Doorway to Death

Chapter X

Willie Martin lay on his back in the big double bed in the hotel room, and the cigarette in the corner of his mouth trailed lazy spirals of gray-blue smoke upward. He looked up at Johnny sitting on the far edge of the bed, and his crisp voice broke the little silence. “This is not exactly the party I had in mind for the night I got back, Johnny. Maybe we should take the bit in our teeth and go out on the town?”

“Stop racin' your motor,” Johnny told him. “I got someplace for you to go later, anyway, if Shirley doesn't call. I told you she was in a bad mood.”

“You did tell me.” The lean, poised face returned to its brooding inspection of the eddying haze of his cigarette. “Not that it was necessary. She's had no other mood recently.” The light blue eyes flicked back to Johnny. “I suppose you wonder why I put up with it?”

“That's your business,” Johnny said shortly.

Willie smiled. “But you don't approve? You're as transparent as glass.” He shifted into a more comfortable position. “In a way, I don't approve myself, if it's any consolation to you.”

“Well, what the hell, then, Willie-” Johnny stared down at the slender man. “If you feel that way-I thought she had you on the hip.”

“She has.” The voice took on a brittle edge. “Perhaps I should have said that my intellect does not approve, but that I can't say the same for my emotions.” Willie lifted his head and smiled, this time the quick, flashing smile that Johnny knew so well.

“You find that a little difficult to believe?”.

“Well, knowin' you-” Johnny paused uncomfortably.

“She's a pretty thing, Johnny.”

And at the substantial understatement Johnny knew all that he needed to know; inwardly he was amazed. The man on his bed may not have had his pick of the world, but he hadn't missed it by much. Johnny had seen them come and go in Willie's life, the ladies and the others, and now here was the fastidious Willie trying to justify his feeling for a beautiful face that Johnny could no longer disassociate from a needle-punctured thigh…

He spoke abruptly. “Let's take a little ride.”

“Where?” There was no interest in the inquiry.

“Friend of yours wants to say hello.”

This time the head came around. “A friend? Of mine?”

“Yeah. Joe Dameron.”

Willie made a wry face. “I couldn't work up much enthusiasm over that visit. Joe and I never did see exactly eye-to-eye.”

“This is business.”

The blue eyes narrowed. “What kind of business? Do you have something on the fire with Joe?”.

“We been playin' cops and robbers around here since you left.”

“Well?”

“I'd rather have Joe tell you.”

Willie sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed; his hands energetically attacked his loosened tie and paused as his head swiveled toward Johnny again. “Are you in trouble? You been throwing your weight around?”

“No more'n usual. Joe'll brief you.”

Willie considered him shrewdly for a moment and then shrugged. He dressed quickly, and in deference to his business suit Johnny slipped into a sports jacket. Willie maintained combat silence on the way down to the street, and he spoke only once in the cab. “Has this something to do with the hotel?”

“Yeah.” They finished the ride in silence again, and Johnny led the way up the worn white steps and turned left inside to the high desk presided over by the white-maned patriarch, who regarded them bleakly.

“To see who, is it now?”

“The keeper of the zoo,” Johnny told him. “Mr. Martin to see Lieutenant Dameron.”

Deliberately the old man picked up the phone. “Lieutenant? A Mr. Martin to see you, sor. Wit' that big moose was here the other afternoon. Yes, sir.” He replaced the phone and looked at them.

“Second door on the left,” Johnny said for him before he could speak, and the thin mouth tightened, but he nodded.

Lieutenant Dameron met them in the hall. “Willie!” he exclaimed, hand outstretched. “Good to see you again. I'd heard you were in Europe; really hadn't hoped to see you this soon. What brought you back to town?”

“My sinful nature,” Willie replied drily, shaking hands and glancing from one to the other of the two big men. “This is turning out to be quite a production. What's on your mind, Joe?”

