Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

Johnny studied him. “That's the Chronicle's position? Or Ed Keith's?” The sportswriter was silent. “You on Lonnie Turner's payroll, Keith?”

“I'm not on Lonnie Turner's payroll.” The statement was made with no particular heat or emphasis. “Of course if I were, it still would be none of your business. What's your angle, nosing around?”

“What's yours, covering up for Turner?” Johnny countered.

“I'm not covering-” The newspaperman paused until he could regain control of his voice, which had risen sharply. “I don't happen to think that fight was fixed, Killain. If you've got anything to say that you can back up, I could always change my mind.”

“The kid was killed,” Johnny said softly. “His manager, Gidlow, was killed. If I put something in your hand, would you use it, Keith?”

He could see the sheen on Ed Keith's forehead. “If you can prove it.” The plump features were bloodless. “Although such information properly belongs with the police.”

“First newspaperman I ever saw,” Johnny said dreamily, “who wouldn't put a double hammer lock on me to get the story before I could get to the police.” He considered the unhappy rabbit face. “What is it with you, Keith? You sold out?”

“Get out of here, damn you!” Ed Keith said harshly. “I don't have to listen to this!”

“But you have to listen to Turner tellin' you it wasn't a fixed fight? When everyone on the Eastern Seaboard knows that it was?” Johnny continued quickly before the sports-writer could renew his order. “You know Rick Manfredi?”

Knocked off-stride, Ed Keith stared blankly. “Manfredi? The gambler? I know who he is-” His speech thickened suddenly as it accelerated. “Is he mixed up in this?”

“Mixed up in what?” Johnny inquired innocently. “Nothin' to be mixed up in, is there, Keith? Tell me somethin'. Whyn't you tell me the kid went accidentally in a tavern stick-up when I said he was killed?”

Ed Keith folded his arms tightly across his chest and gazed at Johnny as though trying to make up his mind about something. Johnny wondered if the slight movement of the big man's shoulders was a shrug or a shiver. “Perhaps, like the insurance actuaries, I've given up the idea that anything could happen so conveniently at so critical a time, Killain.”

“Critical for whom?” Johnny pounced. “Turner?”

Surprisingly, Keith smiled. “You're not going to learn very much interrogating me, Killain, because, frankly, I don't know very much. I know just enough-or think I do-to be able to say that Lonnie Turner didn't have them killed.”

He said it so positively that Johnny looked at him speculatively. “You might not rate as a disinterested witness on Turner,” he suggested, “bein' practically on the payroll, through Al Munson.” He continued on before the newspaperman could reply. “You can't say you're not involved, Keith. An' something's spooked you.”

The full lips twisted. “I'm involved to the extent of finding myself in an ethically indefensible position. I'm not saying that you couldn't cause me trouble by taking your questions- or your story-over my head. You could. It's been some time since I've been able to live on this-” He waved a hand behind him-“and I badly need the extra I get out of Turner's office. It's as simple as that. Granted that I don't want to believe that Turner is the mainspring in all this, as you insist, the fact remains that no one has yet showed me that he is. Self-preservation being the first law of nature, I'm forced to stand pat.” Johnny could see the man regaining his self-confidence as he spoke. “Am I right?”

“Right enough to be dead wrong,” Johnny said firmly. “An' I do mean dead. You don't even know which way you're facin' in the saddle, Keith. The first good buck, an' off you go. Like Gidlow. Like Roketenetz. You think newspapermen are insulated?” He hitched up his coat with his shoulders. “Don't dig your feet too deep into the stirrups on this ride, Keith. You might have to turn loose in a hurry.”

Warm blood flamed suddenly in the sportswriter's plump face, only to die out as quickly as it had appeared. Without another word Johnny left him standing there.

“He's scared,” he told himself in the elevator. “He's scared, all right. But not enough to talk. Yet.”

Johnny, seated on an upended box alongside the battered chopping block that served him as a dining table in the rear corner of the semi-deserted hotel kitchen, devoted his attention to the platter placed before him by the white-capped first cook. The large wall clock overhead indicated 8:00 p.m., but for Johnny this was breakfast. He waded into four eggs over light and an Eiffel Tower of hash-browned potatoes, a mound of toast and a steaming, oversized mug of bitter black coffee.

When he had cleaned up the platter and raised and lowered the level on the mug three times, he eased himself back with a repleted sigh and reached for his cigarettes. It was the few odd moments like this, he decided as he lit up, that made life worth living.

“Johnny!”

At the hail Johnny looked up to see Tommy Haines, the night bartender, waving to him from the connecting door between bar and kitchen. “Couple fellas out here to see you, Johnny.”

“They say who they were?”

Tommy shook his head negatively. “Want I should ask?”

“I'll take a look,” Johnny told him. He stood up and strolled to a corner of the kitchen that would give him a view of the bar booths.

“Second from the other end,” Tommy said in a lowered voice, holding the door with his knee as the bar boy passed through with a trayful of glasses. Johnny got one quick look at Rick Manfredi and Manuel Ybarra seated in the second booth from the other end and nodded to Tommy, who returned to his bar.

Johnny took two long drags on his cigarette and stubbed it out; he walked out into the bar and headed directly for the second booth. Rick Manfredi looked up at his approach, nodded but did not rise. “Sit down a minute, Killain.”

“Not in uniform,” Johnny told him. “You want a little privacy, we can walk out to the cloakroom.”

“Fair enough.”

Johnny led the way through the lobby to the cloakroom behind the bell captain's desk. Inside, he snapped on the light and turned to his guests. “Well, boys?”

The gambler was taking Johnny in inch-by-inch, his forehead creased. He looked at the paint-peeled walls and the unshaded light bulb, and then back at Johnny. “What's a guy like you doin' in a place like this?” he demanded abruptly.

“So what's outta focus with the place an' me?” Johnny asked him.

“The muscle,” Rick Manfredi said bluntly. “I been askin' a few questions around. Whyn't you hire out?”

“The people that pay the bills get allergic to my not sayin' 'yes, sir' often enough. I been here long enough so nobody bothers me.”

The chubby man offered Johnny a slim panatela. Johnny pocketed it, and Rick Manfredi stripped the cellophane off another, bit off the tip and spat it out. “How'd you like to work for me?” he asked as he reached for his lighter.

“It wouldn't work, Rick,” Johnny said patiently.

“Don't say that so fast,” the gambler said from around the cigar as he rotated it in the flame of the lighter. “Financially I might be able to make it worth your while.”

“I guess everyone can use money,” Johnny said slowly, “but lately I don't seem able to spend much. I accumulate enough cash from odds and ends around here so that every so often Chet Rollins, the hotel auditor, has to get on my tail about cashin' some back pay checks so he can close his books.” He looked at Rick Manfredi. “I'm not sayin' I'll never need it, but I don't need it now.”

“Why do you say it wouldn't work?” the gambler persisted.