Doorway to Death

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “Ahh, knock it off, Joe,” Johnny interrupted him. “You talked to her for two hours, and you got a big, fat nothing. I just tried to throw a little scare into her, that's all.”

  “God give me strength.” The lieutenant looked up at the ceiling before again boring Johnny with his eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that just possibly we might know what we're doing? We wanted to know where that woman went, whom she contacted. You had your little talk with her and scared her underground. My man lost her yesterday afternoon and hasn't seen her since.”

  “The people she's been playin' with, you'll be lucky if you don't find her underground,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “Or she'll be lucky. Personally, I couldn't care less; in my book she's been livin' on borrowed time a while already, the way she operates. Are you listenin' today, Joe, or just talkin'? I got a couple of things.”

  The big man glowered at him silently, and Johnny shifted his remarks to Detective Rogers. “I was just stuck up at the door of that apartment where you have the stakeout. Gun-in-my-ribs said, 'Get into the second cab at the cab stand.'”

  “Where the hell was Mulleavy while all that was going on?” the sandyhaired man demanded sharply.

  “Mulleavy your man? He was at the head of the stairs, watching.”

  “Oh, great—!”

  “I'm kiddin' you. He didn't have time to blow his nose. I didn't even know he was there, so when I took out the guy in the doorway I had just started to lug him down into the basement for a private interview when Mulleavy declared himself in. Said private interviews were verboten.”

  Lieutenant Dameron broke his silence, the backbone gone from his voice. He sounded tired. “Mulleavy followed orders, but I almost wish he'd been out for a beer. That's an unofficial wish.” Thick fingers drummed on the desk.

  Johnny returned his attention to the lieutenant. “I remember way back at the beginnin' of all this, Joe, you stood up on your hind legs and told me you got answers. You sure as hell haven't gotten many from the people you've talked to so far, and there's been quite a few. What goes?”

  The lieutenant slumped down in his chair and passed a hand over his eyes. “Well, let's take it by the numbers. Max's boys were a couple of professional hoods; you never figure to do much with them. I had hopes for that coked-up redhead; he should have told us everything he'd ever known in his life when his skinful wore out. He got a real weird reaction when it did, though; he went right from a human clam to a whistling scream. The docs took him away from us.” He straightened in his chair and looked over at Johnny. “Then there was Rieder, the cook at the hotel. I don't feel too good about that one. I felt safe; Doc Greenstein had knocked him out with a needle, I had a man at the door of his room, and Jimmy on the way over to kneel on his chest and get a few answers. But with all that, he still went down the drain. Literally, by God. Now there's this one you knocked over today. He able to talk?”

  “When they tape up his ribs.”

  “Put that at the top of your list, Jimmy. Not that it'll do us any good. This is another hood.” The gray eyes ranged Johnny speculatively. “How'd you like the cooperation we got from your boss last night?” Johnny was silent. “Well? Did he give you a reason? He couldn't have given you one that made sense, because there isn't any. I don't forget things like that, Johnny.”

  “He's a businessman, Joe. He can't—”

  “Businessman, hell! This is Dameron you're talking to. Willie inherited a few dollars, and all his life he's been the playboy of the western world, except for that little party overseas. He's been—”

  “Ahhh, chop it!” Johnny snapped. “All that crap is between you and him. All I know is that if I'm in a thirty foot circle and I need a man at my back, Willie's the man. Where the hell do you get off runnin' him down? Why don't you make your own move instead of askin' him to do something you're afraid to do yourself?”

  Detective Rogers interposed himself smoothly between the acrimonious raised voices. “You said you had a couple of things, Johnny. You only mentioned one.”

  “Yeah.” Johnny looked over at the poised notebook. “You got room for hunches in that thing?” Swiftly he outlined the history of the Mullers as he knew it up to the telephone call from the housekeeper. “I don't know why they look out of line to me, but they do.” His eyes came back to the silent lieutenant. “I don't know a thing, Joe, but I tell you I can feel it.”

