Doorway to Death

Chapter VI

Johnny lay on his back in tee shirt and shorts in the wide bed in the pocket-sized apartment, and through the big double door watched Sally's slipclad figure at the ironing board in the kitchenette. He tried to drain the last of a can of beer without lifting his head from the pillow, and half sat up abruptly as a thin trickle ran down his chin onto his chest.

“Slob!” Sally jeered. “Hey! Don't you dare use that pillow case for a bar rag! Here!”

He caught the freshly ironed handkerchief she threw him, and mopped himself off. He stretched out again, bare feet digging luxuriously into the sheet. “Thanks, ma. I'll get around to puttin' you on the payroll next week. Any more beer in the box?”

“Did you leave any? I'll look soon's I finish this blouse.”

Idly his glance followed the slender figure manipulating the iron, the thin white shoulders dipping and swaying as she moved the lace-edged blouse around the board. “By God, you're a slat, kid. I'll bet seven to ten I can spit right through you.”

“I'll take that bet,” she said placidly, and then backed away from her ironing as Johnny sat up suddenly. “Johnny! No! Don't you dare, Johnny Killain!”

“Whattya mean, 'Don't you dare!'“ he queried as he came off the bed in a smooth flowing rush and charged the doorway. “Didn't you take the bet?”

“No!” Sally cried, and fled the kitchenette with Johnny a noiseless barefooted stride behind. Blindly she circled a chair in the living room, panting with helpless laughter, only to be engulfed as he put one foot in the center cushion and bounded clear over the back to scoop her up in his arms and bear her in triumph back to the bed. She squealed as he held her head high over the bed and dropped her, and the squeal changed to a squeak as the big arms caught her on the first bounce and squeezed her.

“How anything … as big as you can… move so fast?” she murmured breathlessly as he dropped down beside her.

“Developed it runnin' from women.”

She hooted and drove a sharp-knuckled little fist just below his rib cage, and he leaned up over her and pinioned both thrashing small hands in one of his. He ran his free hand lightly over the ever so slightly rounded stomach, and a long shiver ran through the slim body. He looked down at her quizzically. “Where's all the fight gone now, ma?”

“Stop it!” she protested, but it was a weak protest; her color had flared high. He slid her closer to him, then rolled over on his back, threw an arm under his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“You know this Myrna on the board days, ma?” he broke the cosy silence after a moment.

“Yes?”

He turned his head on the pillow to see her face. “I mean… Do you know her? Know her at all?”

“I know her very well.”

“I don't mean like knowin' someone works the opposite shift from you. I got a reason for asking.”

“I said very well, didn't I? She used to live with me.”

“She did? I never knew that. Where?”

“Right here. Till just before you decided you wanted to play house.”

Johnny stared, then rolled slowly toward her. “You mean she had this place with you, and you busted her out to make room for me?”

Sally smiled up at him. “Johnny, you child. Do you think only the men have a union in the war between the sexes? Myrna's a realist. Neither she nor I is the type to be cut in on every dance at the senior prom; far from it. So when she began to think from watching you that you were beginning to get ideas about me, she suggested that she step out and give me a little elbow room. Greater love hath no woman … for another.”

He whistled shrilly through his teeth. “By God, it's against the articles of war. Sherman didn't know the half of it. Wait'll the next time I get hold of one of these free-will advocates. It's a cinch that crowd never run up against a coupla ninety five pound designin' females.” He grinned suddenly, and dropped back on the pillow.

“Why did you say you had a reason for asking, Johnny?”

He frowned, and his eyes returned to the ceiling. “I need a stakeout on that board on her four-to-twelve shift.” He raised up to look down at Sally again. “You figure she's safe, then? I can ask her to do a little business with us?” He watched Sally's pursed lip hesitation. “What's the matter?”

“Well… she thinks a little… oddly.”

“Like what?” he demanded.

“She's… well, money conscious. She's … oh, stop pinning me down!” A clear, bright color invaded the thin features. “Let's just say she thinks like an adding machine.”

He stared down at her. “Let's just say instead that her practical nature moved her out of here so I could keep you in befittin' style? That she couldn't see you passing up this golden-”

“Johnny!”

“Well?”

She refused to look at him. “She thinks like that, that's all. And if she thought there were any money connected with anything like that you asked her to do at the hotel-”

Johnny grimaced. “Rembrandt couldn't give me a better picture, ma. I sure as hell don't want her shoppin' around for a higher bidder. Still, I need her so bad I'll just have to figure an angle.” He stared at the wall behind her, lost in thought.

“Johnny-”

He looked down suddenly at the timidity in the soft voice.

