Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

Manuel introduced them. “Rick Manfredi, Johnny Killain.”

Johnny shook a soft, plump hand that retained a surprising firmness in its grip. Manfredi wore an eggshell-white silk shirt with a buttoned-down collar, a bolo tie whose tips glittered with something more than glass, a green velvet smoking jacket, tan slacks and Italian shoes with very pointed toes.

“Glad to meet you, Killain,” the gambler said genially. “Any friend of Manuel's-” He waved a hand. He had a wide, boyish smile, and his youth surprised Johnny; Manfredi must still be in his early twenties, he thought, although the dark eyes in the smooth, olive face looked as though they had been around considerably longer.

The chubby man turned back to Manuel. “I didn't want to ask you inside,” he said in Spanish. “How is he?” He moved to one side to get a better look. “And what's the matter with your face?”

“He is-fair,” Manuel replied in English with a significant glance at Johnny. “The face is nothing.”

“You speak Spanish?” the gambler asked Johnny, surprised. “Yeah?” He smiled broadly. “Good joke on me.” A fleshy hand fumbled in the breast pocket of the smoking jacket and removed a slim panatela. “Try one?” Johnny accepted the cigar and stripped the cellophane from it. Rick Manfredi did the same for its twin after Manuel had refused it. Johnny bowed his head to accept the proffered light from an initialed gold cigar lighter with a big, steady flame. “My mother was Spanish,” Rick Manfredi said almost absently as he rotated the tip of his cigar in the flame, drew on it until he had it going to his satisfaction, and flipped off and pocketed the lighter. He exhaled a thin cloud of blue smoke.

“Good cigar,” Johnny told him.

“Ought to be, what I pay for 'em.” The gambler waved Johnny back into his chair. “You didn't come over here to compliment me on my cigars. What's on your mind?”

“I'm here stoolin' for the police,” Johnny said.

An opaque film seemed to descend over the dark eyes. “Now there's an openin' line I don't seem to have run across before,” Rick Manfredi said softly. His glance at Manuel was expressionless.

“This I have not heard before,” Manuel admitted wryly.

“Jimmy Rogers couldn't locate you,” Johnny said easily.

“I know Rogers,” the chubby gambler said warily. “I'd talk to him. I think.” He stabbed at Johnny with the cigar. “Just where the hell do you wire into Rogers?” he demanded in a hard tone.

“Roketenetz was the kid brother of a good friend of mine. I'd like to find out who killed him. Or had him killed.”

Manfredi looked skeptical until he encountered Manuel's confirming nod. For a count of twenty he thought it over; then his head moved fractionally and Manuel left the room quietly by another door. The gambler seated himself, crossed his legs and made a thorough inspection of Johnny in the chair opposite. “I could be makin' a mistake talkin' to you, Killain,” he said finally. “I wouldn't like to find out later that I had.” The dark eyes were like twin bits of quartz. “If Manuel says you're all right, you're all right, see? But you better be all right.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I don't want no beef with Rogers I can help. Now. How did I get into the act?”

“It's all over town you dropped a ton on the kid to go by the fourth. Since he didn't, it could leave you with an itch.”

“Not that kind of an itch, mister. I'm a gambler, not a hood. I've made losin' bets before. You got me wrong, you an' Rogers, too. I don't go for that kind of action.” He gestured impatiently. “Now this damn fight. I got no use for fights, see? I was touted onto the thing, an' I got burned. I should've known better. That's all there is to it.”

“But you're makin' like hard to find,” Johnny said quietly.

“So I'll tell you,” the gambler said resignedly, “an' you can believe it or don't. I'm clean, where it counts. The fix was in, see? The kid was supposed to go in the fourth. That's from next door to the horse's mouth. I didn't fix it, and I don't know who did, but I had the program. Like I said, it's not my game-horses and cards are my action-but when you get it like that, what're you gonna do? I went but good. So it didn't come off. I was touted in the first place against my better judgment. With fights I'm through. Right?”

“Still no reason to hide,” Johnny observed.

The gambler grimaced. “Like the hog that I am, I bet too much. Nobody bets like that unless they think they know somethin'. Whoever rigged it originally-an', so help me, I never did know-must've decided to show me they didn't appreciate my tryin' to freeload. A couple of little things have happened that made me decide I'd just as soon let things quiet down.”

“You figure they put on a special for you an' changed the round?”

“At first I thought so,” Rick Manfredi admitted. “But after a fight like that it's never too hard to find out which way the big money went. It all went the same way I did. Nobody made a dime but the slobs.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I don't know what happened. As it stands, somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to lose some money.”

“Maybe it was the kid's own idea, an' they gunned him for takin' it to the sixth.”

“They had a better reason than that. A real investigation, with no cuffs on, could've burned up a few licenses.”

“Maybe Gidlow tried to pull a double cross, an' that's why he bought himself a cold slab,” Johnny said.

Rick Manfredi held his nose. “Gidlow was a wart. I don't know why he got it, but it was too good for him.” The gambler stirred uneasily in his chair and looked at the door. “I've got to get back inside.”

“Good game?”

“Fair.” The chubby man looked at Johnny speculatively. “Whyn't you drop around some night an' get your feet wet?”

“Too rich for my blood.”

“Only a couple times a month, probably. Manuel always knows where to find me. I got a dozen, fifteen fleabags like this willin' to let me roost a night for double the rate. Keepin' the game on the trot discourages the cops, both kinds, an' it don't give the heisters much of a shot, either.” In a hurry a second before, he leaned back expansively and smiled as though at some secret joke. “You know Manuel's sister, Consuelo?”

“I've met her.”

Rick Manfredi beamed. “A great kid.” Bosses me around like I was a four-year-old. She picked out these clothes.” He glanced down at himself almost in surprise. “'Course to her I'm a juvenile delinquent, but I'm a friend of her brother's. Hell, Killain, I needed someone like her to show me the score. I been out on this town since I was fourteen, I mean twenty hours a day, the next race, the next game, the next bet. I'd walk up the street with four, five thousand in my kick an' no seat to my pants. Who had time for clothes?” He laughed at himself comfortably. “To her I'm still a jerk, but anyways a better dressed jerk.” He rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and his voice changed. “You tell Rogers what I told you. If he finds out any different — about me, I mean-I'll kiss his butt in the Garden lobby.” He stood up abruptly. “Don't be a stranger.”

“I might cash that ticket, Rick.”

In the room beyond Manuel joined Johnny silently, and in the corridor waiting for the elevator he shook his head. “In the china shop, seizor, you are not an easy man on the nerves.”

“Whose side were you on back there, Manuel?”

“Do not make the mistake,” Manuel warned him. “I have not forgotten la savate on the street, but Rick is my friend from a long while. He comes first.” The white teeth glinted suddenly. “Still, it's jus' as well I did not 'ave to choose.”