Doorway to Death

Chapter VIII

On the street Johnny looked for a cab, glanced up deserted 45th Street and turned right to walk up to Sixth Avenue. He wanted a cab going north.

Half a dozen doors up the street he took in the tall man standing in the doorway in a short-sleeved sports shirt and a colorfully banded panama, and he was almost past before it registered. He stopped. “Hans?” he asked a little doubtfully until he saw the face. “Damn, boy, I almost didn't recognize you, I'm so used to seein' you in whites all the time. Steppin' out?”

The first cook cleared his throat; he seemed uneasy. “Yes. That is … I have a date.”

“Happy hunting. How'd you make out with Freddie?”

This time the voice was bitter. “He will let me know. He needs to make up his mind, to consider the advisability of looking for someone with a name and more experience.”

“I wouldn't worry about it too much, Hans. You're puttin' in a good lick for yourself every day you keep the wheels turning. I doubt Freddie does much of any looking around.”

“The waiting, though … the indecision-”

“You're on the ground, Hans, and you got a runnin' start.”

“It is important to me.”

“Sure it is. Top jobs don't grow on trees. Well, I got to run, boy. See you tomorrow.” A cab turned the corner from Sixth and headed west toward Johnny, and he stepped out into the street and flagged it. He jerked the rear door open, and slid in, and they were riding by Hans and the hotel when the driver tipped the flag down.

On impulse Johnny leaned forward. “Circle the block. I want to come back through this block.”

“Mister,” the cabbie said in patient exposition as to a backward child, “you live around here? You know how these streets run? To come back down this street I got to go clear to Eighth, over to 46th, back to Fifth, over-”

“I didn't tell you how to do it, bud. I said do it.”

They hummed through the deserted streets, the cab rocketing around the right hand turns, catching all the lights. Johnny spoke as they crossed Sixth on 45th. “Slow it down.” His eyes had already seen that the single figure in the doorway had increased to two, and as the cab eased by he could see the horn rimmed glasses and the orange tinted hair above the flowered dress. Myrna. Myrna and Hans. Now there was a combination for you.

Johnny leaned back slowly in the corner of the cab. Hans and Myrna. Not even the rearing of sex's lovely head should explain that surprising alliance, although of course you never could tell…

The driver was looking back over his shoulder. “Well, mister? You like it well enough to do it again?”

Johnny roused himself. “Take me up to Van Cortland and Bacon.”

“Jesus, mister, that's way uptown. You must like to ride.”

“I like to ride but not to talk.”

“Okay, okay. The roof don't have to fall in on me. You want to go through the park or up the highway?”

“Through the park.”

They rode in silence for thirty five minutes, and the meter said $3.15 when the cab pulled in to a comer in an area of apartment houses with massive Gothic fronts. Johnny paid the driver off, and stood on the curb a moment. He had been here once before, but in the daylight. He looked up and down the narrow street with its tightly knit row of cars parked up and down the slight grade. Up, Johnny's sense of direction said, and he turned left and walked steadily, past successive ornate, identical buildings. He moved briskly. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. And at the fifth apartment entrance he saw it: one of the couchant stone lions that formed the elaborate entrance pattern for each building had a chipped nose. Johnny had seen that chipped-nosed lion before.

He ran up the double flight of wide stone steps and entered the bare lobby, in which the impressive exterior quickly degenerated to a shabby gentility. He ran a finger down the list of names on the mail boxes, and stopped at Romero, Jerry. 301-C. It was a walkup, and he climbed the stairs, whistling tunelessly. On the first landing two panes of glass in the large window were broken out completely.

He could see movement behind the one-way glass in the door panel after his knock, and it was a moment before the door opened. “Come in, come in, Johnny,” Jerry Romero invited him. Jerry was a small man, running to flesh, balding, and with a two-day beard. He was dressed in an undershirt, trousers, and bedroom slippers. His wife, Rosa, stood behind him, self-consciously clutching a faded blue dressing gown about her thin body. She was a tired-looking woman, her hair up in curlers, her skin sallow, and her eyes anxious.

“Come in, Johnny,” she echoed. She led the way inside, trying to smile, her glance flickering between the two men. “You're in trouble, Jerry!” she accused her husband.

“You sound like it was something new.”

“There's no trouble, Rosa,” Johnny told her.

“Honest?”

