Doom Service

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “We've considered that.” Detective Rogers' voice was brisk. “It seems valid only up to a point. It could have happened that way if Turner thought that, through the will and other strings, he had Gidlow so completely sewed up that he was taking no risk in letting him hold the money; but it breaks down when you come up against the fact of the joint account. It doesn't explain Roketenetz's name on the bankbook.”

  “Maybe it does, too,” Johnny argued. “If Lonnie had enough on Jake to be sure Jake couldn't double-cross him, he could've had Jake holdin' for him. But if anything went wrong it was Jake that stood to take the fall, and that wouldn't suit a weasel like Jake at all. Jake could have figured that if he had the kid's name on it, too, he could always claim it's the kid's dough and let him explain where it came from when the day for explanations came. I'd like to bet you Gidlow slapped bank signature cards down in front of the kid an' said sign here, an' here, an' here, an' here.

  The little account was the kid's. He never even knew about this other thing.”

  “It's a theory,” the sandy-haired man admitted after a moment. He looked at his superior. “The kicker in the deal is that if the money is Turner's, he—or whoever the money belongs to—has no legal claim to it now. A joint account balance goes to the survivor, period, except in a very few cases of a consideration of trust, which I doubt would apply here. I can't see Turner invoking it, for one thing—if this is hidden tax money, whoever stakes a claim to it is in the grease with Internal Revenue. No, sir—the owner of this money will never dare try to claim it.” He looked at Johnny. “There's another factor. If Roketenetz had anything to do with Gidlow's death, he couldn't benefit, and neither could his heirs.”

  “If you're earnin' your money, you ought to have the answer to that already,” Johnny told him. “Who did grease the chute for Jake?”

  “If I could tell you, I could go home and go to bed.” The slender man yawned and stretched prodigiously. He lowered his arms slowly. “It had aspects of a frame. Gidlow was manually strangled, and the body placed on the divan. The camera was rigged with the thread so that whoever opened the door took a picture of himself without realizing it, since there was no flash and the thread snapped after contact. Very crude.”

  “What the hell was so crude about it?” Johnny demanded. “Suppose it had been me whizzed in there. I'd have taken a picture of myself in the doorway of the room of a murdered man, an' never even known it. You think I'd ever have noticed that little bit of thread left on the camera trigger? Like hell I would.”

  “You'd probably only have been down to your next-to-last appeal before we noticed it, though,” Detective Rogers said cheerfully. “The truth is mighty, and will prevail, to say nothing of the New York City Police Department.” He removed a notebook from his jacket pocket and flipped open its pages. “No sign of forcible entry. We were meant to assume that entry was by key and that a death-reflexive arm movement of the corpse snapped the picture very conveniently upon the murderer's departure.”

  “The kid had a key to this suite,” Johnny said slowly.

  “It could have been meant for him,” the detective agreed. He looked at Johnny slyly. “Of course, with Gidlow strangled manually, someone as well-known as yourself for talking with their hands could easily have come under suspicion.”

  “A situation to which he's not exactly unused,” Lieutenant Dameron rumbled. “Well, are we finished here, Jimmy?”

  Detective Rogers rose and bowed elaborately from the waist. “Monsieur, we may not be finish', but we sure as hell are defeat'.”

  Johnny laughed, then sobered. “I hope you guys realize both these deaths go right back to that fixed fight.”

  “What fixed fight?” the lieutenant inquired blandly.

  “Yeah, you're feelin' pretty brave now with no investigation testimony possible from the two principal witnesses. That could be why they're dead.”

  “Does that explain the bankbook?” Lieutenant Dameron demanded sharply. He got up out of his chair. “Or why Gidlow twelve hours before Roketenetz?” He turned to the door. “Come on, Jimmy.”

  Downstairs in his own room Johnny took down the bourbon bottle thoughtfully and examined the brimful amber contents of the shot glass he then filled. Well, Killain? Why didn't you tell them about finding Monk and the shyster at the door of Sally's apartment before anyone knew Gidlow was dead? Did Lonnie Turner scare you that much into believing you'd better not step on his toes?

