Doorway to Death

by Dan J. Marlowe

  Rosa was doing a little rapid feminine arithmetic. “That's when I was in the hospital for four days. I was afraid to ask you where you'd gotten the money.” She walked over to him and sat down on his lap, leaned over and kissed him, hard. He ran a hand up under the blue dressing gown, and she jumped up and slapped him halfheartedly. “I don't get that kind of attention when we're alone, Mr. Romero. You have to shame in front of Johnny?”

  He reached for her again, but she evaded him and smiled apologetically at Johnny. “I was scared simple when you walked in here, after that last time. God knows he's not worth much, but I'm used to having him around.” She unplugged the percolator, waited for it to stop its rhythmic thumping, and filled three cups. “When I think of tie last time you were here—”

  “He's reformed, Rosa.”

  “Damn right he's reformed, Jerry said breezily. “Those characters sure made a Christian out of ol' Jerry. I can't see now how I could have been so crazy. Any damn fool can gamble with money in his pocket, but it takes a special kind to do it without it.”

  “So you learned.”

  “So I learned. Just this side of City General. I never did ask you what you had to do to get me off the hook with that bunch—”

  “Stop it!” Rosa said sharply. Her coffee slopped over into her saucer. “Let's not even talk about it. How are you going to get back downtown, Johnny?”

  “I'll catch a cab up at the corner.”

  “Not this time of the morning you won't, not in this neighborhood. Jerry, you put on a shirt and drive him down.”

  “There's no need for that—” Johnny protested.

  “I guess you didn't hear the boss talking,” Jerry told him. He stood up and walked into the other room and returned in a moment shrugging into a sports shirt.

  Johnny stood up at the table. “Thanks for the coffee, Rosa. And for the information, Jerry.”

  “No thanks due, and you know it,” Jerry said. “We all set? I won't be long, hon.”

  “You be careful. Goodnight, Johnny. You come by and see us anytime.”

  On the drive downtown in Jerry's fender-dented vehicle, Johnny responded absentmindedly to the engineer's steady chatter. Mentally he shifted pieces in the jigsaw mosaic in his mind, and found himself still dissatisfied with the blurred picture that resulted. A couple of key pieces were still missing, and he had a little digging to do.

  He shook himself awake in his chair, glanced at the fading daylight pouring in the window, and then at the hero riding away into the matching sunset on the television set. He looked at his watch; five forty five. He got to his feet and stretched hugely, and walked over to the set and turned it off. In the bathroom he splashed water noisily on his face, his palms rasping the bronze shadow on his jawline. Resignedly he dried his face and took down the electric razor.

  He shaved hurriedly and looked in the living room for his uniform jacket. He picked it up from the chair into which he had thrown it upon entering, but at sight of the resultant wrinkles he dropped it again and removed a fresh one from the closet.

  In the corridor he considered a moment and then walked down the five nights to the lobby and on into the bar where Fred, the day man, nodded a greeting. “Little early for you, John.”

  “A little. Richie around?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  He walked down the length of the long bar, its gleaming mahogany ever so faintly iridescent under its coating of linseed oil, and passed through the service door into the kitchen beyond. White uniformed cooks, assistant cooks, and busboys rushed about behind the long steel counters ministering to the horde of red-jacketed waiters, and a confusedly subdued babble of sound rose and fell above the steaming atmosphere.

  Richie approached him with a service setup on a tray and a glint of curiosity in the hazel eyes. “Hi, John. You deputizing?”

  “Yeah.” Johnny took the tray from him. “What'd she order?”

  “Roast beef.”

  “Not much they can do to spoil that.” Johnny looked over at the salad counter. “Henry?” The salad man looked up from his half crouch in front of his sink as he rinsed his hands in cold running water. “You got time to let me get in there and rustle myself up a little something?”

  “Help yourself, John. My rush is over.”

  Johnny moved in behind the short counter with Richie on his heels, and the boy looked at him appraisingly.