“Honest. I just wanted to talk to Jerry. I know it's late, and I didn't mean to upset you-”

“Don't you pay any attention to me, Johnny. It's just my nerves aren't good. I shouldn't yell at him like that, I know. Just so he's not in trouble-”

Jerry smiled his easygoing smile at the edge of doubt in her tone. “Haven't raped a soul in six, eight weeks now, hon.”

“You!” she said. “That's not the kind of trouble you find-”

“Maybe I been overlooking something? Coffee, Johnny?”

“Sounds good. Black.”

Rosa moved immediately toward the kitchen in the rear of the apartment, and Jerry waved after her. “We might as well sit in there ourselves, Johnny. It's just as comfortable, and it'll save Rosa running back and forth to listen in.” He grinned at his wife in the doorway.

Johnny followed him into the small kitchen, where Jerry pulled chairs up to the table and looked over at him expectantly as they sat down. Rosa measured level tablespoons of coffee for the percolater and kept her attention upon the table.

“I need a little information that's none of my business, Jerry,” Johnny told him.

“You tell him, you hear me?” Rosa said immediately. “You tell him, Jerry Romero.”

Jerry laughed. “I remember my father used to tell me 'Jerry, you want to watch out for a man tells you he's the boss in his house, because pretty soon he's gonna be lyin' to you about something else.'”

“You tell him,” Rosa repeated.

“I might,” Jerry agreed, “if you'll give the man a chance to ask his question, Rosa. You been doing all the talking so far.”

“It's about the manager down at the place,” Johnny said, and his host made a wry face. “He got you under the gun?”

“No more'n you'd expect. What's on your mind?”

“He asked you to do any special little jobs for him since he's been down there?”

“I don't know how you taped it, but he did.”

“Can you tell me about it? I guess he had a lever.”

Jerry nodded slowly. “He had a lever. Been there about a week and called me into his office one morning. 'Jerry,' says he, chipper as an English sparrow, 'let's have a look at your ticket.' Oh, oh, I thought to myself. Now you know and I know, Johnny, that I'm no engineer. I don't have the education for the job I'm doin' down there. I just kinda grew into it, and after old Hubert left I just kept goin' through the motions. I can do the job; I've proved that ever since the old man left, but hell, you know as well as I do that as soon as someone raises the question, I'm out.”

“So Freddie put the arm on you?”

“Not directly. He was just showin' me where I stood. This little piece of paper says you're not packin' the weight for the job,' he says to me. 'I got twelve years aboard here says I am, Mr. Frederic,' I give it back to him. 'We could get in trouble over this if something went wrong, Jerry.' 'So what's to go wrong, Mr. Frederick?' 'Well, let's hold it in abeyance for the time bein', shall we?' he says. 'Meantime I have a thing or two I'd like you to do for me if you have the time.'”

Jerry's grin was mirthless. “If I had the time. He knew damn well I'd make the time with that sword over my head. He did surprise me, though; when I finished the work for him, he slipped me a hundred.”

“The frosting on the cake to keep you quiet?”

“Well, I didn't figure to do any broadcastin' anyway, but that century didn't make it any harder to button up.” He looked over at Johnny. “You got priority, boy, but I hope-”

“You don't need to worry, Jerry.”

“If you say so, that's good enough for me. After we got it settled whose side I was on, he asked to see the hotel blueprints.”

Johnny whistled. “Now I know I underestimated him.”

“Yeah? Well, I told him the official set was down at the architect's office, but that I had a spare set downstairs was almost as good since I made my own changes on them. I brought them up, and I mean he really went over them with a fine tooth comb, with special attention to his office and his suite upstairs. He let go the office in a hurry; you know that was thrown up on the mezzanine as an extra, and no wall of it touches any other wall. When he left that, I could see right away that what bothered him was what contacted him upstairs. He's some kind of a left-handed engineer himself, I guess, because he put his finger right on things. Like that walkway outside one wall of his living room where there was a little leftover space when we converted the corner room beyond him. I told him nothing but a midget could get in there, but he wasn't satisfied till he'd seen it for himself. Then he wasn't satisfied, either, because he came right out and told me what he wanted.”

Johnny grimaced. “I think I'm way ahead of you.”

