Dan Marlowe - Doom Service

As Johnny shook his head in despair, the handkerchief pad slipped away and fell to the corridor floor. He stooped impatiently to retrieve it, and a wave of dizziness assailed him. Grimly he picked up the pad, glanced at its dried surface and jammed it in a pocket. The ear had stopped bleeding.

He had had a busy sixty minutes. Upstairs at the admission desk he had impatiently tried to answer a hundred questions concerning Manuel the head nurse had asked him, the answers to at least half of which he had not known.

And he had called Consuelo. She had been asleep, and she had flown from stupor to fear to anger to tears in such rapid succession that he couldn't keep up. He would never have believed that that self-sufficient girl could cry like that. In her angry stage she had furiously saddled Johnny with fifty per cent of the blame, and in the midst of the tearful stage she had hung up on him abruptly. It had not been an easy few moments.

A nurse emerged from the emergency room door, and Johnny started toward her hopefully. She hurried off in the opposite direction before he could reach her. Twice he had tried entering himself, but, met by a concerted barrage of negative head shakes from the group about the long white table, he had retreated. He returned disgustedly to his pacing, until the sound of hard heels advancing rapidly from the other end of the corridor made him turn around again.

Detective Ted Cuneo already had a hand on the emergency room door before he noticed Johnny standing twenty feet to the left of it. He did a double take and removed the hand; he advanced upon Johnny with his elbows out from his sides and his lean chin thrust forward. “What are you doing here, Killain?” he rapped out. “The squeal said Ybarra.”

“Inside,” Johnny said wearily. “Stick your thick head the hell inside an' see how he's doin'. They run me outta there twice already.”

The large-pupiled eyes examined him for a moment, and then the tall detective strode back and entered the emergency room. When he came out five minutes later he closed the door behind him very quietly. “Not good,” he admitted. “Something about his eyes.”

“He had low wattage anyway,” Johnny explained. “I think it was a piece of pipe that didn't help it any just now.”

Detective Cuneo looked more closely at the side of Johnny's head, and at his ear. “You were there when it happened?”

“Not at the start.” Johnny explained about walking into the alley to get out of the wind and finding Manuel on the ground. “The guy was workin' him over. I got up there, but I slipped in the snow reachin' for him. He clocked me once before he took off.”

“Did you get a look at him?” Cuneo asked instantly.

“I got a look at him.”

“Well, would you know him?” The detective's voice rose sharply.

“You bet your damn life I'll know him.” Johnny's voice rose in turn. “If it's in the twenty-second century I'll know him, an' I'll scatter that sonofabitch like sunbeams in a forest. I'll take-”

“Back up there, now,” Detective Cuneo ordered peremptorily. “That's enough of that kind of talk. When we finish here you're coming with me and look at some mug shots.” He ran a hand over his chin reflectively. “What were you doing with Ybarra?”

“I was meetin' him on that corner,” Johnny replied stolidly.

A dull flush blossomed on Cuneo's lean features. “Why were you meeting him on the corner?” he said. “And never mind trying for the comic strips with your answer, either.”

“We were on our way over to the gym for a workout,” Johnny lied. “Both of us lard up if we don't sweat it off once in a while.”

The detective studied him suspiciously, but before he could speak again a door opened and closed at the end of the corridor and the sound of hastily clicking high heels filled the hollow quiet. Johnny looked around to see Consuelo Ybarra's strained, beautiful face-and, at her side, a hand solicitously at her elbow, Rick Manfredi.

The girl's eyes passed over Johnny without a flicker of recognition. “I can see him?” she pleaded to Cuneo.

“Hell, I don't know.” The tall man sounded irritable, but he turned back to the emergency room. “I'll find out.”

“A bad thing,” Rick Manfredi said gravely into the silence. His eyes were upon Johnny, who was looking at Consuelo Ybarra. She looked right through him.

“Look-” Johnny began, only to have Rick Manfredi's voice override him.

“I think we should-” He broke off as Detective Cuneo opened the door and beckoned. “You go ahead in,” the gambler said quickly to the girl. “It's you he wants to see.”

Johnny watched silently as she walked, a little unsteadily, to the door Cuneo was holding open. When she had disappeared inside he came back to the business at hand and found Manfredi still looking at him steadily. “What the hell are you doin' with her?” Johnny demanded roughly.

“She called me,” the gambler replied. He said it expansively, but his eyes never left Johnny's face. He unbuttoned his coat with deliberate movements and unwound the silk scarf from about his throat, disclosing a maroon all-wool sportshirt and expensive-looking gray woolen slacks. “What happened?” he inquired in a careful tone.

“You don't know already?” Johnny asked bitterly. “He was jumped in the alley back of your place. I got there just in time to let the guy slip through my fingers.”

“Tough luck,” the chubby man said smoothly. “Him gettin' away, I mean. Now what was that crack about my knowin' already?”

A slow anger heated the blood in Johnny's veins. “Don't play dumb with me, Manfredi!” he said hotly. “Manuel was on his way up to see you. I was with him because I was afraid he wasn't too much in the mood for talkin'.”

“You were with him, despite the fact it was none of your business.” Rick Manfredi's voice was velvet; in the next second it turned to brass. “You've got a long nose, Killain. I think I told you that before. It's about time you smartened up. Now get this-whatever Manuel told you about last night was a misunderstanding that will be straightened out.” The dark eyes glittered coldly. “I wouldn't want Consuelo to be bothered with any of this.”

Johnny blew out his breath sharply. “I'll bet you wouldn't, you bastard. Last night it's okay to take her brother because he's a pigeon who thinks his friends are honest, but today you can make a little time with the sister. That the score?”

“All still none of your business.” The gambler's voice was low and hard. “I expect you to keep your big mouth shut around Consuelo, understand?”

“You expect!” Johnny echoed contemptuously. “How you plannin' on shuttin' it, man?”

The gambler smirked. “There's a medium of exchange that moves mountains.”

“You're damn right there is!” Johnny gritted hoarsely. He took a quick step forward. “Try some!” His left hand piston-powered Rick Manfredi's gold belt buckle three inches backward. The gambler let out a bagpipes' squall as he jack-knifed forward; his right leg gave way first, and he seemed to wind himself pretzel-fashion around the left as he ended up, white-faced, on the floor.

Johnny stepped back and examined the knuckles he had skinned on the belt buckle as Consuelo Ybarra slowly came out into the corridor. She took one look at the man on the floor and flew at Johnny, her fingers like claws and her voice ascending the scale in Spanish imprecation.

“Cut it out!” Johnny warned her, dodging the assault. She wheeled and slashed at him with long nails, and he picked her up by the arms and swung her clear of the floor. “Will you listen to me for a minute?” he wedged in above the torrent of unmusical sound inundating him at the level of G above high C. As she tried to kick him he tossed her upward, catching her deftly behind shoulders and under knees. “Will you listen?” he demanded, restraining her violent writhing. She paused in the fishwife diatribe just long enough to spit at him. “The hell with it,” he decided abruptly, and dropped her seat first on the floor. Her screech split the air when she landed; then she was finally silent.