Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

Johnny grimaced. “I think I'm way ahead of you.”

“Probably. He wanted something to let him know if someone was prowling him, trying to look in or listen in. There was three spots that bothered him: his front door, the bathroom, which adjoined another, like they all do down there, and the wall with the walkway. It was easy enough to do. I put a plate at the door, a strip under the floor of the adjoining wall in the bathroom, and a strip under the walkway. I hooked up three little bulbs inside that light up when anyone hits the plate or the strips. I wanted to put in a buzzer, but he didn't want no buzzer. The bathroom was the toughest, account of the tile. Took me about a week, I guess, workin' an hour or so in the mornings, and when I had him all wired up he thanked me pretty as you please and slipped me the hundred.”

Rosa was doing a little rapid feminine arithmetic. “That's when I was in the hospital for four days. I was afraid to ask you where you'd gotten the money.” She walked over to him and sat down on his lap, leaned over and kissed him, hard. He ran a hand up under the blue dressing gown, and she jumped up and slapped him halfheartedly. “I don't get that kind of attention when we're alone, Mr. Romero. You have to shame in front of Johnny?”

He reached for her again, but she evaded him and smiled apologetically at Johnny. “I was scared simple when you walked in here, after that last time. God knows he's not worth much, but I'm used to having him around.” She unplugged the percolator, waited for it to stop its rhythmic thumping, and filled three cups. “When I think of tie last time you were here-”

“He's reformed, Rosa.”

“Damn right he's reformed, Jerry said breezily. “Those characters sure made a Christian out of ol' Jerry. I can't see now how I could have been so crazy. Any damn fool can gamble with money in his pocket, but it takes a special kind to do it without it.”

“So you learned.”

“So I learned. Just this side of City General. I never did ask you what you had to do to get me off the hook with that bunch-”

“Stop it!” Rosa said sharply. Her coffee slopped over into her saucer. “Let's not even talk about it. How are you going to get back downtown, Johnny?”

“I'll catch a cab up at the corner.”

“Not this time of the morning you won't, not in this neighborhood. Jerry, you put on a shirt and drive him down.”

“There's no need for that-” Johnny protested.

“I guess you didn't hear the boss talking,” Jerry told him. He stood up and walked into the other room and returned in a moment shrugging into a sports shirt.

Johnny stood up at the table. “Thanks for the coffee, Rosa. And for the information, Jerry.”

“No thanks due, and you know it,” Jerry said. “We all set? I won't be long, hon.”

“You be careful. Goodnight, Johnny. You come by and see us anytime.”

On the drive downtown in Jerry's fender-dented vehicle, Johnny responded absentmindedly to the engineer's steady chatter. Mentally he shifted pieces in the jigsaw mosaic in his mind, and found himself still dissatisfied with the blurred picture that resulted. A couple of key pieces were still missing, and he had a little digging to do.

He shook himself awake in his chair, glanced at the fading daylight pouring in the window, and then at the hero riding away into the matching sunset on the television set. He looked at his watch; five forty five. He got to his feet and stretched hugely, and walked over to the set and turned it off. In the bathroom he splashed water noisily on his face, his palms rasping the bronze shadow on his jawline. Resignedly he dried his face and took down the electric razor.

He shaved hurriedly and looked in the living room for his uniform jacket. He picked it up from the chair into which he had thrown it upon entering, but at sight of the resultant wrinkles he dropped it again and removed a fresh one from the closet.

In the corridor he considered a moment and then walked down the five nights to the lobby and on into the bar where Fred, the day man, nodded a greeting. “Little early for you, John.”

“A little. Richie around?”

“In the kitchen.”

He walked down the length of the long bar, its gleaming mahogany ever so faintly iridescent under its coating of linseed oil, and passed through the service door into the kitchen beyond. White uniformed cooks, assistant cooks, and busboys rushed about behind the long steel counters ministering to the horde of red-jacketed waiters, and a confusedly subdued babble of sound rose and fell above the steaming atmosphere.

Richie approached him with a service setup on a tray and a glint of curiosity in the hazel eyes. “Hi, John. You deputizing?”

“Yeah.” Johnny took the tray from him. “What'd she order?”

“Roast beef.”

“Not much they can do to spoil that.” Johnny looked over at the salad counter. “Henry?” The salad man looked up from his half crouch in front of his sink as he rinsed his hands in cold running water. “You got time to let me get in there and rustle myself up a little something?”

“Help yourself, John. My rush is over.”

Johnny moved in behind the short counter with Richie on his heels, and the boy looked at him appraisingly.

“Why'd you bother asking him?” he inquired in a lowered voice when the saturnine Henry moved away to the other end of the kitchen. “D'you think he'd have tried to Stop you?”

Johnny looked up over his shoulder as he knelt before the opened door of the square salad refrigerator. “You must think I'm tired of livin', kid. You don't reach my age pushing kitchen help around. That kind of stuff calls for slow music and faded flowers.”

After a momentary inspection of the refrigerator's contents he removed a head of lettuce, a stalk of celery, a bunch of radishes, two tomatoes, a small cucumber, and a scallion. He straightened up and removed a clove of garlic from the drying string overhead and added it to the pile. From the maple cabinet to the left of the refrigerator he took out ewers of olive oil and wine vinegar, and shakers of pepper and salt. He reached back in once more for a large salad bowl with a visible sheen, then removed his jacket and handed it to Richie.

He rolled up his sleeves, picked up a knife and tried it for balance, and laid it down again. He stripped the slightly wilted outer leaves from the lettuce head and tossed them in the soup stock box. He removed another half dozen crisp leaves and rinsed them lightly in the cold running water, then laid them out on the drain board while he rapidly washed the rest of the vegetables. He picked up the knife again and cut the clove of garlic in two and carefully rubbed the salad bowl with the larger portion. He looked across to the watching Richie.

The big hands gathered the vegetables together on the cutting board. He shredded the lettuce and lined the salad bowl cut the tomatoes in wedges and tossed them in, and chopped the radishes and the scallion, the rapidly moving knife thudding on the board like the roll of a small drum. He diced the celery, and sliced the small cucumber, and added them to the bowl. Measuring with a judicious eye he picked up the olive oil and poured a small quantity over the bowl's contents, and followed suit with the wine vinegar, even more sparingly. He used the salt and pepper liberally and tossed the salad vigorously with his hands for thirty seconds before stepping aside and rinsing off at the running water.

“That looks good,” Richie announced. “Where'd you learn to do it?”

“In Italy. A bishop showed me. He had a broken leg, and he couldn't get around to make it for himself, so he taught me to make it for him. Helluva guy; none better. He must have weighed better'n two sixty and he could go up a rope hand over hand like a hundred forty pounder.”