“Probably. He wanted something to let him know if someone was prowling him, trying to look in or listen in. There was three spots that bothered him: his front door, the bathroom, which adjoined another, like they all do down there, and the wall with the walkway. It was easy enough to do. I put a plate at the door, a strip under the floor of the adjoining wall in the bathroom, and a strip under the walkway. I hooked up three little bulbs inside that light up when anyone hits the plate or the strips. I wanted to put in a buzzer, but he didn't want no buzzer. The bathroom was the toughest, account of the tile. Took me about a week, I guess, workin' an hour or so in the mornings, and when I had him all wired up he thanked me pretty as you please and slipped me the hundred.”

Rosa was doing a little rapid feminine arithmetic. “That's when I was in the hospital for four days. I was afraid to ask you where you'd gotten the money.” She walked over to him and sat down on his lap, leaned over and kissed him, hard. He ran a hand up under the blue dressing gown, and she jumped up and slapped him halfheartedly. “I don't get that kind of attention when we're alone, Mr. Romero. You have to shame in front of Johnny?”

He reached for her again, but she evaded him and smiled apologetically at Johnny. “I was scared simple when you walked in here, after that last time. God knows he's not worth much, but I'm used to having him around.” She unplugged the percolator, waited for it to stop its rhythmic thumping, and filled three cups. “When I think of tie last time you were here-”

“He's reformed, Rosa.”

“Damn right he's reformed, Jerry said breezily. “Those characters sure made a Christian out of ol' Jerry. I can't see now how I could have been so crazy. Any damn fool can gamble with money in his pocket, but it takes a special kind to do it without it.”

“So you learned.”

“So I learned. Just this side of City General. I never did ask you what you had to do to get me off the hook with that bunch-”

“Stop it!” Rosa said sharply. Her coffee slopped over into her saucer. “Let's not even talk about it. How are you going to get back downtown, Johnny?”

“I'll catch a cab up at the corner.”

“Not this time of the morning you won't, not in this neighborhood. Jerry, you put on a shirt and drive him down.”

“There's no need for that-” Johnny protested.

“I guess you didn't hear the boss talking,” Jerry told him. He stood up and walked into the other room and returned in a moment shrugging into a sports shirt.

Johnny stood up at the table. “Thanks for the coffee, Rosa. And for the information, Jerry.”

“No thanks due, and you know it,” Jerry said. “We all set? I won't be long, hon.”

“You be careful. Goodnight, Johnny. You come by and see us anytime.”

On the drive downtown in Jerry's fender-dented vehicle, Johnny responded absentmindedly to the engineer's steady chatter. Mentally he shifted pieces in the jigsaw mosaic in his mind, and found himself still dissatisfied with the blurred picture that resulted. A couple of key pieces were still missing, and he had a little digging to do.

He shook himself awake in his chair, glanced at the fading daylight pouring in the window, and then at the hero riding away into the matching sunset on the television set. He looked at his watch; five forty five. He got to his feet and stretched hugely, and walked over to the set and turned it off. In the bathroom he splashed water noisily on his face, his palms rasping the bronze shadow on his jawline. Resignedly he dried his face and took down the electric razor.

He shaved hurriedly and looked in the living room for his uniform jacket. He picked it up from the chair into which he had thrown it upon entering, but at sight of the resultant wrinkles he dropped it again and removed a fresh one from the closet.

In the corridor he considered a moment and then walked down the five nights to the lobby and on into the bar where Fred, the day man, nodded a greeting. “Little early for you, John.”

“A little. Richie around?”

“In the kitchen.”

He walked down the length of the long bar, its gleaming mahogany ever so faintly iridescent under its coating of linseed oil, and passed through the service door into the kitchen beyond. White uniformed cooks, assistant cooks, and busboys rushed about behind the long steel counters ministering to the horde of red-jacketed waiters, and a confusedly subdued babble of sound rose and fell above the steaming atmosphere.

Richie approached him with a service setup on a tray and a glint of curiosity in the hazel eyes. “Hi, John. You deputizing?”

“Yeah.” Johnny took the tray from him. “What'd she order?”

“Roast beef.”

“Not much they can do to spoil that.” Johnny looked over at the salad counter. “Henry?” The salad man looked up from his half crouch in front of his sink as he rinsed his hands in cold running water. “You got time to let me get in there and rustle myself up a little something?”

“Help yourself, John. My rush is over.”

Johnny moved in behind the short counter with Richie on his heels, and the boy looked at him appraisingly.

“Why'd you bother asking him?” he inquired in a lowered voice when the saturnine Henry moved away to the other end of the kitchen. “D'you think he'd have tried to Stop you?”

