Doom Service

CHAPTER XII

On the street Johnny headed for a drugstore and a telephone booth. It took him nearly five minutes to get Detective James Rogers on the line. “Killain, Jimmy. You get anything from your pigeons yet?”

“That was quite a hunch, little man.” The sandy-haired detective's admission was grudging. “Up to now we've found three small operators who say they were bankrolled to cover all bets on Roketenetz to go by the fourth.”

Johnny grunted with satisfaction. “Able to trace it back?”

“You know I can't answer a direct question. Seems to me I heard, though, that the money man operates a floating poker game.”

“That's lovely,” Johnny commented sourly. “In my time I've met a few warts on the arse of progress, but this Manfredi is in a class by himself. What he's got comin' to him-”

“Don't go getting ideas, now!” Detective Rogers warned him sharply. “And, before I forget it, you're overdue down here to look at mug shots to try to locate the goon who assaulted Ybarra. You'd damn well better get down here before you run into Cuneo on the street. He didn't like that mess you left in the hospital corridor, and even more he didn't like your walking out.”

“I'll be down,” Johnny said. That's not saying when, he added silently. “Jimmy? You guys took the telephone chits outta the hotel for the day Gidlow was knocked off. There was a call made to Lonnie Turner's office from Gidlow's place within an hour of the estimated time of death, and there was another call made within five minutes of the first one. Is that right?”

“Why don't you ask me to send you the flimsies?” the detective asked irritably.

“Who was the second call made to, Jimmy?”,

“You've got better sense than to ask me that!” Jimmy Rogers snapped angrily.

“Sure, Jimmy. Sure. Forget it,” Johnny said soothingly. So there'd actually been a second call. Had to be, of course. The police must be reeling in the line. Slowly. Too damn slowly. “Thanks, man,” Johnny said into the receiver, and walked rapidly from the drugstore, out to the street and the cold.

Back at the hotel he had barely cleared the foyer doors when Gus pointed imperatively to the reservation desk. Gus was the day bell captain, pale and black-haired. “Message for you, Johnny.”

Johnny veered off to the desk and picked up the proffered telephone chit. He looked at the brief message: Call Bartlett.

He stood beside the desk, crumpled the bit of paper in his hand and wondered what could have happened to Stacy. He crossed the lobby to the pay phone booths, and had seated himself in one before he realized he didn't know the number. He had a little trouble before he found it in the directory. No sleep and that whack on the ear were making him a little fuzzy.

“L. Turner Enterprises,” Stacy's pleasant contralto said when she came on the line.

“It's me, kid.”

“Oh.” Her voice lowered conspiratorially. “I shouldn't be telling you this, but Mr. Turner's got a man following you.”

“Following me?” Johnny asked, genuinely surprised. “What the hell for?”

“I don't know. I just know that he has. I can't talk freely.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said slowly. “Well, thanks, anyway. I'll watch for him. Damn nice of you to call me. I'll elaborate on that a little when I see you.”

“Oh,” she said at once. “About tomorrow-would you mind calling for me at my place?”

“Not even if it was at the foot of the Statue of Liberty,” he said cheerfully. “Dinner's on me this time, though.”

“I've got to hang up-there's another call. I'll be expecting you. 'By.”

Johnny jingled the change in his pocket absently as he left the booth. Lonnie Turner's putting a man on him made sense from only one point of the compass-after the full and complete detail in which Lonnie Turner had told his story, he might feel a vested interest in whether Johnny was going to pass the information on. Hardly anything else it could be, but he'd worry about it with a few hours sleep under his belt. He went by the switchboard and left a 2:00 p.m. call with Edna, the day operator. Four hours sleep was not ten, but it was a damn sight better than nothing.

In his room he shed clothing from the door to the bed, and was asleep between one long breath and another.

The jangling phone crashed into his consciousness and jarred him upright. “Yeah. Okay, Edna. Thanks,” he mumbled to the operator. “I'm up.” He gave the lie to this statement by immediately stretching out again, but after a forty-five second inspection of the ceiling he rolled over and picked up the phone again. “Edna? Get me Providence Hospital, will you?” The line rang several times before it was answered. “I'd like to speak to Manuel Ybarra,” he said.

“Mr. Ybarra is not receiving calls,” the phone informed him after a pause long enough to check the alphabetical listing.

“Look-get me his ward nurse,” Johnny said rapidly. I'm-

“I'm not allowed to do that, sir.”

“I'm a relative,” Johnny pressed on, “and I've got to find out what they want me to bring down there.”

“Oh. Just one moment, sir.” In seconds a lighter, younger voice spoke pleasantly. “Ward G, Scalley.”

“Miss Scalley, I'm a cousin of Manuel Ybarra on your ward. How's he doin'?”

