Doom Service

CHAPTER III

Johnny's key admitted him noiselessly to the apartment, and he moved quietly through the small hallway to the bedroom entrance. Amy was sitting bolt upright in the big wing chair, but her head was down on her shoulder. As he came inside she straightened convulsively, her uniform rustling as she came halfway up out of the chair in the darkness.

“Mist' Johnny?” she asked in a tremulous whisper, and collapsed with a soft sigh at his affirmative grunt. “Hoo- ee! Don' you never sneak up on me like that!” She looked guiltily toward the bed. “She been sleepin' 'bout a hour, now.”

He nodded and, realizing that she couldn't see him in the darkness, walked out into the kitchen and turned on the light. Amy followed, stretching and yawning. “I held a cab for you downstairs,” Johnny told her. “Here.”

“Put you' hand right back in that pocket!” the softly slurred accents demanded indignantly. “This ain't no payin' favor!”

He got her out the door finally and toed off his shoes in the hallway. He loosened his tie and, returning to the bedroom, stood beside the bed and looked down at the small body beneath the covers.

He lit a cigarette, moved the ash tray around to the side of the wing chair and settled down in it to wait out the night.

He listened to his own breathing, the only sound he could hear in the room. At least if Sally wakened she wouldn't be alone…

He awoke suddenly with the gray light of dawn under the shades, a crick in his neck and his left leg disembodied from retarded circulation. He looked instantly to the bed-Sally's slight figure was sitting bolt upright in its center, her blanketed knees drawn up snugly and clasped in her arms. She was hunched forward with her chin resting on her knees, and she was staring straight ahead of her.

Johnny moistened dry lips; he didn't think he had made any movement upon rousing from his uncomfortable doze, but he could see Sally's head turn slightly to look in his direction. He couldn't see her features in the shadows extending out to the bed from the fingers of light at the windows, but he could see the suspicious quivering of the slim shoulders as his eyes focused.

He grunted harshly and hauled himself upright; he hobbled stiffly to the bed, pins and needles stabbing his awakening leg. He reached down and picked her up bodily, blankets and all, and sat down on the edge of the bed with her on his lap. He could feel the near rigidity of the small body in its state of semishock.

When she finally spoke her tone was flat and expressionless. “I don't th-think I really believed it, until I saw you s-sleeping in that chair.” Her voice roughened; a hand crept out of the blankets and closed tightly on his arm. “Charlie,” she whispered. “Oh, Johnny-why Ch-Charlie?”

“Nobody knows why, or when,” he said quietly. He waited a moment as she cried openly into his shirt front, then placed two fingers under her chin. “You gonna be all right now?” He could feel pressure against his fingers when she nodded affirmatively, and her exhaled breath was a long sigh.

“Stretch out here beside me for a little while,” she pleaded. “If I know you're here, I might be able to rest.”

He lifted her up and slid her back into the bed. Then he lay down alongside her, slipped an arm beneath her and pulled a corner of the blanket over himself. In the half darkness he listened to her ragged breathing ease until she was breathing quietly. His own eyes closed several times, but he doggedly forced them open.

When he was sure that she was asleep he removed his arm carefully and inched himself from the bed. He listened again for the gently regular exhalations and shuffled cautiously to the hallway in stockinged feet. He picked up his shoes and put them under his arm.

He eased open the apartment door and closed it quietly from the outside, listening for the click of the automatic lock. He was on one knee tying a shoelace when he heard the elevator doors opening at the end of the corridor. He rose to his feet and examined the two men who emerged and looked about them a little uncertainly. Then the squat, thickset man in the lead advanced upon him purposefully.

“Say, Jack,” he demanded briskly, “which is Miss Fontaine's apartment?”

“Who wants to know?” Johnny asked him. He recognized the squat man but did not actually know him. He'd seen the darkly lopsided features under the close-cropped black hair around the fringes of the fight crowd for years, but had never heard him called anything except Monk.

