Doom Service

CHAPTER VII

In the apartment's tiny kitchen Johnny mixed a moderate rye highball and carried it in to Sally in the big armchair in the living room.

“I just wish you'd stop babying me!” she protested as he handed her the glass, a hint of exasperation in her tone. “I'm perfectly all right!”

“Sure you are,” Johnny agreed. Physically, maybe, he thought. The pleasantly small features still looked drawn. That particular note in her voice, though… He bent down over the chair and slipped his hands about her slender waist. “Watch the glass,” he warned her as he picked her up and sat down in the chair with her in his lap. “By God, Ma, in wartime you'd be classified as a dangerous weapon. A man could cut himself on those ribs.”

“Only notarized complaints accepted, sir,” she answered placidly.

“Good thing one kind of meat sticks to your bones.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder. “What's that?”

“Me.”

“Hush, man.” She took a sip from the highball and replaced the glass on the table beside the chair. “I don't know why it is men feel they always have to talk about things!”

“Our braggin' natures, Ma.” He tipped up her chin to examine the still-shadowed brown eyes, which regarded him steadily. “'Course a man should really shake down the furnace once in a while to make good on his brag,” he continued thoughtfully, and stood up with Sally in his arms, alert to the first faint movement of negation. It never came. When her hands did tighten on his shoulders, he found that they were attuned to a familiar wave length.

In the bedroom he slid her easily to her feet and turned her about like a mannequin as he unzipped her. She stood passively as he whisked her out of dress, slip and underwear and speedily removed his own things. Over her shoulder in the vanity mirror he admired the slim, glowing pallor of her body, and, sensing what he was doing, she half-twisted within the circle of his arms to see.

“Voyeur!” she charged breathlessly, and lunged up against him as she tried to dodge the big palm she could see about to descend on her small ivory buttock. She yipped at the crack of his hand and rebounded, only to be engulfed again in the big arms. He whirled her aloft and over to the bed, afire with the silken feel of her, and then his strong hands gathered her in for the harvest.

“Nice… to have you… back with us, Ma-”

He awakened from a light doze to find himself alone on the bed with a blanket thrown over him. He rolled onto his back and stretched mightily, digging his toes luxuriantly into the sheets. Up on an elbow, he looked about him expectantly. “Hey, Sally!”

Before the sound of his voice died away she appeared in the bedroom doorway with a tray in her hands. She wore a robe of Johnny's hitched up at the middle and bloused over the cord, with the cuffs turned back three or four times.

“You'd be a sensation on the Avenue in that outfit,” he told her lazily. “You look like a pregnant monk.” He sat up, examined the contents of the tray and nodded approvingly at the bottled beer and the outsized ham, cheese and onion sandwiches on thick, black rye bread. “Now you're readin' my mind, Ma.”

“Never too difficult,” she informed him. She sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed back the huge sleeves of the robe. “The Killain war cry is food, women and trouble.” She smiled as she poured a glass of beer for herself; Johnny already had a bottle in his hand. “Not necessarily in that order, of course. More properly, shouldn't it be women, trouble and food?”

Johnny ignored her comfortably and, leaning forward, took a large bite from the sandwich Sally had selected for herself. “Mmmmm! Boy, those onions really got some zing to 'em, haven't they?”

“Like the man that bought them?” she asked lightly, and laughed at his expression. A look of surprise came over her face as she sobered. “You know, I think that's the first time I've laughed since-”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Don't backslide on me, now,”

“Don't worry.” She drew a long breath. “I haven't forgotten it, but I guess I've accepted it. I can talk about it. Now.” She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the bed. “And that reminds me. What am I going to do about that money Lieutenant Dameron was over here asking questions about?”

“Spend it on me,” he advised her, and started on his second bottle of beer.

“But it's ridiculous!” She bounced up and down on the bed in her vehemence. “It's not Charlie's money! He never had any money! He borrowed seventy-five dollars from me to help pay his last year's taxes.”

