Doorway to Death

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “All right. I'm on the way down. Keep your eye on that entrance. I'm not gonna be posin' there.”

  “I'll see you.”

  “Just so you do.”

  In the sub-basement's humidity Johnny left the elevator and ran down the alley and around the blank rear side of the hotel, dodging ashcans and garbage buckets from the neighboring areaways. He went up the single flight of stairs inside the help's off-street entrance three steps at a time and stopped just inside the lobby entrance and settled a balled fist lightly in the other palm. He stepped out into the frame of the entrance for an instant, and then back. In the one quick flash he had seen Paul in front of the bell captain's desk at the opposite end of the wide expanse of marbled floor, and the redhead sitting hunched, two thirds of the way across it, eyes glued on the elevators. Johnny's lips tightened; this would have to be quite a diversion.

  A tremendous ringing crash set him in motion. He was in full stride entering the lobby, not running, but up on his toes and moving swiftly. Paul must have dropped at least two pitchers of ice water on the lobby floor; water, ice, and glass were everywhere, and Paul was staggering backward with his arms flailing the air to disappear behind the desk. His immediate audience had half risen at the explosion of noise and was crouched forward staring intently at the miniature flood, and from the corner of his eye as he advanced Johnny was able to see old man Tompkins jerk up from the depths of his chair off to the left and peer around in stupefication.

  It seemed like a long way, but Johnny had reached a point just behind the watcher's chair when some instinct caused the redhead to turn. His one quick movement was wholly abortive. Johnny's reaching left glanced off obliquely, but jolted the red-haired man's ashen face into the path of the crushing right which drove him down and back into the cushion of the chair, out cold. Johnny reached down and picked him up bodily and turned to confront Paul, who was emerging from his refuge.

  “Fella finally passed out, just like you predicted, Paul,” Johnny announced with a warning nod at old man Tompkins belatedly riveted on the creeping pools of water. “I'll take him upstairs.”

  Vic trotted in from the foyer, his arms full of paper cups. “What in the hell was all that racket?”

  “I dropped a tray,” Paul informed him, deadpan.

  “Well, get Amy to clean up the mess.” The stocky man's eyes turned to Johnny. “What happened to him?”

  “Slight case of over-indulgence. I'll tuck him in.”

  “The way you wet-nurse these drunks—”

  From the elevator Johnny could see old man Tompkins settling back in his chair with an indignant jerk of his hat over his eyes; with the flanged doors closed, he dropped his burden, and went down, not up. He searched his pockets for a seldom used key-ring, and dragged the limp redhead to a stout looking door in the passageway. The key revealed an empty linen closet, and Johnny stuffed the red-haired man inside, closed the door, remembered, and re-opened it.

  Hurriedly he removed the snubnosed automatic from its shoulder holster and ran his hands lightly over the recumbent form for further artillery. Finding none, he again closed the door and locked it and returned to the lobby where a languid Amy was already wielding a mop against the debris.

  Paul was back at the switchboard, and Johnny looked at his watch as he circled the still-rampant flood and entered through the switchboard's little gate. “Nice piece of orchestration, Paul.”

  Paul smiled faintly. “I wasn't sure I could hold him long enough for you to reach him.”

  “Just long enough. Whole deal took eight and a half minutes, by the clock. He's the other half of what you helped me upstairs from the other night.”

  “The stubborn type?”

  “Evidently. I think we burned down the schoolhouse on him this time, though. He's hopped to the ears, too dangerous to let run around loose. I've got him in the old linen closet downstairs. Here's the key; there'll be someone by to take him off your hands.”

  He held up a warning finger at the sound of the tap-tap of Sally's high heels, and Paul stood up from the board. She looked at them suspiciously as she entered and placed her bag in the corner behind her chair. “If you two don't look like the cats that swallowed the canary, then I never saw any. What have you been up to now?”

  “Up to, ma? You know us better'n that. Paul here was just tellin' me he'd finally made it big with a piece had been standin' him off too long.”

  “Don't you men ever think of anything else?”

  “You mean there is something else, ma?”

  “You get out of here, both of you.”

