Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 2, February, 1955

The Revolving Door by Sam Merwin, Jr.

He just kept thinking about it. It would be so nice to walk right out of the hotel and be free... even if he got killed for it...

Marty looked up from the cards as the maid came out of the bedroom with the used sheets rolled up in her arms. His dark regard caught her pale blue eyes and held them. She paused politely, waiting for him to speak, while he flipped through the file of his thoughts, searching desperately for something to say. Finally, as she made some small movement, he managed it.

“What’s your name?”

“Ellen, sir.” They were the first words she had spoken to him in the nine days he had been there, save for the routine, “Do you mind if I come in, sir?”

He wasn’t used to being called “sir.” It threw him off stride. But then, he wasn’t used to wanting to talk to a woman like this. He wasn’t used to living in a hotel like this. He wasn’t used to being alone.

He said, “You’re a good girl, Ellen.” The words sounded ridiculous in his inner ears.

But she merely nodded and said, “Thank you, sir. It’s a lovely day out, sir.” Then she went on her way to the linen closet in the hall beyond, leaving the door open behind her.

Marty told himself she hadn’t meant anything by it. Or had she? She couldn’t have. No one knew he was staying here in this hotel, not even Ryan. The maid came back, carrying towels — the pale yellow towels of the hotel. As she disappeared through the bedroom door, on her way to the bathroom beyond, he wondered how many of those elegant towels were stolen by guests every year. This place, he thought, was so elegant probably not even the guests would steal.

This elegance was a vital factor in Marty’s plan. He had worked the whole scheme out almost a year before, when it became evident that he was losing control of the rackets, that Big Nick was muscling his way up to the top. Marty never kidded himself — that was one of the keys to his survival. Ten years ago, even five, he’d have squashed Big Nick and his boys like so many mosquitoes.

But running the rackets was like being a big league ball player — you had just so many base hits, just so many catches, in you. Then it was time to quit, before the game caught up with you. It was quitting time for Marty.

He’d figured the whole thing out. Convert capital into cash — then take a walk and disappear. He had the cash, five neat envelopes, each containing a crisp package of a hundred thousand-dollar bills. They were in a neat alligator-skin briefcase, locked securely in the hotel safe. If need be, he could discard the briefcase and stash the envelopes in his pockets — but they’d ruin the cut of his suit.

The case was his sole piece of luggage when he’d walked into the hotel. He had bought a couple of big suitcases since — by telephone. Suitcases and shirts and ties and underwear and pajamas, all neatly monogrammed with the initials GS. George Smithers — he liked the Smithers touch instead of Smith. It was smart, where Smith would have been stupid. Just as coming to this hotel was smart.

They wouldn’t come after him here. To raise a ruckus in this haven for the very rich, the very important, would be to invite the sky to fall in on them. Even if they knew he was there — which they didn’t. They wouldn’t touch him here.

The one factor he hadn’t figured was that it would take so long for Ryan to arrange transport out of the country. Six days ago, when Marty called him, Ryan had said it would take another week. One more day to go. Ryan thought he was using the name of Gregory Somers — that would be the name on the passport the lawyer was getting for him. And when he registered as George Smithers, Marty had told the desk-clerk he wished to remain incognito during his stay. Those were his words — “I wish to remain incognito.” Marty smiled to himself as he looked at the cards on the table in front of him. A Yale professor couldn’t have said them better.

The king of clubs was hopelessly buried. Marty thought of cheating himself at solitaire, then gathered the cards with a swift, deft gesture and shuffled them for another try. The maid — Ellen — came out and paused by the door and said, “Is there anything else, sir?”

He said, wishing she’d call him Mr. Smithers, George, anything but that goddam “sir.”

“I guess not. You can leave the door open, though.”

He looked after her, wondering why nothing was ever the way it was in the movies. In a place like this, he’d expected the maids would be all dolled up in short black dresses with frilly aprons and caps, like the pants on lamb chops in fancy restaurants. Not in simple, pale green frocks that melted into the walls. And Ellen was no chick. She was well into her placid thirties and broad across the beam. Still, he thought, staring after her, not a bad pair of hips. Not fancy, maybe, but practical. A broad that is a broad, he thought.

Whoa — he was getting island happy. And women were not, had never been, his weakness. But nine days — and nine nights — without a single drink was a hell of a long time for a man like Marty. If you didn’t smoke or play the chicks, there had to be some compensation. For more than twenty years, alcohol had been Marty’s. The very best of alcohol, in the very best mixture, taken slowly, steadily, never enough to addle his wits but enough to keep his nerves from snapping like used-up rubber bands under the never-easing tension of his work.