“Don't spill the beer, Ma. Whose money is it, then? I never saw Jake Gidlow in his life he didn't need a clean shirt. It don't add up that it's his money.”

She was watching him closely. “You think you know whose it is, don't you?” He hesitated a second too long. “You do, don't you?”

“I know whose it could be,” he amended.

“Well, tell him to come and get it as soon as the police release it, and have them stop bothering me about it.” She sounded very determined, and Johnny smiled at her for an instant before he turned serious.

“Look, Sally. I don't think anyone can afford to claim this money. Gidlow was probably hiding it out for someone to keep it away from the tax people, an' whoever claims it now is claimin' a fine and a jail sentence at the same time.”

He had lost her attention. “Johnny, is there-is there going to be an investigation of the fight?”

“Nobody seems to think so now,” he replied. “Nobody-” He stopped. He didn't want to say, “Nobody to testify.”

“Well, I hope there isn't!” Sally said violently. She tossed her head at his look of surprise. “I don't care! It couldn't bring Charlie back. It would just s-smear him forever, and if he th-threw that old fight it was because they m-made him!”

Tears glistened in her eyes, but Johnny realized they were tears of anger. “What a little old fire-eater you are, Ma,” he said fondly, and she ducked her head down on his shoulder.

“I don't care!” she repeated, but less forcefully. Over her shoulder Johnny studied the wall thoughtfully. The whole damn thing didn't make sense. There had to be one hell of a twist in there somewhere. The kid had lost the fight- taken the most arrant dive-and been killed anyway. Gidlow had been killed-part and parcel of the same thing? Or just one of Jake's sub rosa chickens suddenly come home to roost? That bunch of money-it almost had to be Turner's money. Turner had probably had Munson send Carmody over with the shyster to make a fast try at recovering it before he realized the headache that went with it. Munson… Killain, you don't know a damn thing about Munson. And Keith, a guy probably on two payrolls-what do you know about him?

Johnny looked down to find Sally's head up from his shoulder and her eyes studying him intently. “I can feel you just winding yourself up to fly off some place,” she said resentfully. “What is it now?”

His grin was uncomfortable. “Little errand I forgot. Honest.”

Her sniff was pure disbelief. “Be careful, y'hear?”

“Sure.” He flattened the tip of her small nose with a finger. “You be careful, in case I'm wrong about the guy whose money it is bein' afraid to make a move to get it back.” He leaped from the bed, scooped up his clothes and headed for the shower.

The Chronicle building was new, an imposing pile of glass, chrome, tile and marble. Somewhere beneath that elegant facade there must be cement and steel, Johnny thought, but it was visible nowhere. At the ground-level information desk he inquired of the gum-chewing brunette for Ed Keith.

“Sports. Third floor rear, sir. If he's in. Shall I call?”

“I'll take a chance, thanks.”

At the third floor the doors opened upon a tremendous room whose floor space seemed to stretch to infinity. Rows of desks lined the center section in three distinct groups, and a glass-enclosed wire room contained a bank of chattering machines which could be heard every time the door opened. A huge, horseshoe desk-and-work-table had at least sixteen people around it on both sides, and a railinged-off section in a far corner contained one man in shirtsleeves and pince-nez glasses who had the entire room under his eyes whenever he looked up.

Johnny stood undecided. It didn't look like the time of day for a social call; he had just made up his mind to try it again later when a door opened at the rear of the room. Ed Keith came through, ushering a slender man in a gray overcoat ahead of him toward the door through which Johnny had just entered. Ten yards away Keith looked at Johnny casually, looked again, hesitated and walked up to him. “Killain, isn't it?”

“Yeah. Some layout you got here,” Johnny told him.

Ed Keith looked around him critically, as though really seeing the office, his half smile exposing his rabbit teeth. “It's an improvement,” he acknowledged. “You ever see the old building before we moved? Had to strike matches to find your desk.” His eyes swept the office again. “Progress. Everything new and different but the salaries.”