“Johnny didn't tell you? Come on inside. We can't talk out here.” He led the way into the familiar, dingy room and motioned them to chairs as he closed the door. “Sorry about the appearances, but the city doesn't believe in wasting money on us non-revenue producing agencies.” He dropped down in his swivel chair behind the cluttered desk, propped his elbows on its surface and looked at Johnny over his steeple-shaped pressed-together hands under his chin in the gesture Johnny had come to associate with him. “You didn't tell him anything?” Johnny shook his head. “Okay. Here's a fast rundown for you. Willie.”

Johnny sat and listened to the ruddyfaced man quickly sketch the sequence of events at the hotel, beginning with Max Armistead's original proposition and Johnny's session with him on the elevator through all the ins and outs of the subsequent developments down to the point of the discovery that Ronald Frederick was not Ronald Frederick at all but had obtained the job for some purpose of his own through the use of another man's name.

Johnny watched the changing expressions on Willie Martin's aristocratic face as he listened to the rapid recital, and when the lieutenant had finished the slender man sat quietly for a moment, lost in thought. When he spoke his voice was brisk. “I imagine you boys had a specific reason for lugging me in here and spoonfeeding this to me, but how about a couple of questions first?”

“Go right ahead,” Lieutenant Dameron invited him, and Willie Martin frowned absently, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the ceiling a moment before looking back at the big man behind the desk.

“This might sound a little silly to you, Joe, but are you sure you haven't gotten your wires crossed on Freddie?”

The lieutenant stared, but Johnny cut in ahead of him before he could reply. “Not a chance, Willie. Joe got the word from the coast.”

“I know, I know.” The slender man straightened in his chair, and his tone was impatient. “Joe got the word. Now let me tell you something. An hour ago I finished reading the first comprehensive report I've had from my auditor and my lawyer since I put Frederick in there, and both of these reasonably disinterested businessmen assure me that he's doing a better job for me down there than anyone I've had in a long time. Now I wouldn't try to convince you that the hotel is the biggest or most complicated operation of its kind, but on the other hand it doesn't run itself. One of us is barking up the wrong tree, Joe.”

Again Johnny spoke first. “You haven't seen this thing break wide open the way we have.”

“Johnny's right,” the lieutenant chimed in heavily. “We have to believe it's him from what we've developed to date.”

Willie spread his hands placatingly. “Yet we have this suspect, this imposter, successfully operating a fairly specialized business. It's a little difficult to reconcile. Well, let's get to it. Why am I here?”

The red-faced man cleared his throat. “I want you to prefer charges against this so-called Ronald Frederick.”

Willie sat silent so long that Johnny shifted uneasily in his chair; the slim man leaned forward finally, face thoughtful. “Can you blame me if the first thought that comes to mind is that if there were a legitimate charge you'd be making it yourself?”

“You're the injured party, Willie.” The lieutenant's face was bland.

“Exactly where or how am I injured? Let's tighten it up a little-with what am I supposed to charge him?”

“My boys upstairs'll find you half a dozen things, based on the misuse of the name.”

“I'm no lawyer, Joe. Is it criminal? And if it isn't, in view of what I've already told you about his work, if there're no loose ends, no damages, no loss… well, I personally don't see where there's a civil action, either. This is no hood you can push around, Joe; this is an educated man who knows his rights.”

Lieutenant Dameron drew a long breath, and his face hardened. “Are you turning me down, Willie? We look for a little more cooperation than that from our more prominent taxpayers.”

Johnny could see Willie's face stiffen in turn. “Don't threaten me, Joe. Even indirectly.” His tone turned sardonic. “I don't like to be put in the position of defying a duly constituted authority-”

“For God's sake, Willie,” Johnny broke in. He had been sitting more and more uneasily on the edge of his chair. “What the hell's the matter with you? This is serious. There's a goddamn volcano set to go off around the place we don't get the lid on. You sound like an old woman. How come you're so persnickety all of a sudden? I've seen the time you defied a bunch of duly constituted authority would send Joe and me both runnin' for the kaopectate.”

