Doom Service

CHAPTER VI

Johnny leaned his elbow impatiently on Mickey Tallant's mahogany bar and pushed an empty glass around in the wet circles on the bar surface with a stiff forefinger. He caught the tavern owner's eye as the Irishman trotted heavily up and down the duckboards assuaging the before-closing thirst of his customers. “Thought you said he made it every night, Mick?”

“So he makes a liar outta me.” Mickey Tallant wiped off his streaming red face with the skirt of his apron. “I don't remember the last time he missed.”

Johnny shrugged, “Well, the hell with it. I've waited long enough.” He pushed away from the bar. “See you, Mick.” He was within half a dozen paces of the front door when it opened to admit Manuel Ybarra. “Hey, boy!” Johnny greeted him. “Been waitin' for you.”

A curious expression flitted over the dark features. “You took Consuelo home? She is all right?”

“Sure she's all right,” Johnny agreed, and mentally ground to a halt as he recalled the condition of the chain latch on the Ybarra apartment door. He thrust it aside. Let Consuelo do her own explaining; she was a big girl now. He looked at Manuel more closely. “You look a little shook, amigo.”

“Nothing too much,” the dark man replied with a shrug of the thick shoulders. “A friend of mine was-had an accident. I am jus' from the hospital.”

“Oh. Automobile?”

“No. You have been waiting long?”

“Not too long.” Johnny drew him aside from the traffic around the front door. “You're a friend of Rick Manfredi, Manuel. I'd like to talk to him.”

Manuel studied him soberly. “I do not know about this.”

Johnny grinned. “Another friend of Rick's said she thought I might like him.”

“Consuelo talks too much,” Consuelo's brother said wryly. He appeared to be considering. “I don't think so, my friend. Remember, I have seen you in the tavern that night. You are too much the disposition of the man who energetically climbs the mountain to take the punch at the echo. I want no trouble with Rick.”

“Where's the trouble?” Johnny argued. “I just want to talk to him. Why's he hidin' out?”

“He is not an easy man to put the thumb on. He has an all-night poker game which he moves to a different location each night.” Manuel pursed his lips; he looked at Johnny again, then up at the wall clock, obviously undecided. “If I brought you, he might not speak to you. Rick preaches the minding of the own business.”

“You get me two minutes with him,” Johnny said confidently. “He'll talk to me.”

“At least he can decide for himself,” Manuel acknowledged. “You are ready?”

“Right now.”

“We will need a cab.” The dark man rebuttoned his overcoat. “Tonight the game is downtown.” On the sidewalk he turned north, then east at the first intersection. “More cabs on Seventh,” he said to Johnny over his shoulder. “It's not-”

“Watch it!” Johnny interrupted sharply as two bulky figures stepped out into their path from a tailor shop doorway. The nearer figure shouldered roughly between Manuel and Johnny, herding Johnny to the building wall. “Sit still, pal,” he growled warningly. “It's this one we're gonna talk to.” He jerked his head over his shoulder, and half turned to watch. “Hurry it up, Cy.”

Beyond the overcoated shoulder Johnny could see the shine of brass knuckles as Cy, without speaking a word, swung heavily at Manuel. The blow landed high on his cheekbone, and the dark man staggered backward. When he regained his balance he stood motionless, his hands at his sides, and as Cy moved in on him again Johnny lowered his head and butted the man in front of him, hard, between abdomen and breastbone. The man's breath escaped in a whistling sigh, and he doubled over slowly, twisting into the wall. With his back to it he slithered in little spurts to the ground, his heels making scrabbling noises on the sidewalk. At the sound Cy turned sharply away from Manuel, his broad, pock-marked face alert. “Askin' for it, bud? Any old time.”

He moved lithely toward Johnny, a thin-bladed knife materializing in his left hand. Johnny unbuttoned the two bottom buttons of his overcoat and bounded eighteen inches straight up into the air. From this altitude he unleashed a doubled-up right knee, and the sole of his shoe caught the oncoming Cy explosively at the junction of neck and shoulder and landed him on his back in the street. The recoil slammed Johnny's shoulders back against the wall; fifteen yards away approaching footsteps halted, and two men crossed the street hurriedly. Back on balance, Johnny turned to the man on hands and knees on the sidewalk.

“No!” Manuel exclaimed harshly when he sensed Johnny's intention.

“No?” Johnny barked incredulously. “You crazy?”

The ex-fighter took his arm. “We mus' get away from here,” he said resolutely. “Come.” Reluctantly Johnny permitted himself to be towed down the street; at that hour the few pedestrians were as carefully incurious as the first two, and there was no outcry from behind them. By turning his head Johnny could see the thin trickle of blood oozing from the blue welt on Manuel's impassive face.