  “Why'd you bother asking him?” he inquired in a lowered voice when the saturnine Henry moved away to the other end of the kitchen. “D'you think he'd have tried to Stop you?”

  Johnny looked up over his shoulder as he knelt before the opened door of the square salad refrigerator. “You must think I'm tired of livin', kid. You don't reach my age pushing kitchen help around. That kind of stuff calls for slow music and faded flowers.”

  After a momentary inspection of the refrigerator's contents he removed a head of lettuce, a stalk of celery, a bunch of radishes, two tomatoes, a small cucumber, and a scallion. He straightened up and removed a clove of garlic from the drying string overhead and added it to the pile. From the maple cabinet to the left of the refrigerator he took out ewers of olive oil and wine vinegar, and shakers of pepper and salt. He reached back in once more for a large salad bowl with a visible sheen, then removed his jacket and handed it to Richie.

  He rolled up his sleeves, picked up a knife and tried it for balance, and laid it down again. He stripped the slightly wilted outer leaves from the lettuce head and tossed them in the soup stock box. He removed another half dozen crisp leaves and rinsed them lightly in the cold running water, then laid them out on the drain board while he rapidly washed the rest of the vegetables. He picked up the knife again and cut the clove of garlic in two and carefully rubbed the salad bowl with the larger portion. He looked across to the watching Richie.

  The big hands gathered the vegetables together on the cutting board. He shredded the lettuce and lined the salad bowl cut the tomatoes in wedges and tossed them in, and chopped the radishes and the scallion, the rapidly moving knife thudding on the board like the roll of a small drum. He diced the celery, and sliced the small cucumber, and added them to the bowl. Measuring with a judicious eye he picked up the olive oil and poured a small quantity over the bowl's contents, and followed suit with the wine vinegar, even more sparingly. He used the salt and pepper liberally and tossed the salad vigorously with his hands for thirty seconds before stepping aside and rinsing off at the running water.

  “That looks good,” Richie announced. “Where'd you learn to do it?”

  “In Italy. A bishop showed me. He had a broken leg, and he couldn't get around to make it for himself, so he taught me to make it for him. Helluva guy; none better. He must have weighed better'n two sixty and he could go up a rope hand over hand like a hundred forty pounder.”

  “Aww, cut it out! A bishop climbing a rope?”

  “I'm telling you he could really go.”

  “If he had a broken leg he must've gone down one time instead of up.”

  “A character cut the rope, but that's another story. Everything else ready?”

  “All ready.”

  “Let's go, then.” Johnny covered his salad bowl and followed Richie and his tray behind the enormous kitchen range to the tiny room service elevator. To the right of the elevator stood a sleekly polished rolling oven, and Johnny indicated it to Richie with a nod as he slid open the metal door. “Kick that steamer aboard here, kid.”

  The boy complied, shaking his head as he carefully set down his heavily burdened tray. “Boy, are you ever making a production out of this thing! You figurin' on marrying the dame?”

  “Paste this in your derby, Rich: you should never serve a meal upstairs without a steamer, even if it is a little more trouble. Okay. See you around.” He closed the elevator door, punched the twelve button on the automatic pilot, and waited until the car stopped and the door slid open silently. With the salad bowl aloft in his left hand he steered the freely rolling oven off the ca
r into the corridor and around two corners to the door of 1224. His knock was answered immediately, and he eased the wagon over the slightly raised threshold.

  She stood aside to let him in, a slight smile on her face, and he crossed to the card table ready with its usual tablecloth and deposited the covered salad bowl. He returned to the oven, knelt and lit the alcohol brazier and slid the tray into the heating compartment. When he had made the customary place setting and withdrawn her chair, she seated herself in silence, but when Johnny removed the cover from the salad bowl she exclaimed with pleasure. “Insalata mista!” The momentary brightness drained from her features, and she looked up at him speculatively as he spooned a portion of the salad into an individual bowl and placed it before her.

