by Dan Marlowe
Johnny placed a big hand firmly on the box's cover. “Don't open it, Stacy,” he said again. “It was a gag, a damn fool gag. It's not funny any more-”
She removed the hand as firmly as he had placed it upon the box. “Don't be silly,” she told him. “I want to see.” She removed the lid, parted the tissue, started to giggle, choked and gasped for breath as Johnny pounded her on the back. “A s-skunk cabbage!” she said when she could say anything.
“Me and my timely damn sense of humor,” Johnny said savagely. “I wanted somethin' to remind you of the farm. Spent twenty-five minutes findin' one small enough to fit in the damn box.”
“I love it!” she said quickly, and held it up to her shoulder. “I'd have worn-I will wear it tonight!” She marshaled up a deep breath. “I guess the world hasn't come to an end just yet, has it? And in the circumstances this is-this is appropriate.”
“Will you cut it out? You said it yourself-it's not the end of the world. There's plenty of better-”
He paused at the deliberate shake of the blonde head. “I think perhaps my father was right, Johnny. Maybe I am a country girl. I haven't had time to really consider it yet, but-” Her voice trailed off. When it resumed her voice was firmer. “I'll think it over, but I don't believe I want to line myself up for another letdown like that right away.”
“Turner let you go right out of hand?”
She nodded. “Inefficiency, he said.” She said it casually, but he could see her hands.
“Inefficiency, hell!” Johnny exploded. “It took him four months to find it out? This thing is all my fault.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Your fault?”
“Sure it is. Someone heard you makin' that call to me about the tail Turner'd put on me. It has to be that.”
“Do you really think so?” She sounded almost hopeful. “I wouldn't feel nearly as badly-”
“I know damn well so,” Johnny said emphatically. He looked at the tall girl. “I should've had more sense than to let you put yourself on a spot like that when you had a livin' to make.”
She colored lightly. “That was up to me, wasn't it? Anyway, it's a much more comforting reason than the other, and it helps to explain a couple of remarks I couldn't understand. I'm really-” She looked out into the hallway at the sound of a solid knock at the door. “The dry cleaner's delivery boy, I expect. That's why I'm not ready, and that's what you get for being early. Along with a sob story.”
She picked up her bag from the couch and walked out into the hall, and Johnny could hear the surprise in her voice when she opened the door. “Yes?”
“Surprised, doll? I brought the stuff over from your desk.” Johnny's scalp tightened at the sound of Monk Carmody's throaty rasp. “Turner thought it might be a little embarrass-in' for you to come back over to pick it up.”
“Well-thank you. I'll put them-” Listening, Johnny could hear the click of the door lock and the change in Stacy's tone. “Will you kindly open that door? And do you have to stand that close to me?”
Johnny came forward on the balls of his feet and came out of his jacket in one smooth-flowing motion. He threw it at the couch.
“Turner's not behind you now, doll,” Monk husked from the hall. “Turner's mad at you now. I been waitin' a long time-”
Johnny was already in motion as Stacy's tensed voice interrupted the squat man. “Will you please-let go of my wrist?”
“Ahhh, come off it!” the heavy voice rasped.
“Johnny!” Stacy cried out, and Johnny loomed up in the doorway at Monk's back in time to see the tall girl go to her knees, her wrist bent awkwardly in the cruel grip. Monk released the girl and whirled in the same instant, the dark face slack and sick-looking for an instant, then immediately taut and dangerous.
“You meddlin' bastard!” Monk growled bitterly. “You had to be here. I'll give you a little of what I owe you, mister.” He charged, head down, arms flailing, elbows flying. A fist stung Johnny's ear, and an elbow caught him in the throat as Monk's weight and impetus toppled him backward. They went floorward with a crash that shook the whole apartment. Johnny reached up hungrily from beneath and encircled the thick-set body in his arms. His veins felt like molten lava. Ignoring the pounding hands, he applied the constriction with every ounce in him, and Monk stiffened and groaned. Johnny was barely conscious of a burning in one ear as he worried the burden in his arms in a side-to-side movement until it screamed like a stricken horse for seconds before it went limp.
