Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

“Doc says he had it while he was alive, too. With a knife.”

Johnny grimaced. “Somebody carved him to make him talk? Rough.”

“It complicates things. Either we have someone in the crowd getting out of line and being disposed of-and the method makes it unlikely-or else there's an opposition crowd on the scene.”

“Maybe Hans can straighten it out for you.”

“I'd like to think so. What's on your mind now?”

Johnny looked at his watch. “Work. All this has been on the house. My shift's just coming on.”

“The lieutenant will probably want to talk to you tomorrow.” Jimmy Rogers slapped his pockets automatically to account for his belongings, nodded to Johnny, and walked out of the kitchen through the service door at the bar. Johnny sat and listened to the diminishing sound of his heels on the tile, and then it was very quiet in the big kitchen.

Johnny was on his way through the lobby to the street when he heard his name called. Marty Seiden, a middle shift front desk man, waved a red and white envelope at him from the registration counter. “Cablegram, John. Just came in.” Marty was a fresh-faced youngster addicted to pointed collars and bow ties; he had a highly developed clothes' sense, and he looked approvingly at Johnny as he stepped up to the desk. “You look really sharp, John.”

Johnny glanced down at his lightweight summer suit as he slit open the cable. “Handsome is as handsome does, kid. Or don't they teach you that in school these days?” He ran his eyes over the block type on the white sheet.

IN TONIGHT CHECK BOAC OFFICE CALL SHIRLEY RESERVE

mario.

He crumpled the sheet in his hand and stood undecided a moment before nodding to Marty and turning away from the desk. He looked at his watch; plenty of time, but he would have to-

“Why, Ugly! How nice you look!”

Johnny looked down into the round face, brown eyes, and sleekly shining hair of the girl who had stepped into his path, and he smiled. “Hi, Frannie. How's the sociological experiments coming along?”

She blushed vividly and tossed her head. “Don't be mean. I came by to apologize for acting like a snapping turtle the other night. I must have sounded like a shrew.”

He steered her out of the lobby traffic and over against the unoccupied bell captain's desk and considered the serious young face. “You were a perfect lady, Frannie, except in your instincts, and that's the way a man likes to have his lady function.”

A fresh wave of color enveloped her. “You make it sound-well, it probably did look-I'm not like that all the time, really.”

“Now you're disillusioning me.”

Her look was reproachful. “Go ahead and tease; I suppose I deserve it. I do want to thank you, though; you kept me from making a mistake. I realized how silly I must have sounded when I got to my room. I brooded about it for a while, then I went out to the elevator hoping I could find you and apologize, so that you wouldn't think I was just a nitwit schoolgirl, but that man said you had just gone down for the doctor.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes. For the man with the bleeding face. He must have had a terrible fall. The dark man said he'd just sent you down, so I went back to my room. In the morning you weren't around, so-”

Johnny's mind raced into high gear. This pretty youngster had stumbled on the opening act of the drama in the kitchen the night Dutch had been killed; it was so simple when it was all laid out for you. Frank Lustig hadn't been a no-pay skip from 938 that night; Frank Lustig had been killed in 938 by Frenchie Dumas, and the girl had walked in on the operation of transferring the body to the room service elevator for disposal in the kitchen. Frank Lustig was the body in the meat locker.

Johnny opened his mouth to ask the girl if Dumas had been alone with the bleeding-faced man in the corridor, and dosed it again. He must have been alone; if the other man was Freddie, and the girl had seen him, the way this crowd played she very likely would herself have ended up in the meat locker. Johnny looked at the well-scrubbed youthful glow; you had a very, very close call, little kitten. Eight lives left. He held out his hand, and she put her small, warm one in his solemnly. “Apology accepted, Frannie. You come back and see me in about five years when you get bored with your husband.”

“I just might do that,” she said pertly, and he released her hand. “Good-bye, Ugly.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Good-bye?”

“Au 'voir,

then.” Under his approving eye the girl flushed brilliantly, turned on her heel, and sped from the lobby, and Johnny smiled after her. In five years that kid would be something to see. In five years-

“Robbing the cradle these days, mister?”

Johnny turned his head; he had been facing the foyer, but he hadn't seen Shirley come in. He inspected the tall girl's dark beauty critically. “You wanna deprive me of my simple pleasures? You look a little better than you did the last time I saw you.”

“I want to talk to you about the last time you saw me, mister.”

“Not in that tone of voice, you don't.” He straightened the crumpled cablegram in his left hand and thrust it at her. “Here. Wipe the slobber off your chin with that.”

She snatched it from his hand without even looking at it, her eyes slits. “Don't you get tight with me, Johnny, or I'll-”

“You'll what?” he asked her softly. “My name's not Martin. You want to play rough, I'll bounce your tail a foot high off this lobby floor, an' enjoy it. Now why the hell did you come over here?”

Her smile was mocking. “I forgot I was talking to a professional hard guy. My request is simple, sir. I merely want to know why I woke up after you took me home the other afternoon with my brand new gold toreador pants in one and a half inch strips all over the bed, and my backside so sore I couldn't sit squarely? Do you beat unconscious women now for amusement? I looked in the mirror this morning, and it still looks like an Indian smoke signal against a desert dawn. I want to know how come?”

“I was lookin' for needle punctures,” Johnny told her tersely. “When I found 'em, I got mad, and whacked you once.”

“You had a hell of a nerve!” she said harshly. “Did you ever try minding your own business? You've got-”

“Ahhh, break it off,” he said wearily. He looked at the angry, beautiful face. “You hooked solid?”

“Of course I'm not!” she flashed.

“Willie know you're on the stuff?”

Her smile was triumphantly vindictive. “Yes, little boy, Willie knows. Isn't it a shame you won't be able to be the first to give him the news?”

Johnny felt sick; he sensed she was telling the truth. When he remained silent, Shirley remembered the cablegram in her hand. She read it quickly, and her lip curled. She looked at Johnny. “The master's voice. Did you call BOAC's overseas office to see what time he'd get in?”

“You're on the payroll, kid. You call 'em.”

Her lips tightened. 'You trying to start something with me? Some one of these days I'll give you-” She broke off as she thought of something; she looked again at the cable. “'reserve mario.'“ She tore up the cablegram into thin strips; her tone was bitter. “I'm not going back to that place of Mario's. Willie may like to play big shot and be greeted at the front door by the maitre d' bowing from the waist, but not me. I don't like those places where you can't get the frost off the help's chins. Anybody who isn't a charter member couldn't make an impression over there by carpeting the floor wall-to-wall with twenty dollar bills.”

“Willie's been goin' to the Casa Grande for twenty five years,” Johnny said patiently. “He's known Mario longer'n that.”