  Lieutenant Dameron considered the busily writing detective. “Well, Jimmy?”

  Detective Rogers looked up from his notebook. “Let's run through it again. The woman checked in at the hotel— let's see, that would have been the second day after Max ran out of gas in the alley. She takes all her meals in, sees no one, and calls no one, but Johnny here is watching the register for European check-ins because we think this whole thing has something to do with contraband being brought in on boats, so he gives her a second look. He established little except that she was in Italy a few years ago, that she's Viennese married to a German, and apparently hasn't always led the sheltered life. This morning her husband shows up at the hotel and checks in alongside. Oh, yes, and inquired for a Mr. Samud, apparently unregistered.” He looked up from the notebook spread open on his knee. “That's it?”

  “That's it,” Johnny admitted. “You want I should walk out to the sidewalk before droppin' dead and save you the trouble of cleanin' up here? If I'd said it out loud to myself like that before I came over here, I probably would've saved myself the trip.”

  Lieutenant Dameron stared down at the top of his desk. “We can watch them, of course,” he said slowly. “Hell, we must have a man over there now for practically every room in the place. We can watch them, but can you blame me if I ask why?” He pulled at an earlobe exasperatedly. “On the other hand, I've seen these 'feelings' of yours before. You used to be able to smell trouble at two hundred yards, upwind.”

  “Joe, just as sure as I'm sittin'—”

  “Just a goddamned minute, everyone.” The sandyhaired detective was staring down at the notebook on his knee. He stood up quickly, covered the bottom half of the exposed page with his palm and laid the book on the desk before his superior. “Look at that.”

  The lieutenant leaned back first to look at his assistant, as though trying to analyze the repressed excitement in his voice, and then down at the indicated five printed block letters. “Samud? That's the party this Muller asked for when he checked in today, according to Johnny. So?”

  “Try it backward,” Detective Rogers invited. His hand moved off the bottom of the page to reveal another set of printed letters.

  “Backward? D-U-M-A-S-? Dumas? Say, Dumas—!”

  “Sure. The west coast import who caught the cleaver in the kitchen that night.” The detective paced rapidly up and down in front of the desk. “Lieutenant,” he said excitedly, “we've been blind. I can write you a whole new script.” He halted in his pacing and faced them, an arm in the air and an index finger extended like a schoolmaster. “What's bothered us the most about this whole operation? Frederick. In an overall action with a highly professional gloss, he has all along had the look of an amateur. We haven't been able to make him as a pro, and the man that's at the wheel of this thing has to be a pro. It doesn't make sense, otherwise.”

  He directed the pointing finger at Johnny. “That's where we went wrong. Dumas was the pro. Dumas was the boss. Frederick was brought in by him for a specific job, probably to provide cover and act as clearinghouse for whatever their traffic may turn out to be. That's not important. The important thing is that the whole affair hinged on Dumas.”

  “Now just a minute—” Johnny began, and the sandy-haired man waggled a reproving finger.

  “Let me finish. You get the picture in the kitchen that night? Dumas had killed young Rieder, after trying to get him to talk, and he had a body to dispose of in a hurry. He dragooned his man, Frederick, into using his keys to get them down into the kitchen on the room service elevator and into the meat locker. Then the old man interrupted them, and
Dumas killed him, too, but got himself half-killed in the process. Frederick must have stood there with the world coming down around his ears. He couldn't leave Dumas around alive to talk, so he finished him off. I'd say he graduated from the amateurs to the pros right there, and cum laude, at that.”

  He swung back to the lieutenant at the desk. “He had already had the foresight—or had followed Dumas' instructions—to have his room wired up, so that when he knew that Johnny was suspicious of him and was listening in, he was able to sidetrack him. Do you realize that if I'm right this Muller doesn't know Frederick and that Frederick doesn't know him? That Frenchy Dumas was the intermediate contact and possibly the only one?”