Johnny looked up over his shoulder as he knelt before the opened door of the square salad refrigerator. “You must think I'm tired of livin', kid. You don't reach my age pushing kitchen help around. That kind of stuff calls for slow music and faded flowers.”

After a momentary inspection of the refrigerator's contents he removed a head of lettuce, a stalk of celery, a bunch of radishes, two tomatoes, a small cucumber, and a scallion. He straightened up and removed a clove of garlic from the drying string overhead and added it to the pile. From the maple cabinet to the left of the refrigerator he took out ewers of olive oil and wine vinegar, and shakers of pepper and salt. He reached back in once more for a large salad bowl with a visible sheen, then removed his jacket and handed it to Richie.

He rolled up his sleeves, picked up a knife and tried it for balance, and laid it down again. He stripped the slightly wilted outer leaves from the lettuce head and tossed them in the soup stock box. He removed another half dozen crisp leaves and rinsed them lightly in the cold running water, then laid them out on the drain board while he rapidly washed the rest of the vegetables. He picked up the knife again and cut the clove of garlic in two and carefully rubbed the salad bowl with the larger portion. He looked across to the watching Richie.

The big hands gathered the vegetables together on the cutting board. He shredded the lettuce and lined the salad bowl cut the tomatoes in wedges and tossed them in, and chopped the radishes and the scallion, the rapidly moving knife thudding on the board like the roll of a small drum. He diced the celery, and sliced the small cucumber, and added them to the bowl. Measuring with a judicious eye he picked up the olive oil and poured a small quantity over the bowl's contents, and followed suit with the wine vinegar, even more sparingly. He used the salt and pepper liberally and tossed the salad vigorously with his hands for thirty seconds before stepping aside and rinsing off at the running water.

“That looks good,” Richie announced. “Where'd you learn to do it?”

“In Italy. A bishop showed me. He had a broken leg, and he couldn't get around to make it for himself, so he taught me to make it for him. Helluva guy; none better. He must have weighed better'n two sixty and he could go up a rope hand over hand like a hundred forty pounder.”

“Aww, cut it out! A bishop climbing a rope?”

“I'm telling you he could really go.”

“If he had a broken leg he must've gone down one time instead of up.”

“A character cut the rope, but that's another story. Everything else ready?”

“All ready.”

“Let's go, then.” Johnny covered his salad bowl and followed Richie and his tray behind the enormous kitchen range to the tiny room service elevator. To the right of the elevator stood a sleekly polished rolling oven, and Johnny indicated it to Richie with a nod as he slid open the metal door. “Kick that steamer aboard here, kid.”

The boy complied, shaking his head as he carefully set down his heavily burdened tray. “Boy, are you ever making a production out of this thing! You figurin' on marrying the dame?”

“Paste this in your derby, Rich: you should never serve a meal upstairs without a steamer, even if it is a little more trouble. Okay. See you around.” He closed the elevator door, punched the twelve button on the automatic pilot, and waited until the car stopped and the door slid open silently. With the salad bowl aloft in his left hand he steered the freely rolling oven off the car into the corridor and around two corners to the door of 1224. His knock was answered immediately, and he eased the wagon over the slightly raised threshold.

She stood aside to let him in, a slight smile on her face, and he crossed to the card table ready with its usual tablecloth and deposited the covered salad bowl. He returned to the oven, knelt and lit the alcohol brazier and slid the tray into the heating compartment. When he had made the customary place setting and withdrawn her chair, she seated herself in silence, but when Johnny removed the cover from the salad bowl she exclaimed with pleasure. “Insalata mista!” The momentary brightness drained from her features, and she looked up at him speculatively as he spooned a portion of the salad into an individual bowl and placed it before her.

He spoke without looking at her. “Not everyone calls it by that name, ma'am.”

Her fingers plucked stiffly at the napkin in her lap. “I have eaten it before,” she said finally. “It is not uncommon.”

“But more common in some areas than others?” She stared down at her water glass without replying, and Johnny took up his usual station behind her. She began to eat slowly and despite her preoccupation, appreciatively. The room was quiet in the interval before she looked up again in the little gesture which indicated that he was to move back into her field of vision. She looked directly at him an instant, and then back down at the salad. “This is very good.” She hesitated. “You keep reminding me of- of things I thought I had forgotten.”