“Damned if you don't sound like a red, red robin,” the sportswriter's companion said cheerfully. He was a thin-featured man with a seamed face, and, under thinning brows that matched the grizzled hair, sharp blue eyes had already inspected Johnny shrewdly.

“Indigestion. Dave Hendricks, Johnny Killain,” Ed Keith said briefly. “Dave's from Seventh Avenue, a cloak-and-suiter. See him for seconds on hand-me-downs. Killain's over at the Duarte. I'll meet you over at the restaurant, Dave.”

“You must anyways owe him money, the way you want to get rid of me,” Hendricks said drily, but turned to the door.

“This isn't the time or place to talk to me, unless you make it quick, Killain,” Ed Keith said when the little man had gone.

“I'll make it quick enough, Keith. I came over to ask you what the Chronicle was gonna do about that fixed fight.”

“What fixed fight?” the newspaperman asked coolly.

Johnny studied him. “That's the Chronicle's position? Or Ed Keith's?” The sportswriter was silent. “You on Lonnie Turner's payroll, Keith?”

“I'm not on Lonnie Turner's payroll.” The statement was made with no particular heat or emphasis. “Of course if I were, it still would be none of your business. What's your angle, nosing around?”

“What's yours, covering up for Turner?” Johnny countered.

“I'm not covering-” The newspaperman paused until he could regain control of his voice, which had risen sharply. “I don't happen to think that fight was fixed, Killain. If you've got anything to say that you can back up, I could always change my mind.”

“The kid was killed,” Johnny said softly. “His manager, Gidlow, was killed. If I put something in your hand, would you use it, Keith?”

He could see the sheen on Ed Keith's forehead. “If you can prove it.” The plump features were bloodless. “Although such information properly belongs with the police.”

“First newspaperman I ever saw,” Johnny said dreamily, “who wouldn't put a double hammer lock on me to get the story before I could get to the police.” He considered the unhappy rabbit face. “What is it with you, Keith? You sold out?”

“Get out of here, damn you!” Ed Keith said harshly. “I don't have to listen to this!”

“But you have to listen to Turner tellin' you it wasn't a fixed fight? When everyone on the Eastern Seaboard knows that it was?” Johnny continued quickly before the sports-writer could renew his order. “You know Rick Manfredi?”

Knocked off-stride, Ed Keith stared blankly. “Manfredi? The gambler? I know who he is-” His speech thickened suddenly as it accelerated. “Is he mixed up in this?”

“Mixed up in what?” Johnny inquired innocently. “Nothin' to be mixed up in, is there, Keith? Tell me somethin'. Whyn't you tell me the kid went accidentally in a tavern stick-up when I said he was killed?”

Ed Keith folded his arms tightly across his chest and gazed at Johnny as though trying to make up his mind about something. Johnny wondered if the slight movement of the big man's shoulders was a shrug or a shiver. “Perhaps, like the insurance actuaries, I've given up the idea that anything could happen so conveniently at so critical a time, Killain.”

“Critical for whom?” Johnny pounced. “Turner?”

Surprisingly, Keith smiled. “You're not going to learn very much interrogating me, Killain, because, frankly, I don't know very much. I know just enough-or think I do-to be able to say that Lonnie Turner didn't have them killed.”

He said it so positively that Johnny looked at him speculatively. “You might not rate as a disinterested witness on Turner,” he suggested, “bein' practically on the payroll, through Al Munson.” He continued on before the newspaperman could reply. “You can't say you're not involved, Keith. An' something's spooked you.”