“Johnny-”

“-you don't think I'm… that I feel-”

In a swooping lunge his arms burrowed beneath her, circled, and tightened, and her breath whuffed from her lungs. “Hell, ma, you haven't got brains enough to feel like that.” He buried his face in the little hollow between the slim neck and the slightly angular shoulder, and she squirmed.

“Your breath tickles!” He lipped at her neck, and she stiffened. “Johnny! I don't want to have to wear a high-necked collar in all this heat!” When she felt his purposeful movement she placed a palm against the big chest. “Let me up first. The door's unlocked.”

Reluctantly he let her go, and she slid off the bed; her voice drifted back to him from the other room. “Mrs. Hogan told me they're taking up some kind of a collection in the neighborhood. There was a knock on the door just before you came, but there wasn't anyone there when I opened it. They'll be back, though.”

She dropped back down on the bed beside him, and he reached for the slim body, the bass voice a buzzing vibrancy. “Put this on the collection plate, ma.”

He was just out of the shower when he heard Sally's voice at the bathroom door. “I think that's the collectors at the door now. Don't come out unless you're decent.”

At the mirror he ran a hand over his chin and decided against shaving. Have to shave again before he went on duty anyway. You need a haircut, too, he told the face in the mirror. You've got time for everything but that.

He became conscious of the hum of a masculine voice carrying through the bathroom door. He couldn't hear Sally replying. He smiled; must be a good man out there if he could keep Sally from getting a word in for herself. Still, collectors. If they couldn't talk, what could-?

A Neanderthalic sub-current stirred the short hairs on the back of his neck, and his scalp tightened. Sally-

He gave himself no time to think; he snatched up the wet towel and knotted it around his waist, and quietly opened the bathroom door. He couldn't see the apartment door, but he could see Sally. She was backed out into the center of the living room, eyes enormous, and with her clenched knuckles pressed tightly to her lips. He could hear plainly now the snarling cadence.

“-big bastard to keep his nose where it belongs. The boss don't like it, and I got a word or two for him myself. We aren't fooling. You get him off the grass he's on, or we're comin' after the pair of you. You tell him-”

Johnny had crossed the bedroom and appeared soundlessly in the doorway. Sally's expression froze at the sight of him, and the redheaded man from the street scene of two evenings ago whirled to face the doorway. He stood just inside the partly ajar apartment door, a hand on its knob, the other hand deep inside a jacket pocket.

“Why don't you tell him yourself, Eddie?” Johnny inquired softly, and dropped his hands to the top of the straightback chair just inside the living room.

The red-haired man stared morosely, obviously reviewing his orders. “Don't push your luck, mister. If I had my way I'd grease the chute for you right this minute. Don't you get any-”

His right arm relaxed and dropped to his side, and in one fluid motion Johnny picked up the chair upon which his hands rested and with every ounce of strength in his body slammed it across the room in the direction of the red-haired man. Sally's choked scream coincided with Eddie's instinctive snatch at the doorknob in his hand as the dark blur of the chair flew at him knee high, and the door flared out like a bullfighter's muleta and caught and deflected the chair to the wall. It splintered itself with a shocking crash, and plaster flew in a powdery haze.

Johnny's barefooted follow-up rush foundered on the throw rug just inside the door which dropped him heavily. From his knees he struggled upright, the drumming sound of running feet echoing in his ears.

“Johnny! You can't chase him like that-!”

From the door he looked down at his loincloth and bare feet, hesitated, and then returned to Sally still in the room's center. He put his arm around her; he could feel the trembling of her body through the thin robe, and after a moment he picked her up and sat down on the couch with her on his lap. She clung to him tightly, but in a little while the trembling stopped. “That's better, ma. You all right?”

She nodded. Tears flooded the brown eyes and spilled over. “I thought he was going to s-shoot you,” she whispered. “He came in with the gun in his h-hand-”

“He didn't even know I was here, Sally. The whole show was supposed to scare you into callin' me off. It takes a certain kind of adrenalin to use a gun in the daylight, and besides, you could see he wasn't told to go that far. I'll tell you one thing-I don't care if it takes a.30–30 at a thousand yards, I'll sicken that little rat the next time I lay eyes on him.”

“You don't like guns, you s-said,” Sally sniffled, and he smiled down at her. “For him I'd make an exception. You sure you're all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice strengthened, then rose in alarm as he lifted her up and set her on her feet. “Where are you going?”

“Over to see Joe Dameron.”

She followed him into the bedroom. “Why? I thought you didn't like him?”

“I can get along with him.” He skimmed into his clothes, fixing Sally with a hard eye. “Listen. New ground rules around here. Door stays locked all the time. You don't open it till you see who it is out there. That's what they put the one way glass in for. Think you can remember that?”

She nodded. “Will you be gone long?”