Willie leaned forward in his chair again. He looked tired Johnny thought. “Is this the man, Joe? Am I safe in preferring charges? Have you got a case?”

lieutenant Dameron spoke carefully. “With your help, Willie, we intend-” He broke off as the slender man stood up suddenly.

“I can't buy it,” he said sharply. “Not this way. I'll soften it a little, though. I'll have to talk to my lawyer first, of course. Then I'm going to Acapulco in the morning. I'll be back in two days, and by that time you should have developed this thing to the point where you either don't need me at all, or that I can justify my intervention. More than that I can't do.”

“We don't want that little bastard to have two days,” Johnny said gloomily. “I'd bet my life he's the juggler keepin' all this stuff in the air. We grab him we got a good chance of rollin' up the rug on the jackpot.”

Willie looked at him. “Aren't you giving him the Iron Cross with palms for being the mastermind behind all this that I've been listening to, in addition to holding down a full time job?”

“Willie, how many times have I steered you wrong? He's the man.”

Willie shrugged. “We could sit here all night and get nowhere,” he said after a moment. “That's not what I came to New York for, though. Let's go, Johnny.”

Johnny rose reluctantly, looking at the big man behind the desk, who looked away. No one offered to shake hands on the way out, and on the stone steps outside Willie paused and looked up at Johnny. “You figure I'm wrong?”

“I know you're wrong.”

“Sorry.” But he didn't sound sorry, Johnny thought; he slowly descended to the street in the wake of the slender man impatiently whistling for a cab.

He heard Sally's key in the door, and he put down his newspaper as she entered with her arms full of bundles. Her eyebrows lifted at sight of him in the easy chair. “Well buster,” she commented on her way through to the kitchen where she set down her packages with a thump, “I couldn't truthfully say I expected to see you this morning Have you been to bed at all? What happened to Willie?”

“Just put him on the plane to Mexico,” Johnny said.

Her voice drifted out from the kitchen. “He ought to be right in his element with the jumping beans.” She reappeared in the doorway. “You all right? You look a little down. Or just hung over?”

“That must be it, ma.”

She walked into the bedroom and came out with the telephone pad in her hand. “I had a report this morning from a Fontaine Agency operative,” she said importantly. “Interested?”

“It depends.”

“Let me check and see if you've paid last month's bill. Maybe your credit rating doesn't call for any additional information.” She looked down at his expression of inquiry. “Mr. Carl Muller is in town.”

Johnny grunted. “You know that?”

She nodded. “He's not only in town, he's in the hotel. I've had Vivian Fuller-she's the new day housekeeper- watching Mrs. Muller's room ever since you said you were interested in it. She called me a half hour ago and said that he'd just checked in. Same address, Bremerhaven. He doesn't speak as good English as his wife. He asked if a Mr.-” she checked the telephone pad ”-Samud was registered or had left a message for him. Seemed surprised when they said no and made the desk check again. They opened up the connecting door between 1224 and 1226 and made a suite out of it; you know, with the bathroom in between. End of report.”

Johnny stared at the white summer curtains moving gently in the early morning breeze. “He's meeting someone. Or planning to. Probably doesn't have a thing in the world to do with this other skirmish-” He stood up restlessly and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Think I'll go out for awhile.”

“You just got here. Barely.”

“I'll call you, ma.”

He ran lightly down the single flight of stairs to the street level, his mind on Carl Muller. Now if somehow there should be a connection-

He noticed the man in the hallway but brushed past him to open the door. His hand barely touched the knob when a hard object was jammed into his right side and a voice spoke curtly in his ear. “Take the second cab at the stand, bud. No tricks.”

Gun and voice were at his right; Johnny turned left. “I beg your pardon?” he said politely over his left shoulder, then continued to turn in apparent surprise at not finding anyone there. In the middle of his turn the pressure in his right side lessened as the man with the gun tried in vain to follow his movement, and Johnny accelerated. He came out of the turn with a stiffened left forearm that clubbed the squat body viciously at the beltline, and the man gasped and doubled up, face screwed up in agony.