Johnny clawed himself savagely up to his knees. He picked Monk up and smashed him at eye level into the wall, picked up the sodden mass that rebounded within range of his reaching hands and smashed it again.
He was reaching for Monk again when he heard a thin, piercing edge of sound he dimly associated with Stacy, and then a great white light flared brilliantly and he pitched forward into a retreating darkness.
Detective James Rogers strode into the emergency room to find Johnny sitting stripped to the waist upon the examination table. “Well, he's alive,” he said bitterly. “No thanks to you.”
A white-uniformed intern approached the table, needle and catgut in hand. “Give me a minute with that ear, now,” he announced with professional cheeriness, “and we'll have it as good as new.”
Johnny bowed his head, and the room became silent. When the intern stepped back Johnny looked at the watching detective. “How's the girl, Jimmy?”
“About out of her mind,” the sandy-haired man replied tartly. “What the hell would you expect? You scared her worse than Carmody did. She got the door open finally and ran screaming down the hall, and a couple of the neighbors ran in and beat you off what was left of Monk. And a damn good thing, or I'd be taking you in for at least manslaughter. As it is, only that bruise on her wrist stands between you and an aggravated assault charge.” He turned as he saw that he had lost Johnny's attention.
Stacy Bartlett stood in the emergency room doorway, a hospital robe thrown over the shoulders of her dress. She walked directly to Johnny. “Thank you,” she said quietly. Her usual fresh color was missing, her features were haggard and the soft lips were bloodless. “I'm staying here tonight,” she continued conversationally, and Johnny nodded. “Tomorrow I'm going back to the farm. You remember you said once that I might not care to gear myself up to the tough set of circumstances in this town, as you put it? I don't, any more.”
“I messed things up for you, kid. I really did.”
“Don't feel that way, please.” She extended a hand gravely, and he took it. “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.”
When she had gone it was some seconds before Johnny reached for his undershirt and eased it on over the bandaged ear. He slid off the table and picked up his shirt as Detective Rogers resumed his irritated monologue. “I don't care what this Carmody is, Johnny, I've told you time and time again that things like this are going to get you in-”
“Ahhh, bag it, Jimmy,” Johnny said shortly. He worked his jacket on carefully over his shoulders. “Who'd miss the sonofabitch?” He moved toward the door. “Or me, either?”
CHAPTER XIV
The ring of the telephone aroused Johnny from a blank-eyed inspection of the wallpaper in his room. He heaved himself laboriously to his feet from the depths of his armchair and picked up the receiver from the night table beside the bed. “Yeah?”
“I want to see you, Killain. Right now.”
“Who the hell-” Johnny began, and recognized the crackling-syllabled voice of Lonnie Turner before he had completed the question. “You've got a nerve, man!”
“Don't be childish,” the staccato voice rapped at Johnny over the wire. “What's your room number?”
“You stay the hell away from me, Turner. I don't-”
“I'm not fussy about standing around down here until someone recognizes me,” the promoter interrupted. “Give me the room number, and stop being a jackass.”
“Six-fifteen,” Johnny told him reluctantly. The phone clicked in his ear,
and Johnny made an effort to stir himself from the lethargic state of mind into which he had drifted before the phone's ring had jerked him awake. What could be important enough to Turner to bring him over here? Johnny shook his head; it wasn't worth the effort to force himself to think. In two minutes the answer would be on his threshold.
He opened the door at the promoter's knock and stared at the apparition he had admitted. Lonnie Turner was huddled in a shapeless coat sizes too large for him, and he had a black snap-brim hat pulled down over his eyes and a woolen scarf over mouth and chin.
“Costume party?” Johnny inquired sourly, closing the door. “Or is that your disguise when you're out hirin' murderers?”
“I see no more humor in this damned masquerade than you do,” Turner said coldly, disposing of the articles with jerky movements of his arms. He rubbed his hands together briskly, blew on them and ran them lightly over the pompadoured white hair. He paced the room in short, choppy strides as Johnny watched him, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of the expensive-looking suit.
