Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“I asked you when he was here last!”

The cook looked startled at the vigor of the interruption. “Why, twice a week he comes; what then? Three days ago, four days ago; from week to week it varies. I can look it up. I remember he ruined a loin of pork. Ridiculous. I say-

“Has that big box been opened since the night Dutch was killed?”

Hans sucked in his breath, and his eyes widened. “1 have not opened it. There has been no need. I have not-”

“Gimme your keys.” Johnny was on his feet, palm extended. He hefted the huge key ring placed in it by the tall man. “Which one is the meat box key?”

Hans silently picked it out for him, and Johnny walked across to the twelve foot high meat locker with the cook on his heels. Johnny unlocked the big padlock and handed it to Hans. The tall man's voice was husky. “You don't think-?”

“Won't have to think in a minute.” Johnny threw back the long bar handle, and the big door creaked open. Inches of frost clung to its inner side, and a breath of frigid air drifted out with a swirling mist. An ammoniac smell wrinkled Johnny's nostrils unpleasantly, and he stepped inside and tried to quell a shiver. This damn place was fantastically cold after the heat of the kitchen. “Where's the lights, Hans?”

The cook reached over his shoulder and snapped on the switch, and bright daylight washed over them. Johnny took a quick look around the floor with particular attention to the corners of the freezer; he started to step around the butcher's block for a better look, and a strangled sound from behind him caused him to pivot sharply. The white-faced Hans was staring at the rows of frozen carcasses suspended from their heavy hooks, and Johnny turned in the direction of the stricken gaze. One look was enough; he cleared his throat. “I don't see any government stamp on that one, Hans. Let's get out of here.”

The cook did not appear to have heard him. Shock had transfixed him; Johnny put a hand on his arm to recall him. With a convulsive movement Hans threw off the hand and dropped to his knees and addressed a hoarse torrent of guttural pleading to the body on the hook.

“Hans!” Johnny said sharply. “Hans!”

Roughly he placed his hand under the chin of the kneeling man, and at the sight of the glassy unrecognition he waited no longer. He caught Hans as his body slipped away from the short right hand punch that had blanked out the staring eyes, and Johnny picked him up and carried him outside and laid him down on a counter.

He hesitated an instant, then stepped back inside the locker and with a hurried two hand lift removed the chilled, slippery body from the hook on which it hung and laid it out on the floor. He left the box, closed the door, threw over the long bar, and headed for a telephone.

Detective James Rogers sat at the shabby desk in the corner of the kitchen and wrote busily in his notebook while Johnny squatted on the upended box and watched him. Once again the kitchen was quiet; it was three hours since Johnny had found the body in the meat locker, had called the police, and the cloud of investigators had descended upon the place as they had the night Dutch had been killed. The body had been removed, and Hans had been given a needle and taken upstairs, and the uniformed and plainclothesmen had done their big and little jobs and departed, and only Detective Rogers remained.

In the silence he wrote on, less rapidly, pausing to frown at the wall, and he finally slipped his pen back in his inside breast pocket while he riffled pages and re-read what he had entered. He sighed deeply, closed the book with a snap, and looked over at Johnny. “A ringtailed wowzer of a mess, brother.”

“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Look, before you put that notebook away-I couldn't reach Joe this morning-”

“Out of town all day.”

“-so I'd better give this information to you. Were you with him when he called me last night?”

“No. I had a note from him this morning saying you'd scooped that gunman that had been living in your pocket lately, and that I should make arrangements to talk to him when his snow melts off.”

“This was at the same time. Joe said he'd been trying to work out Freddie's rung on the ladder in this thing, and the part that bothered him was the telephone call I'd heard him make resignin' from a stool pigeon detail. That's the call my girl on the board didn't catch, and last night after Joe called me I talked to a man who told me why.” “Because he didn't make it?” the sandyhaired man hazarded.

“Because he didn't make it. His place is wired up like a Christmas tree. I couldn't get near him unless I used a helicopter. He knew I was there, and he gave me the informer bit, and I went for it hook, line, and sinker.”

Jimmy Rogers shrugged as he re-opened his notebook. “It looks to me like your character-good-for-a-laugh, as you introduced him, has had the laugh on all of us.” He pulled out his pen and stared at it. “Still does, for that matter. We don't have him yet.”

“I'm beginnin' to smell hair burning.”

“We're getting closer, but we're not ready to bundle this up and run downtown to put it in the D.A.'s hot little hand. Not yet.”

“Then what the hell do you need, for God's sake? Doesn't this thing here tonight point to him all over again? That's what they were doin' in the kitchen here that night, him and that Frenchie what's-his-name. They were tuckin' the stiff away in the locker, and poor old Dutch caught them at it. Who else could get in that box?”

“The man that was with you when you opened it, for one.

“Hans?” Johnny rubbed his chin. “He could, at that. But I know it was Freddie.”

“Can you stand up in court and prove it? Let's talk sense. For instance, didn't the behavior of this Hans-” Jimmy Rogers glanced down at his notebook, “-Reider strike you as being something out of the ordinary?”

“He threw a fit, for sure. Horns and all. I had to knock him out to get him out of the box. He was orey-eyed, frothin' at the mouth in German, it sounded like. He came to while your examiner was here and threw another wing-ding, and your boy slipped him a needle and packed him upstairs. Hell, I told you all that before.”

“I know you did. I'm trying to make a point, in my feeble way. If reaction could be laid out on a Fahrenheit thermometer, just where would you rate his performance?”

Johnny grunted. “212: Right through the roof. He took it big.”

“I'd like to know why. I'm looking forward to our conversation in the morning.”

“His nerves were gone, anyway. He'd been sweatin' out the promotion here, afraid he was going to be bypassed. He'd just got through tellin' me he wasn't sleeping good.”

“The shylocks had him. He'd borrowed heavily recently.”

“Yeah? So he needed money bad? No wonder he wanted the job so bad he could taste it. Say, that reminds me… last night when I left the place to check that thing out for Joe I ran into Hans on the sidewalk waitin' in a doorway up the street. I got curious and doubled back, and the one he was waitin' for turned out to be this Myrna telephone operator on the middle shift. You know the one?”

“I know her. A well-frosted tomato.” Jimmy Rogers turned pages in the ever-ready notebook. “Myrna Hansen. Age thirty two. Collecting alimony from two ex-husbands. Up on a lightweight blackmail charge six years ago. Nol-prossed. Completely uncooperative under questioning.”

“I can see I should've asked you that yesterday. Did you see the body before they took it out?”

Detective Rogers closed the notebook again. “You mean his face? I wondered when you'd get around to that.”

“He looked like he'd had a hard time.”