Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

“It's a class job,” Johnny conceded, “but it's not you. An' Stacy-that had to be Stacia when you were in pigtails.”

She smiled her agreement. “Stacia didn't seem to go with the hair.” The brown eyes appraised him coolly as she lifted the receiver. “Without appointment, a Mr. John Killain to see you, Mr. Turner.”

Now I'd give a Confederate dollar bill to know just what wheels that introduction started turning, Johnny thought.

Stacy was still on the phone. “Yes. Right away, Mr. Turner.”

“So I'm in like Flynn?” he asked the girl as she opened the center drawer of her desk and removed a small key ring.

“Yes, indeed,” she replied, a blonde eyebrow quirked gracefully. “I'll have to let you in, since Monk isn't here.” She pushed back from the desk. “It's through this door, and straight-”

“Did you say Monk?” Johnny asked sharply. When she turned to look at him in surprise he held up a hand negatively. “Never mind. Excuse the interruption.” He followed her to the three identical heavy-hinged doors at the rear of the reception room and nodded at the keys in her hand. “Lonnie expectin' a raid?”

“All kinds of people call on Mr. Turner,” she said gravely as she unlocked the left-hand door. She turned in time to catch his careful assessment of the woolen suit.

“Nice,” he told her, and she colored faintly. He measured her with his eyes. “About five-ten? Vitamins should take you, kid. How much you weigh?”

“One-forty-nine.” She nibbled ruefully at her lower lip. “Honestly, I don't know why I'm being so-truthful!” She examined him again as though trying to find the answer in his appearance.

“Nineteen?”

“Twenty-one.” Her color rose still higher at this skeptical look. “Well, nearly-”

“Cocktails tomorrow after work?” At her silence he grinned at her. “Ice cream sodas?”

“I'm not a child,” she replied with dignity. “If I go, I think I'd like to try the cocktail.”

“You haven't before? Well, you got to start apprenticin' to be an adult sometime,” Johnny agreed. “What time you get off here?”

“Four-thirty.”

“I'll be stage-door Johnny downstairs at four-thirty tomorrow.”

She nodded as though she were still a little surprised at the whole idea. A faint line of puzzlement appeared between the sleek brows. “Do you-are you usually so impetuous, Mr. Killain?”

“Johnny,” he reminded her. “An' it depends on the provocation.”

He watched the renewed tide of color roll up from beneath the prim white blouse as without another word she opened the door, which eased back silently on its heavy hinges. He blew her a kiss from just inside as the door closed behind him. He listened to the solid-sounding chunk with which it fitted into the sill again, and he shook his head. Take a tank to breach that baby…

He looked around expectantly at the small, brightly lighted room, which didn't have a stick of furniture in it. The walls and ceiling were a pale green, and the only break in the monotonous expanse was a single-paned opaque window high up on the opposite wall. A lookout, Johnny thought. One-way glass. His eyes were still upon it when beneath the window a door, painted the same pale green and set so flush with the wall as to seem a part of it, opened quietly, and Johnny's expectations were realized as a squat man in a dark business suit stepped through.

“Well, well, Monk!” Johnny greeted him elaborately. “Small world, huh? You screenin' the admissions here? I always did wonder what you did for a livin', besides escortin' shysters.”

“So now you know.” The squat man stooped swiftly and began a light-patting manual examination of Johnny's slacks and sport coat from ankles to shoulders, front and back, with particular attention to hips and armpits.

“You think you know me that well?” Johnny asked mildly.

Monk didn't reply. Stepping back from Johnny, he raised his voice and addressed the window in the wall ahead of them. “No iron,” he said clearly, and motioned Johnny ahead of him. They waited at the front wall until the door silently opened inward. Electric, Johnny decided. Or electronic. From the doorway he glanced upward casually. The observation post was enclosed; the man behind the one-way glass who operated the door below upon an all-clear was not visible. And his one-way glass, Johnny realized, permitted him to see every movement in the room-except straight beneath him.

“Let's go, Killain,” Monk said impatiently. “Third door on the right inside. Walk right in.”

“Sure,” Johnny said soothingly. “You put everyone through this windmill?”

“We know who to do it to.” The dark face was arrogant.

“Is that right?” With the sound of his voice still in the air, Johnny turned slightly and hammered a solid muscle-punch to Monk's right arm. The squat man's mouth opened and closed, soundlessly; his features turned gray as he sagged against the door frame. Johnny reached quickly beneath a wide lapel, removed a snub-nosed revolver from the holster slung right-to-left across Monk's body and dropped it into his own jacket pocket.

Monk gamely pulled himself off the door jamb as he tried to recover; he lowered his head to charge. In the split second before momentum developed Johnny reached out and took the straining neck in his right hand, fending off wild swings with his left. Monk thrashed valiantly in the constricting grip, and then Johnny's searching thumb moved over a quarter inch and found the pressure point he sought. Monk's eyes rolled up until only the whites were visible, and he slumped loosely in Johnny's grasp.

Johnny eased him floorward quietly, listening for investigatory sounds overhead, but the little scuffle had apparently attracted no attention. He pushed the still figure back inside the bare room, and, as he had expected, when he cleared the inner side of the opened door it swung back into the wall by itself, eerily silent.

He entered briskly through the third door on the right and realized immediately he was in Lonnie Turner's private office. The decor was impressive, lavish, lush. The carpeting was luxuriantly thick, the lighting indirect and subdued. The promoter's desk was a massive mahogany monument, the four pastel telephones neatly arranged in its center its only touch of color. The chairs scattered liberally throughout the room were overstuffed armchairs.

Johnny eyed the huge room; despite the presence of five men in it, including himself, it by no means gave the impression of being crowded.

From behind the big desk Lonnie Turner lifted a casual hand and pointed to a chair. He was a well-set-up individual, not quite so wide in the shoulders as the carefully tailored suit suggested. His face was healthily tanned, its apparent youthfulness belied only by the near-white hair combed straight back from his high forehead. His mouth was a thin, straight line, and a cigar stub smoldered between the clenched fingers of his beringed right hand.

“With you in a minute, Killain,” the promoter said easily. His attention was given the man standing before his desk, a middle-aged, dapper-looking specimen with pink cheeks and rimless eyeglasses. Two men sat to the right of the big desk; both were fat-one corpulent and pasty-faced, a belly set on legs, and the other larded up over what Johnny decided had once been an athletic frame. The ex-athlete had a pepper-and-salt crew cut and protruding teeth, which gave his smile the appearance of a slightly cynical rabbit.

In the little silence Lonnie Turner's eyes wandered back to Johnny as though conscious that he was remiss in his duties as host. “You know everyone?” He nodded across the desk. “Doc McDevitt, of the commission staff.” He flapped a hand at the cynical rabbit. “Ed Keith, of the Chronicle.” The cigar stub leveled at Pasty Face. “Al Munson, my publicist.”