At her left he refilled her salad dish and set it a little to one side. He returned to the oven, swathed his hand in a napkin and removed the roast beef platter from the heating compartment. He placed it before her and removed the aluminum lid. “Careful. Plate's hot.”

She nodded absently, her eyes following the quick dexterity with which he deepened the incision in a foil-wrapped baked potato and inserted a slice of butter, and then with a circular motion of his wrist opened up the potato until its mealy center was exposed. “Why do I feel that you remind me deliberately?”

He took up her knife and fork and cut her roast beef into manageably small pieces, placed the knife on the butter dish, and handed her the fork.

“Thank you. Why do you deliberately remind me?”

“Maybe because we both were there. Italy. A few years back.”

“I see. And you feel that I should be reminded of Italy a few years back?”

He broke a piece of rye bread into thirds, buttered a section thinly, and handed it to her. Her eyes never left his face. “Maybe I feel we were members of the same dub.”

This time there was no hesitation at all. “Scarcely an exclusive one.”

“Some branches of it were.”

Her glance dropped to her plate, and she began to eat, and Johnny retired again behind her chair. She spoke after a moment without looking around. “What is your name? Your surname?”

“Killain.”

“You're not French, then?”

“No. Your name's Muller, but you're not German.”

Her head came up, and she stared across the room. “A married woman changes her name.”

“Your maiden name could've been Muller, too, but that wouldn't make you German, either.”

“So it seems I am not German.” She pushed a square of meat absently about her plate with her fork, then speared it purposefully. “My beef is getting cold.”

She completed her meal in silence, and when she had finished he removed her dishes, scraped off the table crumbs, and poured her coffee. She extracted a cigarette from a tiny metallic case, and he lighted it for her. He made a one load trip with her dishes to the oven where he stacked them neatly, and then returned to his position behind her chair. She motioned him forward with a wave of the cigarette. “Come around here where I can see you. And stop standing at attention like that. Sit down.”

Johnny sat on the chair beside the bed, and she studied him, the tired eyes shadowed in the worn face. She pointed the cigarette at him. “There must be a reason for the diligence with which you extract information without ever asking a direct question?” She inspected his silence gravely, and when she resumed her voice was level and calm. “At my age one does not blithely discard small favors, small comforts. Not out of hand, at least. Since your advent I have eaten much better, but unless you can convince me that there is an essential point to this cat-and-mouse business into which we seem to be drifting, I shall have to forego these meals in your company.”

Smoke drifted up from her cigarette in a long, wavering line as she again studied his continued silence, and her tone was puzzled when she continued. “I believe that I sense in your attitude an aura of concern, of protectiveness. If I am correct in this assumption I think that you had better explain yourself.”

Johnny's voice was hard and abrupt. “You're in trouble.”

She stiffened, then shook her head slowly and put down her cigarette with a sigh. “I'm sorry. I have to say-”

“That it's none of my business.”

“-that you are presumptuous to an egomaniacal degree, certainly-“ She reached for the cigarette again and stubbed it out decisively. “I think that you should leave now.”

Johnny rose from his chair, removed her cup and saucer, dumped and cleaned her ash try and replaced it, and folded her tablecloth and placed it on the card table. He made all his movements deliberate in the hope of provoking her to further speech, but he was halfway to the door before she spoke again from her frowning concentration. “I am a complete stranger to you. Even if I were in trouble, why should you be interested, let alone concerned?”

He spoke shortly, over his shoulder. “I'm the elected godparent of all the stray cats in the neighborhood.”

He was surprised to hear her laugh. “Self-elected, I'm sure.”

When he turned she was still smiling. She had removed another cigarette from her case and was tapping it on the back of her wrist reflectively. “There is an unkind name for such as you, young man, and yet I feel that no un-kindness is meant. Come back here and sit down. I see that we shall have to bring this to a conclusion.” He paused on the way to light her cigarette, and when he had re-seated himself her eyes resumed their steady contemplation of him. “Now.” She spoke deliberately. “I am not in trouble. Is that clear?”

“No.”

“Attend me. I am not in trouble.”

“That's not the truth.”

“I don't like the implications of such an assertion.”

“Regardless-” Johnny swept an arm in an exasperated semicircle. “Your being here like this-”

“The circumstances of my being here need not concern you. Kindly remember that.”

“You're in trouble,” he said stubbornly.

