The Fatal Frails

CHAPTER VI

At three minutes to nine that night Johnny walked up the stairs in Madeleine Winters' apartment building, avoiding the elevator. At the door he pushed the white button in the left jamb. Chimes, he was sure, but he couldn't hear them. The place must be well-insulated. Or soundproofed.

Harry Palmer opened the door. “How you do get around, man,” Johnny said to him, and walked inside. Behind him he heard the solid snick of the lock as the door closed again. At the far end of the huge white-and-gold room, Madeleine Winters stood erect with her hands clasped loosely at her waist. She had on something that looked to Johnny like black lounging pajamas, but he had to forgo a closer look.

A big man, who seemed to overflow in all directions from the armchair in which he sat, lumbered to his feet at Johnny's entrance. He had no neck at all, but a lot of face, hammered flat. “This the guy?” he asked hoarsely. Nobody denied it, and he moved forward. His jacket rested on the back of his chair, and his shirt-sleeves were rolled back to disclose thick, hairy forearms.

Johnny circled slowly, one eye on Madeleine Winters. “No sheets on the pretty furniture to keep the blood from splashin'?” he chided her. “You're-” He broke off as the big man rushed him. Johnny side-stepped and put two hundred thirty-eight pounds into the hardest right-hand kidney smash he had in him as the man went by. The big man sucked in his breath, hard. Before he could turn, Johnny was in behind him and, with a bladed hand, chopped savagely twice at the stubby neck. It should have dropped him; all it did was turn him around. Johnny lowered his shoulder, set himself and sank his left hand out of sight in the ponderously advancing, bulbous stomach. He followed it with a right, and the big man went to his knees with a crash that jiggled the shades on the wall lamps. He looked mildly surprised.

Johnny set himself again as the man dropped his fists to the floor for leverage, hoisted his rump in the air and started up. From an angle Johnny blasted him with a right to the bridge of the nose that rolled the big man on his side. Blood spurted. The big man shook his head gingerly, drew one knee up under him, thought it over a second and straightened the leg out again. Johnny found a handkerchief and wrapped his right hand in it gently.

“I hope you're satisfied,” Madeleine Winters said bitterly from the back of the room.

No one answered her. Johnny pointed at an amazed Harry Palmer. “Outside, you.” Johnny strode to the chair, picked up a jacket with enough material in it for a horse blanket and threw it at the little man. “An' take your garbage with you.” He moved in on the bloody-shirted man weaving to his feet, grabbed him by an arm and shoulder and half pushed, half dragged him to the door. He opened it with one hand and spun his burden out into the corridor. He looked back at the still motionless Palmer. “Out, man.”

“You know what we agreed, Madeleine!” the little man cried shrilly. He scuttled sideways like a crab as Johnny left the door and advanced on him, but there was no fear in his face. “You know what we agreed!” His voice trailed off in a squeak as Johnny's hand closed down on his coat collar. Backing and struggling, Johnny marched him to the door on tiptoe, thrust him out and banged it shut. For an instant there was an impotent drumming of fists on the outer panels, and then silence reigned.

Johnny walked back down the length of the room to where Madeleine Winters had seated herself, on the royal blue couch. He removed his jacket, straightened his shirtsleeves, unbelted his trousers and restored his shirt-tails, and put the jacket back on. “Who was payin' for the breakage an' redecoration?” he asked her casually. “Harry darlin'?”

“I told him it was stupid!” she exclaimed spiritedly. “If Max couldn't do it, that clown certainly couldn't.”

“I got news for you, lady. That clown would eat Max for lunch an' me for dinner if he ever got himself untracked. He sopped up more'n the first wave at Anzio, an' he wasn't even close to bein' out. He just decided the size of the job hadn't been taken care of in the wage scale. Us businessmen are like that. We don't-” The phone rang shrilly on the gate-legged table across the room. “That's Harry darlin' from the lobby, pantin' to know if you need the cops to keep me from poundin' on your lily-white body,” Johnny told Madeleine Winters. “If you think you know, tell him.”

The blonde rose languidly and walked to the phone, every movement as studiedly graceful and carefully rehearsed as any on a Broadway stage. “Hello? No, you fool! Next time you'll listen to me. I said no! No! Don't you understand English?” She banged the phone down and turned to survey Johnny from beneath long lashes. “I don't know that I've ever met a man as sure of himself,” she said thoughtfully. She smiled. “But who am I to say it's not justified?”

“What's this agreement with Harry darlin' he was yodelin' about goin' through the door?” Johnny asked her. He removed the handkerchief from his right hand and inspected the knuckles.

The green eyes glinted with amusement. “A suggested pact not to engage in an auction for the merchandise you're selling.”

“He seemed to think it was a little stronger'n that.”

“At his age Harry should be used to a lady's exercising her perogative to change her mind,” she said silkily. Abruptly her mood hardened. “Are you for hire, Killain?”

