Doorway to Death

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “Shut up!” Johnny said under his breath.

  Willie looked over at Jimmy Rogers sitting up on the floor, a hand to the side of his face and a lack of expression in his eyes. “And this one? Was he for, or against?”

  Lieutenant Dameron spoke roughly; “That's my man, Willie. What the hell is this, a guided tour?”

  “If you'll do the honors, Joe. You don't mind my checking up on things in my own place?” He moved over to the lieutenant in a saunter. “May I look over your shoulder, Joe?”

  The ruddyfaced man hesitated, and then stepped aside from the doorway, and Willie Martin stood on its thresh-hold and quickly surveyed the interior of the brightly lighted room. With no visible change of expression he turned back into the bedroom; the lean mouth quirked humorously at the corners as he looked at Johnny. “I must say that tears it rather thoroughly.” He walked around the card table and seated himself on the edge of the bed; his tone was absentminded as he continued. “Had the very devil of a time getting off that plane you put me on, Johnny, without your seeing me.”

  Lieutenant Dameron stared at him; Johnny stood frozen, every internal muscle strained with the repression of the sound welling up within him. He wanted to scream until his throat was raw: Willie... Willie... don't... don't... don't...!

  Willie smiled at him, the cheerful, devil-may-care smile. “I gave it all I had, Johnny. As usual. It was leaning on broken reeds that destroyed me. First Dumas... and now Frederick—”

  Lieutenant Dameron's stare was frozen incredulity. On the floor Detective Rogers was looking up intently with eyes that had come back into focus. Willie Martin looked amusedly from one to the other.

  “The long arm of the law,” he said softly and stood up and moved away from the bed, his manner deliberate and unhurried; under the expensive gabardine jacket his shoulders moved slightly in the fashion of a man testing unused muscles.

  The lieutenant's apple cheeks were faded. He took a short step forward; his voice was tentative. “Willie—”

  The slender man turned casually to the nearer window; he looked back over his shoulder, the easy smile a mockery.

  “Yes, Joe?” he asked quietly, and his eyes passed on to Johnny.

  “Next incarnation, boy,” Willie Martin said casually and turned back to the window.

  “Willie—!” This time it was the imperative flavored Lieutenant Dameron's official voice. Then his bull-like rush ended up in a sliding skid as he encountered Johnny's out-thrust leg. From hands and knees on the floor Johnny winced at the earsplitting crash as the doubled up figure took sashing and pane on its flight through the window.

  The tinkling sound of glass falling could be heard for a long time in the quiet room.

  Johnny awoke lying on his back in the instant before the awakening hand touched his shoulder; he blinked up at the blue uniform. “He's ready for you now, Killain.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Mac.” He lay quietly an instant, his eyes tracing the barred pattern of the lights and shadows on the ceiling above him before he sat up on the iron cot in the precinct cell block.

  His left arm throbbed like an infected wisdom tooth; he stood up, balancing cautiously. After treatment last night, the police surgeon had strapped it tightly to his chest, and he felt curiously one-sided.

  The cell door was ajar, and he stepped outside and walked across to the little desk fronting the row of cells. He looked down into the shrewd pale eyes of the uniformed patrolman. “Cigarette me, Mac.”

  He caught the pack of cigarettes tossed to him, shook one out, and bowed his head the distance necessary to accept the proffered light. He nodded his thanks and strode out through the big iron gate, off the cement floors of the cell block to the familiar oil-darkened wooden floors of the old building. He could hear the sound of his heels echoing in the early morning quiet.

  Johnny knocked on the door of Lieutenant Dameron's office, but Detective Rogers opened the door. Jimmy Rogers had a sizable swelling on his jaw and a vivid discoloration that ran up his cheek and merged with a multicolored black eye. Johnny inspected his handiwork critically. “Mornin', Jimmy. Run into a door?”

  The sandyhaired man stood aside silently to let him in, and Johnny looked across the room an instant at the big man behind the desk. Lieutenant Dameron's redrimmed eyes were sunken, and the florid cheeks liberally sprinkled with a silver stubble. He looked up from a litter of papers at Johnny's entrance and nodded to a chair. “Sit down.”