Johnny chopped a rabbit punch to the exposed neck, and the man pitched forward to his knees. Johnny bent swiftly and removed the gun from the nerveless hand as the squat man fell over on his side; with a firm grip he grabbed the slack shirt collar and towed the limp figure along the parqueted floor toward the basement entrance just down the corridor from him. Five minutes privacy with this one, and he would have the answers to a few questions.

Johnny speeded up as he heard steps descending the stairs. The overhang partly hid him, and he didn't know whether he had been seen or not. He was not long in doubt; the voice behind him was heavy and demanding. “Just a minute, mister.”

Johnny halted and turned slowly. A stout man with hard gray eyes advanced from the foot of the stairs and stopped a dozen feet away. Johnny blinked; there was no gun in his hand. That was an improvement. He estimated the distance between them, and then it came to him. “You Dameron's stakeout here?”

“That's right, fella.” He gestured at the figure on the floor. “I'll take over now. I saw the whole thing from the top of the stairs. That's a real nice move, Killain. Like to show it to me sometime on my day off?”

“I'll make a deal with you, Jack. You go get lost upstairs for ten minutes. When you come back down I give you this and I show you the move any time you say.”

The fat man shook his head regretfully. “I can't do it. I got my orders, and they say to keep an eye on that door upstairs, and to break up any scrimmage you get into around here. What I hear, if I took you up on that offer I'd need a basket to get him downtown.”

“It bothers you, Jack?”

“It bothers the people that sent me here. Comprends?” Johnny sighed and released the collar to which he had been holding. There was a hollow sound as the dead weight struck the floor, and the fat man clucked in disapproval. “You're gonna spoil him, Killain.”

Johnny started to reply and then remembered. “This bastard said the second cab at the stand-” He ran lightly to the door with the fat man outdistanced. Behind the first cab at the stand was an empty space. “Damn-!”

“Gone, huh?” the stout man sympathized. “Too bad. I think I'll call and get the meat wagon for your boy here.”

“Here.” Johnny handed him the gun. “This goes with him.”

“Well, thanks, now. I appreciate it. Sorry I can't do you that other favor, but you know how it is. I sure would like to learn that move, too.”

“You keep the stairs here clean, and you learn the move.”

“Yeah? Mister, nobody gets up those stairs without a blood test.”

Johnny nodded, and turned to the door.

He ran into Jimmy Rogers just inside the door of the stationhouse, and the sandyhaired man cocked a quizzical eyebrow at the sight of him. “The lieutenant get hold of you? He's been calling all around.”

“First I heard of it. What's up?”

“Put up your lightning rod.”

“Like that, huh? What's chewin' him?” Johnny followed the detective inside to the private offices, and a billow of sound rolled through the corridor.

“Rogers!”

Johnny grinned at Jimmy Rogers' sardonic glance. “The bull moose is in rut, huh? Let's go in an' give him a hotfoot.”

“You don't have to work for him.” Detective Rogers made no objection to Johnny entering behind him into the same office he had left with Willie Martin not so many hours ago.

“Mornin', Joe.”

“You!” It was an epithet the way it was uttered as the red-faced man's head jerked up and focused on Johnny. “I want a few words with you right now!”

“You expect to enjoy yourself while you're havin' 'em, furl your sails a little,” Johnny suggested. He seated himself comfortably as he eyed the irate lieutenant. “You'd have a little trouble bustin' me back to a post, Joe.” Detective Rogers' expression as he sat down across from Johnny was carefully blank.

“You can skip the wise remarks. I want a straight answer from you. Have you had anything to do with this Myrna Hansen, the telephone operator?”

It surprised Johnny. “I had a little talk with her,” he said cautiously.