“By the pound,” he told her solemnly.

“And just where do you draw the line?”

He looked at her. “What kind of business are we in?”

She gestured impatiently. “The kind I just saw demonstrated.”

“You've got a reputation for killin' your own, the way I hear it,” Johnny said.

She turned white. “That's the nastiest-” She stopped as mellow chimes sounded from the front of the room. She started automatically to the door, but her first step in that direction ended up against the iron bar of Johnny's arm.

“That could be Big Stuff back for Round Two,” he said mildly. “I wouldn't want to see those pajamas get rumpled. Unless I did the rumplin'.” He walked out to the door. Silently he turned the knob in slow motion, stepped back and flung it open.

The unexpectedly dark corridor, the shadowy figure, the sharp report, the blue flame and the hard sting in the ribs impressed him simultaneously. His feet became entangled in the door mat as he lunged forward. He shot over the threshold, clawing at the air. The first part of him to make contact was his head, with the wall, making him feel as though his neck had been telescoped. From his knees he shook his head groggily, surged erect and wheeled in the direction of the rapidly diminishing sound of running feet on the corridor's thick carpeting.

Madeleine Winters' thin scream halted him before he ever got in motion. From her apartment doorway she stared unbelievingly at the bright red blotch staining his jacket on the left side.

Detective James Rogers propped his topcoated shoulders against the emergency room wall. He lipped at an unlighted cigarette, his hazel eyes reflective as he watched the crew-cut intern briskly winding adhesive around Johnny's waist.

“That's enough, Doc,” Johnny growled finally. “I'm not fixin' to wear this till New Year's.”

The white-coated doctor cut the wide-backed tape with a shears and stretched the loose end into place. “That'll do it,” he announced.

“Okay.” Johnny slid down from the table. “Where's my pants?”

“You're staying overnight, at least,” the doctor said, surprised. “Precautionary. Possible-”

“The hell I'm stayin' overnight. Where's my things?”

“Out of the question, Killain.” The intern turned to leave. “I'll want to see you in the morning.”

Johnny caught his wrist. “I'll give you an address where you can see me in the mornin'. Meantime, do I get my clothes or do I wear yours?”

“Ridiculous!” the doctor snorted. He looked at the detective for support.

Rogers looked amused. “He's entirely capable of doing it,” he warned.

“Oh, very well, then,” the doctor said impatiently. “When bigger fools are made-” He looked Johnny up and down. “I'll send the nurse in with a release form for you to sign.”

“An' my clothes,” Johnny called after him as the doctor strode out. “These people are nearly as bad as yours for thinkin' they got to get their own way,” Johnny told Rogers. “Throw me a cigarette.”

“Now there's an all-fired black pot calling the kettle ebony,” the detective declared sarcastically. “No smoking in here,” he added as an afterthought. “How much of a chunk of you did that thing get?”

“Not much,” Johnny grunted. He raised his arms gingerly over his head and twisted from side to side at the waist, testing the constriction of his adhesive corset. “Chopped out a furrow under the arm is all. Grazed a rib.”

“What were you doing while all that was going on?”

“Standin' there watchin'. Someone unscrewed the corridor light bulbs, rang the bell an' busted one through me when I opened the door. The door was at the dark end of the apartment, too. All I saw was a kind of outline. Dark Clothes, an' I'd bet gloves an' a mask. I didn't even get a glimmer of skin.”

“How about size?”

“Right quick I'd have said not too big, but after I like to sprung my neck against the opposite wall goin' after him, the runnin' footsteps sounded real heavy.”

“All running footsteps sound heavy,” Detective Rogers said patiently. He removed the still unlighted cigarette from his mouth and placed it carefully over one ear. “When I got there after they'd hauled you in here, your ex-hostess was hysterical. Claimed that, with the difference in height, if she'd opened the door herself she'd be on a slab downtown.”

“Could be, Jimmy.”

“On the other hand, you haven't made many new friends lately, either.”

“I think this is one time I was the innocent bystander. On two counts. That shot came through so fast it had to be just reflex on the part of the gunman. He wasn't pickin' an' choosin' targets. He was all lined up on the door, an' the second it opened-bang.”

“You said on two counts,” Rogers reminded him.

Johnny hesitated. “I didn't use the elevator goin' up there, Jimmy. I used the stairs. There was two people with her when I got there. For anyone watchin' the elevator, when those two people left Madeleine Winters was supposed to be alone.”

“I know it's hopeless asking you why you avoided the elevator, so I'll just ask you who her visitors were.”

“You must've asked her that when you talked to her, Jimmy.”

“Maybe she lied to me.”

“Maybe she did. You don't want any help from me, though. I've got it on the best of authority.”

Detective Rogers glared. “Was one of them this Tremaine? The woman's got him all tagged and labeled as the gunman. She was all for swearing out a warrant until I asked her what she planned to use for evidence.”