“Well, now-” Monk started to bristle, and evidently thought better of it. The uniform, Johnny thought; he thinks I work here. “This is Mr. Hartshaw, an attorney,” the squat man said quickly. “He has an appointment with Miss Fontaine.”

Johnny looked briefly at the tall, cadaverous-looking individual in heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a black Homburg that completed his funereal appearance. The tall man had a manila file folder under his right arm, and Johnny took a casual step forward and snaked the folder from beneath Mr. Hartshaw's arm. By the time Mr. Hartshaw was ready to react, Johnny had the folder open and was reading the single legal-looking document within.

“Hey, you!” Monk exclaimed. His tone was ugly.

Johnny transferred his attention from the folder to Monk. “I don't get it, man. A power of attorney? At six in the morning? With her brother dead maybe four hours?” He looked down at the document. “An' who the hell is Albert Munson?”

“Who the hell are you?” Monk demanded angrily, and sidled closer. “Maybe you need a lesson in mindin' your own business?”

Johnny deliberately folded and creased the paper and slipped it into a pocket. He looked at the lawyer. “You know that the kid had a manager? Isn't he the one to see?”

“I'm tellin' you he's got an appointment with Miss Fontaine!” Monk cut in.

“An' I'm tellin' you… shut up!” Johnny told him grimly, and returned his attention to the lawyer. “Well?”

“Why, ah-I was-it was said-” His high-pitched voice hesitated. “I'm to represent Miss Fontaine.”

“Not today, Hartshaw.” The tall man looked incredulous, and Johnny raised his voice. “Rack it up and drag it outta here, man. You're not representin' anyone. Blow.”

Mr. Hartshaw closed his slightly gaping mouth and stalked off injuredly in the direction of the elevator, turning once to look back over his shoulder en route.

“Now just a minute, damn you!” Menace hung heavy in Monk's rasping tone; his hands were bunched massively as he advanced gloweringly upon Johnny.

“You come right ahead, Monk,” Johnny invited him, moving away from the wall.

The mention of his name stopped the squat man. He licked his lips rapidly. “You know me, hah?” he mumbled. He stood stiffly, obviously reviewing his instructions; then he sullenly unbundled his fists and tramped to the elevator in the wake of the lawyer. Johnny followed him.

“These two are just leavin', Carlo,” he said to the slim, dark-haired operator when the doors opened. The boy looked surprised at the sight of Johnny; he looked hurriedly at his passengers as they entered, and the look changed to apprehension.

Johnny reached in and casually removed a folded bill from the small breast pocket of the operator's uniform. “A five spot,” he said musingly. “You buy cheap, Carlo.” He smiled into the cab at the boy; deliberately he tore the bill into confetti. “Easy come, easy go, huh, kid?” Suddenly he leaned in again toward the good-looking boy, who backed away guiltily, and his voice hardened. “The next time you let someone con you into takin' 'em up here without goin' through the switchboard first, I'll hang you out to dry. Understand?”

The boy swallowed hard. “S-sure, Johnny. Sure.”

“Then run these rats outta here. Hose down the lobby afterward an' cut down on the smell.”

Above the faint hum of the descending elevator Johnny could hear Monk's furious bark. “What in the hell is his name?” Johnny doubted somehow that another five-dollar bill went with the answer. It looked like a poor day for Carlo.

Johnny glanced up at the lobby clock as he pushed his way in through the foyer doors, and his attention was distracted at once by the sight of Detective James Rogers standing, overcoat on arm, to the left of the newsstand. From behind a half-raised paper, he was unobtrusively studying the passengers entering and emerging from the elevators. The detective laid the newspaper down on the counter as Johnny approached him. “Been watching for you, Johnny.”

Johnny's grunt was pure skepticism. “Among others?”

The detective's smile was unabashed. “There's Gidlow. He hasn't shown yet. Otherwise, I'm just practicing.”

“Your no-good partner home feedin' milk to his ulcer?”