“You will of course have to permit me to be the judge of that.” Again the cigarette pointed at his silence. “Why? Why this persistence? This solicitude?”

“I just got a feelin' you're my kind of people, that's all.”

“Listen to me a moment.” Her smile was pleasant but firm. “You're not a gentleman, but I would think a man in the better sense of the word. I want you to believe that I am in no more trouble than I have been at any time in the past ten years, let us say, and your help or offer of help is not indicated or requested. I have over-indulged myself in talking to you, because I have been lonely. You are more perceptive… yes, and more sensitive than I might reasonably have expected, and I have said more than I should at times. You have somehow succeeded in dredging up things I had thought more deeply submerged, but all this has got to stop. Now.” She waited, but Johnny sat motionless. “I will ask you one question, and then we will have an end to all this foolishness. What were you doing in Italy?” Johnny grinned at her. “Runnin' errands.” “For whom?”

He shrugged. “People with more brains 'n me. Seemed to be a lot of 'em.”

“What exactly were you doing?” “Is this a one-way street, ma'am? Are we tradin'?” She bit her lip. “Everything I pursue with you… this is all so foolish, all these little words about another time and another life-” Johnny outwaited her hesitation. “All right. And then once and for all, it is finished. There will be no further discussion, or probing. Is it understood?” “You might bring it up yourself.” “Don't trouble yourself with the possibility. Now what were you doing in Italy?”

It was his turn to hesitate. “I was along to shore up the timbers on a few undercover operations.”

She nodded matter-of-factly. “Placing you in a little different perspective, it becomes almost obvious. One has only to look at you bursting in all directions from that ridiculous uniform. I take it that you were not a man of peace, and that since you sit here now in appearance reasonably intact that you had the necessary qualifications to be a successful man of violence.”

“Includin' the attitude.”

Her hands had knitted themselves tightly together on the table, fingers interlaced. “It is important. I myself lacked it. And for whom did you commit these successful violences?”

“Originally for an unpublicized branch of U.S. Intelligence.”

She stared down at her hands. “I am… was Viennese. I had lived in Italy for years, although not recently at that time. I was recruited by a group in France to go back, for a purpose. I had a minor success or two, and then my purpose was discovered. I had no reason to expect differently, I suppose, but they treated me-well, despicably. I found that I was not so tough-fibred as I had imagined. I had a great deal of difficulty in re-orienting myself afterward.”

“Afterward?”

“After I was liberated.”

“And now?”

Her lips firmed. “We will not speak of now. We will not speak of Italy again. It has bad memories for me, and thinking of it or talking about it is not good for me. And now I am sure I must be keeping you from your duties.” She rose, and Johnny reluctantly followed suit. She held the door for him as he rolled the wagon out into the corridor, and then it closed quietly behind him.

He turned to stare thoughtfully at the impassive door panel. “Killain, you accident of nature,” he accused himself. “That's a lady in there. Not a woman, or a female, or a broad, or a twist, or a frail, or a skirt. A lady.” He pushed the silently moving oven down the corridor and around to the push-button means of descent.

In the kitchen the dinner hour rush was over; Johnny could see only a single red jacket and a sprinkling of whites behind the glistening steel tables. Hans was seated at Dutch's old desk, and Johnny drew off a mug of coffee at the big urn and walked over to him. He didn't particularly want the coffee, but he did want to talk to the first cook, who sat staring off into space, his hands idly shuffling a stack of loose invoices.

“You got the sugar, Hans?” Johnny upended a box and sat down beside him, and the tall man silently opened a drawer and removed two glassined envelopes which he handed to Johnny, who noted the tremor in the offering hand and the bloated lids on the redrimmed eyes. Hans's nerves seemed very nearly out of control.

“Freddie said anything yet?” Johnny asked him and watched the negative curl of the lip and the shake of the head.

“I dislike that man,” Hans said suddenly, then attempted to smile in self-disparagement of his own vehemence. “I shouldn't say that. He's within his rights in taking his time in making up his mind. Yet it means so much to me. And I have not been sleeping well. And I have not had word-” His voice trailed off, and his eyes came back to Johnny as if again becoming aware of his presence. “You'd think he'd realize the impossible position in which he places me. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I give orders, but where is the authority to enforce them?” He waved the bills in his hand at Johnny. “These tradesmen. What respect can they have for me?”

