by Dan Marlowe
“You with Wages and Hours now?” Johnny answered. He sugared his coffee liberally. “I got a good crew over there. Five of us do eight people's work, an' we been doin' it a long time now. Nobody peeps at what goes on on our shift, brother. It'd cost them money, an' they know it.” He took a sip of the scalding coffee. “You clockin' Turner's workouts now?”
“You know better than to ask me that. What happened over at your place tonight?”
“Munson and Carmody showed up to talk to Sally. I kind of changed their minds.”
“Galahad in full armor, by God. What did they want?”
Johnny made his grin sheepish. “I made a mistake. I run them outta there so fast I never did get to find out.” He hurried on past the slender man's disbelieving stare. “I was a little late catchin' up to the fact that they'd been worryin' her. They'd made the point they'd take a little interest in me if she let me know. She thinks I'm the delicate type.”
“How much are you holding back this time?” Detective Rogers inquired casually.
Johnny stared. “This time?”
The slender man absent-mindedly sugared his coffee for the second time, tasted the resulting syrup and pushed it aside. “Carlo Petrillo made a statement to the effect that you had run Carmody and a man he didn't know away from Miss Fontaine's apartment early in the morning on the day that Roketenetz was killed.” Hazel eyes studied Johnny. “I don't seem to remember hearing about that from you.”
“Oh, that-” Johnny shrugged. “Things happened so fast right after that it slipped my mind. I thought of it a couple of times since, but it didn't seem important enough to bother you with.”
“We'd like to be the judge of that. Who was the other man?”
Why hasn't he asked Carmody, Johnny wondered, and immediately caution inserted, Perhaps he has. “A lawyer,” he said reluctantly. “Name of Hartshaw. He showed up with a power of attorney for her to sign.”
“And this wasn't important enough to tell me about!” the detective rasped. “Before anyone knows Gidlow is dead a power of attorney is given to the girl to sign away her interest in her brother's estate. In whose favor was the power of attorney drawn?”
“Al Munson's.”
Detective Rogers leaned back deeply in the corner of the booth and half closed his eyes. “Al Munson. Now isn't that interesting? Care to change your story about what happened at the hotel tonight?” His eyes opened wide as he asked the question, but Johnny sat mute. “All right!” the slender man snapped. “I'll save you the trouble. Munson was over there tonight with the same kind of pressure, and he's shutting you up by threatening Miss Fontaine.” The eyes narrowed again. “And, knowing you, you're probably planning a move of your own. Don't try it!”
“Ahhh, get another record, Jimmy,” Johnny said disgustedly. “What the hell are you gettin' done except sweepin' the streets with your pants cuffs over at Turner's?”
The detective's tone was emphatic. “You heard me. You're going to get in trouble. Stay away from this case. Stay away from Turner.” He stood up and buttoned his overcoat rapidly.
“I hope I'm not wasting my breath.” He pulled his hat down hard with both hands and walked out the door.
The crowd sound in the Rollin' Stone Tavern was something you had to hear to believe, Johnny reflected as he passed through the wide front door into the uninhibited din of upper register voices and heavy laughter. He reached a notch deeper for his own voice as he moved to the near end of the bar, where the red-faced proprietor was lounging bulkily over a cup of coffee. “Don't spare the horses, Mick,” Johnny greeted him. “I've had a tough night.”
Mickey Tallant nodded and poured liberally. “Manuel was askin' earlier if you'd been in.” The Irishman's glance ranged the low-ceilinged room. “Don't see him now. Guess he went out again.” He looked at Johnny speculatively. “You two gettin' buddy-buddy?”
Johnny raised his glass halfway, then lowered it again. “Speakin' of buddy-buddy, what do you know about the gambler Rick Manfredi?”
“You're not thinkin' of hookin' up with him?” Honest alarm was in the heavy voice.
“Why not?” Johnny asked curiously. “He's got a rep as a square gambler. I checked.”