“My partner,” Detective Rogers said crisply, “is out on a job of work.”

“Good for him. What's his beef with me, Jimmy?”

“Could it be that he feels you have no respect for authority?”

“I should change the spots on this leopard just to humor him? Him and Dameron. May their tribe decrease.”

“Speaking of-angels-” the slender man remarked, and cut his eyes toward the lobby chairs. Johnny turned in time to see Lieutenant Joseph Dameron's bulk propel itself upward from the depths of the largest chair and walk toward them.

“Morning, Johnny,” the lieutenant rumbled in a powerhouse boom that turned heads in the lobby. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with apple cheeks and iron gray hair that nearly matched the frosty tint of his eyes.

“Mornin', Joe,” Johnny acknowledged; neither man offered to shake hands. He nodded down at the black blare of the headline at the newsstand counter: fighter slain in tavern holdup. “This little caper got the brass out plowin' up the streets, too?”

“There's a couple of things,” the big man said vaguely. He gestured in the direction of the elevators. “Can we talk upstairs?” Johnny motioned them into an unoccupied cab and took the controls himself. In the elevator the lieutenant spoke again, in dry tones, with the fluid lingual grace of the polished public speaker. “I'd have had Jimmy ask you to drop by the station house, but I thought he might need a warrant if you were having one of your bad days.”

“He has any other kind?” the detective asked solemnly.

The ruddy-faced lieutenant's smile was wintry. “I decided I'd be better off coming over myself.”

Johnny looked over his shoulder as he halted the cab at the sixth floor. “That's a switch, Joe, your bein' able to decide somethin'.” He winked at Detective Rogers. “You always used to have such a hard time makin' up your mind. Like the time we was holed up for three days in an ice storm in a cottage in the Pyrenees, an' you couldn't decide whether the mother was better than the daughter.”

The apple cheeks darkened, and the lieutenant's stare passed from Johnny to the wooden-faced detective. “Officially you never heard that, Rogers,” he growled.

Johnny led the way to 615 and unlocked the door. “The trouble with your job nowadays,” he needled, “is that you do too much pitchin' an' not enough catchin'. You ought to drop around more often an' slop a little swill with the rest of us hogs.”

The lieutenant was silent; inside he eyed with grudging appreciation the attractively furnished oversized bed-sitting room, with its wall-to-wall deep pile carpeting and the three-quarter-sized refrigerator tucked neatly in a corner. “Damned if I don't like this a little better each time I see it,” he said gruffly. He ran an appraising eye over the gray-green Segonzac on the opposite wall, and the corners of his hard mouth turned upward. “I'm a cinch to outlive you, Johnny, the way you pace yourself. Why don't you will this to me, the same way Willie Martin left it to you?”

“An' give you a motive for gettin' rid of me, along with an inclination? I might not fit in a round hole, Joe, but I'm not that square, either. I don't own nothin' here yet, anyway; the new owners have gone to court over that clause in the will.”

Lieutenant Dameron raised an eyebrow. “I thought Willie went to a little trouble to plug that loophole?”

“That's why these corporations have lawyers.” Johnny nodded at the leather-covered armchairs. “Park it, you guys.” He seated himself on the edge of the bed. “These people caught the estate lawyers so hungry for a buyer they agreed to a transfer without prejudice as to the clause favorin' me, which meant they were entitled to go into court an' try to tip it over.”

“And you've got the expense of fighting it?”

Johnny shook his head. “Willie even thought of that. If it's contested, my legal expenses come right off the top of the estate, just like the room and the furnishings here.” He looked over at the two men in their chairs. “They'd have held still for the furnishings-it was the room that bugged them. Nobody ever heard of a hotel room bein' willed to someone before. They can't find any precedents.”

“They haven't tried to buy you off?” Detective Rogers asked.

“They tried,” Johnny admitted. “I blew that fuse for them, fast. If Willie wanted me to have this place, nobody's gonna muscle me out of it.”