“Your inquiry should be addressed to the desk,” she said doubtfully. “You say you're a cousin?” Johnny gave her the first two lines of the Star Spangled Banner in rapid-fire Spanish. “Well,” Miss Scalley said quickly, “he's conscious and improving slowly. We're hoping he'll have some vision left in the right eye.”

“The left's gone?”

“From present indications. Dr. Martin says there's always a chance of a miracle, but-”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks, Miss Scalley.” Johnny hung up, rolled slowly onto his back and stared up at the ceiling again. Well, Killain. What are you getting yourself all roiled up about? A guy and a gal took a short cut to the money chamber. They didn't make it. The girl doesn't know yet why they didn't make it. And a damn good thing for Manfredi that she doesn't.

He shifted restlessly on the bed. How had Manfredi gotten to the kid to change the round of the fix? It couldn't have been through Gidlow. Gidlow had been sewed up lock, stock and money belt by Lonnie Turner. Or had he?

Terry Chavez had probably been closest to the kid in the hours before the fight. Johnny sat up on the bed suddenly. Terry Chavez. Would the old man double-cross his own flesh and blood? Hardly, but Terry Chavez-if he were able to talk-could very easily know how it had been done.

Johnny slid off the bed and began to dress rapidly. In the mirror he examined the purpling bruise spreading beneath his ear. Another mercenary. Nobody kills his own in this rat race-it's all hired. Unless Gidlow- You don't know about Gidlow. And Hendricks? You don't know about Hendricks, either. That one might have had no connection at all with the rest of it. Except for Hendrick's trip to borrow money from Manfredi. That tied him in solidly, as solidly as Keith. Or as solidly as Munson. Or Turner. Or Manfredi.

A fight manager dead, a fighter dead and a fight judge dead. A fight trainer hospitalized and an ex-fighter hospitalized. Not much doubt about the hub of the wheel.

He descended hurriedly to the lobby, and he was in full flight through it to the street when, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a slim, youngish man detach himself easily from a lobby chair and swing along in his wake. Belatedly Johnny recalled Stacy's warning. He turned right under the marquee, toward Sixth Avenue, looking nowhere but straight in front of him. He had no intention of having his movements reported upon to Lonnie Turner. The gentlemen behind him had a surprise coming to him.

Johnny turned right on Sixth, walked rapidly up the block and turned right again at the next corner. Two doors down he stepped into the recessed doorway of a cocktail lounge, a quick glance through the window verifying that it was deserted at that time of day. He couldn't even see the bartender.

Right on schedule, the slim man came around the corner, moving smoothly, tight to the wall. His eyes flickered side-wise to Johnny in the doorway, but he would have continued right on by if Johnny's hand on his arm had not snatched him into the doorway. Johnny shoved his hands casually in his coat pockets and leaned a shoulder against his companion, pinning him not too conspicuously to the window. “You do that real good, Jack,” Johnny told him gently. “I like the way you take the corners with the inside leg, like a base runner.”

“What the hell?” the slim man breathed wonderingly. “Am I wearing a sign?” The dean features looked startled; he had blue eyes and a fringe of red hair beneath a gray fedora.

“P.I.?” Johnny inquired. The man shrugged and nodded. “What's your per diem?”

“Twenty-five, and expenses.”

“Turner's probably payin' fifty to insure a good job,” Johnny guessed, and knew from the blue eyes' blink that the guess had been a good one. “It's not worth it, Jack.” He increased the shoulder pressure, and the slim man winced. “The next right turn I make an' your right ankle comes dippin' around the corner, I put a bullet through it.” Johnny paused to note the effect, then in midstream changed horses. There was an easier way than trying to scare this boy. “You know Jimmy Rogers?”

“De-Detective Rogers?” The man sounded as though he were having trouble with his wind.

“Detective Rogers,” Johnny agreed, and eased up on the weight of his shoulder. “You call him up an' ask him if he thinks it's a smart idea.” Without another word he walked out of the doorway back up to Sixth and flagged a cab. From the back seat as it pulled away he could see the slim man still in the doorway. So that was that, unless he had a partner, which wasn't likely. “Sisters of Mercy Hospital,” Johnny told the cabbie, and settled back for the ride.

He watched the neighborhoods change from business to residential to slum to slightly seedy residential again. His thoughts were on the white-haired, hawk-nosed man he had last seen in a coma in the boxlike, white-walled room at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. If Terry Chavez were able to communicate at all…

He stepped from the cab at the end of the ride and mounted the glistening white stone stairs. Inside the front door he glanced in at the little chapel; it would not do to run into Consuelo Ybarra on these premises. The hospital's air of quiet serenity would more than likely never be the same. Johnny didn't want to run into Manuel's sister unexpectedly, but there was a question he had to ask her, and it couldn't wait much longer.

