He turned to stare thoughtfully at the impassive door panel. “Killain, you accident of nature,” he accused himself. “That's a lady in there. Not a woman, or a female, or a broad, or a twist, or a frail, or a skirt. A lady.” He pushed the silently moving oven down the corridor and around to the push-button means of descent.
In the kitchen the dinner hour rush was over; Johnny could see only a single red jacket and a sprinkling of whites behind the glistening steel tables. Hans was seated at Dutch's old desk, and Johnny drew off a mug of coffee at the big urn and walked over to him. He didn't particularly want the coffee, but he did want to talk to the first cook, who sat staring off into space, his hands idly shuffling a stack of loose invoices.
“You got the sugar, Hans?” Johnny upended a box and sat down beside him, and the tall man silently opened a drawer and removed two glassined envelopes which he handed to Johnny, who noted the tremor in the offering hand and the bloated lids on the redrimmed eyes. Hans's nerves seemed very nearly out of control.
“Freddie said anything yet?” Johnny asked him and watched the negative curl of the lip and the shake of the head.
“I dislike that man,” Hans said suddenly, then attempted to smile in self-disparagement of his own vehemence. “I shouldn't say that. He's within his rights in taking his time in making up his mind. Yet it means so much to me. And I have not been sleeping well. And I have not had word—” His voice trailed off, and his eyes came back to Johnny as if again becoming aware of his presence. “You'd think he'd realize the impossible position in which he places me. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I give orders, but where is the authority to enforce them?” He waved the bills in his hand at Johnny. “These tradesmen. What respect can they have for me?”
“It'll work out, Hans,” Johnny said soothingly. He sipped at the strong black coffee, and in his mind cast about for a lead-in remark in which to mention Myrna to Hans. He wanted a reaction from the first cook. An occasional raised voice was the only disturbance in the quiet kitchen, and up front a busboy went from counter to counter turning out the lights in the forward end of the long room. Darkness crept toward them, and the goose-necked light on the desk spotlighted their corner.
This is the way it must have been for Dutch, Johnny thought suddenly, sitting here targeted by this same light on the desk. He himself had walked in here many a morning through the service door and found the old man reading or nodding over his book. But the murderers had not come through the service door. Johnny frowned; why would old Dutch let himself be spotlighted in such a manner if he had heard the noise of entrance—even a key— from any unaccustomed direction? The old man was scarcely a fool. Unless he had been asleep.
Johnny stared at the far wall, trying to concentrate on a teasing tickle in the foreground of his mind. If Dutch had been asleep, the light would have been on, and the intruders would have been warned. But suppose Dutch had been awake and had switched off his light and had sat there in the dark watching them? Johnny shook his head; that didn't make sense, either, for if the old man had done that, why expose himself to them later? Unless it had seemed important....
He ran his eyes around the rectangular room. From where he sat he could see the fire door which led down to the storeroom below. He could see three of the tall windows which, though not barred, were always securely locked from the inside. He could see the small door leading into the bakery ovens which was locked only occasionally. It had been a bone of contention whether it had been locked that night. He could see the two massive walk-in boxes with their heavy steel corner bracings and their brass padlocks. He could see—
He stifled an impulse to jump to his feet; he could feel his pulse accelerate. He turned his head to look at the cook, and with an effort kept his voice casual. “Hans?”
The tall man looked up from his shuffled invoices. “Yes?”
“When'd you have the butcher last?”
Hans smiled sourly, as though reminded of another cross to bear. “He will be here in the morning. Another front office economy. Whoever heard of a hotel kitchen with a butcher being called in twice a week to dress out four days work in advance? Ridiculous. You simply cannot function—”
“I asked you when he was here last!”
The cook looked startled at the vigor of the interruption. “Why, twice a week he comes; what then? Three days ago, four days ago; from week to week it varies. I can look it up. I remember he ruined a loin of pork. Ridiculous. I say—
“Has that big box been opened since the night Dutch was killed?”