  Glass in hand, he wandered into the bathroom, and studied his hard-bitten, bronzed features in the mirror. He knew why he hadn't told him. If Turner was as tough as his reputation, it would be just as well to keep Sally out of the foreground so they wouldn't get back at her, rather than Johnny. And from the sound of this thing, Turner had something to protect.

  He downed his drink and considered the empty glass. Suppose that Turner knew Gidlow was dead? Or going to be? Turner undoubtedly had a key to the suite, too. Suppose he'd send someone over to check on the cash, or even to retrieve it before Jake went over the dam? All they'd have found was the bankbook. A telephone call about that should have started Lonnie's ulcer working overtime.

  A telephone call...

  Johnny put down his glass and moved briskly to the phone. “Vic? Can you get me the telephone chits out of the auditor's office for the day Gidlow was killed?”

  “Be no problem ordinarily, Johnny,” Vic replied apologetically, “but the police already took them out of here.”

  “Okay, boy,” Johnny said shortly, and hung up. He stared at the wall. Great minds...

  He sat at a small table in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted Cafe of the Three Sisters and listened to Consuelo Ybarra's professional rendition of gypsy love songs. The surprisingly deep, husky voice from the tiny bandstand did justice and a little bit more to the fiercely passionate nature of her material.

  She looked the part, too, Johnny thought; the snug-fitting scarlet sheath that encased the full curves of her body matched the brilliance of her lips, the only touch of color in the pale ivory features. Her blue-black hair was drawn straight back in an artfully careless chignon upon the nape of her small neck, and in the spotlight her bare arms and shoulders were dazzling. Altogether an extremely sophisticated simplicity, Johnny reflected.

  He took another swallow of the heavy dark rum in the glass on the table before him. He felt fine—light, loose, and liberal. Consuelo had commented a bit pointedly upon the array of glasses upon the table each time she returned to it, but Johnny's mood had soared too high to be blunted. It had been a pleasant evening, and he had plans for its remainder.

  He glanced around the quiet room. The girl was in the final moments of her last show, and she had really enlisted her audience. The slim dark men and their women—slender and fiery or plump and placid—sat entranced. Dark heads bowed in evoked remembrance. There must be no happy gypsies, Johnny mused; the songs delivered in the throbbing voice bitterly lamented unrequited love and tearful farewell.

  When Consuelo finally curtsied to the room the applause was not overloud, but on the way back to Johnny's corner the scarlet sheath was delayed at table after table for a word of commendation. Johnny was on his feet with her chair withdrawn when she reached him, and she sank into it gratefully.

  “You do that well,” he told her seriously. “The accompaniment could have been a little bit better.”

  “The accompaniment is as good as the voice,” she replied indifferently, accepting the cigarette he offered her.

  “Who does your arrangements ?”

  “A legacy from my ex-husband.” She smiled, a self-mocking smile of the lips but not the eyes. “I shouldn't say it like that, really, because they're exceptionally good arrangements, and the material itself is timeless.”

  “You do them well,” he said for the second time.

  The full lips thinned, and he could see the line of her jaw. “Once I dreamt that I would be the best. The greatest.” She smiled, in self-disparagement. “It seems so simple whe
n one is young. Yet I came closer than most; I had the energy, and the ruthlessness.” The smile turned wry. “I had little voice, actually, but I persevered. I found a whisky-soaked, hunchbacked wreck of a man with a genius for musical arrangement, and I married him. In more sober moments he worked with me, hand-tailoring the arrangements to what voice I had. With him I just possibly might have made it to the top, but then he discovered a girl with a real voice who challenged the drunken artistry in him—”

  She spread her hands, palms up. “The story of my life, senor. He left me flat. At my age I know it should be difficult to think of myself as in a backwater, yet I find that it is so. I sing here, and I wait. I tell myself that something will happen some day that will again push me out into the mainstream of life.”

  She looked over at the bar as Johnny sat in silence. “You must have charmed Manuel, that he is not here to escort me.”

  “I'll deputize,” Johnny announced.