  “Just one minute, Joe.” Johnny turned to Detective Rogers. “You got a legitimate beef, kid. I took a sucker shot at you last night, but Joe here'll tell you I pay my bills.” He walked over to the detective. “Go ahead, kid; shoot your wad. Let's see you land one right about here.” He extended his chin and pointed to the mandible, and Jimmy Rogers left the floor with the gusto with which he propelled a roundhouse right to within a quarter inch of Johnny's pointing finger. Johnny went backward on his heels in a staggering trot. A chair caught him behind the knees, and he was on his way down when his shoulders hit the wall behind him with a crash that shook the room and bounced him upright again.

  Johnny shook his head gingerly and found his voice after a moment. “Not bad.” He waggled his jaws gently, experimentally. “Not bad at all. You eat another barrel or two of flour you'll be a man yet.”

  “I knew I could put you down,” Detective Rogers said with deepest satisfaction, blowing on his knuckles.

  “If the charades are over, let's get down to business,” the lieutenant said from the desk. His voice was a tired rumble. Jimmy Rogers pushed a chair over to Johnny, and they both sat down. “The least said about certain aspects of last night the better, but we are going to have to talk about this a little.” The gray eyes bored into Johnny, who shrugged. “When did you first think of Willie?”

  “When he walked in that door,” Johnny said wearily. “He thought I knew, from what he said, but I didn't I'd never have given you—”

  He stopped, and the lieutenant looked at him. “You'd never have given us even the left-handed help that you did? I realize that. Just like the leg trip you gave me when I tried to get him away from the window.”

  “You want to make something out of it, you go right ahead, Joe. I spent a lot of time gettin' Willie out of spots like that.” He stared at a point on the wall above the lieutenant's head. “This time, though, I didn't get much cooperation from him.”

  “Are you interested in knowing why?”

  “Maybe I know why.”

  The big man glanced down at the papers on his desk.

  “Maybe. We'll probably never know exactly, but in my book Willie Martin had two gods: money and excitement. He lived his whole life at the top of the scale; as long as he had the money he could more or less legitimize the excitement.” He turned over the papers before him. “But he didn't have the money. Not any more. I rousted that lawyer of his out of bed last night, and he admitted that Willie was dependent upon the hotel for income and that the hotel itself was about two and a half jumps ahead of the receiver.”

  Johnny leaned back in his chair with his eyes dosed. “Does it make any difference now?”

  “We have to tie the ribbon on these packages. We finally ran that Myrna Hansen to ground late last night, and she filled in the missing details. Willie had gone commercial, He'd been using his overseas contacts—and with his background he probably had dozens—to obtain information for him that was worth a good deal of money to the right people. Or the wrong people. This microfilm deal was a new phase. According to this woman, Willie engineered the original steal from a European foreign office ministry. Then he was doublecrossed, and the film stolen from his man. That was Myrna's team: Muller and his wife, the two Rieders, and a man in the hotel by the name of Dobson that nobody had ever taken a second look at. I've got him under glass right now.”

  He looked at Johnny sitting slumped in his chair. “You'd be surprised at the reaction on those films. I've had three phone calls already this morning from echelons of brass congrat
ulating me for winding this thing up.”

  Johnny's mouth twisted. “Let me congratulate you, too, Joe.”

  “Don't strain yourself. To conclude the story, when Willie's European contact was robbed of the film, Willie set up the machinery to recover it. He set Frederick up at the hotel with all the other apparatus, but he made a final try at recovering it himself. He flew to London to try to head off Muller, but he missed connections.”

  “He asked me to go,” Johnny said almost to himself.. “He said he'd get me a seat on the plane. But he didn't say why—if he'd only said why—”

  “It's a damn good thing for you he didn't,” Lieutenant Dameron said sharply. “And you ought to know why. Willie was the padrone, the benevolent despot. He couldn't ask anyone for help; that was going against the grain. Willie had to maintain the picture of himself as a distributor of sunshine.”

