Doorway to Death

Chapter IV

The cold water faucet needed a washer, Johnny noted; he rough-palmed his wet hair tighter to his skull and walked out into the bedroom. The clock on Maria Stevens' night table said twelve forty five; he bent down over the bed and laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. “So long, kid.”

She sat up with a start. “Goodness! I must have dozed off-” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and felt for her slippers as a small palm smothered a yawn. “Oh, my! It's the hour, not the company, believe me. I do hate to see you go.”

“You'll be back again before you know it.”

“Not that quickly, unfortunately.” She walked with him to the door, and the sleepy look on the plain features evaporated as the mild eyes inspected again the tape on his face. “I certainly hope that the police find whoever did that to you. It's criminal that such things can happen!”

He grinned at her. “You sound just like somebody else I know-”

“It makes me uneasy. If a thing like that can happen right in the neighborhood, are the children safe when we bring them here? After all, there's-”

“Now don't go givin' the hotel a bum rap because of somethin' that happened to me,” Johnny broke in quickly. “I shouldn't have told you about it.”

“You didn't tell me about it,” she said spiritedly. “I had to drag it out of you a word at a time. Anyway, if I know Ronald Frederick he'll give the police no rest until they clear it up.”

“You know Freddie?” he asked her in surprise.

“Well, not really. He's a very close friend of two good friends of mine, though. Rose and Terry Lund. I've met him twice, I think, at their place in Atlanta. He was managing a hotel there before he went out to the coast. I was the most surprised person in the world when I saw his name on the hotel stationery here. I went by his office, and even sent in a note, but he must have been terribly busy; his secretary came out and apologized that he just didn't have a moment, even, to visit.”

“I don't know what the hell could have been so damn Important that he didn't have a minute for a cash customer-”

“Oh, it was just impulse, really… seeing the familiar name. I don't know what I'd have talked about if he had come out.” She looked up at him gravely. “I hate to go back.”

He held out his hand, and she took it, her hand lost in his. “Keep punchin', kid. You'll be back-”

“But not before I know it. Good-bye, Johnny. It's been fine.”

He saluted, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor. He was half a dozen doors down the hall before he heard her door close behind him. He took the service elevator down to the lobby, and Vic Barnes looked up from the registration desk as Johnny stepped out of the cab. “Got a minute, John-?”

“Sure, Vic.” He shuffled in the bearlike stride over to the desk and looked at the stocky man inquiringly. “Trouble?”

“You remember that 938 you were talking about last night?”

“938?” Johnny frowned. “Oh, yeah, that was that hard looking ticket that ordered the beer. Or rather, he was in the room. Why?”

“He blew. No-pay. I got a note here from Chet to see him about it in the morning.”

“Bags and all?”

“Clean. Chefs trying to pin it on our shift.”

“If you have any trouble with Chet, you let me know. He didn't get out of here on our shift. Listen. Look up 1421, I think it was; Dumas. That's the guy that was in 938's room.”

Vic glanced at the room rack. “Vacant now.” He picked up a handful of cards and started turning them over; he stopped a third of the way through the pile. “There he is. 9:30 A.M. checkout. Everything in order.”

“Damn funny,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “I'll ask Gus in the morning to find out how many bags he took out with him. If he had a couple extra we can sic Chet on him.” He glanced around the quiet lobby. “You send Paul out for something?”

“He's on the board, relieving Sally. She went out in the alley for a smoke.”

“The alley? For God's sake, there's still a ladies' lounge in this place, isn't there?” He was conscious of Vic's eyes on him curiously. “Keep an eye on this menagerie.”

He walked quickly to the elevator, dropped to the sub-basement, stationed the car, and walked out into the alley through the partly opened heavy iron door. He saw her right away, resting with her back against the building wall, the glow of her cigarette softening the sharp lines of the thin face. She turned at the sound of his steps on the cement. “Oh, I'm glad you came down, Johnny. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Me first, ma. What's the matter with havin' your smoke in the ladies' room?”

“It's hot in there.”

“So it's hot. You do your smokin' in there from now on. You lookin' to tie into the same buzzsaw I tangled with last night?”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

“Who's bein' ridiculous? I don't know what's goin' on around here, Sally. So far they've been able to lean on me whenever they took the notion, which means they know my habits. If they also happen to know that you and I aren't exactly strangers, I don't want them reachin' for me through you.”

“But no one ever pays any attention to me, Johnny!”