Hans sucked in his breath, and his eyes widened. “1 have not opened it. There has been no need. I have not—”
“Gimme your keys.” Johnny was on his feet, palm extended. He hefted the huge key ring placed in it by the tall man. “Which one is the meat box key?”
Hans silently picked it out for him, and Johnny walked across to the twelve foot high meat locker with the cook on his heels. Johnny unlocked the big padlock and handed it to Hans. The tall man's voice was husky. “You don't think—?”
“Won't have to think in a minute.” Johnny threw back the long bar handle, and the big door creaked open. Inches of frost clung to its inner side, and a breath of frigid air drifted out with a swirling mist. An ammoniac smell wrinkled Johnny's nostrils unpleasantly, and he stepped inside and tried to quell a shiver. This damn place was fantastically cold after the heat of the kitchen. “Where's the lights, Hans?”
The cook reached over his shoulder and snapped on the switch, and bright daylight washed over them. Johnny took a quick look around the floor with particular attention to the corners of the freezer; he started to step around the butcher's block for a better look, and a strangled sound from behind him caused him to pivot sharply. The white-faced Hans was staring at the rows of frozen carcasses suspended from their heavy hooks, and Johnny turned in the direction of the stricken gaze. One look was enough; he cleared his throat. “I don't see any government stamp on that one, Hans. Let's get out of here.”
The cook did not appear to have heard him. Shock had transfixed him; Johnny put a hand on his arm to recall him. With a convulsive movement Hans threw off the hand and dropped to his knees and addressed a hoarse torrent of guttural pleading to the body on the hook.
“Hans!” Johnny said sharply. “Hans!”
Roughly he placed his hand under the chin of the kneeling man, and at the sight of the glassy unrecognition he waited no longer. He caught Hans as his body slipped away from the short right hand punch that had blanked out the staring eyes, and Johnny picked him up and carried him outside and laid him down on a counter.
He hesitated an instant, then stepped back inside the locker and with a hurried two hand lift removed the chilled, slippery body from the hook on which it hung and laid it out on the floor. He left the box, closed the door, threw over the long bar, and headed for a telephone.
Chapter IX
Detective James Rogers sat at the shabby desk in the corner of the kitchen and wrote busily in his notebook while Johnny squatted on the upended box and watched him. Once again the kitchen was quiet; it was three hours since Johnny had found the body in the meat locker, had called the police, and the cloud of investigators had descended upon the place as they had the night Dutch had been killed. The body had been removed, and Hans had been given a needle and taken upstairs, and the uniformed and plainclothesmen had done their big and little jobs and departed, and only Detective Rogers remained.
In the silence he wrote on, less rapidly, pausing to frown at the wall, and he finally slipped his pen back in his inside breast pocket while he riffled pages and re-read what he had entered. He sighed deeply, closed the book with a snap, and looked over at Johnny. “A ringtailed wowzer of a mess, brother.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Look, before you put that notebook away—I couldn't reach Joe this morning—”
“Out of town all day.”
“—so I'd better give this information to you. Were you with him when he called me last ni
ght?”
“No. I had a note from him this morning saying you'd scooped that gunman that had been living in your pocket lately, and that I should make arrangements to talk to him when his snow melts off.”
“This was at the same time. Joe said he'd been trying to work out Freddie's rung on the ladder in this thing, and the part that bothered him was the telephone call I'd heard him make resignin' from a stool pigeon detail. That's the call my girl on the board didn't catch, and last night after Joe called me I talked to a man who told me why.” “Because he didn't make it?” the sandyhaired man hazarded.
“Because he didn't make it. His place is wired up like a Christmas tree. I couldn't get near him unless I used a helicopter. He knew I was there, and he gave me the informer bit, and I went for it hook, line, and sinker.”
Jimmy Rogers shrugged as he re-opened his notebook. “It looks to me like your character-good-for-a-laugh, as you introduced him, has had the laugh on all of us.” He pulled out his pen and stared at it. “Still does, for that matter. We don't have him yet.”