  He spoke without looking at her. “Not everyone calls it by that name, ma'am.”

  Her fingers plucked stiffly at the napkin in her lap. “I have eaten it before,” she said finally. “It is not uncommon.”

  “But more common in some areas than others?” She stared down at her water glass without replying, and Johnny took up his usual station behind her. She began to eat slowly and despite her preoccupation, appreciatively. The room was quiet in the interval before she looked up again in the little gesture which indicated that he was to move back into her field of vision. She looked directly at him an instant, and then back down at the salad. “This is very good.” She hesitated. “You keep reminding me of— of things I thought I had forgotten.”

  At her left he refilled her salad dish and set it a little to one side. He returned to the oven, swathed his hand in a napkin and removed the roast beef platter from the heating compartment. He placed it before her and removed the aluminum lid. “Careful. Plate's hot.”

  She nodded absently, her eyes following the quick dexterity with which he deepened the incision in a foil-wrapped baked potato and inserted a slice of butter, and then with a circular motion of his wrist opened up the potato until its mealy center was exposed. “Why do I feel that you remind me deliberately?”

  He took up her knife and fork and cut her roast beef into manageably small pieces, placed the knife on the butter dish, and handed her the fork.

  “Thank you. Why do you deliberately remind me?”

  “Maybe because we both were there. Italy. A few years back.”

  “I see. And you feel that I should be reminded of Italy a few years back?”

  He broke a piece of rye bread into thirds, buttered a section thinly, and handed it to her. Her eyes never left his face. “Maybe I feel we were members of the same dub.”

  This time there was no hesitation at all. “Scarcely an exclusive one.”

  “Some branches of it were.”

  Her glance dropped to her plate, and she began to eat, and Johnny retired again behind her chair. She spoke after a moment without looking around. “What is your name? Your surname?”

  “Killain.”

  “You're not French, then?”

  “No. Your name's Muller, but you're not German.”

  Her head came up, and she stared across the room. “A married woman changes her name.”

  “Your maiden name could've been Muller, too, but that wouldn't make you German, either.”

  “So it seems I am not German.” She pushed a square of meat absently about her plate with her fork, then speared it purposefully. “My beef is getting cold.”

  She completed her meal in silence, and when she had finished he removed her dishes, scraped off the table crumbs, and poured her coffee. She extracted a cigarette from a tiny metallic case, and he lighted it for her. He made a one load trip with her dishes to the oven where he stacked them neatly, and then returned to his position behind her chair. She motioned him forward with a wave of the cigarette. “Come around here where I can see you. And stop standing at attention like that. Sit down.”

  Johnny sat on the chair beside the bed, and she studied him, the tired eyes shadowed in the worn face. She pointed the cigarette at him. “There must be a reason for the diligence with which you extract information without ever asking a direct question?” She inspected his silence gravely, and when she resumed her voice was level and calm. “At my age one does not blithely discard small favors, small comforts. Not out of hand, at least. Since your advent I have eaten much better, but unless you can convince me that there is an essential point to this cat-and-mouse business into which we seem to be drifting, I shall have to forego these meals in your company.”

  Smoke drifted up from her cigarette in a long, wavering line as she again studied his continued silence, and her tone was puzzled when she continued. “I believe that I sense in your attitude an aura of concern, of protectiveness. If I am correct in this assumption I think that you had better explain yourself.”

  Johnny's voice was hard and abrupt. “You're in trouble.”

  She stiffened, then shook her head slowly and put down her cigarette with a sigh. “I'm sorry. I have to say—”

  “That it's none of my business.”

  “—that you are presumptuous to an egomaniacal degree, certainly—“ She reached for the cigarette again and stubbed it out decisively. “I think that you should leave now.”

  Johnny rose from his chair, removed her cup and saucer, dumped and cleaned her ash try and replaced it, and folded her tablecloth and placed it on the card table. He made all his movements deliberate in the hope of provoking her to further speech, but he was halfway to the door before she spoke again from her frowning concentration. “I am a complete stranger to you. Even if I were in trouble, why should you be interested, let alone concerned?”

