Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

“Nice… to have you… back with us, Ma-”

He awakened from a light doze to find himself alone on the bed with a blanket thrown over him. He rolled onto his back and stretched mightily, digging his toes luxuriantly into the sheets. Up on an elbow, he looked about him expectantly. “Hey, Sally!”

Before the sound of his voice died away she appeared in the bedroom doorway with a tray in her hands. She wore a robe of Johnny's hitched up at the middle and bloused over the cord, with the cuffs turned back three or four times.

“You'd be a sensation on the Avenue in that outfit,” he told her lazily. “You look like a pregnant monk.” He sat up, examined the contents of the tray and nodded approvingly at the bottled beer and the outsized ham, cheese and onion sandwiches on thick, black rye bread. “Now you're readin' my mind, Ma.”

“Never too difficult,” she informed him. She sat down on the edge of the bed and pushed back the huge sleeves of the robe. “The Killain war cry is food, women and trouble.” She smiled as she poured a glass of beer for herself; Johnny already had a bottle in his hand. “Not necessarily in that order, of course. More properly, shouldn't it be women, trouble and food?”

Johnny ignored her comfortably and, leaning forward, took a large bite from the sandwich Sally had selected for herself. “Mmmmm! Boy, those onions really got some zing to 'em, haven't they?”

“Like the man that bought them?” she asked lightly, and laughed at his expression. A look of surprise came over her face as she sobered. “You know, I think that's the first time I've laughed since-”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Don't backslide on me, now,”

“Don't worry.” She drew a long breath. “I haven't forgotten it, but I guess I've accepted it. I can talk about it. Now.” She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the bed. “And that reminds me. What am I going to do about that money Lieutenant Dameron was over here asking questions about?”

“Spend it on me,” he advised her, and started on his second bottle of beer.

“But it's ridiculous!” She bounced up and down on the bed in her vehemence. “It's not Charlie's money! He never had any money! He borrowed seventy-five dollars from me to help pay his last year's taxes.”

“Don't spill the beer, Ma. Whose money is it, then? I never saw Jake Gidlow in his life he didn't need a clean shirt. It don't add up that it's his money.”

She was watching him closely. “You think you know whose it is, don't you?” He hesitated a second too long. “You do, don't you?”

“I know whose it could be,” he amended.

“Well, tell him to come and get it as soon as the police release it, and have them stop bothering me about it.” She sounded very determined, and Johnny smiled at her for an instant before he turned serious.

“Look, Sally. I don't think anyone can afford to claim this money. Gidlow was probably hiding it out for someone to keep it away from the tax people, an' whoever claims it now is claimin' a fine and a jail sentence at the same time.”

He had lost her attention. “Johnny, is there-is there going to be an investigation of the fight?”

“Nobody seems to think so now,” he replied. “Nobody-” He stopped. He didn't want to say, “Nobody to testify.”

“Well, I hope there isn't!” Sally said violently. She tossed her head at his look of surprise. “I don't care! It couldn't bring Charlie back. It would just s-smear him forever, and if he th-threw that old fight it was because they m-made him!”

Tears glistened in her eyes, but Johnny realized they were tears of anger. “What a little old fire-eater you are, Ma,” he said fondly, and she ducked her head down on his shoulder.

“I don't care!” she repeated, but less forcefully. Over her shoulder Johnny studied the wall thoughtfully. The whole damn thing didn't make sense. There had to be one hell of a twist in there somewhere. The kid had lost the fight- taken the most arrant dive-and been killed anyway. Gidlow had been killed-part and parcel of the same thing? Or just one of Jake's sub rosa chickens suddenly come home to roost? That bunch of money-it almost had to be Turner's money. Turner had probably had Munson send Carmody over with the shyster to make a fast try at recovering it before he realized the headache that went with it. Munson… Killain, you don't know a damn thing about Munson. And Keith, a guy probably on two payrolls-what do you know about him?

Johnny looked down to find Sally's head up from his shoulder and her eyes studying him intently. “I can feel you just winding yourself up to fly off some place,” she said resentfully. “What is it now?”

His grin was uncomfortable. “Little errand I forgot. Honest.”

Her sniff was pure disbelief. “Be careful, y'hear?”

“Sure.” He flattened the tip of her small nose with a finger. “You be careful, in case I'm wrong about the guy whose money it is bein' afraid to make a move to get it back.” He leaped from the bed, scooped up his clothes and headed for the shower.

The Chronicle building was new, an imposing pile of glass, chrome, tile and marble. Somewhere beneath that elegant facade there must be cement and steel, Johnny thought, but it was visible nowhere. At the ground-level information desk he inquired of the gum-chewing brunette for Ed Keith.

“Sports. Third floor rear, sir. If he's in. Shall I call?”

“I'll take a chance, thanks.”

At the third floor the doors opened upon a tremendous room whose floor space seemed to stretch to infinity. Rows of desks lined the center section in three distinct groups, and a glass-enclosed wire room contained a bank of chattering machines which could be heard every time the door opened. A huge, horseshoe desk-and-work-table had at least sixteen people around it on both sides, and a railinged-off section in a far corner contained one man in shirtsleeves and pince-nez glasses who had the entire room under his eyes whenever he looked up.

Johnny stood undecided. It didn't look like the time of day for a social call; he had just made up his mind to try it again later when a door opened at the rear of the room. Ed Keith came through, ushering a slender man in a gray overcoat ahead of him toward the door through which Johnny had just entered. Ten yards away Keith looked at Johnny casually, looked again, hesitated and walked up to him. “Killain, isn't it?”

“Yeah. Some layout you got here,” Johnny told him.

Ed Keith looked around him critically, as though really seeing the office, his half smile exposing his rabbit teeth. “It's an improvement,” he acknowledged. “You ever see the old building before we moved? Had to strike matches to find your desk.” His eyes swept the office again. “Progress. Everything new and different but the salaries.”

“Damned if you don't sound like a red, red robin,” the sportswriter's companion said cheerfully. He was a thin-featured man with a seamed face, and, under thinning brows that matched the grizzled hair, sharp blue eyes had already inspected Johnny shrewdly.

“Indigestion. Dave Hendricks, Johnny Killain,” Ed Keith said briefly. “Dave's from Seventh Avenue, a cloak-and-suiter. See him for seconds on hand-me-downs. Killain's over at the Duarte. I'll meet you over at the restaurant, Dave.”

“You must anyways owe him money, the way you want to get rid of me,” Hendricks said drily, but turned to the door.

“This isn't the time or place to talk to me, unless you make it quick, Killain,” Ed Keith said when the little man had gone.

“I'll make it quick enough, Keith. I came over to ask you what the Chronicle was gonna do about that fixed fight.”

“What fixed fight?” the newspaperman asked coolly.