  “You're goin' too fast,” Johnny complained. “You lose me when you say Freddie wouldn't know this Muller. If he doesn't know Muller, what's the point in the boy-stood-on-the-burnin'-deck act he's puttin' on down there?”

  “Does he need to know that Muller doesn't know him?” Jimmy Rogers demanded earnestly. His hazel eyes popped with excitement. “Frederick is waiting to be contacted, not to do the contacting. He doesn't realize that he's killed off probably the only contact there ever was. He'll be there till the wreckers move in. What else can he do?”

  “He can blow,” Johnny said flatly.

  “Don't say that,” Lieutenant Dameron winced. “I've been lying awake nights sweating out his giving us the slip ever since we found out he's not the real Frederick. Do you realize we don't even know who he is, legitimately? I've got to pick him up. Fifteen yards start and he'd melt out on us like an ice cube on a summer day.”

  “If you haven't got him staked out like a uranium field you ought to lose him,” Johnny said.

  “So he's staked out. Accidents happen. Look at that orange-headed female I'm plowing up the streets for now. I've got to pick this Frederick up. I want his prints.”

  “That's a little different tune than you were singin' last night. Last night you needed a little help.”

  The big man nodded. “I could use some, but I can't wait. I've got a boy upstairs has forgotten more law than most judges ever learn, and he's given me a couple of angles. I've got a chance to make it stick.”

  “He'll spit in your eye,” Johnny predicted. “Besides, there's a better way, Joe.” He grinned into the wary glance behind the desk. “Let's introduce 'em to each other over there.”

  An exhaled breath sounded gustily in the room's quiet. “Impossible!” Lieutenant Dameron exploded the word.

  “What the hell's impossible about it? Outside of you sayin' so like God Almighty?”

  “Just a minute, Johnny,” Detective Rogers thrust in soothingly. “Suppose we did what you suggest. What would happen?”

  “Who the hell knows? Let nature take its course. It ought to flush a little of this mess out into the daylight.”

  The sandyhaired man shook his head patiently. “I wouldn't try to convince you that we always go by the book, but a police action has to be a little more integrated than what you have in mind.” He glanced at the lieutenant who was tipped back in his chair with his eyes closed, the red face thoughtful. The little silence was broken when the chair tipped forward with a bang and the face set itself in stern lines.

  “No. We can't do it. It's extra-legal. It's dangerous.”

  “Ahhhh, let me call him, Joe. I can probably convince him he should give himself up.”

  “You needn't put any extra effort into being a wise guy, Johnny. I'm telling you: don't do it. I can't stand wrong guesses and further complications. Don't even think of it.”

  “You think you can stop me?”

  “I can make you wish you'd never thought of the idea, and by God, I will. I'll take you off the street if I have to make a law. Don't you cross me.”

  “Blow it outta your barracks bag, Joe. You think you're scarin' anyone?”

  “Johnny, this is important to me!”

  “So you sit here an'—ahhh, forget it!” He lurched to his feet and started for the door.

  “Johnny—!”

  He slammed the door heavily behind him.

  In his own room he stared at himself in the bureau mirror over the rim of the double shot-glass of bourbon in his hand. He threw back his head and tossed down the contents, shivered, and solemnly inspected himself again in the glass.

  “Well, Killain? You figure it out. Man told you not to do something. Did he mean it, or did he say it figurin' you'd do it anyway to spite him? An' if that's what he figured, you sure you want to do it? Go ahead, Killain. Figure it out.”

  He refilled the shot-glass and sat down in his easy chair.

  He lifted the glass to the light, studied its amber contents, and drank deeply. After a moment he put down the glass and got to his feet again; he walked into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He groped for a towel, dried himself off, threw the towel aside, and walked back into the living room.

  The telephone rang as he walked to the door; he ignored it. In the corridor he turned right and walked steadily on past the service elevator to the end suite in the hallway.

  At the door he knocked sharply three times, folded his arms, and waited.

  Chapter XI

  The man who was not Ronald Frederick opened the door.

  “You owe me a drink, Freddie,” Johnny informed him.