  “You figure his girl in the apartment was bleeding him?” Johnny asked after a moment.

  Lieutenant Dameron looked at him carefully. “The answer to that has to be 'yes,' but don't you go getting any ideas. We'll take care of her, understand?” He stood up behind the desk. “Officially I'm going to forget parts of last night.”

  “Don't do me any favors, Joe. I can pack the assigned weight on any kind of racetrack.” He rubbed at his eyes tiredly with his free hand. “I do owe you one bouquet though. When you boarded the ship there last night, I was only forty-sixty to get a draw with Freddie, and I couldn't have sold many shares in the proposition, either. We were both on the floor, and he had the gun. I think I'd've kept going long enough to make sure he didn't enjoy much prosperity, but beyond that I needed a fresh deck.”

  To his left Detective Rogers cleared his throat. “Your girl's waiting outside,” he told Johnny.

  “Yeah? Since when?”

  “Since all night.”

  “Christ.” Johnny stood up. “You couldn't get her to go home?”

  “Did you want me to pull a gun on her?”

  “All right, all right.” Johnny looked at Lieutenant Dameron. “That's it, Joe?”

  “That's it. Do me a favor, Johnny. Stay out of my sight for a while. My nerves aren't what they used to be.”

  Johnny nodded to each of the two men in turn; Detective Rogers was putting on his jacket and the lieutenant was locking his desk when Johnny closed the door from the outside. Sally was asleep sitting up on the bench just beyond the big desk at the entrance. He shook her gently, and the brown eyes flew open. She stared up at him un-comprehendingly for a moment, and then silent tears started to flow. “Cut it out, ma. Cut it out.”

  “Oh, Johnny—” She stood up and tried to put her arms around him, then backed off and looked down at the strapped arm. “What happened? The lieutenant said you were all right—!”

  “As usual, ma, the lieutenant is correct.”

  “But your arm—!”

  “I zigged when I should've zagged. Let's get out of here.”

  In the cab he held her in the good arm all the way over to the apartment. Upstairs with the door closed she turned to him, and the brown eyes were anxious. “Johnny—”

  “Post mortems later, ma. You got to get some sleep. Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket. Hop in the sack.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “In a little while.” He eased himself down in his chair when she walked into the bedroom, but hoisted himself up almost immediately and walked out to the kitchen. From the cabinet he took down the bourbon bottle, and a little awkwardly poured himself a drink. He lifted it and studied it absently against the light, then on impulse walked into the bathroom. Drink in hand he examined the mirror the deep, dark circles under the eyes and the bronzed, barb-wire stubble on the jawline.

  He threw back his head and drained the glass, swallowed hard, shuddered, and looked back into the mirror again at the lips drawn down thinly at the corners of the hard mouth. He spoke bitterly to the face in the mirror.

  “'Goodbye, my friend. I have a certain familiarity with losing causes.'“ He cleared his throat, and put down the empty glass. “If you hadn't felt like playin' God, Ugly, you could've kept her alive. You think you can maybe convince yourself one of these days she probably really died a dozen years ago?”

  He became aware that a sound impinging upon his consciousness was the dripping of water. He walked to the shower stall and turned the faucet viciously, and looked down a little blankly at the imprint of the metal in his palm.

  He turned aimlessly back to the mirror; his voice when he spoke again was a husky whisper. “Willie—”

  He broke away from the mirror and went into the bedroom. He looked down at the thin body on the bed, already asleep on top of the covers. He found a lightweight robe in the closet which he drew over her; she murmured in her sleep, breaking the rhythm of her breathing.

  Johnny removed his clothes, with difficulty because of the strapped arm. He had trouble bending for shoelaces, but he got the shoes off. As he struggled out of the trousers he noticed the stains and abrasions in the fabric, and all too quickly his thoughts were back in Room 1224. He put it firmly from his mind.

  He lay down on the further side of the bed, cautiously, so as not to disturb the sleeper. He eased himself onto his back, and threw the good arm behind his head. With his eyes he traced the sunlight on the ceiling, and the familiar smudges, cracks, and shadows.

  In a little while he would sleep.