“She's got a thing about him. They don't like each other.”

“You don't know that it wasn't Tremaine who fired the shot, Johnny.”

An orderly entered with Johnny's clothes, and he signed without reading the slip offered him. He began to dress. “No. I don't know. I think Tremaine's too big for what I saw, but I don't have to be right.”

“What were you doing up in that apartment in the first place?”

Johnny eased on his undershirt, picked up his shirt and looked at the dark-red clotted stain on it. He got his arms into it and buttoned it slowly. “Dechant had been crooked for years, accordin' to what I hear, an' had been mixed in with the same crowd right along. Everyone enjoyed good health, except Dechant's partner some time back. Then Kiki landed here. Pow! Dechant evaporated, Arends was blasted, someone pitched a shot through the widow lady's door an' all the other lovely people keep makin' noises like they'd like to nibble each other to pieces. Why, Jimmy?”

“What were you doing up in that apartment?”

Johnny settled his jacket gently on his shoulders and covered the red-brown discoloration on the left side with his sleeve. “I just about got time to get back to the Duarte an' knock off a fast forty winks before the school bell rings,” he said. “Seems like a better idea the more I think of it.”

“Johnny, you-”

“I'm the guy that got scragged, Mr. Detective, please, sir,” Johnny said in a falsetto. “Wouldn't you think the police department would be out scufflin' to find out who pegged that iron instead of fussin' with little old me?”

“Little old you can drop dead, as far as I'm concerned,” Detective James Rogers said bitterly. He set sail for the door without a backward glance, the back of his neck rigid with anger.

Johnny went out to the street leisurely. It was surprisingly mild, a pointed reminder that the weather was about to catch up with the calendar. Johnny couldn't truthfully say he thought too well of the idea. He seemed to appreciate the heat of the summer in New York City a little less with each passing year.

He stood on the curb and waited for a cab. He'd have to find some way to smooth down Rogers' ruffled fur. He liked Jimmy Rogers.

It had been quite an evening. Quite an evening.

In the lobby of the Duarte Johnny caught Paul Sassella's head nod, and turned to confront Madeleine Winters rising from an armchair. She came directly to him, her green eyes large in the pale oval of her face. “I want to talk to you. Privately,” she said huskily.

“Just a minute.” Johnny walked over to Paul behind the bell captain's desk. “What time did she get here?” he asked the stocky Swiss in an undertone.

“Three minutes ago. Less, maybe. Hadn't even gotten the chair warm.”

“Any excitement around here?”

“Marty had a no-pay skip on the middle shift. He checked in on our shift. Rollins wants to see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” Johnny grunted. “I'm goin' up an' change.” He walked back to Madeleine Winters. “Let's go upstairs.”

“I called the hospital and they said you'd left against their advice,” she said on the elevator. “I came right over.”

“You sure did,” Johnny agreed. “You had farther to come than I did.”

“You certainly don't look as though you were shot,” she said in the sixth floor corridor, almost trotting to keep up. “If I hadn't seen you hit-”

“It wasn't much of a hit,” Johnny said patiently. He was going to get rid of this woman in a hurry, that he knew. He was in no mood for small talk. Key in hand he stopped at 615, and froze instantly. One glance was enough to show that the lock had been forced with no particular finesse. “Stay back tight against the wall!” he threw over his shoulder at the blonde, and barreled inside with a rush.

The hard-flung door banged off the inside wall. Johnny stood just inside the threshold, and for once in his life stared blankly at the welter of upside-down chairs, torn-up bed, torn-down curtains, overturned chest of drawers, and dumped-out refrigerator. The floor was a tangled litter of bedclothing, cushions, pillows and papers thrown down from table drawers.

Recovering, he made a quick circuit of the room. The bathroom and the closet were the only places anyone could hide, and there was no one there. He turned to find Madeleine Winters surveying the devastation from the doorway. “A pig couldn't find its little ones in here if it didn't hear them grunt,” he said wryly.

“Didn't that expression sound more like 'Un cochon n'y retrouverait pas ses petits a moins de les entendre' the first time you heard it?” the blonde inquired.

“Maybe it did,” Johnny admitted absently, his eyes roaming the wreckage of his room. His attention sharpened. “What was your name before it was Winters?”

“Maillard.” She gestured at the room. “You haven't even looked to see if anything's missing.”

He didn't answer her. He walked over to a chair with its bottom slashed, and handfuls of coarse, wiry hair dribbling out, and kicked it gently. “I sure wish I'd stumbled in here while this was goin' on,” he said in a thinking-out-loud voice.