Johnny climbed to the second floor and approached the remembered door with caution. He was ready to retreat at sight of a figure in the chair beside the bed until he realized that the head outlined was masculine. He entered the room after his momentary hesitation, and in the gloom had difficulty in recognizing Dr. McDevitt until the pink-cheeked man looked up with a start from his meditative, head-on-chest position.

The doctor rose to his feet with hand extended. “Ashamed to say I was nearly asleep, Killain. Haven't been sleeping too well recently.” His hand in Johnny's was dry and crisp. “Nice to know poor Terry's not completely forgotten,” he added with a glance at the bed.

“How's he doin', Doc? Any better?”

The commission physician pursed his lips doubtfully. “I'm afraid not. I've already looked at the chart.” He nodded at the clip-board hanging from the end of the bed. “It's difficult to tell in these cases sometimes, but it's my feeling that he's slowly sinking.”

“He's never regained consciousness?”

Dr. McDevitt walked around to the foot of the bed and picked up the chart. “Not since he first lapsed into this comatose condition. He was conscious-let's see-the first thirty-six hours after admission.” He looked up from the chart. “I feel a little negligent in this. Terry's an old friend of mine, and the first report I had was that it wasn't this serious.”

“He must have made a statement to the police at the time of admission,” Johnny said, thinking aloud, his eyes on the still form in the bed. He continued as the doctor raised an inquiring eyebrow. “If he'd never made a statement at all, there'd be a man in blue cocked up in a chair outside this door right now. An', whatever he told 'em, they're not expectin' a follow-up, or they'd have someone posted.”

“I'm afraid I didn't pay enough attention to the few details I did hear,” Dr. McDevitt admitted ruefully. “I believe it was the usual thing-attacked from behind on the street, with no sight of the assailant. You're a friend of Terry's?”

“A friend of a friend.”

The doctor nodded. “I like Terry. He's no saint-he's a hard drinker, in spurts-and certainly no intellectual. I employed him for some time as my chauffeur. I'm a poor driver in city traffic, and among other things Terry drove me out the highway to my psychiatrist's office every afternoon.” He chuckled gently. “Ever been in analysis, Killain? No, I can see it's a foolish question from looking at you. I had to give it up myself.” He chuckled again. “When those devils get to the point where they can remove the feeling of guilt from a man's life, it's time to quit. No guilt, no flavor, I always say. Ergo, no life. None worth living, at any rate. And I've managed to live quite comfortably with my little peccadilloes.” He waved a deprecating hand. “I'm boring you. I'm sorry. I've got to run along. Can I offer you a share of a cab downtown? Or have you the time for that drink I owe you from the other evening?”

“Not right now, thanks, Doc. That fella that was with you the other night went kinda quick, didn't he?”

“About as quickly as you can go, I guess,” the doctor said drily. “As sometimes happens after a man's gone, I'm beginning to hear stories that he led a parti-colored life. Dave Hendricks operated on several levels, apparently. In running up and down various stepladders he got his foot caught between the rungs of one of them. Not an infrequent occurrence in this town, but I was a little surprised that it happened to Dave.” The pink-cheeked doctor nodded casually, moved to the door and went out.

Johnny moved in beside the chair the doctor had vacated and looked down at the sharp-angled features under the shock of white hair visible above the head bandage. “I wonder if you'd make the same statement to the police now, man, if you knew what a tight fit it is,” Johnny mused, half aloud. He straightened finally and walked from the silent room.

In the daylight under a threatening sky, the tenement area in which the Ybarras lived looked even more depressing than at night, Johnny reflected. Scabrous building fronts contributed their own indefinable rundown aura. The gutters were dirty, there was trash in the streets, papers were blowing wildly and the half-hearted sidewalk snow removal had created unsightly melting lumps carelessly blocking off storm sewers.

Johnny hesitated before the iron steps of the Ybarra tenement. He'd come over here, but he hadn't really made up his mind. This trip could turn out to be not such a good idea if Consuelo Ybarra was still set on a hair trigger. Still, only she could tell him what he needed to know. If she doesn't hand you one of your ears before you get your mouth open, he thought grimly.

Well, one way to find out. He climbed the steps, entered the building and started up the five flights. In contrast to his first early-morning climb there was noise aplenty now-shrill, childish voices, the continual sound of doors opening and closing and the banging of pots and pans.

Johnny knocked twice at the door of 5-B. For seconds there was no sound at all, and then he could hear a cautious shuffling noise inside as though the inner side of the door had been carefully approached. He knocked again, impatiently.

“Who is it?”

He would have known that husky voice among a thousand. “Open up, Consuelo.”

The door opened conservatively on the chain latch, and she looked out at him. “You!” she said, and the pronoun became an epithet. “Are you ashame' of your name?”