“I'm beginnin' to smell hair burning.”
“We're getting closer, but we're not ready to bundle this up and run downtown to put it in the D.A.'s hot little hand. Not yet.”
“Then what the hell do you need, for God's sake? Doesn't this thing here tonight point to him all over again? That's what they were doin' in the kitchen here that night, him and that Frenchie what's-his-name. They were tuckin' the stiff away in the locker, and poor old Dutch caught them at it. Who else could get in that box?”
“The man that was with you when you opened it, for one.
“Hans?” Johnny rubbed his chin. “He could, at that. But I know it was Freddie.”
“Can you stand up in court and prove it? Let's talk sense. For instance, didn't the behavior of this Hans—” Jimmy Rogers glanced down at his notebook, “—Reider strike you as being something out of the ordinary?”
“He threw a fit, for sure. Horns and all. I had to knock him out to get him out of the box. He was orey-eyed, frothin' at the mouth in German, it sounded like. He came to while your examiner was here and threw another wing-ding, and your boy slipped him a needle and packed him upstairs. Hell, I told you all that before.”
“I know you did. I'm trying to make a point, in my feeble way. If reaction could be laid out on a Fahrenheit thermometer, just where would you rate his performance?”
Johnny grunted. “212: Right through the roof. He took it big.”
“I'd like to know why. I'm looking forward to our conversation in the morning.”
“His nerves were gone, anyway. He'd been sweatin' out the promotion here, afraid he was going to be bypassed. He'd just got through tellin' me he wasn't sleeping good.”
“The shylocks had him. He'd borrowed heavily recently.”
“Yeah? So he needed money bad? No wonder he wanted the job so bad he could taste it. Say, that reminds me... last night when I left the place to check that thing out for Joe I ran into Hans on the sidewalk waitin' in a doorway up the street. I got curious and doubled back, and the one he was waitin' for turned out to be this Myrna telephone operator on the middle shift. You know the one?”
“I know her. A well-frosted tomato.” Jimmy Rogers turned pages in the ever-ready notebook. “Myrna Hansen. Age thirty two. Collecting alimony from two ex-husbands. Up on a lightweight blackmail charge six years ago. Nol-prossed. Completely uncooperative under questioning.”
“I can see I should've asked you that yesterday. Did you see the body before they took it out?”
Detective Rogers closed the notebook again. “You mean his face? I wondered when you'd get around to that.”
“He looked like he'd had a hard time.”
“Doc says he had it while he was alive, too. With a knife.”
Johnny grimaced. “Somebody carved him to make him talk? Rough.”
“It complicates things. Either we have someone in the crowd getting out of line and being disposed of—-and the method makes it unlikely—or else there's an opposition crowd on the scene.”
“Maybe Hans can straighten it out for you.”
“I'd like to think so. What's on your mind now?”
Johnny looked at his watch. “Work. All this has been on the house. My shift's just coming on.”
“The lieutenant will probably want to talk to you tomorrow.” Jimmy Rogers slapped his pockets automatically to account for his belongings, nodded to Johnny, and walked out of the kitchen through the service door at the bar. Johnny sat and listened to the diminishing sound of his heels on the tile, and then it was very quiet in the big kitchen.
Johnny was on his way through the lobby to the street when he heard his name called. Marty Seiden, a middle shift front desk man, waved a red and white envelope at him from the registration counter. “Cablegram, John. Just came in.” Marty was a fresh-faced youngster addicted to pointed collars and bow ties; he had a highly developed clothes' sense, and he looked approvingly at Johnny as he stepped up to the desk. “You look really sharp, John.”
Johnny glanced down at his lightweight summer suit as he slit open the cable. “Handsome is as handsome does, kid. Or don't they teach you that in school these days?” He ran his eyes over the block type on the white sheet.
IN TONIGHT CHECK BOAC OFFICE CALL SHIRLEY RESERVE
mario.
