Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

On impulse Johnny leaned forward. “Circle the block. I want to come back through this block.”

“Mister,” the cabbie said in patient exposition as to a backward child, “you live around here? You know how these streets run? To come back down this street I got to go clear to Eighth, over to 46th, back to Fifth, over-”

“I didn't tell you how to do it, bud. I said do it.”

They hummed through the deserted streets, the cab rocketing around the right hand turns, catching all the lights. Johnny spoke as they crossed Sixth on 45th. “Slow it down.” His eyes had already seen that the single figure in the doorway had increased to two, and as the cab eased by he could see the horn rimmed glasses and the orange tinted hair above the flowered dress. Myrna. Myrna and Hans. Now there was a combination for you.

Johnny leaned back slowly in the corner of the cab. Hans and Myrna. Not even the rearing of sex's lovely head should explain that surprising alliance, although of course you never could tell…

The driver was looking back over his shoulder. “Well, mister? You like it well enough to do it again?”

Johnny roused himself. “Take me up to Van Cortland and Bacon.”

“Jesus, mister, that's way uptown. You must like to ride.”

“I like to ride but not to talk.”

“Okay, okay. The roof don't have to fall in on me. You want to go through the park or up the highway?”

“Through the park.”

They rode in silence for thirty five minutes, and the meter said $3.15 when the cab pulled in to a comer in an area of apartment houses with massive Gothic fronts. Johnny paid the driver off, and stood on the curb a moment. He had been here once before, but in the daylight. He looked up and down the narrow street with its tightly knit row of cars parked up and down the slight grade. Up, Johnny's sense of direction said, and he turned left and walked steadily, past successive ornate, identical buildings. He moved briskly. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. And at the fifth apartment entrance he saw it: one of the couchant stone lions that formed the elaborate entrance pattern for each building had a chipped nose. Johnny had seen that chipped-nosed lion before.

He ran up the double flight of wide stone steps and entered the bare lobby, in which the impressive exterior quickly degenerated to a shabby gentility. He ran a finger down the list of names on the mail boxes, and stopped at Romero, Jerry. 301-C. It was a walkup, and he climbed the stairs, whistling tunelessly. On the first landing two panes of glass in the large window were broken out completely.

He could see movement behind the one-way glass in the door panel after his knock, and it was a moment before the door opened. “Come in, come in, Johnny,” Jerry Romero invited him. Jerry was a small man, running to flesh, balding, and with a two-day beard. He was dressed in an undershirt, trousers, and bedroom slippers. His wife, Rosa, stood behind him, self-consciously clutching a faded blue dressing gown about her thin body. She was a tired-looking woman, her hair up in curlers, her skin sallow, and her eyes anxious.

“Come in, Johnny,” she echoed. She led the way inside, trying to smile, her glance flickering between the two men. “You're in trouble, Jerry!” she accused her husband.

“You sound like it was something new.”

“There's no trouble, Rosa,” Johnny told her.

“Honest?”

“Honest. I just wanted to talk to Jerry. I know it's late, and I didn't mean to upset you-”

“Don't you pay any attention to me, Johnny. It's just my nerves aren't good. I shouldn't yell at him like that, I know. Just so he's not in trouble-”

Jerry smiled his easygoing smile at the edge of doubt in her tone. “Haven't raped a soul in six, eight weeks now, hon.”

“You!” she said. “That's not the kind of trouble you find-”

“Maybe I been overlooking something? Coffee, Johnny?”

“Sounds good. Black.”

Rosa moved immediately toward the kitchen in the rear of the apartment, and Jerry waved after her. “We might as well sit in there ourselves, Johnny. It's just as comfortable, and it'll save Rosa running back and forth to listen in.” He grinned at his wife in the doorway.

Johnny followed him into the small kitchen, where Jerry pulled chairs up to the table and looked over at him expectantly as they sat down. Rosa measured level tablespoons of coffee for the percolater and kept her attention upon the table.

“I need a little information that's none of my business, Jerry,” Johnny told him.

“You tell him, you hear me?” Rosa said immediately. “You tell him, Jerry Romero.”

Jerry laughed. “I remember my father used to tell me 'Jerry, you want to watch out for a man tells you he's the boss in his house, because pretty soon he's gonna be lyin' to you about something else.'”

“You tell him,” Rosa repeated.

“I might,” Jerry agreed, “if you'll give the man a chance to ask his question, Rosa. You been doing all the talking so far.”

“It's about the manager down at the place,” Johnny said, and his host made a wry face. “He got you under the gun?”

“No more'n you'd expect. What's on your mind?”

“He asked you to do any special little jobs for him since he's been down there?”

“I don't know how you taped it, but he did.”

“Can you tell me about it? I guess he had a lever.”

Jerry nodded slowly. “He had a lever. Been there about a week and called me into his office one morning. 'Jerry,' says he, chipper as an English sparrow, 'let's have a look at your ticket.' Oh, oh, I thought to myself. Now you know and I know, Johnny, that I'm no engineer. I don't have the education for the job I'm doin' down there. I just kinda grew into it, and after old Hubert left I just kept goin' through the motions. I can do the job; I've proved that ever since the old man left, but hell, you know as well as I do that as soon as someone raises the question, I'm out.”

“So Freddie put the arm on you?”

“Not directly. He was just showin' me where I stood. This little piece of paper says you're not packin' the weight for the job,' he says to me. 'I got twelve years aboard here says I am, Mr. Frederic,' I give it back to him. 'We could get in trouble over this if something went wrong, Jerry.' 'So what's to go wrong, Mr. Frederick?' 'Well, let's hold it in abeyance for the time bein', shall we?' he says. 'Meantime I have a thing or two I'd like you to do for me if you have the time.'”

Jerry's grin was mirthless. “If I had the time. He knew damn well I'd make the time with that sword over my head. He did surprise me, though; when I finished the work for him, he slipped me a hundred.”

“The frosting on the cake to keep you quiet?”

“Well, I didn't figure to do any broadcastin' anyway, but that century didn't make it any harder to button up.” He looked over at Johnny. “You got priority, boy, but I hope-”

“You don't need to worry, Jerry.”

“If you say so, that's good enough for me. After we got it settled whose side I was on, he asked to see the hotel blueprints.”

Johnny whistled. “Now I know I underestimated him.”

“Yeah? Well, I told him the official set was down at the architect's office, but that I had a spare set downstairs was almost as good since I made my own changes on them. I brought them up, and I mean he really went over them with a fine tooth comb, with special attention to his office and his suite upstairs. He let go the office in a hurry; you know that was thrown up on the mezzanine as an extra, and no wall of it touches any other wall. When he left that, I could see right away that what bothered him was what contacted him upstairs. He's some kind of a left-handed engineer himself, I guess, because he put his finger right on things. Like that walkway outside one wall of his living room where there was a little leftover space when we converted the corner room beyond him. I told him nothing but a midget could get in there, but he wasn't satisfied till he'd seen it for himself. Then he wasn't satisfied, either, because he came right out and told me what he wanted.”