“I might like to keep it that way.”

“Such gallantry!” she smiled. “In that mood, how about answering a question for me?”

“I don't know the answers to any questions.”

“You know this answer.”

He studied her for a moment. “Shoot.”

“Johnny, what happened to Max?”

“He became deceased.”

“I can read, I hope! What I want to know is what you had to do with it.”

“You think I scragged him, ma? You an' Joe Dameron.”

“You didn't, did you, Johnny?”

“No, ma, I didn't. They found me upstairs, but I got lucky. It was on the elevator, and they were in each other's way. I christianized the crowd, dropped down here, and unloaded. They were all breathing, if that's what's botherin' you.”

“But the paper said he was s-shot-!”

“Not by me. I don't like guns.”

“Honestly? Then why were you beaten up last night? Look at you… you look like a pirate.”

“I already told you I don't know. I think Max was the front man for something that's supposed to be headquartered here, and he was supposed to get me in line. When he fumbled it, someone further up the line decided Max should abdicate.”

Sally shivered and moved a little closer to him. “Where does Freddie fit into all this, then?”

“I'm not even sure he does. He sat up in my room last night drinking my Scotch and apologized for twenty minutes straight for thinking I was nothin' but a fourteen carat gigolo. That was after he'd heard Joe Dameron shoot off his mouth about where him an' me had put in a little time together. Freddie pumped me up, down, and sideways, tiptoed all around the edges of a proposition, and then backed off. Maybe when he realized how it was with Willie and me.”

“Well, if he didn't proposition you, why did you expect to see his name on the list of telephone calls I kept for you?”

“A hunch, that's all. Joe Dameron thinks this is a big noise around here; if he's right, I'd already tangled with the militia once, see, and made it stick. If Freddie's in the chain of command and had changed his mind about propositioning me, I figured to hear an echo before I began feeling a little cocky. Only thing, I heard it so damn quick it don't hardly seem likely Freddie had time to trigger the action.”

Sally drew a long breath. “I never heard of anything so … so fantastic. What are you going to do now?”

“Well, I've got one fish in a rain barrel I'm goin' to draw a bead on; I know something about Freddie's room that he doesn't. This old place has been carved up so many times changing rooms and making apartments that in a few places there's walkways between the walls. One of them is just outside the north wall of his room. It'll be a tight fit, but if I can get in there I can stand with just a little plaster and paper between us, and if he's got anything interesting to say I should be able to hear it without too much trouble. I'm telling you this now because you'll have to cover for me while I'm browsin'. I'll let you know before I go aloft.”

“Johnny, why don't you go to the police?”

“That mountain's already been to Mohammed, ma. What really kicked this whole thing off was Joe Dameron blowin' in here and giving me the fraternity grip and a sales talk about signing up for a little cruise. Freddie heard some and guessed the rest.”

He scowled across the alley, thinking back to the scene in the little manager's office. “Joe's in a racket where you can go just so far up the ladder, and then you wait for someone on a rung above to die or retire before you can move up. He's buckin' for another stripe, and he's not fussy how he gets it. He wants all the credits he can get in the meantime so someone like himself don't submarine him from beneath. I don't think he really thinks I killed Max, but he's perfectly willing to hold it over my head and guarantee to keep his bloodhounds off if I'll do what he wants. When I figured his angle, I put it to him straight. I made him admit that if and when I cold-decked the set up for him around here, the umbrella was gone. I don't need the umbrella, you understand, but I got mad anyway and told him what I thought of people workin' with collapsible gear.”

Sally stubbed her cigarette out against the side of the building. “I've got to get back to the board. Please be careful, Johnny?”

“You

be careful. Nothin' ever happens to me.”

“Take a look in the mirror,” she advised him and disappeared inside past the iron door. Johnny stood in the alley, an idle toe scuffing the moisture accumulating underfoot. There should be something in all this that a man could get his teeth into….

Far down the dark wall of the hotel a light came on at ground level. The kitchen, he registered automatically. Another light flashed on. But there should be no lights in the kitchen this time of the morning; Johnny was already in motion when the third light appeared. He ran back through the passageway back to the elevator, slammed up to the lobby and burst into the somnolent quiet. Vic looked up from the desk and waved idly.

Johnny turned and ran for the bar, silently. Inside the paneled doors he rushed soft-footedly past the drowsing drinkers on the bar stools, and then at the far end of the long bar the service door to the kitchen flew open, and the bar boy Manuel stared out at him, his eyes two unripe olives in the white face. “Johnee! The keetehen! The keetehen-!”