  Johnny paused at the desk. “I'll be in the room if you need me, Paul.” He turned to the elevator as Paul nodded, and went up, and he could hear his phone ringing as he stepped out into the sixth floor corridor. He opened his door hurriedly. “Yeah?”

  “Johnny? You know who this is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your girl on the board? Can I talk?”

  “Go ahead, Joe. I was just gonna call you.”

  “Something I should know?”

  “You first.”

  “All right. A couple of things occurred to me after you left.”

  “That was only about ten hours ago. You got insomnia?”

  “If I haven't, I will have. I'm beginning to get too much noise from downtown about three bodies and no action from me. I need a little diversion. Now you take this Frederick—”

  “You take him.”

  “Maybe I will. I need to take someone, and you seem to think he's the man.”

  Johnny hesitated. “Or close. You can't prove it, though.”

  “We didn't get around to it this afternoon, but you think he was the one behind the silencer in the kitchen that night?”

  “He has keys.”

  “So Jimmy told me. And of course it figures that he would. But assuming he was the man in the kitchen, you know what doesn't fit?”

  “The telephone call.”

  “That's right. His calling someone and resigning from a pigeon loft puts him in the office boy category on this detail, while everything else says he's a lot farther up the line. You said you had the drop on the switchboard, yet your girl in whom you seem to have a lot of confidence didn't catch his call. Which brings up a very interesting point: did he make it at all? Could he have foxed you?”

  Johnny opened his mouth and closed it again. When he spoke his tone was thoughtful. “I had my big bazoo open to tell you that no one coulda known where I was listenin' in from, but maybe Freddie isn't the only one around here to do a little underestimating. It's a good point, Joe. I think I can find out without too much trouble. I'll call you back. In the meantime I got a little something for you down here, like the partner of the guy you talked to after the doc got palpitations.”

  “He showed up again? What happened?”

  “He blew into the lobby downstairs, snowed up like a blizzard. I got him on ice downstairs; send someone around with the net.”

  “A pleasure. You think he was sent?”

  “Not this time. I think he was plannin' on getting himself a hunk of even for the chair I slung at him this afternoon. From the looks of him nobody's said much of anything to him in the last couple of hours that's gotten through. He's makin' his own music. This was just a little sortie to kinda re-establish his own opinion of himself.”

  “We'll want to talk to him when he unwinds.”

  “I'm going out for a while, so tell whoever you send by to ask Paul for the key. And don't send any flyweights. I took the difference away from our redheaded friend, but I got a feeling the man in front of that door when it opens'll think Anzio was a high tea.”

  “How'd you take him?”

  “He didn't see me.”

  “How unsporting of you.”

  “Yeah. I'll call you back.”

  “Call me back in the morning. I do sleep a few hours a night.”

  “You'll never get to be a captain that way, Joe.”

  He hung up the phone in t
he middle of the multisyllabic reply.

  Chapter VIII

  On the street Johnny looked for a cab, glanced up deserted 45th Street and turned right to walk up to Sixth Avenue. He wanted a cab going north.

  Half a dozen doors up the street he took in the tall man standing in the doorway in a short-sleeved sports shirt and a colorfully banded panama, and he was almost past before it registered. He stopped. “Hans?” he asked a little doubtfully until he saw the face. “Damn, boy, I almost didn't recognize you, I'm so used to seein' you in whites all the time. Steppin' out?”

  The first cook cleared his throat; he seemed uneasy. “Yes. That is ... I have a date.”

  “Happy hunting. How'd you make out with Freddie?”

  This time the voice was bitter. “He will let me know. He needs to make up his mind, to consider the advisability of looking for someone with a name and more experience.”

  “I wouldn't worry about it too much, Hans. You're puttin' in a good lick for yourself every day you keep the wheels turning. I doubt Freddie does much of any looking around.”

  “The waiting, though ... the indecision—”

  “You're on the ground, Hans, and you got a runnin' start.”

  “It is important to me.”