But lately, as his confidence crumbled under the assault of Big Nick and his musclemen, it had been getting him. And now, when he wanted one of those special drinks only Louis, his houseman, knew how to make — a julep, of special, uncommercial Kentucky bourbon, spiced with crushed mint and topped by an armagnac float, he couldn’t afford to. He couldn’t trust Louis any more than he could trust any of the others. Not with Big Nick making the power play he’d been making lately. He couldn’t trust anybody, not even Ryan — though he had enough on that slick shyster to keep him in line until he was safely out of the country.

And there were a lot of places in the world where Gregory Somers, American, could settle down and live like an emperor on five hundred grand. Five hundred gees would buy a lot of juleps — with armagnac floats. As a kid, he’d resented his alien parentage, the accent he’d had to work so hard to get out of his voice. But now he was grateful. His Spanish and Italian might be gutter-glib — but with them, he could get by anywhere except maybe in Russia. And who wanted to go to Russia except a lot of crazy Commies?

The door of the room across the hall was open and Marty could hear faint strains of hot jazz coming his way. Illinois Jacquet on tenor sax — that kind of music was something he knew about. Hearing it now, in these surroundings, it gave him a lift and made him a little sad, all at once. It reminded him of all the good times, all the good places, all the good music, all the chicks he was kissing good-by. To hear it better, he got up and strolled to the door and stood there, listening.

The husky kid had moved in across the hall three days earlier. Marty had seen him, passed him in the hall, maybe a half dozen times. A great tall kid, maybe six-three, with shoulders like a football player. A crew-cut kid with a slightly busted nose and an otherwise round, healthy, untroubled face. An unpressed-tweed and flannels kid, an Ivy League kid who would never have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to. The kind of a kid who belonged in a place like this. Marty wondered what a kid like that thought about, how he felt. He wondered if Ellen called him “sir,” or “Mr. Wiggensworth,” or whatever his name was.

Marty had never before thought of kids like that, or of the perfectly brushed, fur-bearing girls who went with them as human. They were out of the race, above it. They didn’t know the score — hell, they didn’t have to.

The big kid appeared in the doorway and looked mildly surprised to see Marty standing across the hall, listening. God, but he was big. He had taken off his tweed jacket and his plain white shirt looked ready to split apart if he took a deep breath. For a moment, out of long habit, Marty measured him, wondering how he would go in the ring. With the right handling, the right buildup, maybe. They needed heavyweights like crazy now. But he was crazy even to think about it. Why should a kid like that want to fight?

Marty said, “You got any Dixieland?”

The big kid looked down at Marty. He seemed to be seeing him for the first time and not liking what he saw. He said nothing, just firmly and quietly closed the door.

Marty discovered his jaw was hanging open. He shut it and went back inside and closed his own door behind him carefully, resisting an impulse to slam it. He felt as if someone had stuffed ice-cubes into his stomach. The fresh young punk! All Marty had wanted was someone to talk to. He wouldn’t have dreamed of speaking to the kid at all if there’d been anyone else around.

That was it, he thought furiously — that was the invisible barrier that couldn’t be crossed. They called it a free country, a democratic country — what a laugh! Money wouldn’t do it — they laughed at money because they had it, or their fathers had it, or their uncles, or somebody. They thought they owned the world when they didn’t even know what was happening in it or how real people felt.

For five lousy bucks, Marty thought, he’d have that kid worked over. The kid probably thought football was a rough game...

He stayed mad for almost an hour, keeping himself mad for something to do. But then it faded and the loneliness crept back in. Nine lousy days in this lousy hotel and no one to talk to, nothing to do. He had tried reading — but he had never been much good at reading anything but a comic book or a balance sheet. And who could read anyway, with the thought of Big Nick being after him always in back of his thoughts? He couldn’t concentrate, except on his own survival.

He looked at the phone, pushed over to the edge of the table to make room for his solitaire. He wished the damned thing would ring. He was used to lots of phones, all of them ringing, all of them bringing reports on provinces of the empire he had built up and run for so long. But if the phone rang now...

He got up and walked to the bathroom — fancy, black tile and mirror. Back through the bedroom — comfortable, discreet, polite, not even a pinup, just a lousy modern copy of a lousy modern painting with trees that looked like houses, and houses that looked like faces, and faces that looked like pinball machines. He’d have settled for a couple of cows and a Swiss chalet — anything, as long as it looked like what it was supposed to.

He went back to the living room, all pale green and grey. Why not a few splashes of the warm, bright colors his Mediterranean soul longed for? Probably the guy that decorated the joint considered bright colors vulgar. He’d like to get hold of the creep and turn him loose with some of the boys. They had special treatments for guys like that and why not? Weren’t the guys against nature?