  “To the tenement steps only, then,” she warned him. She looked significantly at the empty glasses on the table. “I mean no offense, but I have no need for a rum cavalier.” She rose to her feet. “I'll speak to Doug, the manager, and then we can leave.”

  Johnny watched appreciatively the tic-toe of her hips beneath the tight material of her gown as she crossed the floor to the manager's office. He felt a fine inner glow, and he did not think it was rum-induced.

  “There's a taxi at the front door,” she told him as she returned to the table and picked up her bag. In the cab she favored him with the same self-mocking smile he had seen previously. “This is really quite an occasion. My brother does not permit club patrons as escorts, even for a once-married sister. He is old-fashioned. You are only the second so favored. Do you know Rick Manfredi, the gambler?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “He impossible, I suppose, but fun, in a way. The little boy type. Difficult to explain if you don't know him. You might like him.”

  “Sure,” Johnny said carefully, and they rode in silence through the narrow, dirty streets. Consuelo leaned forward to speak quickly as the cab pulled into the curb in front of the tenement. “You won't need to get out. I'll run right on up.

  “I can't leave you out here on the street,” Johnny said in his most reasonable voice. “Manuel'd come after me with his dullest knife if someone jumped you on the stairs.” He handed the driver a bill. “I'll walk you up.”

  “Then hold the cab, at least!” she warned him. “You'll never get another in this neighborhood this time of night.”

  “Occupational hazard,” he told her, and took her arm. In the light of the lower stairway he could see a faint dimple of amusement in an ivory cheek. In the narrow stairwell he relinquished her arm, and she walked up steadily ahead of him. He was not unaware of the landscape immediately before his eyes as he climbed.

  “It keeps me fit, this stair climbing,” she announced, and with no warning broke into a run in the middle of the fifth floor stairway. She fled light-footedly up the balance of the steps and across the hallway, and when Johnny belatedly arrived at the door of 5-B she was looking out at him coolly over the chain latch. “Good night, Johnny,” she said with only a touch of breathlessness after her run. “You can start testing the occupational hazard.”

  In the room shadows behind her he could make out little more than the shape of her features, but there was no mistaking the mocking lilt in her husky voice. “Now you're a playful little jigger, aren't you?” he grumbled, reaching inside and securing a handhold on the end of the chain latch bolted to the door. He bent his wrist, and with a scree-e-e the metal came free of the door with half a panel of wood attached. He dropped the piece, and it jangled lightly as it fell to the end of the chain. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “It seems a little juvenile to scream,” Consuelo Ybarra said cautiously in the silence that had fallen.

  “That's what I thought, too,” Johnny agreed, and reached for her. In the room's half light he was watching her feet, wary of the inch-long high heels, and the full-armed slap delivered from the near-darkness surprised him and rocked his head on his shoulders. He whistled and stepped back to wait for the ringing in his ear to die out. “You sure Manuel did the fightin' in this family, kid?” he asked her, shuffling closer as she backed away.

  “Have a care!” she warned breathlessly, and fell victim to the left arm feint as the right hand caught and spun her. He boosted her aloft easily as he turned to the bedroom doorway, and before she could struggle he had shot-putted her eight feet to the center of the bed. She bounced high and came up in a twisting roll as a hand flashed into her bosom and emerged with a glint of steel. “I will teach you that I am not a whore,” she said calmly. “When I get off this bed, I will kill you.”

  His wrist slap sent the knife spinning as he dropped down beside her. “When you get off this bed, girl, you're welcome.” His hands came down upon the tensed vitality of her bare shoulders, and it was only seconds before the shoulders relaxed. He rolled her over swiftly and pried off her high-heeled shoes.

  “You are one big fool!” she murmured languidly, marveling. “So much importance you attach to this?” She lifted an arm lazily. “The zipper is under here....”

  She stirred in the crook of his arm as he lay at peace in the perfumed darkness, and he turned his head. “Cigarette?”

  “It is not important.” Her voice was quiet, relaxed.

  He half raised himself on an elbow. “Put on the light. I want to see.”

  “No light,” she said immediately. “It's not decent, between strangers. And you are old enough to know that all cats are gray.”