  “Sure it is. Top jobs don't grow on trees. Well, I got to run, boy. See you tomorrow.” A cab turned the corner from Sixth and headed west toward Johnny, and he stepped out into the street and flagged it. He jerked the rear door open, and slid in, and they were riding by Hans and the hotel when the driver tipped the flag down.

  On impulse Johnny leaned forward. “Circle the block. I want to come back through this block.”

  “Mister,” the cabbie said in patient exposition as to a backward child, “you live around here? You know how these streets run? To come back down this street I got to go clear to Eighth, over to 46th, back to Fifth, over—”

  “I didn't tell you how to do it, bud. I said do it.”

  They hummed through the deserted streets, the cab rocketing around the right hand turns, catching all the lights. Johnny spoke as they crossed Sixth on 45th. “Slow it down.” His eyes had already seen that the single figure in the doorway had increased to two, and as the cab eased by he could see the horn rimmed glasses and the orange tinted hair above the flowered dress. Myrna. Myrna and Hans. Now there was a combination for you.

  Johnny leaned back slowly in the corner of the cab. Hans and Myrna. Not even the rearing of sex's lovely head should explain that surprising alliance, although of course you never could tell...

  The driver was looking back over his shoulder. “Well, mister? You like it well enough to do it again?”

  Johnny roused himself. “Take me up to Van Cortland and Bacon.”

  “Jesus, mister, that's way uptown. You must like to ride.”

  “I like to ride but not to talk.”

  “Okay, okay. The roof don't have to fall in on me. You want to go through the park or up the highway?”

  “Through the park.”

  They rode in silence for thirty five minutes, and the meter said $3.15 when the cab pulled in to a comer in an area of apartment houses with massive Gothic fronts. Johnny paid the driver off, and stood on the curb a moment. He had been here once before, but in the daylight. He looked up and down the narrow street with its tightly knit row of cars parked up and down the slight grade. Up, Johnny's sense of direction said, and he turned left and walked steadily, past successive ornate, identical buildings. He moved briskly. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he would know it when he saw it. And at the fifth apartment entrance he saw it: one of the couchant stone lions that formed the elaborate entrance pattern for each building had a chipped nose. Johnny had seen that chipped-nosed lion before.

  He ran up the double flight of wide stone steps and entered the bare lobby, in which the impressive exterior quickly degenerated to a shabby gentility. He ran a finger down the list of names on the mail boxes, and stopped at Romero, Jerry. 301-C. It was a walkup, and he climbed the stairs, whistling tunelessly. On the first landing two panes of glass in the large window were broken out completely.

  He could see movement behind the one-way glass in the door panel after his knock, and it was a moment before the door opened. “Come in, come in, Johnny,” Jerry Romero invited him. Jerry was a small man, running to flesh, balding, and with a two-day beard. He was dressed in an undershirt, trousers, and bedroom slippers. His wife, Rosa, stood behind him, self-consciously clutching a faded blue dressing gown about her thin body. She was a tired-looking woman, her hair up in curlers, her skin sallow, and her eyes anxious.

  “Come in, Johnny,” she echoed. She led the way inside, trying to smile, her glance flickering between the two men. “You're in trouble, Jerry!” she accused her husband.

  “You sound like it was something new.”

  “There's no trouble, Rosa,” Johnny told her.

  “Honest?”

  “Honest. I just wanted to talk to Jerry. I know it's late, and I didn't mean to upset you—”

  “Don't you pay any attention to me, Johnny. It's just my nerves aren't good. I shouldn't yell at him like that, I know. Just so he's not in trouble—”

  Jerry smiled his easygoing smile at the edge of doubt in her tone. “Haven't raped a soul in six, eight weeks now, hon.”

  “You!” she said. “That's not the kind of trouble you find—”

  “Maybe I been overlooking something? Coffee, Johnny?”

  “Sounds good. Black.”

  Rosa moved immediately toward the kitchen in the rear of the apartment, and Jerry waved after her. “We might as well sit in there ourselves, Johnny. It's just as comfortable, and it'll save Rosa running back and forth to listen in.” He grinned at his wife in the doorway.