“It'll work out, Hans,” Johnny said soothingly. He sipped at the strong black coffee, and in his mind cast about for a lead-in remark in which to mention Myrna to Hans. He wanted a reaction from the first cook. An occasional raised voice was the only disturbance in the quiet kitchen, and up front a busboy went from counter to counter turning out the lights in the forward end of the long room. Darkness crept toward them, and the goose-necked light on the desk spotlighted their corner.

This is the way it must have been for Dutch, Johnny thought suddenly, sitting here targeted by this same light on the desk. He himself had walked in here many a morning through the service door and found the old man reading or nodding over his book. But the murderers had not come through the service door. Johnny frowned; why would old Dutch let himself be spotlighted in such a manner if he had heard the noise of entrance-even a key- from any unaccustomed direction? The old man was scarcely a fool. Unless he had been asleep.

Johnny stared at the far wall, trying to concentrate on a teasing tickle in the foreground of his mind. If Dutch had been asleep, the light would have been on, and the intruders would have been warned. But suppose Dutch had been awake and had switched off his light and had sat there in the dark watching them? Johnny shook his head; that didn't make sense, either, for if the old man had done that, why expose himself to them later? Unless it had seemed important….

He ran his eyes around the rectangular room. From where he sat he could see the fire door which led down to the storeroom below. He could see three of the tall windows which, though not barred, were always securely locked from the inside. He could see the small door leading into the bakery ovens which was locked only occasionally. It had been a bone of contention whether it had been locked that night. He could see the two massive walk-in boxes with their heavy steel corner bracings and their brass padlocks. He could see-

He stifled an impulse to jump to his feet; he could feel his pulse accelerate. He turned his head to look at the cook, and with an effort kept his voice casual. “Hans?”

The tall man looked up from his shuffled invoices. “Yes?”

“When'd you have the butcher last?”

Hans smiled sourly, as though reminded of another cross to bear. “He will be here in the morning. Another front office economy. Whoever heard of a hotel kitchen with a butcher being called in twice a week to dress out four days work in advance? Ridiculous. You simply cannot function-”

“I asked you when he was here last!”

The cook looked startled at the vigor of the interruption. “Why, twice a week he comes; what then? Three days ago, four days ago; from week to week it varies. I can look it up. I remember he ruined a loin of pork. Ridiculous. I say-

“Has that big box been opened since the night Dutch was killed?”

Hans sucked in his breath, and his eyes widened. “1 have not opened it. There has been no need. I have not-”

“Gimme your keys.” Johnny was on his feet, palm extended. He hefted the huge key ring placed in it by the tall man. “Which one is the meat box key?”

Hans silently picked it out for him, and Johnny walked across to the twelve foot high meat locker with the cook on his heels. Johnny unlocked the big padlock and handed it to Hans. The tall man's voice was husky. “You don't think-?”

“Won't have to think in a minute.” Johnny threw back the long bar handle, and the big door creaked open. Inches of frost clung to its inner side, and a breath of frigid air drifted out with a swirling mist. An ammoniac smell wrinkled Johnny's nostrils unpleasantly, and he stepped inside and tried to quell a shiver. This damn place was fantastically cold after the heat of the kitchen. “Where's the lights, Hans?”

The cook reached over his shoulder and snapped on the switch, and bright daylight washed over them. Johnny took a quick look around the floor with particular attention to the corners of the freezer; he started to step around the butcher's block for a better look, and a strangled sound from behind him caused him to pivot sharply. The white-faced Hans was staring at the rows of frozen carcasses suspended from their heavy hooks, and Johnny turned in the direction of the stricken gaze. One look was enough; he cleared his throat. “I don't see any government stamp on that one, Hans. Let's get out of here.”

The cook did not appear to have heard him. Shock had transfixed him; Johnny put a hand on his arm to recall him. With a convulsive movement Hans threw off the hand and dropped to his knees and addressed a hoarse torrent of guttural pleading to the body on the hook.

“Hans!” Johnny said sharply. “Hans!”

Roughly he placed his hand under the chin of the kneeling man, and at the sight of the glassy unrecognition he waited no longer. He caught Hans as his body slipped away from the short right hand punch that had blanked out the staring eyes, and Johnny picked him up and carried him outside and laid him down on a counter.

He hesitated an instant, then stepped back inside the locker and with a hurried two hand lift removed the chilled, slippery body from the hook on which it hung and laid it out on the floor. He left the box, closed the door, threw over the long bar, and headed for a telephone.