The lieutenant's hands came up from his lap and gripped the edges of his desk, hard. “You had a little talk with her,” he mimicked heavily. “She's only a certain witness and a possible confederate to some of these goings on, but you had a little talk with her.” He raised himself up in his chair, and the angry face was dark red. “Just who the hell do you think you are? This is a police investigation. I don't want you-”

“Ahh, knock it off, Joe,” Johnny interrupted him. “You talked to her for two hours, and you got a big, fat nothing. I just tried to throw a little scare into her, that's all.”

“God give me strength.” The lieutenant looked up at the ceiling before again boring Johnny with his eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that just possibly we might know what we're doing? We wanted to know where that woman went, whom she contacted. You had your little talk with her and scared her underground. My man lost her yesterday afternoon and hasn't seen her since.”

“The people she's been playin' with, you'll be lucky if you don't find her underground,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “Or she'll be lucky. Personally, I couldn't care less; in my book she's been livin' on borrowed time a while already, the way she operates. Are you listenin' today, Joe, or just talkin'? I got a couple of things.”

The big man glowered at him silently, and Johnny shifted his remarks to Detective Rogers. “I was just stuck up at the door of that apartment where you have the stakeout. Gun-in-my-ribs said, 'Get into the second cab at the cab stand.'”

“Where the hell was Mulleavy while all that was going on?” the sandyhaired man demanded sharply.

“Mulleavy your man? He was at the head of the stairs, watching.”

“Oh, great-!”

“I'm kiddin' you. He didn't have time to blow his nose. I didn't even know he was there, so when I took out the guy in the doorway I had just started to lug him down into the basement for a private interview when Mulleavy declared himself in. Said private interviews were verboten.”

Lieutenant Dameron broke his silence, the backbone gone from his voice. He sounded tired. “Mulleavy followed orders, but I almost wish he'd been out for a beer. That's an unofficial wish.” Thick fingers drummed on the desk.

Johnny returned his attention to the lieutenant. “I remember way back at the beginnin' of all this, Joe, you stood up on your hind legs and told me you got answers. You sure as hell haven't gotten many from the people you've talked to so far, and there's been quite a few. What goes?”

The lieutenant slumped down in his chair and passed a hand over his eyes. “Well, let's take it by the numbers. Max's boys were a couple of professional hoods; you never figure to do much with them. I had hopes for that coked-up redhead; he should have told us everything he'd ever known in his life when his skinful wore out. He got a real weird reaction when it did, though; he went right from a human clam to a whistling scream. The docs took him away from us.” He straightened in his chair and looked over at Johnny. “Then there was Rieder, the cook at the hotel. I don't feel too good about that one. I felt safe; Doc Greenstein had knocked him out with a needle, I had a man at the door of his room, and Jimmy on the way over to kneel on his chest and get a few answers. But with all that, he still went down the drain. Literally, by God. Now there's this one you knocked over today. He able to talk?”

“When they tape up his ribs.”

“Put that at the top of your list, Jimmy. Not that it'll do us any good. This is another hood.” The gray eyes ranged Johnny speculatively. “How'd you like the cooperation we got from your boss last night?” Johnny was silent. “Well? Did he give you a reason? He couldn't have given you one that made sense, because there isn't any. I don't forget things like that, Johnny.”

“He's a businessman, Joe. He can't-”

“Businessman, hell! This is Dameron you're talking to. Willie inherited a few dollars, and all his life he's been the playboy of the western world, except for that little party overseas. He's been-”

“Ahhh, chop it!” Johnny snapped. “All that crap is between you and him. All I know is that if I'm in a thirty foot circle and I need a man at my back, Willie's the man. Where the hell do you get off runnin' him down? Why don't you make your own move instead of askin' him to do something you're afraid to do yourself?”

Detective Rogers interposed himself smoothly between the acrimonious raised voices. “You said you had a couple of things, Johnny. You only mentioned one.”

