Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

The towheaded crew cut came up slowly as Charlie Roketenetz straightened and turned to blink unsteadily at Johnny. “'Lo, big man,” he said thickly. “Have a li'l drink wi' The Rockin' Horse?”

Johnny stared down into the ashen features. He knew the boy fought as a welter, but he never looked that big. His face looked doubly white against the background of the stitched-together raw scars above his brows, making slits of his eyes. Johnny experienced a sudden sense of uneasy doubt. If you were going to bag a fight, Killain, couldn't you find an easier way? Ahh, stop it, he told himself impatiently- you watched it happen. His hand tightened on the shoulder in his grasp. “We're gettin' outta here, Charlie.”

“Like it here,” the boy said obstinately. “Rockin' Horse likes it fine.” He looked up into the back bar mirror as though reassuring himself where he was, then turned to look at Johnny. “Wassamatter 'th you?” he demanded plaintively. “Wy you lookin' at me li' that?” He ran an exploring finger along his stitched brows and grimaced. “Oh. The fi'.” He wrapped his arms about himself as though unexpectedly cold; his slitted eyes peered upward at Johnny and his thickened voice suddenly gained strength. “How much you lose, big man?”

“Keep it down,” Johnny said levelly. “Who said I lost?”

“How much?” the fighter repeated impatiently. The nearer hand thrust stabbingly into a pocket and emerged with a roll of bills, which it brandished fiercely. “Pay you ri' now. How much you-”

“Shut up!” Johnny cut him off fiercely as the nearer heads started to turn at the stridency in the young voice. “Put it away!”

The boy eyed him uncertainly an instant, then stuffed the money back into a pocket. “How's-Sally?” he asked raggedly, and his ashen face crumbled momentarily as though he were going to cry. It stiffened at once, though, and, without waiting for a response, Charlie Roketenetz turned and restored his elbows to the bar in front of him, slipping off again into the alcoholic no man's land from which Johnny had roused him. Johnny hesitated, then edged back from the bar, ignoring the curious glances around him. Mickey Tallant was shaking his head dubiously.

“He's not goin' easy,” the tavern owner predicted.

“He's goin', though,” Johnny promised. “I want to call Paul.” He pushed through the crowd to the wall phone in the rear and dialed quickly. Too late he realized that to talk to Paul he also had to talk to Sally; he started to hang up, and then shrugged. Couldn't be helped. “Put Paul on, Ma,” he directed her when she came on the line. “An' cut yourself out-this is man-talk.” He could hear her indignant sniff as she rang for Paul. “Paul?” Johnny began when the stocky Swiss answered, then paused. “You off the line, Sally?”

“I think she is,” Paul said finally into the silence.

“Okay. That package is a little heavier'n I figured, Paul. Grab a cab from the corner an' send him down here. In about ten minutes run the service elevator down to the basement, an' I'll get on from the alley.”

“Right now,” Paul replied matter-of-factly, and Johnny hung up. The sudden pall of silence in the room behind him brought his head around sharply, and he stared unbelievingly at the twin masked figures with exposed automatics who stood just inside the barroom door, the slow sweep of their guns menacing bar, back bar and booths.

“Holdup!” a hoarse voice breathed to Johnny's right as the taller of the two intruders turned slightly to say something to his companion, who replied briefly. The taller bandit wheeled, gun extended, and with even, deliberate steps stalked the end of the bar Johnny had just vacated. The crowd instinctively retreated, and, roughly jostled in the general withdrawal, Charlie Roketenetz raised his head again and lurched around indignantly. He glowered at the masked figure less than six feet away.

“Who you poin'in' that thing at?” the boy demanded, his voice high-pitched amid the hush in the low-ceilinged room; his feet did a boxer's shuffle to get leverage as he moved away from the bar, and the smashing left hook exploded upward and caught the gunman under the ear. The bandit staggered backward on his heels as his mask flew off, and his shoulders hit the glass center of the front door heavily. He was catapulted to the sidewalk outside in a harsh detonation of plate-glass fragments, and fifty breaths in the room exhaled noisily.

They sucked in again immediately as the boy charged the shattered door, fists cocked alertly in his mincing fighter's stance. Before anyone realized his intention he had scrambled through the broken-out glass to close with the fallen bandit.

“Behind you, kid!” Johnny yelled despairingly, and ferociously carved a hole in the crowd with his elbows. He knew he couldn't be in time-he reached the front rank only in time to see the second gunman recover from his stupor, dash to the door and fire four times into the blended figures on the ground outside, then vault over them and dart up the street.

Johnny never remembered covering the balance of the distance to the door. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself on his knees on the sidewalk, with Charlie Roketenetz's crew-cut head cradled against his thighs, and the glazing eyes under the raw-looking scars staring upward unseeingly.

The slam of a car door impinged upon his consciousness as he drew a slow, deep breath; he looked up into Sally Fontaine's white, stricken face as she knelt in the slush across from him and silently took the boy's still face in her hands.

Mickey Tallant's voice roused them finally. “Come in out of the weather, both of you,” the tavern owner ordered them gruffly. “It's no good you can do him out here.”

Sally rose like a sleepwalker with the Irishman's hand on her arm; Johnny gently eased the body back down and straightened up slowly. He stooped again to brush absently at the sodden knees of his uniform, and his eyes slid off to the second still figure on the sidewalk.

“Come in, man, will you, now?” Mickey Tallant barked from the doorway, then saw Johnny's gaze riveted on the gunman lying sprawled on his back. “Broke his damn neck goin' through the door, an' good riddance,” he announced firmly.

Johnny's eyes returned to Charlie Roketenetz's quiet face; in the intermittent flashing of the electric display overhead he studied the alternately dead white and pale green features. Then he finally followed the tavern owner inside. The crowd had withdrawn from the bar section nearest the door in deference to Sally, who was standing there wooden-faced, staring off into space, a filled double-shot glass at her elbow.

The crowd seemed to have diminished by about a third to Johnny's eyes, but the remainder showed no intention of leaving. A shrill note of excitement prevailed throughout the general buzz in the big room.

“Get that drink into her, will you?” Mickey Tallant urged Johnny in an undertone. “She's in shock.”

The Irishman slipped through the hinged section at the end of the bar, and Johnny picked up the shot glass and handed it to Sally. She took it obediently, swallowed once, shivered and finished it off. Tears came into her eyes, whether from the potency of the drink or the state of her emotions Johnny wasn't sure. He ached to say something violent and tender, but the words weren't in him. He took her hand silently, and the planes of her small features crumpled like wet cardboard as the tears spilled over.

She drew a long, shuddering breath, and her cold little hand clamped down convulsively upon his. “Oh, Johnny!” she got out in a strangled whisper; then she choked up completely. Sally Fontaine was a tiny girl, almost painfully thin. The small face was usually pleasantly unbeautiful, with a gaminlike quality emphasized by the generous, smiling mouth and the large brown eyes. “I knew s-something was wrong when he didn't c-call me after the fight,” she said drearily, and the tears started anew. “Johnny, what h-happened?”