Lieutenant Dameron looked around the room reminiscently. “You and Willie,” he said softly. “God help me, the gray hair you two gave me. In an operation that above all things demanded discretion-” He shook his head in remembered disbelief.

“Discretion didn't always get the job done, Joe,” Johnny replied. “Which brings us up to right now. What you bein' discreet about these days?”

“This business this morning-”

“Before we get into the double talk,” Johnny interrupted, “just what do you think actually happened over at the Rollin' Stone?”

“The newspapers had a rather full account, I thought. A bit sensationalized, but of course that's what sells newspapers.”

“Joe, this is Johnny. You don't believe the newspapers, or what the hell are you doing sittin' here?”

“There were certain aspects-”

“Bag it, Joe. Tell it to someone who doesn't know you.”

The gray eyes examined him frostily. “We have time to listen to your version, if you have one.”

“You won't like it. My version is that the kid was murdered by two gunmen sent to do that specific job.”

“You know you can't prove that!” The heavy voice was edged. “I just can't buy it, Johnny.”

“So don't buy it,” Johnny replied indifferently. “It'll sell itself to you. Just remember I said so.”

“I hope I don't have to warn you about withholding information,” the big man said icily. “I want to know what you know. Right now.”

Johnny laughed shortly. “You always get what you want?”

Lieutenant Dameron's hands closed down tightly on the arms of his chair. “By God, I'll-”

“Easy, Joe, easy.” Johnny rose to his feet leisurely and looked down at the man in the chair. “What did you bring over here for me? Not a damn echo, even. That's why for you I got nothing, in spades. I don't work one-way streets.” He made a production of looking at his watch. “You're abusin' my hospitality, boys.”

Detective Rogers rose, looking uncomfortable, but the steely gray eyes of the man in the armchair glared up at Johnny for five seconds before the lieutenant heaved himself to his feet. Without a word he strode to the door and flung it open. In the second that Johnny had Jimmy Rogers' sole attention he silently mouthed, “Come on back.” He received a quick affirmative nod before the slender man followed his superior from the room.

Johnny closed the door behind them and lit a cigarette. He stretched out on his back on the bed, and thought about the reason for the visit, never disclosed. Experimentally, he blew smoke rings at the ceiling; but, seeing they were all lopsided, he gave it up. He had stubbed out the cigarette when the knock came at the door, and he admitted a weary-looking Detective James Rogers.

“Man, oh, man!” the sandy-haired man exclaimed feelingly. “I know you don't like him, but do you mind making your point some time when I'm not around to get the rebuttal?” He probed at both ears.

“He's gone?”

“Fortissimo, he's gone. Now why am I back up here?”

“You know why you're back up here. I'll tell you what I wouldn't tell that big monkey just slammed outta here. From you just possibly I might get somethin' one of these days. Now listen.” Naming no names, Johnny swiftly gave his interpretation of the fixed fight and the deaths in the tavern as he now reconstructed them.

“Where did you learn all this?” Detective Rogers bristled.

“You practicin' to sound like Dameron? You ought to know there's people will talk to me won't talk to the police.”

“We'd had rumors on that fight,” the detective admitted. “The lieutenant's afraid of an investigation. Every time there's an investigation of a sporting event, the police department winds up in the middle of a political weight-throwing contest.”

“So good old Joe was out scoutin' the ground figurin' the safest way to lean?”

“It's hardly likely there'll be an investigation now, with the boy dying a hero, as far as the newspapers are concerned. Who wants to try to make any hay bucking those headlines?” Detective Rogers looked at Johnny thoughtfully. “I can't understand how you get away with it with the lieutenant.”

Johnny grinned. “You think I got somethin' on him? Not a damn thing, except in his own mind. Joe fought a good, tight war over there, but the rat holes we was sent to plug had to be handled in a way sometimes you wouldn't want to mention at a political rally. Joe knows that I don't give a damn, an' he's afraid I'll open my mouth in the wrong place an' run his dirty underwear up to the top of the mast along with mine.” He kept his tone casual. “Say, you know anyone named Munson?”