“Yeah.” Johnny looked over at the poised notebook. “You got room for hunches in that thing?” Swiftly he outlined the history of the Mullers as he knew it up to the telephone call from the housekeeper. “I don't know why they look out of line to me, but they do.” His eyes came back to the silent lieutenant. “I don't know a thing, Joe, but I tell you I can feel it.”

Lieutenant Dameron considered the busily writing detective. “Well, Jimmy?”

Detective Rogers looked up from his notebook. “Let's run through it again. The woman checked in at the hotel- let's see, that would have been the second day after Max ran out of gas in the alley. She takes all her meals in, sees no one, and calls no one, but Johnny here is watching the register for European check-ins because we think this whole thing has something to do with contraband being brought in on boats, so he gives her a second look. He established little except that she was in Italy a few years ago, that she's Viennese married to a German, and apparently hasn't always led the sheltered life. This morning her husband shows up at the hotel and checks in alongside. Oh, yes, and inquired for a Mr. Samud, apparently unregistered.” He looked up from the notebook spread open on his knee. “That's it?”

“That's it,” Johnny admitted. “You want I should walk out to the sidewalk before droppin' dead and save you the trouble of cleanin' up here? If I'd said it out loud to myself like that before I came over here, I probably would've saved myself the trip.”

Lieutenant Dameron stared down at the top of his desk. “We can watch them, of course,” he said slowly. “Hell, we must have a man over there now for practically every room in the place. We can watch them, but can you blame me if I ask why?” He pulled at an earlobe exasperatedly. “On the other hand, I've seen these 'feelings' of yours before. You used to be able to smell trouble at two hundred yards, upwind.”

“Joe, just as sure as I'm sittin'-”

“Just a goddamned minute, everyone.” The sandyhaired detective was staring down at the notebook on his knee. He stood up quickly, covered the bottom half of the exposed page with his palm and laid the book on the desk before his superior. “Look at that.”

The lieutenant leaned back first to look at his assistant, as though trying to analyze the repressed excitement in his voice, and then down at the indicated five printed block letters. “Samud? That's the party this Muller asked for when he checked in today, according to Johnny. So?”

“Try it backward,” Detective Rogers invited. His hand moved off the bottom of the page to reveal another set of printed letters.

“Backward? D-U-M-A-S-? Dumas? Say, Dumas-!”

“Sure. The west coast import who caught the cleaver in the kitchen that night.” The detective paced rapidly up and down in front of the desk. “Lieutenant,” he said excitedly, “we've been blind. I can write you a whole new script.” He halted in his pacing and faced them, an arm in the air and an index finger extended like a schoolmaster. “What's bothered us the most about this whole operation? Frederick. In an overall action with a highly professional gloss, he has all along had the look of an amateur. We haven't been able to make him as a pro, and the man that's at the wheel of this thing has to be a pro. It doesn't make sense, otherwise.”

He directed the pointing finger at Johnny. “That's where we went wrong. Dumas was the pro. Dumas was the boss. Frederick was brought in by him for a specific job, probably to provide cover and act as clearinghouse for whatever their traffic may turn out to be. That's not important. The important thing is that the whole affair hinged on Dumas.”

“Now just a minute-” Johnny began, and the sandy-haired man waggled a reproving finger.

“Let me finish. You get the picture in the kitchen that night? Dumas had killed young Rieder, after trying to get him to talk, and he had a body to dispose of in a hurry. He dragooned his man, Frederick, into using his keys to get them down into the kitchen on the room service elevator and into the meat locker. Then the old man interrupted them, and Dumas killed him, too, but got himself half-killed in the process. Frederick must have stood there with the world coming down around his ears. He couldn't leave Dumas around alive to talk, so he finished him off. I'd say he graduated from the amateurs to the pros right there, and cum laude, at that.”

He swung back to the lieutenant at the desk. “He had already had the foresight-or had followed Dumas' instructions-to have his room wired up, so that when he knew that Johnny was suspicious of him and was listening in, he was able to sidetrack him. Do you realize that if I'm right this Muller doesn't know Frederick and that Frederick doesn't know him? That Frenchy Dumas was the intermediate contact and possibly the only one?”

