Dan Marlowe - The Fatal Frails

“What the hell are you yapping about, Jack?” A thinly veiled note of contempt edged Max Stitt's hard tone. He was tall and solidly lean, with a pale face and a jutting hawk's nose beneath a pepper-and-salt crewcut. Johnny judged him to be about forty-five. His eyes were almost completely colorless, making them the coldest-looking Johnny had ever seen. Stitt was wearing a short leather jacket with a pushed-back, fleece-lined hood, heavy stagged-top trousers and bronze-toecapped boots.

The fat man waved his hands wildly in the air. “Don't you get gay with me, Max. This guy comes looking for you because Dechant sent him. It's not about the symbol markings, he says. How in the goddam hell does he know about the symbol markings? Are we running ads in the papers? And what were you and Dechant-”

“Will you dry up and blow away, Arends?” Max Stitt cut in. “You make me sick.”

“I make you sick!” The fat man's voice rose shrilly. “Don't you talk like that to me! You may run this business, but I own it, and don't you forget it!”

“Maybe you'd like to try running it yourself?” Stitt's cold eyes shifted from the momentarily silenced Arends to Johnny. “What's your story?”

The question revived Arends. “I already told you his story!” In his anger the fat man bounced up and down on his toes. “If you think I'm holding still for-”

“Shut your mouth, Jack,” Max Stitt said forcefully. “Let's go inside.” He turned and walked to a door in the rear of the office. Johnny followed promptly. He noticed that Jack Arends was more hesitant, although the fat man was still sputtering.

The room beyond the door was small and cold and boxlike, illuminated by a single overhead bulb. The floor was springily latticed for drainage, and higher than the office level they'd just left. It was a storage room, not meat-icebox-cold, but chilly enough.

“Throw that bar over on the door,” Stitt said to Arends as the fat man stepped inside.

“Now look, Max-” Arends began uneasily, but followed instructions. The tall man's strange eyes brushed Arends off as something inconsequential and returned to Johnny. Stitt slid easily from the leather jacket, reached in his hip pocket for a heavy pair of gloves and jerked them on. His movements were briskly efficient.

“Arends is getting as fat in the head as he is in the ass,” he said tonelessly to Johnny. “Claude Dechant never sent you anywhere. Jack doesn't know blackmail when he sees it any more. I'm not going to ask you anything and have you lie to me, friend. In about eight minutes you'll tell me what you know about Claude Dechant, mismarked symbols and anything else I ask you.” He moved away from the wall, and in the harsh glare of the light Johnny appraised the shoulders that were broader than he would have expected and the attitude that was something more than cold-bloodedly professional. Max Stitt looked and sounded like a man who planned to enjoy himself.

“Let-let me out of here!” Jack Arends bleated from behind Johnny. Neither Stitt nor Johnny looked at him. Johnny inched away from the door at his back, still not sure. Stitt's reaction, as well as the man himself, had surprised him.

Stitt made up his mind for him in a hurry. The tall man charged, hopped into the air from the springy flooring like a lumberjack from a birling log and slashed a heavy boot at Johnny's groin. Instinctively Johnny avoided the boot, but not the gloved left hand that thudded solidly into his side. Cat-quick, Max Stitt's right hand ripped at Johnny's jacket and sport shirt, and buttons flew in all directions. The tall man laughed derisively.

“You'll eat those,” Johnny promised him grimly, and waded in. A right hand bruised his forehead, a left stung the back of his neck in a vicious rabbit punch, another left knocked him a step off stride. Max Stitt's hands were lightning fast. In close finally, Johnny barely diverted a jerked-up knee outside his own thigh as he smashed with his left hand at the lithe, hard body. He moved it backward, but the left caught him again, on the bridge of the nose. He grunted, and his eyes watered. The right stung his cheekbone.

Johnny lowered his head angrily and bulled toward the toe-dancing Stitt, crowding the tall man cornerward although a ripping punch savaged his right ear. “You'll- carry boot marks-for a month-when I'm finished with you,” Stitt panted as he drove both hands to the body. As though to punctuate the remark, a bronze-capped boot crashed against Johnny's right shin.

Red spots swirled before Johnny's eyes. Heedless of everything, he rushed Stitt to the wall. Furiously he closed down his straining hands on the muscular figure, lifted it and slammed it heavily into the wall three times without releasing his grip. The third time Stitt came off the wall limply, head lolling. Johnny relaxed his hold, and Stitt, by sheer strength, raised himself in Johnny's arms and drove his clasped hands down upon the back of Johnny's neck. Anything less than that twenty-and-a-half inch expanse might not have weathered it. Ragingly, Johnny heaved Stitt aloft and slammed him floorward. He dropped on him heavily and pinned the still struggling man with his weight.

“Now, damn you-” Johnny looked over his shoulder to locate the babbling sounds coming from Jack Arends. “Pick up-those buttons,” he ordered. “All of 'em.” He had to repeat it between harsh breaths before he got through to the white-faced fat man, who scrambled awkwardly over the floor in compliance. “Dump 'em in his mouth when I open it,” Johnny commanded, and pulled on Stitt's nostrils ferociously, until his mouth opened. “Now chew, you bastard,” Johnny told him as Jack Arends backed away, saucer-eyed. “So far I left your face alone, but if you don't chew I'll break your jaw in seventeen places.”

The cold eyes stared up at him an instant, and then Max Stitt chewed. The crunch of the bone buttons was the only sound in the room, except for the heavy breathing. All the fight had finally drained from the man on the floor. Johnny raised his own hands cautiously to his face. The heavy gloves had felt like clubs. His skin neither cut nor bruised easily, but Johnny knew that he bore marks.

He got abruptly to his feet, and Jack Arends scuttled away in alarm. Johnny paid no attention to him. He picked up Stitt's leather jacket and slipped into it. It was far too small in the shoulders, but it covered the torn shirt and missing buttons. Behind him, Max Stitt crawled to a corner, gagging.

His hand on the slung-over bar on the door of the storage room, Johnny looked back at Jack Arends. “The name's Killain. I'm at the Duarte. You got that? I got something to sell. Bring cash when you come.”

The fat man was staring, awe-stricken, at Stitt in the corner. “He'll kill you,” he said nearly in a whisper. “He'll kill you for this.”

Johnny threw over the bar and walked out without a backward glance.

Gus Poulles, Johnny's counterpart on the day shift, handed him two telephones chits when he walked into the hotel. Gus studied Johnny's face. Johnny had stopped off for hurried repairs en route, but he had a lumped-up cheekbone, a scratched ear and a scraped forehead. “What's the other guy look like?” Gus wanted to know. He was a pale-faced, black-haired Greek, whose worldly-wise expression perfectly reflected his bored attitude. He tapped the top chit in Johnny's hand. “If this one looks like the sounds, I'm available for a spare slice off the loaf.”

“If it's who I think it is, I haven't dulled my own knife yet,” Johnny grunted. The top chit invited him to call G. Philips at the Spandau number. “Yeah. I'm not plannin' on makin' it a long campaign, though.” The second chit suggested that he call J. Tremaine, and the number listed was not the Spandau number. Johnny tossed the bits of paper thoughtfully on his palm. “Thanks, Gus,” he said, and headed for the lobby phone booth.