“Square gambler he may be,” Mickey Tallant said emphatically, “but let me tell you about Rick Manfredi. Square with his friends he's not, an' I know what I'm talking about. He's got a cute little gimmick for his friends with money. He'll get up on your blind side one day an' say, 'Johnny, you've got a little spare change right now. Let's throw in fifteen or twenty apiece-' an' it's thousands he's talkin', mind you-'and back a little action. I've got a few angles; let's see if we can run it up into a little something.'“ The Irishman glared indignantly. “Then he'll take the forty thousand bank, an' he'll tell you now we're doin' thus an' so-we laid eight grand to five on this fight, an' we took seven and a half to ten on that one. Only when he knows somethin' he actually goes the other way. He takes the five to eight, an' he lays the ten to seven and a half. So the bank blows fifteen five, half of which is yours, but Mr. Manfredi just takes it out of one pocket and puts it in another. He might keep you alive six months, but sometime before you go clean he'll suggest bustin' up the partnership because of the run of bad luck, but meantime he's got two thirds or better of your money.”
“Sounds like he'd run out of friends right often,” Johnny suggested.
“You might get to thinkin' you were bein' taken, but what could you prove? He'll let you out any time you ask, an' blame it on the tough luck you've run into as a team. You'd be surprised the wise guys go for the idea of bein' a gambler's silent partner.”
“You sound like you were a little close to the subject, Mick.”
“My brother,” the tavern owner admitted sheepishly. He straightened and swiped with his rag at the top of the bar. “You'll never see Manfredi in here!”
“But he's a square gambler,” Johnny said thoughtfully.
“Which means he's never been caught at anything. I don't like the cut of his jib, an' I told him so!” Mickey Tallant boomed belligerently. He moved away down the bar at the sound of a coin tinkling on glass. “Keep your hands in your pockets if you do business with him,” he called over his shoulder.
Johnny smiled. He picked up his drink again and downed half of it; then he turned to run his eye up and down the booths across the room. Two-thirds of the way up the line he paused at sight of a shrewd-faced, wiry-looking man leaning forward in earnest conversation with a companion Johnny couldn't see. The man looked familiar, but Johnny couldn't place him. He caught Mickey Tallant on his next trip by and nodded at the booth in question. “The little guy, Mick, in the booth in line with the guy with the beard. Who is he?”
The Irishman needed only one look. “Dave Hendricks. You know, the fight judge.”
“Fight judge-” Johnny began doubtfully. Hendricks, he thought. Hendricks. Sure, the guy Ed Keith had introduced him to in the Chronicle office. But that introduction… He turned back to Mickey Tallant alertly. “How come I got a knockdown to him the other day that put him down on Seventh Avenue?”
“Maybe because he is,” the tavern owner replied equably.
“You know anyone makin' a livin' judgin' fights? Dave runs a dress shop down there. Owns it, I think. Dave's a regular in here.”
“He judge that fight the other night?” Johnny asked the Irishman, and wondered why he asked the question even as he did.
“Damned if I know,” Mickey Tallant answered. “I didn't see him, but then I never paid any attention. He could have. He only works a card in every four or five, though.”
Johnny's eyes had returned to the booth. “Who's with him?”
“For God's sake!” Irritation died out in the heavy voice as the Irishman sighed, fumbled in his shirt pocket and looked up toward the front of the bar at the cash register. “Wait'll I get my glasses.”
“Never mind,” Johnny decided. “If I sit down, send a round over, Mick. Whatever they're drinkin'. Bourbon for me.” He
crossed the room in his swaying shuffle and appeared beside the booth before either man had noticed his presence. He recognized the second man immediately as the pink-cheeked little doctor whom he had first seen outfacing Lonnie Turner in his own office. “Hi, Doc,” he said casually. “Buy you a drink?”
Dave Hendricks sat back abruptly, his expression confused, but his companion spoke up at once. “You certainly can, if I can buy one back. Sit down, won't you?” Johnny eased into the booth alongside the doctor so that he could watch the face across from him. “First time I've been here,” Dr. McDevitt continued with an amused smile. “Dave's been holding out on me. Extraordinary place. I feel as though I've been missing something.”
Johnny was watching Dave Hendricks' puzzled effort to place him. “Chronicle office,” he said briefly. “Ed Keith.”