His heart twisted violently as he saw a piece of white paper slid halfway under the door. For a moment, he stalked it warily, like a dog scenting out something he does not understand but knows instinctively is hostile. If Big Nick or his boys had run him to earth here... With a quick, darting, sidling gesture, he picked it up.

It was merely the room-service luncheon menu.

Marty scanned it, scowling, humiliated at having been afraid. Hors d’oeuvres variés, paté maison, petite marmite Henri Quatre, consommé double, vichysoisse, truite frais meunière, tête d’agneau vinaigrette... Why the hell hadn’t his parents been French?

And whatever he ordered would be some prettied-up, tasteless guck. He thought longingly, as he had thought thousands of times over the years, of the hot, strong, redolent dishes his mother had cooked in the old railroad flat in the tenement — the scalloppini, the risottos, the thick minestrones, the spaghetti. How he had put them away! He looked down at his lean belly, flat against the dark-brown waistband of his trousers. He had never had to worry about diet — but now he wasn’t hungry, and he wondered if only the food was at fault. His whole being craved alcohol — but how could he afford to drink under the circumstances?

He called room service and ordered a half-broiled chicken, in English, and coffee and ice cream. At least he knew what he’d be getting. But his appetite was causing him to envision baked lasagna and pasta fazoole.

He wondered why he let Big Nick coop him up here, like some sort of animal in a plush cage. All he had to do was take the elevator downstairs, get his briefcase out of the safe and walk through the revolving door and the world was his. He reminded himself to stop kidding. They might not know Marty’s dark, undistinguished, blue-chinned face in the hotel — but he wouldn’t go two blocks without being recognized. And then he wouldn’t merely be a voluntary prisoner in comfortable sanctuary — he’d be the proverbial hunted animal, with no chance of escape.

If he could only walk through that revolving door — but he couldn’t, not till Ryan had completed arrangements for his escape from the country.

The food came and the waiter was new to him. He watched the blond, nondescript little man in a white jacket as he served and cut the chicken — they did everything for you in a place like this — and set up a table. The waiter was nervous; he shook so he banged a plate on the table three times, putting it down. Marty’s heart took another twist and his fingers itched to grab the man by his jacket front and shove him against the wall and bat some sense out of him.

But then he noted the man’s nicotine-stained fingers and dull, bloodshot eyes. He said, “Rough one last night, fellow?”

The man blinked at him, shuffled apologetically and said, “A little, sir. I’m not supposed to be on today, but Fred took sick and they called me in.”

In his relief, Marty tipped him five bucks. A harmless, hungover rabbit of a guy. Yet Marty envied the jerk his hangover. At least he’d had to drink to get it. Since he wasn’t hungry, he forced himself to eat, chewing each mouthful carefully. When he was through, he put the plates back on the wagon himself and pushed the wagon out into the hall. The door across the way was open again, and strains of hot music still emanated from inside — this time it sounded like a Buck Clayton trumpet chorus to Marty’s seasoned ear. He heard a girl’s soft laughter followed by, “You know, Binny, you’re cute.” Then, maddeningly, he heard the unmistakable clink of ice against glass.

Binny! What a name for a guy, and a monster guy like his neighbor. The big, thick-headed punk! he thought in an excess of fury and envy. He stood there a moment, just hating, then went slowly back inside. His hands were shaking, just like that goop waiter’s. Marty thrust them in his pants pockets.

He turned on the television set they’d sent up the second day and tried to get the ball game. But the home team was out of town — how had he managed to forget that? — and all he could get were homemaking programs and old movies. He tried to lose himself in an ancient gangster picture, but its devices and dramatics were too unbelievable to hold his interest. He must have walked five miles of carpet before it began to get dark. I’m getting just like stir-crazy, he told himself.

He toyed with the idea of using the cover of darkness to go downstairs, get his dough and slip out through that damned revolving door. Once he was in the clear, he could drink like a lord. Not long ago, he’d have made the break — and he’d have gotten away with it too, but now it would be a lunatic move. He’d softened up — not much, just a little, like a great infielder just over the hill and half a step slow. But it was enough, too much. He’d been giving orders too long instead of executing them. Hell, he didn’t even have a gun with him.

He hadn’t carried a gun in years.