He sprinted past the stricken Manuel, spared only a glance for the darksuited figure crumpled just inside the door to the left, and dropped to his knees beside the loosely sprawled slight body in the white uniform beside the shabby desk. “Dutch-?”

A vein throbbed in the thin temple. The closed lids opened and the washed-out blue eyes looked up at Johnny. A trickle of blood ran down from a corner of the twisted mouth, but the old man managed a faint smile. “-missed … the fun, John. S'prised 'em-”

Johnny eased the thin body to a more comfortable position, his mouth taut at the sight of the dark red stain on the front of the white jacket. “Who was it, Dutch?”

“-s'prised-”

The white head fell sideways suddenly, the high chefs hat falling off and rolling away. Johnny reached for it and replaced it automatically, and then he stood, up slowly and looked down at the newly pinched features. After a moment he crossed the huge room and bent over the dark-suited figure in the corner; the last time Johnny had seen that hard-visaged face it had been to exchange two quarts of beer for a five dollar bill. Johnny studied him carefully, lifted a lapel of the jacket fractionally, and let it fall again. He straightened and made a swift circuit of the room, checking the window fastenings and the locks on the walk-in boxes. When he turned again Manuel's pale face was in the service entrance to the bar.

“You call the police?”

“Si.”

“Dutch say anything at all while you were in here?”

The slim shoulders lifted apologetically. “Notheeng I understand-”

“What'd he say, Manuel? Exactly.”

The boy hesitated. “No sense to eet. Eet sound like he say 'the clocks.'”

“'The clocks'?” Manuel nodded. Johnny stared at the large kitchen clock on the wall across the room. “That's all he said?”

“That ees all.”

Johnny sighed. “Okay. Tell Tommy to close up the bar.”

“Si.” Manuel's dark eyes lingered fascinatedly on the body just inside the door, until he caught Johnny's gaze upon him.

“Move!” The boy disappeared, and Johnny returned to his restless prowling of the kitchen. Twice he stepped off the distance between the two bodies, dissatisfied, then knelt quickly to examine a dark spot on the tiles midway but a little to one side. The spot smeared under his probing finger, and he nodded.

He was seated in Dutch's chair behind the little desk in which the old man had kept his records when the police arrived, a corporal and an eager-beaver rookie in the van, and Lieutenant Dameron not fifteen yards behind.

Johnny waved without rising. “Sleepin' light, Joe?”

The lieutenant came over and kicked a chair into position beside Johnny's and sat down heavily. The red face was shiny and stubbled with gray whiskers. He stared out impassively over the room filling up with men, watching the uniformed and plainclothesmen drawing lines on the floor, dusting powder, taking pictures, and putting minute specks of dirt in labeled white envelopes. A man with horn-rimmed glasses bent alternately over the two still figures on the floor, writing busily in a notebook, and in a matter of minutes the bodies were lightly covered, rolled loosely onto narrow stretchers, and taken out the back way.

Lieutenant Dameron looked at Johnny. “You know anything about this?”

“I know how it happened.”

“Wait till my boy can check you out.” The lieutenant raised a hand and beckoned, and a slim, sandyhaired man approached them. His features were pleasant, and he smiled at Johnny. “You two know each other,” Lieutenant Dameron continued. “This was the second man on the scene, Jimmy, if we can believe the bar boy.”

Detective James Rogers nodded and took out his ever-present notebook. “Long time, Johnny.”

“Yeah. How's the only straight man works out of 54th Street?”

“Shhh-” the sandyhaired man warned. “The boss'll hear you.”

“He should hear me.” Johnny reached over and tapped Joe Dameron on the knee. “How come you let this boy work with the rest of the bastards you've got up there? He supposed to leaven the loaf?”

“He beats his wife,” Joe Dameron said amiably. “That qualifies him. You ready, Jimmy?”

“Yes, sir.” He bent over the notebook. “Name: John Killain-”

“'D you ever know he had an alias, Jimmy?” the lieutenant interrupted. “Sure. Ask him. Or never mind asking him, ask me. Poetic, too. Manos Muertas.”

Johnny stiffened in his chair, and Detective Rogers looked from him to the lieutenant and back again. “Muertas,” he repeated slowly. “Odd name. Manos Muertas. Translates a bit grimly. The hands of death.”