“Can't tell. I'll see you at work tonight, anyway.”

“Johnny, please be careful-”

“Sure, ma. Sure.” He finished dressing with Sally forlornly trailing him around the apartment; he left hurriedly before she could tie him up in further conversation. On the street he whistled for a cab going in the opposite direction, and it made a sweepingly illegal U-turn and came back and picked him up.

At the precinct stationhouse he ran up the worn white stone steps of the old red brick building and nodded to the incurious uniform at the door. Inside he turned left on oil-darkened wooden floors and walked down a narrow passageway that widened into a large room whose front section was taken up by a massive desk, head high. Johnny returned the inquisitive stare of the white-haired figure enthroned behind the desk.

“Yis?”

“Lieutenant Dameron.”

“And who wants to see him?”

“Killain.”

“What about?”

“The lieutenant might tell you if you asked him.”

Thin lips tightened as the old man picked up the phone. “Sweeney, Lieutenant. A fresh moose by the name of Killain says-” He broke off to listen, leaned forward in his chair, and replaced the phone silently. “Inside. Second door on the left.”

He knocked on the second door on the left, and a chair scraped noisily inside and a bolt snicked back in the lock before Jimmy Rogers opened the door. Johnny stood on the threshold and looked in at the blackboard walls and the battered desk and mismatched chairs. A single desk lamp illuminated the gloomy room.

“Come in, come in!” Lieutenant Dameron barked irritatedly from the interior shadows, the big body sprawled loosely in a swivel desk chair. He beckoned with the half-filled glass in his hand.

“You boys afraid of a raid?”

A chair was kicked in his general direction. “Don't like to be interrupted when I'm drinking. I've given the dear taxpayers their dollar's worth today.” The red-faced man nodded to the chair. “Park it.”

Johnny remained standing. From the looks of the half-empty bottle on the desk and the overflowing ashtrays this war council had been a lengthy one. “I came by to see if your offer to sign up was still good, Joe.”

Lieutenant Dameron set down his glass and leaned forward over his desk to look at Johnny more closely. “You're serious?”

“Yeah.”

A five second pause. “Say please.”

Johnny focused his eyes on a point two and a half feet over the lieutenant's head. “Please.”

Lieutenant Dameron grunted in surprise. “Down on your knees, Jimmy. The world is positively coming to an end within the next twenty minutes, I'd say.” He leaned back in his chair, picked up his glass, and took a swallow from it. “I'm a little curious over this switch.”

Johnny remained silent, and the frosty gray eyes studied him carefully above the rim of the glass before switching to the watching Detective Rogers.

“Jimmy? What do you think?”

“He's already given us about all we have to date, if you look at it one way,” the sandyhaired man said mildly. “And knowing him, I don't think he'd walk in like this empty-handed.” He grinned at Johnny. “Course, as to why, that's your problem, Lieutenant. I imagine you'll get the due-bill later.”

The gray eyes came back to Johnny. “All right,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “Against my better judgment, but all right. We've been sitting here getting knots on our head. You got anything for the pot?”

“I've got a candidate good for a laugh, anyway.”

“I could stand a good laugh right about now.”

“I think it's Fearless Freddie.”

“Freddie? You mean the manager, Frederick? Is he the one you were hinting at the other night when you called me and asked me if I'd checked out the help?”

“He's the one. I got to admit he's not much of a candidate, for looks.”

The ruddyfaced man tipped back in his chair, forehead creased. “You can play that contract vulnerable, redoubled. Still… Jimmy, what did we turn up on him?”

Detective Rogers spread his hands widely. “Almost nothing, literally. Hotelman all his working life, never in any trouble, unless you call a divorce trouble. I went through his folder from end to end.”

“You got a picture in that folder?”

Lieutenant Dameron's eyes swiveled from Johnny to Rogers and back again.

“No picture,” the slender man admitted.

The lieutenant's voice was mild. “You think we should have a picture, Johnny?”

“I'll tell you why I think so. This week there was a guest at the hotel who knew Ronald Frederick when he managed a hotel in the south. She went by the office and sent her name in, but he was too busy to see her, even to say hello.”

Jimmy Rogers shifted in his chair. “So we could have a bogus Frederick? I'd have to say possible-”

“-but not probable,” Johnny finished. “I know.”

Lieutenant Dameron's heavy voice broke the little silence. “Do you have anything substantial on him, Johnny?”

“I know he got his feet wet. After the fracas in the kitchen the other night, I followed him upstairs and listened in on him. He was shook, but good. He called someone and resigned from the human race, most especially from the information furnishin' branch of it.”

“Maybe we're getting somewhere,” Lieutenant Dameron said thoughtfully. “Any chance he made you listening in?”