  The little manager was neatly dressed in a light gray suit with the ever-present breast pocket handkerchief prominent as usual. For the count of ten the mild eyes behind the steel rimmed spectacles studied his visitor, and then he nodded, and stepped back. “I... ah... recall that I do. Come in.”

  Johnny preceded him into the sitting room which was fitted out with a desk in its center, and his host scrutinized him carefully as he followed. “Are you sure that you—ah— need it now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Have a chair, then.” He stood beside his desk as Johnny seated himself in the armchair to one side. “Scotch?”

  “Naah.”

  “Bourbon, then?”—*

  “Okay.”

  Johnny watched as bottles were removed from a wall cabinet and two liberal drinks poured. Ronald Frederick looked at his guest. “Chaser?”

  “Some other time.”

  The little man handed Johnny his glass and put his own down on the desk. He walked unhurriedly to the door, turned the bolt, and slipped on the chain latch. His manner as he returned to his desk was politely courteous. “I'm assuming that we wish no interruptions?”

  “You're assumin' well today.” Johnny lifted the drink in his hand. “To your beautiful blue eyes, Freddie.”

  The manager smiled faintly as he seated himself and picked up his own drink. He leaned back comfortably in his desk chair. “Since my eyes don't happen to be blue—”

  “Got to be,” Johnny said flatly over the rim of his glass. “San Francisco says Ronald Frederick's eyes are blue.”

  The slender face behind the desk seemed to tighten up feature by feature. “San Francisco?”

  “Yeah. Let's cut out the horsin' around, Freddie. I want a piece of your action here.”

  The little man pursed his lips, seemed to consider for a moment, then leaned forward smoothly, slid open a desk drawer, and emerged with his right hand gripping a revolver from which the long snout of a silence projected. He sat back again with it lying casually across his lap. “You're so impetuous at times, Johnny,” he said apologetically. “You'll understand, I'm sure.”

  “Yeah. That the gun you measured Frenchy with that night in the kitchen?”

  Ronald Frederick picked up his drink carefully in his left hand and sipped at it, his face impersonal.

  “Not very smart of you keepin' it around here, Freddie. Suppose Joe Dameron had picked you up any time in the last few days, like he'd halfway planned. Could you've explained it? They got the slugs outta Frenchy, you know.”

  The silence from behind the desk lengthened. Johnny threw back his head and drained his glass, and at his first movement the revolver in the chair opposite lifte
d itself three inches and then lowered again as he settled back. “You didn't know the stuff was in the hotel already, did you, Freddie?” Ronald Frederick delicately removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket, flipped it open, and Spread it on his knee. He wiped his fingers deliberately by rubbing them briskly over the handkerchief, one hand at a time, the free hand in turn hovering over the gun butt. “It's funny, in a way, Freddie. Dumas hires you to do a job for him here and sets you up in business. All of a sudden to save your own neck you have to knock him off. The man with the stuff arrives; he knew Frenchy, and he's waitin' for Frenchy to contact him. Gonna be quite a wait. The man doesn't know you. You don't know him, but I know both of you.”

  The voice from the opposite chair was quiet and unemotional. “You seem to have acquired a good deal of dangerous information.”

  Johnny grinned at him. “You know I haven't got that kind of brains, Freddie. This is right from the horse's mouth. If Joe'd had even a halfwit to put you near the kitchen that night, your tail woulda been sizzlin' in the bacon grease long ago. How much more time you think you're gonna get?”

  “I trust just time enough.” The manager lifted the gun in his lap, balanced it appraisingly a moment, and gently returned it again. “As you said a moment ago, let's eliminate the—ah—horsing around. I'm sure you didn't come here without a proposition!”

  “Sure. It's simple. I take you upstairs, and we go up against the guy with the stuff. How you handle him is your problem, but you and I split the dollar bills right down the middle.”

  The manager nodded. “It sounds reasonable from your point of view, of course. Unfortunately the answer is 'no.'”

  “You got a choice?”