“Light somewhere, will you?” Johnny said in disgust. “You'd give anyone the twitch, just watchin' you.”
“I want to know where I stand with you,” the promoter said, wheeling abruptly. “I suppose you blame me for-”
“You're goddam right I blame you!” Johnny interrupted truculently.
“I knew I had to talk to you,” Lonnie Turner said in a self-satisfied tone. “I don't want you going off half-cocked because of what happened.” Authority and arrogance mingled in the expressive voice. “I'll admit I might have been a little more prescient as far as Monk was concerned in view of his reaction to the girl during the period of her employment, but I refuse to concede that I contributed in any manner at all to his actions.”
“You refuse to concede-” Johnny echoed bitterly. “You're not talking to your lawyers, Turner. You threw the kid overboard!”
“She threw me overboard,” Turner corrected him sharply. “I'm not in the habit of continuing to employ help who sell me out to the other side, for reasons of romance or anything else. Keith should have told me a week ago that you'd been seeing her. She couldn't have worked for me for five minutes afterward. I hired her in the first place because I thought her lack of sophistication would prevent this sort of thing.”
“You bastard, you had an obligation-”
“Don't tell me about my obligations, damn you!” the promoter interrupted angrily. “I run my business to suit myself!” The healthily tanned features were flushed. “Obligations! What about her obligation to me? Am I supposed to wet-nurse some foolish girl who deliberately chooses up sides against me? Be yourself, Killain. And blame yourself. Don't blame me. You're of age, if she isn't.” He quieted down a little. “Of course I wished the girl no personal harm, and I certainly never dreamed that Monk would take it upon himself to go over there and act as he did, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand still and have you snatch the rug out from under me just because you in your sublime ignorance feel that I should have had more control of a situation that you yourself provoked!” His voice had risen sharply again.
“If you won't stand for it, you can sit for it,” Johnny told him, his voice hard. “You and I are through, mister.”
Lonnie Turner was plainly striving to retain a grip upon himself. “I didn't come over here to make threats, Killain. I didn't come over here to argue with you. I knew you'd react this way. Through circumstances I bitterly regret, you possess information that can inestimably damage my freedom of action if misused. I'm just asking that before you throw me to the wolves you disregard aroused emotion for a moment and realize that basically nothing has changed in our situation.”
“You're a fine one to talk about throwin' to the wolves!” Johnny commented harshly. “You're also goin' to a hell of a lot of trouble, it strikes me, for a man whose only concern is standin' off a tax case he probably could beat.”
The white-haired man slapped his palms together in exasperation. “Will you kindly permit me to be the judge of my concern? I've never bothered to ask you what gives you your kick out of life, Killain. Mine happens to be the unhampered conduct of my own affairs in my own way. Once I stand a tax examination under the gamy circumstances rife in this case I've got those people looking down my throat for all time.”
Johnny needled him deliberately. “I still think you fixed that fight.”
Turner refused to rise to the bait. “So we're back at that point again? The answer is the same-I had no interest whatever in fixing it or having it fixed. I categorically deny that I had anything at all to do with it.”
Johnny shook his head stubbornly. “You'd make a good witness, mister, but what about the facts? Every goddam spoke in the wheel goes right back to you. Roketenetz, Gidlow, Hendricks, Keith, Chavez, Carmody, Munson-you pulled the strings on every single one.”
He could see the glistening shine on the high forehead. “Hendricks? If he came back to life and walked through that door I'm not sure I'd recognize the man. I may have met him three or four times, never socially. Can't you get it through your thick head that in the course of a year just about everyone in the fight game at least walks through my office?” He drew a deep breath. “We're wasting time. I want your word that the situation is unchanged.”
“You want my word!” Johnny growled. “What you'll get from me is the back of my hand, or my shoe tattooed to your tail. If you can't control Carmody, I'm supposed to believe you can control those other muzzlers you're supposed to keep off Sally's back? Grab for a bailin' bucket, buster; you're on your own. For my money you're not even capable of runnin' your own business, even if you're clear on the other, which I doubt. I don't trust you, Turner, not-” He broke off at the ring of the telephone, hesitated and shuffled over to the night table. “Yeah?”