“No way he could.”

“Who'd he call?”

“Didn't mention names,” Johnny said. “I had the switchboard alerted, but the gal missed it somehow.”

“Why did you call me that night asking if I'd checked on him?”

“Because after he'd listened to you buildin' me up in his office that afternoon, he popped up to my room on the late shift and bummed me for a drink. He sat in my place and apologized almost on his knees for taking me strictly for an oversized rigidity before on the strength of what he'd heard around the hotel. He asked about four dozen questions, gave every sign of a man about to hurdle the gap with some kind of proposition, and then said goodnight and tiptoed down the hall.”

Johnny looked around for the chair he had ignored originally and sat down in it. He looked from one to the other of his silent audience. “There's one more thing. When he backed off that night on the proposition-if he ever actually was goin' to make one-it figured that if he was in the chain of command he'd turn in a bad report card on me, in which case I was due to hear a noise.” He smiled and leveled a finger at the lieutenant. “I came out of the phone booth after callin' you, Joe, which wasn't ten minutes after that happened, and I was spread all over the sidewalk. So did he have a goon squad in his pocket waitin' for me? Or didn't he have anything to do with it at all? I haven't been able to make up my mind.”

The lieutenant nodded slowly. “I heard about that sidewalk caper, second or third hand. Fact is, I had a little talk with the party who thought two or three whacks with a gun butt would stop your clock, even temporarily.”

“It damn near did, mister. I thought his friends got him away.”

“They did, but the doc they took him to got palpitations. He didn't report it officially, you understand, but he reported it.”

“You got 'em everywhere, haven't you, Joe?”

“You were spread all over the sidewalk.”

“Yeah. I almost quit on Freddie then, because my first reaction was that it happened too quick for him to have had much of anything to do with it. I'll admit, Joe, for a while I thought he might be your original walkie-talkie.”

“My original walkie-talkie seems to have dismaterialized.”

“Permanently?”

“No body. Yet.”

“Cement takes care of that.”

“It does. I think, though, that someone, scared him.”

“Seems to be a well organized crowd, Joe.”

“Too damn well organized. That's why I can't see Frederick. He doesn't look like he could organize the ladies' aid society.”

Johnny shrugged. “Getting back to the story, Joe, there was a little sequel this afternoon to the sidewalk caper the other night.” His glance fixed itself on the red-faced man behind the desk. “The partner of the guy you talked to showed up at the apartment of Sally Fontaine, the night telephone operator at the hotel. Somebody had sent him to scare her into tellin' me to lay off. I happened to be there, which was a big surprise to him. When I busted in on the conversation, he started to go for a gun and changed his mind. I missed him from across the room with a chair, and he took off.”

Lieutenant Dameron was sitting up straight in his chair. “I know that I predicted it, but you surely are getting a lot of attention from these people. They seem to have you taped pretty damn well, which of course brings us back to Frederick.” His fingers drummed impatiently on the desk top. “I still can't-” He shook his head.

“If it isn't classified, Joe, what'd you find out about the one Dutch got with the cleaver?”

Jimmy Rogers spoke up after glancing at the lieutenant. “A hired gun from the west coast. Frenchie Dumas.”

“Usin' his own name, too; they're not bashful. Any tie-in?”

“Not on the surface.”

Lieutenant Dameron cleared his throat heavily. “This Frederick character. Where'd he work last before this job, Jimmy?”

The sandyhaired man blew out his breath sharply. “'Frisco.” The silence lengthened, and he rose briskly. “I'll get the wheels turning on that picture of Frederick.”

“It'll put him in or out,” the lieutenant agreed. “I'd like to know.” He looked over at Johnny as the door closed behind Rogers. “Maybe you've got something. Maybe.”

Johnny looked down at his hands. “I want you to do me a favor, Joe. Charge it off to that due-bill Jimmy mentioned.”

The gray eyes studied him. “I'm listening.”

“Stake out a man on that apartment, Joe. I can't be there all the time.”

It was the lieutenant's turn to look down at his hands. “I won't say you haven't got a point.” He frowned, picked up the bottle, and poured a half inch into his glass. “Write out the address for me before you leave. It's only the taxpayers' money.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“That leaves me with the due-bill. I'll be presenting it. You going back to the hotel?”

“Yeah. How long'll it take Jimmy to get that picture?”

“Twenty-four hours, if he's lucky. Write your own ticket, if he's not.”

“Yeah.” Johnny stood up. “Throw the dice, the losers say. Come on over to our happy home when you run out of things to do, Joe.”

Outside it had started to rain; he turned up his collar and walked down the white stone steps. All the cabs that approached him were full; he shrugged and lengthened his stride as he set off for the hotel.