuneo's temper was growing short. “Take a walk till you're sent for, sonny!”

Manfredi's voice was steady. “I'm her fiance, Cuneo. There are times you can push me around, but this isn't one of them. Make an issue of it and I'll promise you a wasted trip.”

Cuneo glared at him, undecided, glanced at Johnny standing silently to one side and abruptly started for the iron steps. “Be my guest,” he threw over his shoulder. “All I want right now is to get home to dinner.”

Johnny followed him, and the gambler fell in behind. They mounted the five flights in silence and waited while Cuneo knocked on the door of 5-B. He knocked again more sharply when there was no response and whirled on Manfredi. “So she took a runout!” he grated. The gambler looked surprised, but Johnny pointed silently to the stairs. Cuneo's mottled color faded a little as he listened to the ascending footsteps, and in seconds Consuelo Ybarra's shawled head and shoulders appeared around the final turn as she climbed to the fifth-floor landing.

She looked windblown and breathless. “I 'ad a call to go out,” she managed to get out, and fumbled in her bag. “The key-”

Johnny was startled at the difference in her looks when she got the door open. The first time he had seen her she had been twenty-five and looked eighteen. She looked thirty-five now; the old-womanish shawl blotted out the youthful sheen of her hair, and there were deep lines about her mouth and eyes.

He pushed inside with the rest, and the girl waved them to the room beyond as she pulled off the shawl. “I will take off my coat-”

Rick Manfredi snapped on the light in the semidark inner room and opened the long box he was carrying. He removed two dozen red roses from the swaddling tissue and arranged them in the crook of his arm, a complacent little smile on his round, smooth face. He moved forward to catch Consuelo's attention as she entered. “For you, querida,” he said quickly, and presented his arm with a flourish.

The girl appeared not to have seen the roses as she stood before him with hands knitted in a fold of her skirt. “My Uncle Terry is dead,” she said quietly with an expressionless face. The gambler looked shocked. Ted Cuneo looked puzzled and glanced at Johnny, who kept his attention fastened upon Consuelo Ybarra. “I am jus' from the hospital,” she continued in the same quiet tone. “He spoke to me before he- died.” Rick Manfredi paled, and stood in sudden awkwardness with arm still extended. “He tol' me how you changed the round with Gidlow.” The dark eyes burned upward at the gambler. “An' how you had him beaten when you found out that he knew. You meant to kill him then, and you finally succeeded!”

“No!” Manfredi cried out hoarsely as the girl's hand flashed upward like lightning from its hiding place in her skirt. The glinting metal in her hand slashed him from eyebrow to jaw-line, and he screamed as his arms jerked upward with a reflexive movement that sent the roses to the ceiling. He staggered back a pace as the knife whipped across his face again, and the roses fell on them both. With a guttural sound the gambler brought his hands down in clenched fists upon the girl's head, and she wobbled and fell back against the wall on her knees. The wall held her cruelly upright as the crazed man slammed maniacal punches into the beautiful face, which disappeared in a crimson smear before she pitched forward.

Johnny's hard hands on Rick Manfredi's shoulders jerked the gambler over backward so violently the back of his head hit the floor first. He rolled and rolled like a stricken animal, blood spurting between the hands that were holding the gaping face. A pale-faced Detective Cuneo put himself belatedly in motion and tried to ignore the sounds from the floor as he grabbed up the telephone.

The overpowering scent of crushed roses filled the room.

Johnny swung up into the seat beside the driver as the second ambulance pulled away, and the man behind the wheel glanced sidewise at him curiously. “You there, Jack? Lovers' quarrel?” He shrugged at Johnny's silence. “How's it look, Pauline?” he called over his shoulder.

“Plastic surgery for both,” the woman intern's voice replied matter-of-factly. “This one's not quite as bad as the man.”

Ahead of them the traffic thickened in front of their blinking red light, and the siren steadied down to a prolonged wail.