But the darkness was heartening. It meant his self-inflicted term of confinement was drawing to its close. He listened to a news program on television, but it had nothing of interest to him. He thought about Louis, about those thousands of wonderful juleps he’d mixed over the years. Thought about them until they merged into a single tall, frost glass with a sprig of green mint peeping out over its ice-rimmed top. Hell, he could even smell the blend of mint, bourbon and rare armagnac that held out its delightful promise of relief from tension. He thought about the big punk across the hall — Binny, that was a laugh! — having drinks with a girl in his room and no worries about Big Nick on his stupid, Ivy League brain. Marty ran a suddenly dry tongue across the roof of his mouth.

Hell, it was his last night — Ryan had said a week, and the week would be up tomorrow morning. He thought of calling Ryan and giving him a nudge. But it didn’t pay to look anxious — not with a sharp character like Ryan. Marty picked up the phone instead and called for bar service.

After all, he was human, wasn’t he? And this was his last night. He hadn’t believed he could ever crave a drink so badly. His whole being was starved for one.

It took half an hour — Louis had used to make them ahead of time and store them in the refrigerator. Putting a julep together properly took time and trouble. And it was ten to one — no, a hundred to one — the room service bartender wouldn’t do the job properly.

When the same watery-eyed waiter who had brought his lunch came in with it on a tray, Marty eyed it like a cat inspecting a new kind of food in its dish. Then, slowly, he lifted it from the tray and inhaled its fragrance. So far, so good. His hand was steady as the proverbial rock when at last he lifted it to his lips...

Halleluja, it was good! He told himself, as the mellow fluid floated down his gullet, that it wasn’t really as good as the ones Louis mixed, that it only seemed so because he hadn’t tasted any liquor at all for so long. He took a long pull at it, then lowered the tall pewter tumbler and said to the waiter, who was still standing by, “Tell your barman to make three more — and bring them up at half-hour intervals.”

When the man had gone, Marty sat down on the sofa and looked at the drink on the table in front of him, and felt the good whiskey and brandy flow through him like liquid gold and lived — just lived.

When he had finished the fourth julep, Marty debated with himself about ordering four more. But his wits were still with him, and he knew he’d had all he could afford to take if he was going to be sharp on the morrow. Hell, he was going to have to be sharp on the morrow. He got up just a shade unsteadily and moved sedately toward the bedroom, turning the lights off carefully behind him. He hung up his clothes carefully and dropped, naked, into bed, where he fell almost immediately into the first sound sleep he had enjoyed in more than a week. The first two nights in the hotel, he had slept well, but since then it had been purgatory.

When he woke up, suddenly, he was clammy with sweat. Nightmare, he thought, and tried to put the pieces of it together. But it wasn’t nightmare, it was something far worse. He’d made a slip, a bad slip.

And they knew where he was!

It was cat and mouse, and he was the mouse. He had played this game himself much too long not to recognize what was going on. How he had ever missed it in the first place he couldn’t imagine. Tricked by his own stupid weakness for drink!

The aftertaste was the tipoff. It was faintly sharp but not unpleasant, like the usual aftertaste of whiskey — a taste he knew all too well. It was the aftertaste of his own private whiskey, the special private stock, laid down more than forty years ago by some Kentucky colonel. Marty had bought the whole supply for himself when the estate went on the block more than a decade ago. It had a distinct individual quality, imparted by a combination of local springwater and non-commercial distillation.

It was his own brand of julep — or rather Louis’ — and as part of the game they had mixed it for him. He recognized all too well the brand of humor behind the game. Big Nick had even taken over Marty’s own kind of joke!

Panic rode him like a witch on a broomstick. He fumbled his way out of bed, turned on the lights and began to walk some more. He was shivering in his sweaty nakedness and, outside, the grey of dawn was bringing renewed life to the office building across the street. He couldn’t plan coherently. All he could think of was that Big Nick knew where he was and was waiting for him.

He reached for the phone on the living room table and gave Ryan’s private home number to a sleepy-voiced switchboard operator. He stood there, still shivering, while it rang twice, three times, four times, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven times without an answer.

Then he saw the white triangle under the hall door. He went over and picked it up, not warily but resignedly. Then he switched on the lights and looked at it. It was a letter, in an envelope, with the name George Smithers scrawled on it in a semi-literate, too-familiar hand. Violet ink and verbena — Louis even had his suite number under his name. He tore open the envelope, unfolded the letter inside and read —

Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped Louis that last time. But Louis’ too-silent perfection had gotten on his nerves at a time when they were stretched singing taut. And that “we” he used — it meant Louis and someone else, of course. Louis and who? Big Nick, of course. It was like that phoney to grab his houseman as well as his business. The creep had never had an original thought or idea in his life.

And where was Ryan? Marty tried him again, and again, kept trying every fifteen minutes, as the dawn became morning outside. For something to do, he bathed and shaved and got dressed, just as if it mattered any more.