The full lips twisted. “I'm involved to the extent of finding myself in an ethically indefensible position. I'm not saying that you couldn't cause me trouble by taking your questions- or your story-over my head. You could. It's been some time since I've been able to live on this-” He waved a hand behind him-“and I badly need the extra I get out of Turner's office. It's as simple as that. Granted that I don't want to believe that Turner is the mainspring in all this, as you insist, the fact remains that no one has yet showed me that he is. Self-preservation being the first law of nature, I'm forced to stand pat.” Johnny could see the man regaining his self-confidence as he spoke. “Am I right?”

“Right enough to be dead wrong,” Johnny said firmly. “An' I do mean dead. You don't even know which way you're facin' in the saddle, Keith. The first good buck, an' off you go. Like Gidlow. Like Roketenetz. You think newspapermen are insulated?” He hitched up his coat with his shoulders. “Don't dig your feet too deep into the stirrups on this ride, Keith. You might have to turn loose in a hurry.”

Warm blood flamed suddenly in the sportswriter's plump face, only to die out as quickly as it had appeared. Without another word Johnny left him standing there.

“He's scared,” he told himself in the elevator. “He's scared, all right. But not enough to talk. Yet.”

Johnny, seated on an upended box alongside the battered chopping block that served him as a dining table in the rear corner of the semi-deserted hotel kitchen, devoted his attention to the platter placed before him by the white-capped first cook. The large wall clock overhead indicated 8:00 p.m., but for Johnny this was breakfast. He waded into four eggs over light and an Eiffel Tower of hash-browned potatoes, a mound of toast and a steaming, oversized mug of bitter black coffee.

When he had cleaned up the platter and raised and lowered the level on the mug three times, he eased himself back with a repleted sigh and reached for his cigarettes. It was the few odd moments like this, he decided as he lit up, that made life worth living.

“Johnny!”

At the hail Johnny looked up to see Tommy Haines, the night bartender, waving to him from the connecting door between bar and kitchen. “Couple fellas out here to see you, Johnny.”

“They say who they were?”

Tommy shook his head negatively. “Want I should ask?”

“I'll take a look,” Johnny told him. He stood up and strolled to a corner of the kitchen that would give him a view of the bar booths.

“Second from the other end,” Tommy said in a lowered voice, holding the door with his knee as the bar boy passed through with a trayful of glasses. Johnny got one quick look at Rick Manfredi and Manuel Ybarra seated in the second booth from the other end and nodded to Tommy, who returned to his bar.

Johnny took two long drags on his cigarette and stubbed it out; he walked out into the bar and headed directly for the second booth. Rick Manfredi looked up at his approach, nodded but did not rise. “Sit down a minute, Killain.”

“Not in uniform,” Johnny told him. “You want a little privacy, we can walk out to the cloakroom.”

“Fair enough.”

Johnny led the way through the lobby to the cloakroom behind the bell captain's desk. Inside, he snapped on the light and turned to his guests. “Well, boys?”

The gambler was taking Johnny in inch-by-inch, his forehead creased. He looked at the paint-peeled walls and the unshaded light bulb, and then back at Johnny. “What's a guy like you doin' in a place like this?” he demanded abruptly.

“So what's outta focus with the place an' me?” Johnny asked him.

“The muscle,” Rick Manfredi said bluntly. “I been askin' a few questions around. Whyn't you hire out?”

“The people that pay the bills get allergic to my not sayin' 'yes, sir' often enough. I been here long enough so nobody bothers me.”

The chubby man offered Johnny a slim panatela. Johnny pocketed it, and Rick Manfredi stripped the cellophane off another, bit off the tip and spat it out. “How'd you like to work for me?” he asked as he reached for his lighter.

“It wouldn't work, Rick,” Johnny said patiently.

“Don't say that so fast,” the gambler said from around the cigar as he rotated it in the flame of the lighter. “Financially I might be able to make it worth your while.”

“I guess everyone can use money,” Johnny said slowly, “but lately I don't seem able to spend much. I accumulate enough cash from odds and ends around here so that every so often Chet Rollins, the hotel auditor, has to get on my tail about cashin' some back pay checks so he can close his books.” He looked at Rick Manfredi. “I'm not sayin' I'll never need it, but I don't need it now.”