“Only Al Munson, Lonnie Turner's press agent,” the detective said absently. “He fixes me up with a ticket every now and then.” His attention sharpened. “What's with Munson?”

“Had a message from someone by that name,” Johnny said easily. “That's probably the one. Turner promoted that fight, didn't he? It's probably about the check for the kid's end.”

“Roketenetz hadn't been paid?”

“Hadn't been time, Jimmy.”

“He had thirty-eight hundred and a few dollars on him when we-brought him in,” the slender man said slowly.

Johnny whistled. “You just this minute held your own fight investigation, didn't you? Not that there was ever any doubt, if you saw it. This Gidlow-the kid's manager — haven't I heard that he's in Turner's pocket?”

“I've heard stories.” Jimmy Rogers tugged at an ear lobe exasperatedly. “I'd like to talk to Gidlow. I've got lines out for him all over town, but he doesn't show.”

“You sure he's not upstairs?”

“He'd better not be upstairs. I've called up there fifteen times since two-thirty this morning.”

“Jake's got a gizmo disconnects his phone when he doesn't want to be bothered,” Johnny said. He removed his wallet and from a hidden compartment took out the illegal brass passkey. “You could scratch the suite off your entries right now, Jimmy.”

“I wouldn't have a leg to stand on,” Detective Rogers said.

“I'll open the door, an' if he's in there I'll double talk him about the floor below complainin' about noise. Once you know he's there you can make him open up.”

“I'm getting into bad habits associating with you,” the slender man said wryly. “All right. Come on, before I change my mind.”

Johnny led the way cheerfully to the service elevator, ran them up to the tenth floor and anchored the cab with a slab of wood. With Detective Rogers a self-conscious dozen yards away, Johnny knocked sharply three times on the door of 1020, the corner room entrance to Jake Gidlow's three-room suite. At the pervading silence he glanced sardonically at the detective and removed the key from his pocket.

“Let's give this some semblance of legitimacy,” the detective said quickly. He advanced upon the door and repeated Johnny's triple knock. “Gidlow! This is Detective Rogers! Open this door!”

“You an' your conscience,” Johnny grunted in disgust.

“You'll never get a peep outta him now.” With his toe he pointed at the base of the door. “See that?”

The sandy-haired man stared down at the bright strip of light in evidence under the sill. “So he's in there,” he said softly. From an inside breast pocket he removed a small oilskin package, which resolved itself into a two-hinged, three-sided magnifying glass of varying strengths. He knelt swiftly and applied it to the keyhole.

“Now there's a handy gadget,” Johnny approved.

“Room brightly lighted,” Detective Rogers said, and was silent. He rose finally with a peculiar expression on his face. “There's a thread running from the door to a corner I can't see.”

“A thread?” Johnny repeated incredulously. “Mmmm- from the back of the room a half-choked shotgun would get most of the door area.” Detective Rogers looked doubtful. “Okay,” Johnny continued rapidly. “It's a bum guess, you think. Let's take the guess out of it. Get down on the floor over there, out of line.” He dropped down himself, and bellied up to the wall. He reached up, inserted his key gently and looked over at the prostrate overcoated figure on the other side of the door. “Here we go, Jimmy,” he said softly, and, with his left hand, the only part of him in front of the door, turned the key and pushed in the same movement. He snatched his hand back at once as the door swung open.

Silence. Complete and utter silence…

Johnny pushed himself away from the wall and scrambled to his knees, but Detective Rogers was already up and inside. When Johnny reached him the slender man was already bending over the purple-faced gargoyle half sitting, half reclining in a corner of the upholstered divan, one hand precariously balancing an expensive-looking camera on the broad divan arm.

“You were right about one thing,” the detective said crisply. “I'll never get a peep out of him now.” He lifted an arm and watched it fall back rigidly. “Dead twelve to eighteen hours,” he said quietly, and walked to the telephone.