“You're goin' too fast,” Johnny complained. “You lose me when you say Freddie wouldn't know this Muller. If he doesn't know Muller, what's the point in the boy-stood-on-the-burnin'-deck act he's puttin' on down there?”

“Does he need to know that Muller doesn't know him?” Jimmy Rogers demanded earnestly. His hazel eyes popped with excitement. “Frederick is waiting to be contacted, not to do the contacting. He doesn't realize that he's killed off probably the only contact there ever was. He'll be there till the wreckers move in. What else can he do?”

“He can blow,” Johnny said flatly.

“Don't say that,” Lieutenant Dameron winced. “I've been lying awake nights sweating out his giving us the slip ever since we found out he's not the real Frederick. Do you realize we don't even know who he is, legitimately? I've got to pick him up. Fifteen yards start and he'd melt out on us like an ice cube on a summer day.”

“If you haven't got him staked out like a uranium field you ought to lose him,” Johnny said.

“So he's staked out. Accidents happen. Look at that orange-headed female I'm plowing up the streets for now. I've got to pick this Frederick up. I want his prints.”

“That's a little different tune than you were singin' last night. Last night you needed a little help.”

The big man nodded. “I could use some, but I can't wait. I've got a boy upstairs has forgotten more law than most judges ever learn, and he's given me a couple of angles. I've got a chance to make it stick.”

“He'll spit in your eye,” Johnny predicted. “Besides, there's a better way, Joe.” He grinned into the wary glance behind the desk. “Let's introduce 'em to each other over there.”

An exhaled breath sounded gustily in the room's quiet. “Impossible!” Lieutenant Dameron exploded the word.

“What the hell's impossible about it? Outside of you sayin' so like God Almighty?”

“Just a minute, Johnny,” Detective Rogers thrust in soothingly. “Suppose we did what you suggest. What would happen?”

“Who the hell knows? Let nature take its course. It ought to flush a little of this mess out into the daylight.”

The sandyhaired man shook his head patiently. “I wouldn't try to convince you that we always go by the book, but a police action has to be a little more integrated than what you have in mind.” He glanced at the lieutenant who was tipped back in his chair with his eyes closed, the red face thoughtful. The little silence was broken when the chair tipped forward with a bang and the face set itself in stern lines.

“No. We can't do it. It's extra-legal. It's dangerous.”

“Ahhhh, let me call him, Joe. I can probably convince him he should give himself up.”

“You needn't put any extra effort into being a wise guy, Johnny. I'm telling you: don't do it. I can't stand wrong guesses and further complications. Don't even think of it.”

“You think you can stop me?”

“I can make you wish you'd never thought of the idea, and by God, I will. I'll take you off the street if I have to make a law. Don't you cross me.”

“Blow it outta your barracks bag, Joe. You think you're scarin' anyone?”

“Johnny, this is important to me!”

“So you sit here an'-ahhh, forget it!” He lurched to his feet and started for the door.

“Johnny-!”

He slammed the door heavily behind him.

In his own room he stared at himself in the bureau mirror over the rim of the double shot-glass of bourbon in his hand. He threw back his head and tossed down the contents, shivered, and solemnly inspected himself again in the glass.

“Well, Killain? You figure it out. Man told you not to do something. Did he mean it, or did he say it figurin' you'd do it anyway to spite him? An' if that's what he figured, you sure you want to do it? Go ahead, Killain. Figure it out.”

He refilled the shot-glass and sat down in his easy chair.

He lifted the glass to the light, studied its amber contents, and drank deeply. After a moment he put down the glass and got to his feet again; he walked into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He groped for a towel, dried himself off, threw the towel aside, and walked back into the living room.

The telephone rang as he walked to the door; he ignored it. In the corridor he turned right and walked steadily on past the service elevator to the end suite in the hallway.

At the door he knocked sharply three times, folded his arms, and waited.