The wiry man's face cleared. “Sure. I remember.” The frown reappeared. “Kil-Kilcoyne?”
“Not bad. Killain.” Johnny paused as the waiter appeared with a tray of drinks, speedily dispensed them, nodded at Johnny and departed. The other two lifted their glasses to him slightly. “You work that fight the other night?” he asked Dave Hendricks. “The Roketenetz fight?”
The shrewd eyes narrowed, then widened. “No, thank God,” the wiry man replied breezily. “That's one clinker I missed. For a couple of days I was congratulating myself I'd missed a commission appearance, but it doesn't look like there's going to be anything like that now. You see the fight?”
“I saw it.”
“A real job of work.” Dave Hendricks spread his hands, palms up. “I was sure glad I wasn't workin' it.”
“I worked it,” Dr. McDevitt said gravely, and Johnny looked at him in surprise.
“Phil was the commission doctor,” Dave Hendricks explained.
“It's water over the dam now, of course,” the pink-cheeked man said slowly, “but as a matter of fact I came as close as I don't know what to stopping that fight in the second round when the boy received that slash over the right eye-Johnny drew a long breath. “Not second-guessin' you, Doc, but a hell of a lot of things might've been different if you had.”
“Hindsight, of course,” the doctor agreed. “The fight was a big step up for the boy, and unconsciously I may have leaned over backward to give him his chance.”
“Only he never had a chance,” Johnny said bitterly.
“That seems to be the consensus-”
“Johnny! Telephone!” Mickey Tallant bellowed from the bar.
Johnny excused himself and walked over to the telephone beside the register. “Yeah?”
“It's Paul, Johnny. I'm a little jammed up here if you're not tied up.”
“Be right there.” Johnny returned to the booth and the two men. “I'll have to take a rain check on that other drink, Doc. Time to start makin' a noise like a working man.” Was it his imagination, or was there a look of relief on Dave Hendricks' face? “See you both around.”
On the way to the door he stopped in front of Mickey Tallant. “Tell Manuel to call me at the hotel,” Johnny said, and the Irishman nodded. It was time to have a little talk with Manuel about Rick Manfredi, Johnny felt. Somebody had to be wrong.
CHAPTER X
The sunrise was coming to life high upon the skyscraper windows across the street from the hotel, and Johnny lay quietly on his back in bed and watched the red-gold reflection from dozens of windows. He stretched lazily, crossing his wrists together and arching his back, then rolled up on an elbow and looked impatiently at the bathroom door. “Come on, muscles,” he called out disgustedly. “You're pretty enough.”
“You know you only say it because it's true,” Sally replied in a muffled voice. “Hold your horses, sir. Or should I make that singular?” She skipped lightly into view, swathed from neck to knee in a bath towel that Johnny promptly disposed of the second she hit the bed. Her slender body tensed like fine wire under his caressing hands.
“Really-in the mood-aren't you?” she got out jerkily.
He grunted as the sharp little teeth nipped him in the neck. “Cut the foolishment, Ma.”
“Who's f-fooling?” she gasped, and the arms about his shoulders clamped down with a strength belying her ninety-eight pounds.
Their cigarettes made twin wreaths of blue smoke against the background of the golden reflection from across the street. Sally's sigh seemed to come from her toes; she wriggled up from her back and dropped her head on Johnny's chest. “I've got to get out of here. Are you going to sleep?”
He shook his head negatively, and immediately regretted it. It would have been a lot easier to lie to her than to answer the stream of questions that bubbled over at once. “Why not? What are you going to do?” She peered up into his face. “Johnny, won't you please just forget it?”
He attempted to parry. “Forget what?”
“All these crazy goings on without any rhyme or reason to them!” she burst out resentfully. “Let the police handle it, like they're paid to do.”
“There's a rhyme and reason to it,” he said patiently, “if I had brains enough to figure it out.”
“You're not supposed to figure it out!” She bounced upright to look down at him, her small face childishly solemn. “You're all mixed up in this because of me, aren't you?” He groped for a handy, convincing denial with the brown eyes daring him to lie. “I'm right, aren't I? Johnny, I want you to forget the whole thing.”