Lieutenant Dameron laughed. “You see the advantages of an education, Johnny? Jimmy went to school.”

Johnny's voice was thick and heavy. “There's a nice, quiet alley outside, Joe.”

The lieutenant eyed him placidly. “My mother didn't raise any foolish children to my age.”

“Just one. The one trying to push me around.” “Nobody's pushing you around, you thick idiot. Will you get off that button?”

“I'll get off it when you put away flat needle you've had out lately. I don't like it.”

“So you don't like it. Drop dead.” The chair creaked as Johnny's weight shifted. “Don't do it,” Lieutenant Dameron continued softly. The redrimmed eyes stared frostily. “Don't even think of it, Johnny. You're no privileged character. I gave you a chance to do me a favor, and you turned me down. I can use you, but I don't need you, so don't get out of line. That's a warning. Now let's catch Jimmy here up on a little ancient history.”

He leaned back in his chair, unheeding the smoldering glance from across the desk. “A few years back, Jimmy, when you were still trying to get the pants off the high-school cheerleaders in your home town, this character and I were running around southern Europe for Uncle. I imagine quite a few people over there would remember that name, even today.”

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and idly dabbled the tip of his cigarette in it before replacing it in his mouth. “He was a specialist, Jimmy. No machinery. No guns, no knives, no blackjacks; all he had to do was reach you. He can give any circus strong man you ever saw cards and spades, and when he gets mad you wouldn't believe it. He warms up on brick walls.”

The cigarette's tip glowed redly. “Willie brought him back here with him… that's Willie Martin, the owner of this place. Our sourpussed friend here was Willie's hatchet man, and he pulled Willie through a couple of mighty snug knotholes. Willie stuck him in a uniform here and gave him the run of the place, and he developed a sideline. Women. What I hear, they had to enlarge the place a couple of times to get them all in.” He studied the growing ash on his cigarette. “This Willie Martin's a story himself. He was head oddball in a strictly oddball outfit; he inherited some money, and while I never did hear of him making any, he'll probably always be able to buy and sell the crowd here. He's the type that lives every minute like it's going to be his last on earth; a little frantic for the pedestrian caliber like me, geared a little lower.”

Lieutenant Dameron leaned forward in his chair, head turned up sidewise to the listening detective. “I'm telling you this, Jimmy, because I know that he's what happened to Max and Co.; his brand was stamped all over them. All except the bullet, the way I see it now. With the buzz we'd had on this deal, I offered him in; he was on the ground, and he's got a nose for this kind of thing. He thought I was holding the Armistead thing over his head, and he wouldn't buy. I figure he's lonewolfing it now; none of us knows what we're doing here anyway, and he thinks he might find a spot to cash in. Right, Johnny?” He shrugged at the glowering silence. “All right, then. What happened here tonight?”

“You tell me, you're so goddamn smart.”

“Temper, temper.” The lieutenant turned back to his assistant. “I forgot to say, Jimmy, that Armistead had braced him first, before I did, but he didn't like Armistead. When Max tried to push it a little, Johnny dropped him in the alley on the second bounce, and whoever was behind Max figured he could do without him.” He turned back to Johnny. “All right. Let's hear it.”

Johnny drew a deep breath, and for the first time in minutes wrenched his eyes away from the red-faced man. He looked up at Jimmy Rogers. “I can tell you what you already know. Whoever it was, they had a key to something. No sign of forcible entry. They just didn't know old Dutch had insomnia and often sat here nights. When they stumbled over him, the one on the floor got nervous and started after him, probably wavin' a gun. He violated the number one rule for drawing your social security; never go after a chef in his own kitchen. Dutch split him like a chicken from a dozen feet away with the cleaver he always had on this desk. The boy that caught the cleaver put two out of two into Dutch, which was pretty good shootin' under the circumstances. That was a little noisier than his partner liked to work, so the partner pumped in a couple of convincers alongside the cleaver to make sure no talkee and blew. Game, set, and match.”

“How'd you know the man the chef got was shot, too?” Detective Rogers asked him curiously.

“I looked. He wasn't layin' right for a knife wound, even a smash like that. A knife, they got time to get down easy, usually. A gun belts 'em down hard. This guy was belted.”

“He was, for a fact.”

“Now I'll tell you something you didn't know. The guy on the floor was registered into 1421 here last night under the name of Dumas. He was visitin' a guy named Lustig up in 938 early this morning; I brought him up some beer. Dumas checked out at nine thirty this morning. Lustig turned out to be a no-pay; room clean and no sign of him.”