“Dameron, downstairs. Can we come up?”
“I'm busy, Joe,” Johnny said impatiently.
“We'll be right there,” the heavy voice said blandly, and the connection was broken.
“Company,” Johnny announced, and turned to see the promoter putting his hat, coat and scarf back on.
“I won't forget this, Killain,” he said in a brittle tone. “If the day ever comes that I drop this decision, the ripples will reach you, so help me.”
“Ahhh, turn it off!” Johnny snapped testily. “You had me fooled for a while, Turner. You're like a kid playin' store, an' because you got money everyone's supposed to say 'yessir.' What you haven't got you try to buy, and what you can't buy you try to scare. The hell with you.”
The intense, furious features glared back at Johnny from the doorway. “Just keep on living until I can get to you!” Johnny started for him, but the door opened and closed, and the promoter was gone. Johnny hesitated an instant, reopened the door, looked up and down the deserted corridor and left it ajar. He walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge.
A brief tap on the door preceded the entrance of Lieutenant Joseph Dameron and Detective Ted Cuneo. The lieutenant dropped heavily into the leather armchair before the television set, picked up first one foot and then the other and studied each critically. “It's hell to get old,” he said finally, and passed a hand tiredly over his face, the apple cheeks of which were tinted nearly purple from the temperature outside. “Good thing you're on the sixth floor instead of the sixteenth.”
“Aren't the elevators running, for God's sake?” Johnny demanded.
“Just thought I'd like to see who you were shooing down the back way,” Dameron said easily.
“That's just like you, Joe, doin' it the hard way. He took the elevator down.”
The lieutenant looked at him thoughtfully as though estimating the truth in the remark; then he glanced at Detective Cuneo standing stiffly by the door. “Sit down, Ted. If everyone who didn't get along with his highness here waited for him to offer them a seat, the chair manufacturers would go out of business tomorrow.” The big man looked across from Cuneo seating himself to the bandage on Johnny's ear.
“The report said that Carmody just about took that thing right off you,” he said casually. “Rogers had it that the intern was sewing for ten minutes.”
“A slight exaggeration,” Johnny told him. “How's the ticket read on Carmody, by the way? Nothin' trivial, I hope?”
“Nothing trivial,” Dameron agreed. “And if it weren't due to the circumstances, we'd-”
“Lay off me, Joe,” Johnny told him tightly. “You got a fairly good idea of what was due to happen if I hadn't happened to be there?”
“In the confusion we didn't seem to get it on the record just how you did happen to be there.” The lieutenant's tone was mild. When Johnny failed to answer he continued. “You don't consider it a little bit thick that the girl should be Turner's receptionist?”
“If you've got anything to say, Joe-” Johnny bit off the words-“say it fast.”
Lieutenant Dameron leaned forward in his chair. “Why were you in that girl's apartment?”
“Why, Lieutenant!” Johnny mocked him. “I thought you were a gentleman.”
“What was the information you wanted out of Turner's office you felt that she could get for you?” the big man persisted. “I know you far too well to imagine that it was an accident that you were dating that pipe line.”
“She's a nice kid,” Johnny said quietly. “She's goin' back home, where she belongs.” He stared at the man in the chair. “You've talked to her, Joe. She told you all that. Didn't she tell you what I wanted out of Turner's office?”
The apple cheeks darkened. “She's too damned innocent to know what you were after!” the lieutenant snapped. “And what a wolf like you does with a lamb like that is beyond me!”
“Dear me!” Johnny murmured. “Don't tell me she's going to prefer charges?” He laughed at the big man's irritation.
“He probably made a deal with Turner,” Cuneo threw in coarsely.
Johnny looked at him, then back at Dameron. “Deal? With Turner? You boys don't sound too bright, Joe. Turner's a wheel. He'd make a deal with me?”