He crumpled the sheet in his hand and stood undecided a moment before nodding to Marty and turning away from the desk. He looked at his watch; plenty of time, but he would have to—
“Why, Ugly! How nice you look!”
Johnny looked down into the round face, brown eyes, and sleekly shining hair of the girl who had stepped into his path, and he smiled. “Hi, Frannie. How's the sociological experiments coming along?”
She blushed vividly and tossed her head. “Don't be mean. I came by to apologize for acting like a snapping turtle the other night. I must have sounded like a shrew.”
He steered her out of the lobby traffic and over against the unoccupied bell captain's desk and considered the serious young face. “You were a perfect lady, Frannie, except in your instincts, and that's the way a man likes to have his lady function.”
A fresh wave of color enveloped her. “You make it sound—well, it probably did look—I'm not like that all the time, really.”
“Now you're disillusioning me.”
Her look was reproachful. “Go ahead and tease; I suppose I deserve it. I do want to thank you, though; you kept me from making a mistake. I realized how silly I must have sounded when I got to my room. I brooded about it for a while, then I went out to the elevator hoping I could find you and apologize, so that you wouldn't think I was just a nitwit schoolgirl, but that man said you had just gone down for the doctor.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes. For the man with the bleeding face. He must have had a terrible fall. The dark man said he'd just sent you down, so I went back to my room. In the morning you weren't around, so—”
Johnny's mind raced into high gear. This pretty youngster had stumbled on the opening act of the drama in the kitchen the night Dutch had been killed; it was so simple when it was all laid out for you. Frank Lustig hadn't been a no-pay skip from 938 that night; Frank Lustig had been killed in 938 by Frenchie Dumas, and the girl had walked in on the operation of transferring the body to the room service elevator for disposal in the kitchen. Frank Lustig was the body in the meat locker.
Johnny opened his mouth to ask the girl if Dumas had been alone with the bleeding-faced man in the corridor, and dosed it again. He must have been alone; if the other man was Freddie, and the girl had seen him, the way this crowd played she very likely would herself have ended up in the meat locker. Johnny looked at the well-scrubbed youthful glow; you had a very, very close call, little kitten. Eight lives left. He held out his hand, and she put her small, warm one in his solemnly. “Apology accepted, Frannie. You come back and see me in about five years when you get bored with your husband.”
“I just might do that,” she said pertly, and he released her hand. “Good-bye, Ugly.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Good-bye?”
“Au 'voir,
then.” Under his approving eye the girl flushed brilliantly, turned on her heel, and sped from the lobby, and Johnny smiled after her. In five years that kid would be something to see. In five years—
“Robbing the cradle these days, mister?”
Johnny turned his head; he had been facing the foyer, but he hadn't seen Shirley come in. He inspected the tall girl's dark beauty critically. “You wanna deprive me of my simple pleasures? You look a little better than you did the last time I saw you.”
“I want to talk to you about the last time you saw me, mister.”
“Not in that tone of voice, you don't.” He straightened the crumpled cablegram in his left hand and thrust it at her. “Here. Wipe the slobber off your chin with that.”
She snatched it from his hand without even looking at it, her eyes slits. “Don't you get tight with me, Johnny, or I'll—”
“You'll what?” he asked her softly. “My name's not Martin. You want to play rough, I'll bounce your tail a foot high off this lobby floor, an' enjoy it. Now why the hell did you come over here?”
Her smile was mocking. “I forgot I was talking to a professional hard guy. My request is simple, sir. I merely want to know why I woke up after you took me home the other afternoon with my brand new gold toreador pants in one and a half inch strips all over the bed, and my backside so sore I couldn't sit squarely? Do you beat unconscious women now for amusement? I looked in the mirror this morning, and it still looks like an Indian smoke signal against a desert dawn. I want to know how come?”
“I was lookin' for needle punctures,” Johnny told her tersely. “When I found 'em, I got mad, and whacked you once.”
“You had a hell of a nerve!” she said harshly. “Did you ever try minding your own business? You've got—”
Doorway to Death Page 12