  “Yeah, but there's gray, and dove-gray, and silver-gray, and pearl-gray, and dapple-gray. Put on the light.”

  “No light,” she said again. “Your hands can be your eyes.”

  Delicately he traced the line of satiny curves as he listened to the faint sibilance of her breathing. “Only one reason I'm lettin' you get away with it,” he told her. “I'm a believer in leavin' somethin' for the next time.” The big hands pulled her toward him. “Right now, excuse me while I play that record again.”

  A half block from the hotel Johnny set himself instinctively as a black overcoat stepped from a doorway and tapped him on the arm. Johnny shook his head warningly at Detective James Rogers standing alongside him on the windy street. “You want to be a little careful how you do that, Jimmy. I'm half expectin' at least one guy to bounce out of a doorway at me.”

  “Monk Carmody?” the slender man queried shrewdly, and took Johnny's arm without waiting for a reply. “Come on. The coffees are on me.”

  The detective sat down heavily in the back booth of the all-night restaurant. He took off his hat, placed it in the booth beside him and rasped a palm over his chin, “You went over to Turner's?” Johnny asked him.

  “I did.” Detective Rogers grimaced. “Mr. Turner has an inflated opinion of the water he draws in this town.”

  “He could fool you, boy. A mug like me stands a better chance of twistin' his tail than someone standin' on a political ladder like you.”

  “The police department is not political, Johnny.”

  “You keep up that Jimmy-in-Wonderland gag an' you'll be tipped right outta your crib one of these days.”

  “You'll pardon me if I disagree?” Detective Rogers looked at his watch. “Let's see if I made a mistake paying for your coffee. Do you know Rick Manfredi?”

  “I know the name,” Johnny admitted cautiously.

  “One of the sharper gamblers. It's around town that he went for a bundle on the kid to dump in the fourth. As you know, it went to the sixth, and Manfredi got burned. I'd like to know where he got his original steer. He's young, tough and smart. Kind of a lone wolf. Not too popular.” The hazel eyes across the booth studied Johnny. “I'd like to talk to him, and I can't find him.”

  “You mean those four-bit stoolies you guys use can't turn him up for you? Now that's a shame.”

  “I
thought you'd think so.” The detective pointed with his coffee spoon. “I thought you might be able to reach him.”

  “All right—suppose I get to talk to him. What's the pitch?”

  “I knew you wouldn't forget I keep you in the very best coffee. You know where to find him?”

  “I might just happen to have a string on him.”

  “I wouldn't doubt it,” Detective Rogers said drily. “I wouldn't doubt it for a minute.” He leaned back in the booth, lines in his face and the hazel eyes bloodshot. “How do you fix a fight, Johnny? Seriously?”

  “If you're an amateur, you get hold of the fighter an' try to talk him into doin' a little business. Or scare him. If you're a pro, the Jake Gidlows in the business'll save you the trouble, for a fee.”

  “The lieutenant would say that it's a good line, but you can't prove it,” the detective observed. “Who'd need to be in on it? Rock bottom?”

  “The fighter. The fighter's manager. The fighter's trainer, possibly. The other manager, probably. At least one heavy-money party. That's basic. You can go for yourself from there.”

  The sandy-haired man nodded. “Of the line-up, on a double cross the heavy-money party stands to feel the biggest bruise.” He drained the last of his coffee. “Which brings us back to Manfredi.”

  “It does, for a fact,” Johnny agreed.

  “The fighter's dead. The manager's dead. The trainer, Terry Chavez, is another one I've been unable to find. Williams' manager, Carl Ecklund, is out of town, nobody seems to know where. A nice, cozy freeze-out.” Detective Rogers buttoned his coat. “I wouldn't want to delay you. Bon voyage.”

  “Wait a minute. What's the pitch I feed Manfredi?”

  “Why don't you tell him you're interested in a do-it-yourself kit on how to fix a fight? That ought to reach him.”

  “About the same time he reaches me. Is this guy on the muscle?”

  “I expect to receive a firsthand report from you on that point, among others.”