“I'm not ashamed of nothin',” he told her flatly. “I don't blat my name for these walls to hear.” Behind her in the doorway he could see that the shades were drawn and the lights on. Her voice had sounded thick and unsteady, and he studied her in the poor hall light. The eyes looked dull and the full-lipped mouth slack, and the disorderly mass of blue-black hair seemed to be flying all over the small head. “You drunk?” Johnny asked her apprehensively.

She smiled broadly. “Not dronk. Dreenking.” She fumbled off the new chain latch, for which he was responsible, and threw open the door. “Come in!” The smile flattened to a half sneer as he hesitated. “The beeg man is afraid!”

“Ahhhh!” he said roughly, and pushed inside, past her. “Listen to me, now. Drunk or sober, you start anything an' I'll finish it, see? I don't want no caterwauling in my ear.”

“But of course,” she said gravely, and missed the first three times she tried to rehook the chain-latch bolt, her movements all in slow motion. She finally managed it and preceded him inside. His uneasiness increased when he got his first good look at her. She was in her stockinged feet and a shapeless purple dressing gown that should have made her look like a hag. Instead it made her look like a very attractive gypsy, Johnny thought. “Sit down,” she invited him with a wave of her arm, which nearly overbalanced her, and collapsed herself into a chair beside a table prominently furnished with a bottle and glass, each half empty. “Mus' make yoursel' at home.”

The liquor had tripled her tongue to the point where her speech, ordinarily quite good, was more accented than Manuel's. She pulled herself up out of the chair in sections and weaved unsteadily to a wall cabinet, from which she removed another glass. She returned to the table and sloppily poured him a drink. She pushed the overfilled glass in his direction, picked up her own and stared over its rim at him, her eyes narrowed with the intensity of her thought.

“Confusion everyone,” she toasted finally, “an' hell damn hell.” She giggled triumphantly, threw back her head, tossed down her drink, coughed, gasped and sank down into her chair. Her eyes watered and ran copious tears.

Johnny picked up his drink and sniffed at it. “What the hell kind of wild moose milk is this?” he demanded disgustedly. “Tequila?”

“Mescal,” she said in a faraway tone when she could get her breath. “National drink. Smooth's mother's milk. Good for babies. Something matter with me. Can't drink it.”

“You drank half a bottle of this-this antifreeze?”

“Cer'ainly. Felt fine, till 'bout ten minutes ago.” She hiccuped gently, cocked her head on one side and looked at him sleepily. “You're the bigges' theeng-”

“Never mind that,” he said harshly. “I came over here to ask you something.”

“Okay. All right. Yes.” She re-enacted the complicated maneuver of rising from the chair, then turned her back to him. Before he realized her intention she had slipped out of the dressing gown with a movement of her hands and a shrug of her shoulders. Beneath it she was wearing the stockings and a white blouse that failed to cover her rib cage-and the rest was Consuelo Ybarra. Johnny felt his eyes bulge as he stared at the soft lamplight polish on the dusky ivory tints of her buttocks.

“What the hell you doin'?” he demanded huskily. “You came to ask,” she said in surprise over her shoulder, then smiled and gestured at herself coquettishly. “All right. Yes.”

“I didn't-” he began, and swallowed it as she turned. She moved toward him, stumbled, fell up against him and threw her arms convulsively around his neck. She was shivering as though with a chill, but Johnny's hands had come up instinctively and filled themselves to overflowing with flesh that was far from chilled. He couldn't see her face, but he could hear her panting.

“Hurt me!” she urged throatily, and moved in his hands. Her dead weight hung suspended from his neck, and her body writhed ceaselessly. “Hurt me!” she demanded despairingly. “Your hands. Your-belt.” Her voice roughened in a hoarse gasp. “Do — something!”

He almost fell getting her through the doorway.

He was on his way out when he remembered. He walked back in beside the bed and, after the first glance at the face on the pillow, avoided looking at it. It was far more naked than the body. “Manuel had a twenty-five caliber Spanish automatic,” he said roughly.

“Si, pis tola.” She might have been a thousand light-years distant.

“Where is it?”

“Bureau-bottom drawer.” Her voice had no resonance. “I hid it.”

He crossed swiftly to the bureau, stooped and dredged ruthlessly amidst the welter of flimsy underwear. His probing hands touched something hard, and he removed it, unwrapped the tightly folded pink slip to its hard core and looked down at the toylike, pearl-handled weapon in his hand. So Manfredi hadn't killed Hendricks. Check that, Killain. He didn't kill him with Manuel's automatic.

He rolled the little handgun back up in the slip and thrust it back in a corner of the drawer.

He returned to the bed, but she spoke before he could. “Don't talk. Go.”

He was surprised to find that it was daylight when he reached the street. Where he had been it had been night for some time.