He remained silent, a little grim at the impossibility of it. There were too many threads unraveled, too many toes stepped upon. There were a couple or three people in this thing not about to let Johnny Killain forget all about it, even if he wanted to.
“Please, Johnny,” Sally persisted. “Nothing you can do will make any difference as far as Charlie is concerned, and nothing else matters. And don't start talking about the m-money. The f-first person that asks me politely can h-have it. I'm sick of all the murderous p-pussyfooting going on over it!” She tried to blink away her tears. “Dead people, and people in h-hospitals-”
She jumped as the phone rang, instinctively grabbing up a corner of the sheet to hide behind. Then she threw it aside, slid from the bed and ran for the bathroom as Johnny picked up the phone. “Yeah?”
“Killain? This is Keith. I'm downstairs. I'd like to come up and talk to you.”
Johnny cocked an appraising eye at Sally in the bathroom door. “You caught me with one foot in the shower, Keith. Give me ten minutes, an' come on up. Something special?”
“It'll keep. Ten minutes.”
“And what does he want?” Sally demanded belligerently from behind the door.
“A little talk-talk,” Johnny said lightly. “Hustle it outta here, Ma, will you? This guy's got nerves. He'll spill like an overripe avocado one of these days, an' it might just as well be to me.”
“You just keep getting in deeper and deeper!” she exclaimed despairingly. “And it's so pointless!” She came back into the bedroom, dressed, and her exasperated expression softened as she walked to the bed. “I know I keep saying it, but you be careful, y'hear?”
“Of this guy? I'll match you against him anytime, Ma, an' give him the first punch.” He rolled off the bed and reached for his robe. “I may be by the place this afternoon.”
“You may!” she sniffed. “I may be there.” Unexpectedly she smiled. “Toodle-oo, professor.”
“You take it outta here like you're runnin' out a bunt,” he warned her. “I don't want Keith to see you, an' not for the reason you think.”
“And here I thought chivalry was in full flower again!” she mourned, grinned up at him impishly, brushed his cheek with her lips and flew out the door.
Johnny returned to the edge of the bed and seated himself; he rubbed the nape of his neck briskly to stir sluggish circulation and reached for his cigarettes on the night table. Ed Keith. Johnny squinted up around the trailing plume of smoke as he speculated. Hardly likely Keith had come to talk. Unless something had rattled the skeleton in his closet. More likely he'd come o
n a little fishing expedition of his own. Well, two could play at that game…
When the knock came at the door he raised his voice. “Come along in.”
The bulky newspaperman entered, and, looking at him, Johnny realized that over a good frame the man had fattened up in all the wrong places. High living does that sometimes, Johnny reflected; Keith looked almost gross, and the deep, dark circles beneath his small eyes testified to an interesting state of nerves. Johnny waved him to a chair without speaking, and the sportswriter looked a little uncomfortable as he took it and glanced at Johnny's robe. “I'll make this quick, since it's your sleeping time-”
“What's on your mind?” Johnny asked him. This was one conversation he'd like to keep pruned of unessentials.
Keith's lips grimaced in the familiar cynical-rabbit manner. The expression in his eyes was that of a man who has fought a long, losing battle. “I might need to talk to someone, Killain.” He said it jerkily, his hands jumping from his thighs to the arms of his chair and back again. “I'm- mighty near backed into a corner.” Keith paused suggestively, but Johnny remained silent. Obviously choosing his words carefully, the newspaperman continued. “I might like to talk to you, understand, but it could make one hell of a difference to me in whose ears it wound up afterward, get me?”
“There's a problem?” Johnny asked lightly.
“Damn right there's a problem!” Ed Keith said energetically. “I want to know where you stand. You get around to Manfredi's, you get around with that Rogers detective, you hang out at the Rollin' Stone, you're holding an umbrella over the telephone operator downstairs, you get around with Turner's receptionist.” He paused for emphasis. “You get around to the hospital where Roketenetz's trainer is perhaps not recovering from a beating.”
“Sound like I'm on your radar screen twenty-four hours a day, Keith,” Johnny said slowly when the sportswriter paused again. “These your own personal observations?”