Madeleine Winters' voice rose. “You haven't even- ”

“I heard you,” Johnny interrupted her. He righted a chair and sat down. “I don't need to look. It wasn't here.” He bent stiffly to unlace his shoes, then changed his mind, got up and went to the phone. “Ring Housekeeping, will you, Sally?” he asked when she came on the line. “Amy?” he inquired of the languid drawl that eventually answered. “Killain. Hustle your tail on down here. Bring an appetite for hard labor.” He hung up and removed his jacket and shirt, carefully.

“But what are you going to do?” the blonde cried forcefully. “Nothing at all?”

“Do? I'm goin' to work,” Johnny said blandly. He removed a uniform from the closet and draped it over the chair back. He noticed that the pockets in some of the other clothing had been ruthlessly slashed, and his lips tightened.

“Work!” the blonde exclaimed scornfully. “I don't understand a man like you in a place like this, Killain.”

“I like it here.” Johnny sat down, and tackled the shoes again. He glanced upward to note the petulance of Madeleine Winters' expression. “I like it fine. Nobody bothers me. Look around when you go back downstairs. You see a night manager? No. You see a house dick? No. You see Killain. It gives a man a little room to spread his wings. Around here I do it my way, an' the brass don't ask me how I get it done.”

The blonde spoke swiftly as he paused. “Killain, I can make it worth-” She stopped suddenly at the sound of a knock at the door.

Amy, the tall colored girl who handled housekeeping nights, sidled in with her attention directed downward at the broken lock. “Mist' Johnny, somebody done bust-” she began, then straightened and saw the room. “Hoo-ee!”

The pretty face crinkled in an impudent grin. “Who you gone an' got mad at this time?”

“This time I wasn't here,” Johnny told her. “I hope you brought a shovel.” He redirected his attention to Madeleine Winters. “Go ahead,” he invited her.

“I can't talk now,” she protested sulkily, an eye on Amy, who was examining her with bright-eyed interest. “Okay,” Johnny shrugged. “Good night.” “Good night?” The green eyes flattened at the corners in the manner of a cat's. “Don't get on your high horse with me, Killain. I came-” She turned suddenly to Amy. “You'll excuse us for just a moment, please?” She really had a charming smile when she wanted to use it, Johnny reflected.

Amy promptly dropped the shredded curtains she had been gloomily regarding. “I'll get my cleanin' things,” she said, and went out.

Johnny forestalled the blonde before she could speak. “You came over here to buy something?” It took her by surprise. “Well, no. I came-“ “You came to put me on the pay roll so you'd have me handy in the oat bin when it come time to slam down the lid.”

“I don't see how you can say that. I never intended-” “You're not buyin',” he interrupted. “That leaves Palmer.” “I didn't say I wasn't buying,” she said quickly. “I said that wasn't my idea in coming here tonight.”

“You figure whoever got Arends winged that one at you tonight?” he asked her casually.

Her features seemed to shrink, and she circled her lips rapidly with the tip of her tongue. “I don't know. I need help. Don't you see that I could buy the thing from you tonight, and wind up dead before morning? It wouldn't solve anything for me.”

“But it would for me. All I want is to convert.” She chose to disregard this completely. “Come to work for me, Killain,” she pleaded. The vibrant voice was artistically husky. “I do need help, and I promise it wouldn't be the worst job in the world. I need someone like you.

Jules Tremaine would kill me as quick as he'd look at me. He proved that tonight.”

“Sorry,” Johnny said curtly.

The beautiful face looked pinched. “You mean-you won't?”

“That's what I meant.”

The change of expression was instantaneous. Madeleine Winters hitched her fur stole about herself with a vicious twist of her shoulders. “I won't forget this. You won't, either.”

“That's better,” Johnny said approvingly. “For a minute there I was afraid you were goin' soft on me.”

She was already on her way to the door. Only the broken lock prevented a really effective slam. Amy thrust her head cautiously inside before entering. “You is shuah rough on 'em, Mist' Johnny. That one got steam comin' out of her ears. She pretty enough to expect to have it the other way aroun'.” Amy's silvery giggle rippled through the room.

“See what you can do with this mess,” Johnny told her. He finished dressing and headed for the service elevator and the lobby. He found Paul in the cloakroom. “A guy about six-one, Paul,” he began without preliminary. “Looks slender, but isn't. Walks like he had a poker up his back. A real cold face an' eyes. Crew-cut gray hair, if he didn't have a hat on.”

Paul nodded. “A man like that came in just after the shift changed. He went directly to the house phones, spoke to someone and went upstairs.”

“He called a number at random, an' if he got an answer asked 'em if they wanted to buy any insurance,” Johnny said musingly. “When they hung up on him he went upstairs as if by invitation. Tore my place all to hell.” Max Stitt's footprints had been all over that job, he decided. A man looking for a thirty-pound object slashes curtains and clothes only from pure meanness. Unless he didn't know what he was looking for? Not likely.

He flexed his hands unconsciously. He would interview Mr. Stitt in the morning. He planned to enjoy it.