“Man, you're outta your head,” Johnny steamed. “With your eyes like they are, how many knucks shots you think you can take before the lights go out for good?”

“I think you know there mus' be a reason,” the dark man replied patiently. He looked at Johnny curiously. “Where did you learn la savate?”

“Marseilles,” Johnny said shortly. “On the street in overcoat weather your hands are no good.”

“My hands, perhaps,” Manuel Ybarra said significantly. At the corner of Seventh Avenue he looked north for a cruising cab. “Never have I seen a more formidable bull in the plaza, my friend.” White teeth flashed in a smile as he turned again, and then the smile faded. “You gored them most prettily, yet almost-” He hesitated-“almost I wish I had been alone.”

He raised an arm, and a block and a half north a cab accelerated and darted toward them at the curb. “But why the sittin' duck act?” Johnny demanded. “You could have taken him.”

“I made a mistake with a dangerous man, amigo. If his men had punched out the little debt on Manuel, it might prevent the unhealthy mind of him from turning to the idea of repayment through Manuel's sister.”

“Is that right?” Johnny said with interest. “That puts you in the same club as a guy I know.” He stepped down from the curb into the cab. “It was Manfredi you made the mistake with?” he asked as the thick-shouldered man crowded in beside him.

“Rick?” Manuel turned to stare in surprise. “Rick is my friend!” He said it proudly. He leaned back in his corner of the cab, dabbling at the purpling bruise on his cheek with a handkerchief. “You meant it of the best, and Manuel Ybarra does not forget,” he said with a flat finality that closed the conversation. The hum of the tires was the only sound in the cab for the balance of the downtown ride.

Johnny rose from the shabby chair in the sitting room of the second-rate hotel suite as Manuel entered from the room beyond with a chubby, moon-faced man with short, curly hair. In the second before the door closed behind them, Johnny had a fleeting glimpse through a smoky haze of intent, soft-hatted men circled about a green-baize table top.

Manuel introduced them. “Rick Manfredi, Johnny Killain.”

Johnny shook a soft, plump hand that retained a surprising firmness in its grip. Manfredi wore an eggshell-white silk shirt with a buttoned-down collar, a bolo tie whose tips glittered with something more than glass, a green velvet smoking jacket, tan slacks and Italian shoes with very pointed toes.

“Glad to meet you, Killain,” the gambler said genially. “Any friend of Manuel's-” He waved a hand. He had a wide, boyish smile, and his youth surprised Johnny; Manfredi must still be in his early twenties, he thought, although the dark eyes in the smooth, olive face looked as though they had been around considerably longer.

The chubby man turned back to Manuel. “I didn't want to ask you inside,” he said in Spanish. “How is he?” He moved to one side to get a better look. “And what's the matter with your face?”

“He is-fair,” Manuel replied in English with a significant glance at Johnny. “The face is nothing.”

“You speak Spanish?” the gambler asked Johnny, surprised. “Yeah?” He smiled broadly. “Good joke on me.” A fleshy hand fumbled in the breast pocket of the smoking jacket and removed a slim panatela. “Try one?” Johnny accepted the cigar and stripped the cellophane from it. Rick Manfredi did the same for its twin after Manuel had refused it. Johnny bowed his head to accept the proffered light from an initialed gold cigar lighter with a big, steady flame. “My mother was Spanish,” Rick Manfredi said almost absently as he rotated the tip of his cigar in the flame, drew on it until he had it going to his satisfaction, and flipped off and pocketed the lighter. He exhaled a thin cloud of blue smoke.

“Good cigar,” Johnny told him.

“Ought to be, what I pay for 'em.” The gambler waved Johnny back into his chair. “You didn't come over here to compliment me on my cigars. What's on your mind?”

“I'm here stoolin' for the police,” Johnny said.

An opaque film seemed to descend over the dark eyes. “Now there's an openin' line I don't seem to have run across before,” Rick Manfredi said softly. His glance at Manuel was expressionless.

“This I have not heard before,” Manuel admitted wryly.

“Jimmy Rogers couldn't locate you,” Johnny said easily.

“I know Rogers,” the chubby gambler said warily. “I'd talk to him. I think.” He stabbed at Johnny with the cigar. “Just where the hell do you wire into Rogers?” he demanded in a hard tone.

“Roketenetz was the kid brother of a good friend of mine. I'd like to find out who killed him. Or had him killed.”

