Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“'The clocks'?” Manuel nodded. Johnny stared at the large kitchen clock on the wall across the room. “That's all he said?”

“That ees all.”

Johnny sighed. “Okay. Tell Tommy to close up the bar.”

“Si.” Manuel's dark eyes lingered fascinatedly on the body just inside the door, until he caught Johnny's gaze upon him.

“Move!” The boy disappeared, and Johnny returned to his restless prowling of the kitchen. Twice he stepped off the distance between the two bodies, dissatisfied, then knelt quickly to examine a dark spot on the tiles midway but a little to one side. The spot smeared under his probing finger, and he nodded.

He was seated in Dutch's chair behind the little desk in which the old man had kept his records when the police arrived, a corporal and an eager-beaver rookie in the van, and Lieutenant Dameron not fifteen yards behind.

Johnny waved without rising. “Sleepin' light, Joe?”

The lieutenant came over and kicked a chair into position beside Johnny's and sat down heavily. The red face was shiny and stubbled with gray whiskers. He stared out impassively over the room filling up with men, watching the uniformed and plainclothesmen drawing lines on the floor, dusting powder, taking pictures, and putting minute specks of dirt in labeled white envelopes. A man with horn-rimmed glasses bent alternately over the two still figures on the floor, writing busily in a notebook, and in a matter of minutes the bodies were lightly covered, rolled loosely onto narrow stretchers, and taken out the back way.

Lieutenant Dameron looked at Johnny. “You know anything about this?”

“I know how it happened.”

“Wait till my boy can check you out.” The lieutenant raised a hand and beckoned, and a slim, sandyhaired man approached them. His features were pleasant, and he smiled at Johnny. “You two know each other,” Lieutenant Dameron continued. “This was the second man on the scene, Jimmy, if we can believe the bar boy.”

Detective James Rogers nodded and took out his ever-present notebook. “Long time, Johnny.”

“Yeah. How's the only straight man works out of 54th Street?”

“Shhh-” the sandyhaired man warned. “The boss'll hear you.”

“He should hear me.” Johnny reached over and tapped Joe Dameron on the knee. “How come you let this boy work with the rest of the bastards you've got up there? He supposed to leaven the loaf?”

“He beats his wife,” Joe Dameron said amiably. “That qualifies him. You ready, Jimmy?”

“Yes, sir.” He bent over the notebook. “Name: John Killain-”

“'D you ever know he had an alias, Jimmy?” the lieutenant interrupted. “Sure. Ask him. Or never mind asking him, ask me. Poetic, too. Manos Muertas.”

Johnny stiffened in his chair, and Detective Rogers looked from him to the lieutenant and back again. “Muertas,” he repeated slowly. “Odd name. Manos Muertas. Translates a bit grimly. The hands of death.”

Lieutenant Dameron laughed. “You see the advantages of an education, Johnny? Jimmy went to school.”

Johnny's voice was thick and heavy. “There's a nice, quiet alley outside, Joe.”

The lieutenant eyed him placidly. “My mother didn't raise any foolish children to my age.”

“Just one. The one trying to push me around.” “Nobody's pushing you around, you thick idiot. Will you get off that button?”

“I'll get off it when you put away flat needle you've had out lately. I don't like it.”

“So you don't like it. Drop dead.” The chair creaked as Johnny's weight shifted. “Don't do it,” Lieutenant Dameron continued softly. The redrimmed eyes stared frostily. “Don't even think of it, Johnny. You're no privileged character. I gave you a chance to do me a favor, and you turned me down. I can use you, but I don't need you, so don't get out of line. That's a warning. Now let's catch Jimmy here up on a little ancient history.”

He leaned back in his chair, unheeding the smoldering glance from across the desk. “A few years back, Jimmy, when you were still trying to get the pants off the high-school cheerleaders in your home town, this character and I were running around southern Europe for Uncle. I imagine quite a few people over there would remember that name, even today.”

He exhaled a cloud of smoke and idly dabbled the tip of his cigarette in it before replacing it in his mouth. “He was a specialist, Jimmy. No machinery. No guns, no knives, no blackjacks; all he had to do was reach you. He can give any circus strong man you ever saw cards and spades, and when he gets mad you wouldn't believe it. He warms up on brick walls.”

The cigarette's tip glowed redly. “Willie brought him back here with him… that's Willie Martin, the owner of this place. Our sourpussed friend here was Willie's hatchet man, and he pulled Willie through a couple of mighty snug knotholes. Willie stuck him in a uniform here and gave him the run of the place, and he developed a sideline. Women. What I hear, they had to enlarge the place a couple of times to get them all in.” He studied the growing ash on his cigarette. “This Willie Martin's a story himself. He was head oddball in a strictly oddball outfit; he inherited some money, and while I never did hear of him making any, he'll probably always be able to buy and sell the crowd here. He's the type that lives every minute like it's going to be his last on earth; a little frantic for the pedestrian caliber like me, geared a little lower.”

Lieutenant Dameron leaned forward in his chair, head turned up sidewise to the listening detective. “I'm telling you this, Jimmy, because I know that he's what happened to Max and Co.; his brand was stamped all over them. All except the bullet, the way I see it now. With the buzz we'd had on this deal, I offered him in; he was on the ground, and he's got a nose for this kind of thing. He thought I was holding the Armistead thing over his head, and he wouldn't buy. I figure he's lonewolfing it now; none of us knows what we're doing here anyway, and he thinks he might find a spot to cash in. Right, Johnny?” He shrugged at the glowering silence. “All right, then. What happened here tonight?”

“You tell me, you're so goddamn smart.”

“Temper, temper.” The lieutenant turned back to his assistant. “I forgot to say, Jimmy, that Armistead had braced him first, before I did, but he didn't like Armistead. When Max tried to push it a little, Johnny dropped him in the alley on the second bounce, and whoever was behind Max figured he could do without him.” He turned back to Johnny. “All right. Let's hear it.”

Johnny drew a deep breath, and for the first time in minutes wrenched his eyes away from the red-faced man. He looked up at Jimmy Rogers. “I can tell you what you already know. Whoever it was, they had a key to something. No sign of forcible entry. They just didn't know old Dutch had insomnia and often sat here nights. When they stumbled over him, the one on the floor got nervous and started after him, probably wavin' a gun. He violated the number one rule for drawing your social security; never go after a chef in his own kitchen. Dutch split him like a chicken from a dozen feet away with the cleaver he always had on this desk. The boy that caught the cleaver put two out of two into Dutch, which was pretty good shootin' under the circumstances. That was a little noisier than his partner liked to work, so the partner pumped in a couple of convincers alongside the cleaver to make sure no talkee and blew. Game, set, and match.”

“How'd you know the man the chef got was shot, too?” Detective Rogers asked him curiously.

“I looked. He wasn't layin' right for a knife wound, even a smash like that. A knife, they got time to get down easy, usually. A gun belts 'em down hard. This guy was belted.”