It looked as if he were going to have to wait and get the lawyer at his office. What a time for Ryan to be out on the town, or wherever he was!

Between calls, he stood in the window and studied the blank face of the office building across the street. He wondered which one of those hundreds of sheets of glass covered the stake-out from which they had been watching him. Once, in his cold fear and fury, he almost raised his fist and shook it at the building, in a gesture of desperate defiance. But that would simply tell them their little game of cat and mouse was working on him.

At nine-fifteen, he called Ryan’s office. The lawyer wouldn’t be in yet, but his secretary would, and she’d know when he was coming in. What was her name? Miss Nourse — a plump, homely, efficient girl who knew when to keep her trap shut. As Ryan’s secretary, she had to.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Somers,” she said, “Didn’t Mr. Ryan get in touch with you? He said he was going to before his plane left yesterday.”

“Before — his — plane — left?” Marty heard himself repeating Miss Nourse’s bland phrase like an idiot. “Where’d he go?”

“He’s been so overworked,” she said, as if Marty were just any client. “The doctors told him he needed a rest. He took off for Honolulu yesterday afternoon. I saw him off from the airport.”

“Did he leave anything for me?” Marty asked eagerly — too eagerly.

“Oh — I think I know what you mean,” was the reply. “He did say something about a hitch developing at the last moment. I’m dreadfully sorry.”

Just like that — she was sorry and he was a dead man. There was a click and the line went dead, too. Hell, everything was going dead.

But with hope gone, Marty went into action. There was no sense in staying cooped up, like a beast in a cave. Sooner or later, when they got tired of waiting for him to come out, they’d come in and get him. They’d buy the hotel if they had to — and they had the resources to do it.

But they wouldn’t be expecting him to leave right away. They’d be figuring on having a little more fun with him first. He knew how their minds worked — knew much too well. A rear entrance? No, they’d be having them watched in any case. It was going to have to be smack through the big revolving door.

And then what? The first half minute was going to be the crucial period. If Marty could survive that long, if he was lucky enough to get a good cab driver who could shake the pursuit in traffic, he could make a little private airfield on the outskirts — not the big airport, they’d have that cased, too. If his luck didn’t run out, he could make Canada. And Big Nick couldn’t operate so well north of the border. And you could get a passport forged in Canada as easily as here.

A slim chance? Yes, but better than waiting for the slaughter. Within himself, for the first time in longer than he could remember, Marty felt the rise of excitement — not fear, but the old overwhelming eagerness to meet a challenge, to whip it, to walk away the winner. In this case, of course, the only prize in sight was his survival. But that and the money in the hotel safe were all he had wanted all along.

Marty took a deep breath before he opened the door. Automatically, his fingers rose to straighten his tie. He wasn’t taking the luggage — it was much too risky. And he could pick up a new wardrobe once he was safe again. As his hand came down, quite involuntarily, he crossed himself. Then he opened the door and walked out.

The hall was empty. The door of the big punk’s room across the way was ajar and the maid’s key was in it. Marty thought of giving Ellen a tip, then decided against it. After all, what had she done for him. For all he knew, she might have been the one who put the finger on him.

In the elevator, he even swapped remarks with the pilot about the ball team and its chances for the pennant. But he was thinking, enviously, of the big punk with all the hot records and the soft-voiced girlfriend. Considering what lay ahead of himself, and the soft path ahead of the big punk, he wondered why things weren’t arranged more fairly. Stop being a cry-baby, he thought.

The day desk-clerk greeted him pleasantly and took Marty’s receipt for the alligator-skin briefcase.

As he reached the revolving door, he stopped his mental wandering, took another deep breath. This was going to be it, this next thirty seconds, give or take a few. He was either alive or dead. And, as he pushed boldly through, he felt an inward, singing assurance that he was going to win — and live.

The doorman in his light blue and gold uniform gestured toward a cab. There was nothing wrong with the early morning traffic picture, not a person or a car out of place. The cab pulled up and the doorman opened the door. Marty stepped inside and said, “McMasters Airfield.”

“Sorry,” said another voice almost in his ear. “We’ve got an errand in town first.”

As the cab door shut, Marty looked slowly around. The big punk from across the hall, the one with the funny name — Binny — was sitting there, almost filling the back of the cab, grinning at him like an overgrown, friendly pup.

He held the big automatic as if he’d been born with one in his hand.

For a flickering instant, Marty wondered who had betrayed him — Ryan, Louis, Ellen, one of the waiters, the desk clerk? Or perhaps more than one of them. But, looking into unsmiling steel-grey eyes in that boyish, smiling face, he knew he was never going to find out. There wasn’t going to be time.