Dan Marlowe - Doorway to Death

Johnny retrieved the knife, folded in the blade, tapped the solid casing on his palm, and returned it to his pocket. Myrna rolled her chair back out of its corner, her hands patting ineffectually at the wild hennaed hair. Her face was ghastly, and the lips bloodless.

Johnny half turned to go and then looked back. “Last chance, Myrna.”

“Get out of here! Fast!”

He shook his head commiseratingly. “I gave you an out, kid. I'm not even gonna feel sorry for you when they come for you with the knife. I wish I had your nerve, that's all.”

She looked around wildly for something to throw, and her voice rose hysterically. “Damn you, get out-!”

No score, Johnny thought to himself as he re-crossed the lobby. She's scared, though, and not of my palaver. She may come around yet when she thinks it over.

He entered the bar and stepped behind it at its nearer end, and the boy Manuel looked up from his preoccupation with lime squeezing. Johnny silently offered him the knife.

“Ah, senor!” the slim youth said cheerfully, wiping his hands on his apron. “Eet deed not take long?”

“Not long. Thanks.”

“No cause.”

Johnny moved on to the kitchen. It was Mrs. Carl Midler's dinner time, and Mrs. Carl Muller interested Johnny.

Willie Martin lay on his back in the big double bed in the hotel room, and the cigarette in the corner of his mouth trailed lazy spirals of gray-blue smoke upward. He looked up at Johnny sitting on the far edge of the bed, and his crisp voice broke the little silence. “This is not exactly the party I had in mind for the night I got back, Johnny. Maybe we should take the bit in our teeth and go out on the town?”

“Stop racin' your motor,” Johnny told him. “I got someplace for you to go later, anyway, if Shirley doesn't call. I told you she was in a bad mood.”

“You did tell me.” The lean, poised face returned to its brooding inspection of the eddying haze of his cigarette. “Not that it was necessary. She's had no other mood recently.” The light blue eyes flicked back to Johnny. “I suppose you wonder why I put up with it?”

“That's your business,” Johnny said shortly.

Willie smiled. “But you don't approve? You're as transparent as glass.” He shifted into a more comfortable position. “In a way, I don't approve myself, if it's any consolation to you.”

“Well, what the hell, then, Willie-” Johnny stared down at the slender man. “If you feel that way-I thought she had you on the hip.”

“She has.” The voice took on a brittle edge. “Perhaps I should have said that my intellect does not approve, but that I can't say the same for my emotions.” Willie lifted his head and smiled, this time the quick, flashing smile that Johnny knew so well.

“You find that a little difficult to believe?”.

“Well, knowin' you-” Johnny paused uncomfortably.

“She's a pretty thing, Johnny.”

And at the substantial understatement Johnny knew all that he needed to know; inwardly he was amazed. The man on his bed may not have had his pick of the world, but he hadn't missed it by much. Johnny had seen them come and go in Willie's life, the ladies and the others, and now here was the fastidious Willie trying to justify his feeling for a beautiful face that Johnny could no longer disassociate from a needle-punctured thigh…

He spoke abruptly. “Let's take a little ride.”

“Where?” There was no interest in the inquiry.

“Friend of yours wants to say hello.”

This time the head came around. “A friend? Of mine?”

“Yeah. Joe Dameron.”

Willie made a wry face. “I couldn't work up much enthusiasm over that visit. Joe and I never did see exactly eye-to-eye.”

“This is business.”

The blue eyes narrowed. “What kind of business? Do you have something on the fire with Joe?”.

“We been playin' cops and robbers around here since you left.”

“Well?”

“I'd rather have Joe tell you.”

Willie sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed; his hands energetically attacked his loosened tie and paused as his head swiveled toward Johnny again. “Are you in trouble? You been throwing your weight around?”

“No more'n usual. Joe'll brief you.”

Willie considered him shrewdly for a moment and then shrugged. He dressed quickly, and in deference to his business suit Johnny slipped into a sports jacket. Willie maintained combat silence on the way down to the street, and he spoke only once in the cab. “Has this something to do with the hotel?”

“Yeah.” They finished the ride in silence again, and Johnny led the way up the worn white steps and turned left inside to the high desk presided over by the white-maned patriarch, who regarded them bleakly.

“To see who, is it now?”

“The keeper of the zoo,” Johnny told him. “Mr. Martin to see Lieutenant Dameron.”

Deliberately the old man picked up the phone. “Lieutenant? A Mr. Martin to see you, sor. Wit' that big moose was here the other afternoon. Yes, sir.” He replaced the phone and looked at them.

“Second door on the left,” Johnny said for him before he could speak, and the thin mouth tightened, but he nodded.

Lieutenant Dameron met them in the hall. “Willie!” he exclaimed, hand outstretched. “Good to see you again. I'd heard you were in Europe; really hadn't hoped to see you this soon. What brought you back to town?”

“My sinful nature,” Willie replied drily, shaking hands and glancing from one to the other of the two big men. “This is turning out to be quite a production. What's on your mind, Joe?”

“Johnny didn't tell you? Come on inside. We can't talk out here.” He led the way into the familiar, dingy room and motioned them to chairs as he closed the door. “Sorry about the appearances, but the city doesn't believe in wasting money on us non-revenue producing agencies.” He dropped down in his swivel chair behind the cluttered desk, propped his elbows on its surface and looked at Johnny over his steeple-shaped pressed-together hands under his chin in the gesture Johnny had come to associate with him. “You didn't tell him anything?” Johnny shook his head. “Okay. Here's a fast rundown for you. Willie.”

Johnny sat and listened to the ruddyfaced man quickly sketch the sequence of events at the hotel, beginning with Max Armistead's original proposition and Johnny's session with him on the elevator through all the ins and outs of the subsequent developments down to the point of the discovery that Ronald Frederick was not Ronald Frederick at all but had obtained the job for some purpose of his own through the use of another man's name.

Johnny watched the changing expressions on Willie Martin's aristocratic face as he listened to the rapid recital, and when the lieutenant had finished the slender man sat quietly for a moment, lost in thought. When he spoke his voice was brisk. “I imagine you boys had a specific reason for lugging me in here and spoonfeeding this to me, but how about a couple of questions first?”

“Go right ahead,” Lieutenant Dameron invited him, and Willie Martin frowned absently, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the ceiling a moment before looking back at the big man behind the desk.

“This might sound a little silly to you, Joe, but are you sure you haven't gotten your wires crossed on Freddie?”

The lieutenant stared, but Johnny cut in ahead of him before he could reply. “Not a chance, Willie. Joe got the word from the coast.”

“I know, I know.” The slender man straightened in his chair, and his tone was impatient. “Joe got the word. Now let me tell you something. An hour ago I finished reading the first comprehensive report I've had from my auditor and my lawyer since I put Frederick in there, and both of these reasonably disinterested businessmen assure me that he's doing a better job for me down there than anyone I've had in a long time. Now I wouldn't try to convince you that the hotel is the biggest or most complicated operation of its kind, but on the other hand it doesn't run itself. One of us is barking up the wrong tree, Joe.”