Manfredi looked skeptical until he encountered Manuel's confirming nod. For a count of twenty he thought it over; then his head moved fractionally and Manuel left the room quietly by another door. The gambler seated himself, crossed his legs and made a thorough inspection of Johnny in the chair opposite. “I could be makin' a mistake talkin' to you, Killain,” he said finally. “I wouldn't like to find out later that I had.” The dark eyes were like twin bits of quartz. “If Manuel says you're all right, you're all right, see? But you better be all right.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I don't want no beef with Rogers I can help. Now. How did I get into the act?”

“It's all over town you dropped a ton on the kid to go by the fourth. Since he didn't, it could leave you with an itch.”

“Not that kind of an itch, mister. I'm a gambler, not a hood. I've made losin' bets before. You got me wrong, you an' Rogers, too. I don't go for that kind of action.” He gestured impatiently. “Now this damn fight. I got no use for fights, see? I was touted onto the thing, an' I got burned. I should've known better. That's all there is to it.”

“But you're makin' like hard to find,” Johnny said quietly.

“So I'll tell you,” the gambler said resignedly, “an' you can believe it or don't. I'm clean, where it counts. The fix was in, see? The kid was supposed to go in the fourth. That's from next door to the horse's mouth. I didn't fix it, and I don't know who did, but I had the program. Like I said, it's not my game-horses and cards are my action-but when you get it like that, what're you gonna do? I went but good. So it didn't come off. I was touted in the first place against my better judgment. With fights I'm through. Right?”

“Still no reason to hide,” Johnny observed.

The gambler grimaced. “Like the hog that I am, I bet too much. Nobody bets like that unless they think they know somethin'. Whoever rigged it originally-an', so help me, I never did know-must've decided to show me they didn't appreciate my tryin' to freeload. A couple of little things have happened that made me decide I'd just as soon let things quiet down.”

“You figure they put on a special for you an' changed the round?”

“At first I thought so,” Rick Manfredi admitted. “But after a fight like that it's never too hard to find out which way the big money went. It all went the same way I did. Nobody made a dime but the slobs.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I don't know what happened. As it stands, somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to lose some money.”

“Maybe it was the kid's own idea, an' they gunned him for takin' it to the sixth.”

“They had a better reason than that. A real investigation, with no cuffs on, could've burned up a few licenses.”

“Maybe Gidlow tried to pull a double cross, an' that's why he bought himself a cold slab,” Johnny said.

Rick Manfredi held his nose. “Gidlow was a wart. I don't know why he got it, but it was too good for him.” The gambler stirred uneasily in his chair and looked at the door. “I've got to get back inside.”

“Good game?”

“Fair.” The chubby man looked at Johnny speculatively. “Whyn't you drop around some night an' get your feet wet?”

“Too rich for my blood.”

“Only a couple times a month, probably. Manuel always knows where to find me. I got a dozen, fifteen fleabags like this willin' to let me roost a night for double the rate. Keepin' the game on the trot discourages the cops, both kinds, an' it don't give the heisters much of a shot, either.” In a hurry a second before, he leaned back expansively and smiled as though at some secret joke. “You know Manuel's sister, Consuelo?”

“I've met her.”

Rick Manfredi beamed. “A great kid.” Bosses me around like I was a four-year-old. She picked out these clothes.” He glanced down at himself almost in surprise. “'Course to her I'm a juvenile delinquent, but I'm a friend of her brother's. Hell, Killain, I needed someone like her to show me the score. I been out on this town since I was fourteen, I mean twenty hours a day, the next race, the next game, the next bet. I'd walk up the street with four, five thousand in my kick an' no seat to my pants. Who had time for clothes?” He laughed at himself comfortably. “To her I'm still a jerk, but anyways a better dressed jerk.” He rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and his voice changed. “You tell Rogers what I told you. If he finds out any different — about me, I mean-I'll kiss his butt in the Garden lobby.” He stood up abruptly. “Don't be a stranger.”

“I might cash that ticket, Rick.”

In the room beyond Manuel joined Johnny silently, and in the corridor waiting for the elevator he shook his head. “In the china shop, seizor, you are not an easy man on the nerves.”

“Whose side were you on back there, Manuel?”

“Do not make the mistake,” Manuel warned him. “I have not forgotten la savate on the street, but Rick is my friend from a long while. He comes first.” The white teeth glinted suddenly. “Still, it's jus' as well I did not 'ave to choose.”

The subdued illumination furnished by the filigreed hurricane lamps in the Copper Bowl Cocktail Lounge discreetly shaded the weary five o'clock faces in the booths about them, but Johnny noticed that Stacy Bartlett's fresh young complexion needed no such assistance. The girl was sitting bolt upright across from him, slim fingers idling with the stem of the glass of her pink Clover Club, her eyes roaming booths and room, plainly determined to miss nothing.