  He spoke shortly, over his shoulder. “I'm the elected godparent of all the stray cats in the neighborhood.”

  He was surprised to hear her laugh. “Self-elected, I'm sure.”

  When he turned she was still smiling. She had removed another cigarette from her case and was tapping it on the back of her wrist reflectively. “There is an unkind name for such as you, young man, and yet I feel that no un-kindness is meant. Come back here and sit down. I see that we shall have to bring this to a conclusion.” He paused on the way to light her cigarette, and when he had re-seated himself her eyes resumed their steady contemplation of him. “Now.” She spoke deliberately. “I am not in trouble. Is that clear?”

  “No.”

  “Attend me. I am not in trouble.”

  “That's not the truth.”

  “I don't like the implications of such an assertion.”

  “Regardless—” Johnny swept an arm in an exasperated semicircle. “Your being here like this—”

  “The circumstances of my being here need not concern you. Kindly remember that.”

  “You're in trouble,” he said stubbornly.

  “You will of course have to permit me to be the judge of that.” Again the cigarette pointed at his silence. “Why? Why this persistence? This solicitude?”

  “I just got a feelin' you're my kind of people, that's all.”

  “Listen to me a moment.” Her smile was pleasant but firm. “You're not a gentleman, but I would think a man in the better sense of the word. I want you to believe that I am in no more trouble than I have been at any time in the past ten years, let us say, and your help or offer of help is not indicated or requested. I have over-indulged myself in talking to you, because I have been lonely. You are more perceptive... yes, and more sensitive than I might reasonably have expected, and I have said more than I should at times. You have somehow succeeded in dredging up things I had thought more deeply submerged, but all this has got to stop. Now.” She waited, but Johnny sat motionless. “I will ask you one question, and then we will have an end to all this foolishness. What were you doing in Italy?” Johnny grinned at her. “Runnin' errands.” “For whom?”

  He shrugged. “People with more brains 'n me. Seemed to be a lot of 'em.”

  “What exactly were you doing?” “Is this a one-way street, ma'am? Are we tradin'?” She bit her lip. “Everything I pursue with you... this is all so
foolish, all these little words about another time and another life—” Johnny outwaited her hesitation. “All right. And then once and for all, it is finished. There will be no further discussion, or probing. Is it understood?” “You might bring it up yourself.” “Don't trouble yourself with the possibility. Now what were you doing in Italy?”

  It was his turn to hesitate. “I was along to shore up the timbers on a few undercover operations.”

  She nodded matter-of-factly. “Placing you in a little different perspective, it becomes almost obvious. One has only to look at you bursting in all directions from that ridiculous uniform. I take it that you were not a man of peace, and that since you sit here now in appearance reasonably intact that you had the necessary qualifications to be a successful man of violence.”

  “Includin' the attitude.”

  Her hands had knitted themselves tightly together on the table, fingers interlaced. “It is important. I myself lacked it. And for whom did you commit these successful violences?”

  “Originally for an unpublicized branch of U.S. Intelligence.”

  She stared down at her hands. “I am... was Viennese. I had lived in Italy for years, although not recently at that time. I was recruited by a group in France to go back, for a purpose. I had a minor success or two, and then my purpose was discovered. I had no reason to expect differently, I suppose, but they treated me—well, despicably. I found that I was not so tough-fibred as I had imagined. I had a great deal of difficulty in re-orienting myself afterward.”

  “Afterward?”

  “After I was liberated.”

  “And now?”

  Her lips firmed. “We will not speak of now. We will not speak of Italy again. It has bad memories for me, and thinking of it or talking about it is not good for me. And now I am sure I must be keeping you from your duties.” She rose, and Johnny reluctantly followed suit. She held the door for him as he rolled the wagon out into the corridor, and then it closed quietly behind him.