“You can see why I thought he might be useful, Jimmy,” Lieutenant Dameron said briskly. “He has a nose for trouble.”

“He also has a nose for facts; he laid out a pretty straight story.” Rogers frowned down at his notebook. “The bar boy heard the first two shots and started right in here. On the way he heard a pop-pop; silencer on the second gun, evidently. He ran right back out when he got a look around and says he didn't pass anyone either way.”

“How do you figure the second bird got out of here, then?” Lieutenant Dameron asked him.

“Same key he came in with, I'd say, sir. Mighty cool character. Changed horses at flood tide and never batted an eye.” He closed his notebook. “I'll talk to a few more of the help now, if we've finished here.”

The ruddyfaced man stood up slowly. “You go ahead; I'm running along. Begins to look like one of those things around here; this is the second stone wall we've hit.”

Johnny looked at Detective Rogers. “Manuel tell you what Dutch said?”

The slender man nodded and looked at the lieutenant. “The kid said that the chef said something that sounded like 'clocks.'”

“Clocks?” The big man circled the room with his eyes and stopped at the big kitchen clock. He pointed to it. “Have the lab boys dismantle that and go over it. There won't be anything to it, bat we might as well make a noise like we knew what we were doing, especially since it doesn't look like the rush of witnesses is going to knock us down.” He led the way out to the bar, stopped, and turned to Johnny. “You have a key to this thing?”

“Yeah, but Willie's a little fussy who he sets them up for.”

The apple cheeks darkened, but the lieutenant bit off any reply he might have been going to make. He turned and strode out through the lobby, his heels hitting heavily, — and Jimmy Rogers shook his head disapprovingly at Johnny. “What does it get you, man?”

“A little satisfaction.”

“He'll wear you out, if he takes a notion.”

Johnny looked at him. “I don't work for him, kid. He'll play hell gettin' an angle on me. And when I was workin' for him, I'd leave it up to him who wore who out.”

Detective Rogers laughed. He started to say something and then broke off as Ronald Frederick emerged through the swinging doors from the lobby, in pajamas and plum colored robe. He came directly to them. “A dreadful accident, dreadful.”

“Accident?” Jimmy Rogers' tone was amused.

“I meant to say-that is to say, not an accident, most assuredly not, but a shocking-ah-occurrence. They woke me to let me know.”

The sandyhaired man nodded. “If we could have three minutes' conversation now it might save fifteen or twenty in the morning,” he suggested.

“Certainly,” Ronald Frederick acceded promptly. **We can use my office.” He turned to Johnny. “You'll take care of-ah-things?”

“Yeah.” He looked at the sandyhaired man. “I got something for you I wouldn't give that lardhead just walked out of here. There's an automatic pilot elevator touches on that kitchen; we use it for room service. The kitchen outlet is supposed to be locked at ten every night, but for a client with keys it's the easiest route.”

“Where does it go?” Detective Rogers demanded.

Johnny grinned at him. “Only to the sixteenth floor.”

The slender man grimaced. “I already had no appetite for breakfast; now I'm losing it for lunch.”

“The kitchen outlet can be locked either from the kitchen side or the elevator side,” Johnny suggested.

“So?” Jimmy Rogers began, and then his eyes narrowed. “Then whatever floor that elevator is on now is where the guy got off?”

“If he used it,” Johnny amended. “And if he was cute enough not to get off at his own floor you won't have lowered the odds a nickel's worth.”

“Give me your keys,” Detective Rogers said briskly. “I'd like to start lowering the odds around here even a little bit.”

“I have mine,” Ronald Frederick said interestedly, and produced them from a pocket of his robe. “May I accompany you?”

“You two go ahead,” Johnny told them. “I haven't checked the front in an hour.” He watched the oddly matched pair pause in the service door entrance to the again darkened kitchen while Rogers flipped on lights; when the door swung shut behind them, Johnny left the bar for the lobby. He glanced over at Sally's switchboard; and regretted it immediately; she beckoned imperiously, but he shook his head. Making a circle of thumb and forefinger of each hand, he lifted them to his eyes, and then pointed upward. Sally shook her head in a furious negative, but Johnny grinned at her and headed for the elevator.

As he started upward, he could hear the impatient, persistent ringing of the unanswered bell captain's phone.