“It's such a nice place, really,” she said finally, with a little sigh. “Even if everyone is drinking. It's a shame a girl can't come to a nice place like this by herself sometimes.”

“Some do,” Johnny told her.

“I know,” she admitted. Her glance shifted to the end of the bar where half a dozen well-glazed females with elaborate hair-dos mingled on the bar stools with dark-suited males. “I'm afraid I couldn't compete.”

“In attitude, maybe.”

“Well… thanks.” Her color bloomed. “It must take- practice.” She blushed anew at the sound of her own words. “Isn't that Dr. McDevitt?” she asked hurriedly, nodding at the other end of the bar.

“Who's Dr. McDevitt?” Johnny inquired, not intending to be distracted by this offering. In the direction indicated he caught sight of the dapper, pink-cheeked man he had seen in Lonnie Turner's office. “Oh, him. The man who says 'no' to your boss.”

“And that's Mr. Keith with him,” Stacy continued. Johnny's glance moved along to take in the bulk of the crew-cut sportswriter.

“He spend much time at Lonnie's?” he asked the girl.

“He helps out on various things when Mr. Munson's busy,” she explained.

I wonder, Johnny thought. I wonder if Ed Keith has anyone looking over his shoulder when he writes his column. Or thinks he might have…

Stacy Bartlett placed her elbows on the table top as she leaned forward to command Johnny's full attention. “You don't think too highly of us at the office, do you?” she accused him.

“Present company excepted, sis.” He shrugged under the steady gaze of the brown eyes. “That's a different breed of cats over there from what you're used to down on the farm. I'd remember it, was I you.”

“They've all treated me very nicely,” she said loyally. “Even Monk-”

“Even Monk?” Johnny interjected into her confused pause. He examined her searchingly. “You don't like Monk?”

“He doesn't bother me,” she said hastily, but she was pink again. “Mr. Turner was very much provoked with you the other day,” she continued quickly.

“Mr. Turner needs to watch his blood pressure,” Johnny said. “How'd you hear about it?”

“Oh, I always do. Eventually.”

Is that right, now, Johnny thought. He looked from the girl to the bar. “Didn't I hear somethin' about an accident to someone in the crowd?” he asked casually.

“It wasn't an accident. Terry Chavez was mugged by a gang of thugs right on the sidewalk.” Johnny turned his head in time to receive the indignant candle power of the brown eyes. “And Al says the police haven't been able to find out a thing. We sent a basket of fruit over to him this afternoon.”

Terry Chavez, Johnny thought. Charlie Roketenetz's trainer. A white-haired, lean, half-Mexican, half-Indian old man with the reputation of never, using three words when two would do. Johnny's mind leaped ahead. Could it have been Chavez whom Manuel had been to see in the hospital and about whose health Rick Manfredi had inquired in Spanish? It was on the tip of Johnny's tongue to ask the girl if she knew Manfredi, but he decided against it. In her innocence she might repeat something at the office that could get her in trouble-along with a few other people. Johnny thought grimly to himself that trouble seemed to be using Lonnie Turner's office as a clearing house.

He sought to get the afternoon back on the rails. “It was real nice of you to let me rob the cradle today, baby.”

“Rob the cradle!” the girl repeated with distaste. “Do I look like an infant?”

“Not by a hundred forty pounds, kid.”

She looked unmollified. “I'm free, white-”

“An' almost twenty-one,” he interrupted her. “I know. Not to change the subject, but now that you're a member in good standin' of the wicked world, when you havin' me to dinner over at your place?”

“You know I can't do that!” she said in surprise.

“Can't cook, huh?”

“Certainly I can cook!”

“Then what's the hitch? Monday night? Tuesday?”

She nibbled at her lower lip. “You-hurry me along too quickly,” she complained.

“You got to run nowadays just to keep up. What's the harm in a home-cooked meal an' a little sofa-wrestlin' afterwards?”

“There'll be no sofa-wrestling,” she replied with dignity. “And one more remark like that and there'll be no home-cooked meal.”

“Baby, you can give me the ground rules when I get up to bat,” Johnny told her. He looked around for the waiter. “Tomorrow? Tuesday?”

“You're hopeless,” she replied primly. “I don't know why I listen to you.”

“My unbounded charm.” He grinned at her. “Well? Chicken?”

She flushed, but was silent as the waiter approached and Johnny paid the check. “Make it Tuesday,” she said abruptly when he had gone and Johnny was assisting her on with her coat.

“I wouldn't kid you, Stacy,” he said softly. “I can hardly wait.” On the way out he took her the long way around, out of sight of the end of the bar at which they had seen Dr. McDevitt and Ed Keith.