“Why do you say it wouldn't work?” the gambler persisted.

“Because, when you had somethin' you wanted done, Rick, you'd put out a set of blueprints with the job. I don't work that way.”

The cigar waved in the pudgy hand. “Think it over, anyway. I could use you, and I think we could work it out.” He paused as though planning his next sentence, and Johnny glanced at Manuel Ybarra. The dark man smiled slightly and nodded his head in the very slightest degree. In agreement? Johnny couldn't be sure. “I been gettin' a bad report card on you, boy,” Rick Manfredi resumed. “Had a visitor a little bit ago. Ed Keith. Said he'd been talkin' to you today, and that you was askin' questions about me. That goin' on all over town?”

“Not all over,” Johnny said lightly.

“I don't like it,” the gambler said heavily. “Trouble I can't use. Why you got to get on my back?”

“I heard you say you didn't fix that fight,” Johnny said evenly. “I haven't heard anyone else say so.”

“Listen!” Rick Manfredi said hotly. “If an' when I fix a fight, mister, I don't wind up behind the eight ball with the slobs countin' the money. When I do somethin', I do it right!” He pointed the cigar for emphasis. “Don't crowd me, man.” The olive features turned a dull red as Johnny laughed.

“We already settled you can't buy me, Rick,” Johnny told him. “You think you can scare me? You know what I'd do, was I you? I'd find out who fixed that fight.”

The chubby man's eyes narrowed. “You say that like you think I don't have far to look. I'm beginning not to like a lot of the things you have to say, Killain.” The cigar was restored to the full-lipped mouth, the tip glowed redly and a thin stream of pale smoke emerged in driblets. “I didn't finish tellin' you about Keith. He wanted to borrow five grand so bad he could taste it. I gave it to him.”

“So you're hangin' up with me because Keith put you on the arm for five thousand?” Johnny asked disgustedly. “If it's that easy, I'll take ten myself.”

“The five grand is nothing, I got a story for the five,” the gambler said. “Come to find out Keith went the same way I did on the fight, but he didn't have it to pay off. Now, who bets five grand he don't have on a fight?”

“So he knew it was fixed. So did you, an' I don't see them pinnin' no medals on either of you.”

“He could go like Gidlow went, an' then where's your five?”

“Newspapermen don't get killed,” the gambler said stubbornly. “And how often do you get a chance to put a big-sheet sportswriter in your pocket? It could be a good investment.”

“Regardless of what other pockets he's in?”

The hooded eyes narrowed again. “Like whose?”

“Turner's.”

The silence built up in the cloakroom. “You sayin' Turner fixed that fight?” Manfredi asked finally. He frowned. “I can't see it. He's got too much to lose.” The frown deepened. “I hope you're wrong. I wouldn't like to think it was him I tied into on this deal. That's a tough rooster.” He looked at Manuel, who shrugged neutrally. The round man snapped his fingers. “I've got to make a phone call.” He pointed at Johnny. “One more chance, boy: I'll put you to work.”

“Some other time, Rick. Phone booths are right outside.” Johnny delayed Manuel as Manfredi went out into the lobby. His eyes were on the mark on the bronzed cheekbone, reduced now to a livid scar. “No more excitement?”

Manuel touched the mark tentatively with a fingertip. “Nothing,” he said easily. “For now.”

“I never did ask you if you recognized them,” Johnny said casually.

“If you didn't ask, I wouldn't have to lie,” the dark man replied gravely, and smiled at Johnny. “I don't think they want to kill me.”

“Why the hell should they? Four or five good head shots, an' you sit in the dark the rest of the way.”

“It has occurred to me.” The eyes were shadowed, but the lips were firm. “Shall we join Rick?”

“You joined him a long time ago,” Johnny said softly. “I hope you knew what you were doin'.” He led the way out into the lobby.