Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“Me first, ma. What's the matter with havin' your smoke in the ladies' room?”

“It's hot in there.”

“So it's hot. You do your smokin' in there from now on. You lookin' to tie into the same buzzsaw I tangled with last night?”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

“Who's bein' ridiculous? I don't know what's goin' on around here, Sally. So far they've been able to lean on me whenever they took the notion, which means they know my habits. If they also happen to know that you and I aren't exactly strangers, I don't want them reachin' for me through you.”

“But no one ever pays any attention to me, Johnny!”

“I might like to keep it that way.”

“Such gallantry!” she smiled. “In that mood, how about answering a question for me?”

“I don't know the answers to any questions.”

“You know this answer.”

He studied her for a moment. “Shoot.”

“Johnny, what happened to Max?”

“He became deceased.”

“I can read, I hope! What I want to know is what you had to do with it.”

“You think I scragged him, ma? You an' Joe Dameron.”

“You didn't, did you, Johnny?”

“No, ma, I didn't. They found me upstairs, but I got lucky. It was on the elevator, and they were in each other's way. I christianized the crowd, dropped down here, and unloaded. They were all breathing, if that's what's botherin' you.”

“But the paper said he was s-shot-!”

“Not by me. I don't like guns.”

“Honestly? Then why were you beaten up last night? Look at you… you look like a pirate.”

“I already told you I don't know. I think Max was the front man for something that's supposed to be headquartered here, and he was supposed to get me in line. When he fumbled it, someone further up the line decided Max should abdicate.”

Sally shivered and moved a little closer to him. “Where does Freddie fit into all this, then?”

“I'm not even sure he does. He sat up in my room last night drinking my Scotch and apologized for twenty minutes straight for thinking I was nothin' but a fourteen carat gigolo. That was after he'd heard Joe Dameron shoot off his mouth about where him an' me had put in a little time together. Freddie pumped me up, down, and sideways, tiptoed all around the edges of a proposition, and then backed off. Maybe when he realized how it was with Willie and me.”

“Well, if he didn't proposition you, why did you expect to see his name on the list of telephone calls I kept for you?”

“A hunch, that's all. Joe Dameron thinks this is a big noise around here; if he's right, I'd already tangled with the militia once, see, and made it stick. If Freddie's in the chain of command and had changed his mind about propositioning me, I figured to hear an echo before I began feeling a little cocky. Only thing, I heard it so damn quick it don't hardly seem likely Freddie had time to trigger the action.”

Sally drew a long breath. “I never heard of anything so … so fantastic. What are you going to do now?”

“Well, I've got one fish in a rain barrel I'm goin' to draw a bead on; I know something about Freddie's room that he doesn't. This old place has been carved up so many times changing rooms and making apartments that in a few places there's walkways between the walls. One of them is just outside the north wall of his room. It'll be a tight fit, but if I can get in there I can stand with just a little plaster and paper between us, and if he's got anything interesting to say I should be able to hear it without too much trouble. I'm telling you this now because you'll have to cover for me while I'm browsin'. I'll let you know before I go aloft.”

“Johnny, why don't you go to the police?”

“That mountain's already been to Mohammed, ma. What really kicked this whole thing off was Joe Dameron blowin' in here and giving me the fraternity grip and a sales talk about signing up for a little cruise. Freddie heard some and guessed the rest.”

He scowled across the alley, thinking back to the scene in the little manager's office. “Joe's in a racket where you can go just so far up the ladder, and then you wait for someone on a rung above to die or retire before you can move up. He's buckin' for another stripe, and he's not fussy how he gets it. He wants all the credits he can get in the meantime so someone like himself don't submarine him from beneath. I don't think he really thinks I killed Max, but he's perfectly willing to hold it over my head and guarantee to keep his bloodhounds off if I'll do what he wants. When I figured his angle, I put it to him straight. I made him admit that if and when I cold-decked the set up for him around here, the umbrella was gone. I don't need the umbrella, you understand, but I got mad anyway and told him what I thought of people workin' with collapsible gear.”

Sally stubbed her cigarette out against the side of the building. “I've got to get back to the board. Please be careful, Johnny?”

“You

be careful. Nothin' ever happens to me.”

“Take a look in the mirror,” she advised him and disappeared inside past the iron door. Johnny stood in the alley, an idle toe scuffing the moisture accumulating underfoot. There should be something in all this that a man could get his teeth into….

Far down the dark wall of the hotel a light came on at ground level. The kitchen, he registered automatically. Another light flashed on. But there should be no lights in the kitchen this time of the morning; Johnny was already in motion when the third light appeared. He ran back through the passageway back to the elevator, slammed up to the lobby and burst into the somnolent quiet. Vic looked up from the desk and waved idly.

Johnny turned and ran for the bar, silently. Inside the paneled doors he rushed soft-footedly past the drowsing drinkers on the bar stools, and then at the far end of the long bar the service door to the kitchen flew open, and the bar boy Manuel stared out at him, his eyes two unripe olives in the white face. “Johnee! The keetehen! The keetehen- !”

He sprinted past the stricken Manuel, spared only a glance for the darksuited figure crumpled just inside the door to the left, and dropped to his knees beside the loosely sprawled slight body in the white uniform beside the shabby desk. “Dutch-?”

A vein throbbed in the thin temple. The closed lids opened and the washed-out blue eyes looked up at Johnny. A trickle of blood ran down from a corner of the twisted mouth, but the old man managed a faint smile. “-missed … the fun, John. S'prised 'em-”

Johnny eased the thin body to a more comfortable position, his mouth taut at the sight of the dark red stain on the front of the white jacket. “Who was it, Dutch?”

“-s'prised-”

The white head fell sideways suddenly, the high chefs hat falling off and rolling away. Johnny reached for it and replaced it automatically, and then he stood, up slowly and looked down at the newly pinched features. After a moment he crossed the huge room and bent over the dark-suited figure in the corner; the last time Johnny had seen that hard-visaged face it had been to exchange two quarts of beer for a five dollar bill. Johnny studied him carefully, lifted a lapel of the jacket fractionally, and let it fall again. He straightened and made a swift circuit of the room, checking the window fastenings and the locks on the walk-in boxes. When he turned again Manuel's pale face was in the service entrance to the bar.

“You call the police?”

“Si.”

“Dutch say anything at all while you were in here?”

The slim shoulders lifted apologetically. “Notheeng I understand-”

“What'd he say, Manuel? Exactly.”

The boy hesitated. “No sense to eet. Eet sound like he say 'the clocks.'”