  Johnny followed him into the small kitchen, where Jerry pulled chairs up to the table and looked over at him expectantly as they sat down. Rosa measured level tablespoons of coffee for the percolater and kept her attention upon the table.

  “I need a little information that's none of my business, Jerry,” Johnny told him.

  “You tell him, you hear me?” Rosa said immediately. “You tell him, Jerry Romero.”

  Jerry laughed. “I remember my father used to tell me 'Jerry, you want to watch out for a man tells you he's the boss in his house, because pretty soon he's gonna be lyin' to you about something else.'”

  “You tell him,” Rosa repeated.

  “I might,” Jerry agreed, “if you'll give the man a chance to ask his question, Rosa. You been doing all the talking so far.”

  “It's about the manager down at the place,” Johnny said, and his host made a wry face. “He got you under the gun?”

  “No more'n you'd expect. What's on your mind?”

  “He asked you to do any special little jobs for him since he's been down there?”

  “I don't know how you taped it, but he did.”

  “Can you tell me about it? I guess he had a lever.”

  Jerry nodded slowly. “He had a lever. Been there about a week and called me into his office one morning. 'Jerry,' says he, chipper as an English sparrow, 'let's have a look at your ticket.' Oh, oh, I thought to myself. Now you know and I know, Johnny, that I'm no engineer. I don't have the education for the job I'm doin' down there. I just kinda grew into it, and after old Hubert left I just kept goin' through the motions. I can do the job; I've proved that ever since the old man left, but hell, you know as well as I do that as soon as someone raises the question, I'm out.”

  “So Freddie put the arm on you?”

  “Not directly. He was just showin' me where I stood. This little piece of paper says you're not packin' the weight for the job,' he says to me. 'I got twelve years aboard here says I am, Mr. Frederic,' I give it back to him. 'We could get in trouble over this if something went wrong, Jerry.' 'So what's to go wrong, Mr. Frederick?' 'Well, let's hold it in abeyance for the time bein', shall we?' he says. 'Meantime I have a thing or two I'd like you to do for me if you ha
ve the time.'”

  Jerry's grin was mirthless. “If I had the time. He knew damn well I'd make the time with that sword over my head. He did surprise me, though; when I finished the work for him, he slipped me a hundred.”

  “The frosting on the cake to keep you quiet?”

  “Well, I didn't figure to do any broadcastin' anyway, but that century didn't make it any harder to button up.” He looked over at Johnny. “You got priority, boy, but I hope—”

  “You don't need to worry, Jerry.”

  “If you say so, that's good enough for me. After we got it settled whose side I was on, he asked to see the hotel blueprints.”

  Johnny whistled. “Now I know I underestimated him.”

  “Yeah? Well, I told him the official set was down at the architect's office, but that I had a spare set downstairs was almost as good since I made my own changes on them. I brought them up, and I mean he really went over them with a fine tooth comb, with special attention to his office and his suite upstairs. He let go the office in a hurry; you know that was thrown up on the mezzanine as an extra, and no wall of it touches any other wall. When he left that, I could see right away that what bothered him was what contacted him upstairs. He's some kind of a left-handed engineer himself, I guess, because he put his finger right on things. Like that walkway outside one wall of his living room where there was a little leftover space when we converted the corner room beyond him. I told him nothing but a midget could get in there, but he wasn't satisfied till he'd seen it for himself. Then he wasn't satisfied, either, because he came right out and told me what he wanted.”

  Johnny grimaced. “I think I'm way ahead of you.”

  “Probably. He wanted something to let him know if someone was prowling him, trying to look in or listen in. There was three spots that bothered him: his front door, the bathroom, which adjoined another, like they all do down there, and the wall with the walkway. It was easy enough to do. I put a plate at the door, a strip under the floor of the adjoining wall in the bathroom, and a strip under the walkway. I hooked up three little bulbs inside that light up when anyone hits the plate or the strips. I wanted to put in a buzzer, but he didn't want no buzzer. The bathroom was the toughest, account of the tile. Took me about a week, I guess, workin' an hour or so in the mornings, and when I had him all wired up he thanked me pretty as you please and slipped me the hundred.”