If he was afraid of anything in this world, he was afraid of confinement. Johnny could feel his nostrils thinning in anticipatory rejection as he knelt before the heavy walnut desk in his own room and from the right hand bottom drawer removed flashlight, screwdriver, and icepick. On his way back to the door he could see in the mirror the hard line of his lips as he carefully patted bulging pockets to make sure he had forgotten nothing.
In the corridor he passed the exit door with its prim red overhead light, and stopped at the door beyond it with its neatly lettered metal sign, Maid. He opened this door, groped around behind the mops and the broom handles and removed a short stepladder whose bulk had effectively sealed the narrow opening behind it.
Johnny drew a deep breath, took a final look along the deserted corridor, and squeezed into the closet; he reached back a long arm and carefully closed the door upon himself. The warm, humid darkness closed in upon him, and he listened. Somewhere off to his right water dripped steadily, and the monotonous repetition set his teeth on edge.
He removed the flashlight from his hip pocket and experimented with its sharp finger of light upon the white plastered inner walls which enclosed him. He could feel the almost physical restraint of the tightly walled envelopment with its airless, fetid odor, and without giving himself time to think he inched sideways into the cramped passageway which would not admit the breadth of his shoulders.
Step by step he advanced, crabwise, feet always in the same relative position as he placed them carefully in the path delineated by the flashlight's slender beam upon the white walls which seemed now to stretch narrowly away before him to infinity. He pressed onward with body rigidly braced to withhold contact from the thin shell of plaster on either side of him.
Mentally he counted rooms in his slow progress, hoping he was keeping track correctly. He came to a stop finally, and ineffectually tried to shrug the clinging shirt from its moist contact with his neck and shoulders. He restored the flashlight to his pocket and removed the icepick. Selecting a spot head-high in the darkness which had again enveloped him, he gingerly inserted the point of the pick. Locking his wrist and arm solidly, he exerted a steady, unhurried forward and downward pressure as the needle point attacked the yielding plaster. Patiently he guided its fractional advance until a tiny jolt warned him of the breakthrough.
He removed the pick carefully, and a pinpoint of light rewarded him; he grunted softly as he applied his right eye to the minute aperture and tried to focus on the swirl of color in the room before him. A cream-colored wall reflected light so successfully that his eye watered involuntarily; he blinked it impatiently as he waited for his vision to adjust. The tiny peephole strained his sight intolerably; the left eye ached in sympathy with the staring right. Details of the room filtered through to him in agonizing flashes of recognition: the kneehole desk in its center, the small, neat bookcase in the corner, the imitation-leather easy chair, the partly opened door to the lighted bathroom beyond.
At least it was the right room; he removed himself from the aperture, and in the heat and darkness settled down to wait. He had needed the extra time to take up residence here within the walls before Ronald Frederick should return. Johnny had an increasing interest in the doings of Ronald Frederick.
The sound of a closing door alerted him; it might have come from anywhere in the sticky midnight which pressed in heavily upon him, but he was expecting a particular closed door. An inquiring eye at the peephole again at once disclosed the plum colored swirl of Ronald Frederick's robe as the little manager moved rapidly about the room. As the ache mounted behind Johnny's eye again from the intensity of his stare, the man he was watching broke off in his rapid movements and plopped down in the chair at the desk; Johnny barely had time to focus directly upon him before he leaned forward and picked up the phone. Johnny could see the thin lips moving, and he strained to hear, but a low, indistinguishable murmur was all that came through the plaster. In desperation he turned his head and applied his ear to his newly-manufactured listening post, and perspiration trickled down the back of his neck. He relaxed a little, then, because the clipped tones, though still indistinct, were understandable.
“-speak to Wilson-”
In the earpopping silence Johnny flicked water from the end of his nose. In these moments of aversion to the claustrophobia which gripped him, he had a recurring fantasy: he could feel the sweat which bathed him seeping down his body in tiny rivulets until it seemed to fill his shoes. He could feel it so vividly that involuntarily he flexed his toes. He tensed again as the blurred voice beyond the plaster continued. “-is Ronald Frederick. No, wait. Would I call if it were not an emergency? Never mind your surprise; I was surprised myself so spectacularly a few moments ago, sir, that it seems to me to quite alter the — ah-terms of our contract.”
Johnny tried to hold his breath, which seemed to him to be so loud that it impaired his hearing.
“-must be entirely unaware of the evening's activities, Mr. Wilson, when you can speak so urgently of caution?”
He could picture the thin-lipped, supercilious features hovering over the mouthpiece.
“-perfectly aware of our agreement, but hear me out.
Two men were killed on the premises here tonight, one of them an employee. I have not seen the other, but do you seriously question his identity?”
Again the enveloping silence as the saturated uniform molded itself to Johnny like a wet gunnysack.
“-do get the picture? Then I'm sure you'll agree that becoming involved in such a fiasco is a small world apart from supplying you with the bits of information you fancied? I personally feel so strongly about it that you shan't hear from me again.”
A biting cramp settled in the calf of Johnny's left leg; he jammed the heel down hard to ease the knotted pressure.
“-have something to lose, sir. I shan't change my mind. I was a fool to listen to you originally.”
Awkwardly Johnny lifted the leg and dug at the cramp with iron fingers.
“-sorry. Kindly don't bother to call again.”
The finality of the tone straightened Johnny up; in the darkness he felt all turned around, but with fingertips lightly on the plaster to guide himself, he exchanged ear for eye in time to hazily frame the little manager in the peephole again as he sat slumped forward in his chair at the desk. Johnny's eyes stung from the perspiration, and he sleeved them roughly. Vision was playing tricks on him now; in the inky blackness great white lights roared up and silently assaulted his retinas, and nausea was a cold, balled fist in his middle.
Enough was enough; he'd heard more than he had had any licence to expect. With painful deliberation he wormed his way backward out of the cavern whose walls seemed to press in more tightly upon him by the moment, pausing only to use the flashlight to prompt the positioning of his feet.
He noted wryly upon reaching his starting point that the comparatively cramped confines of the maid's closet felt like a ballroom after the constricting embrace of the passageway between the walls, and in the first instant of light, air, and space in the outside corridor he felt like a grain of sand on the beach.
He blinked at the light in the corridor, hurriedly replaced the ladder in its accustomed spot, and thankfully closed the door. On the way to his room only two things were in his mind: he had to call Sally and find out whom Ronald Frederick had called, and he had to get out of this uniform and under the shower.
With his own door closed behind him he pulled his cigarettes from his breast pocket, then smashed the sodden pack against the wall in disgust. His throat felt parched, and his stomach uneasy; he stripped quickly, balling the soggy uniform trousers and jacket tightly and flinging them into the open closet on his way to the shower, but his impatience detoured him to the phone. “Sally?”
“Oh, Johnny-! Where've you been?”
“In the woodwork.”
“Isn't it terrible about Dutch?”
He could picture the thin, white face whose lips seemed always to turn blue in moments of stress, and he shook his head. “Don't take it so big, kid. He was an old man.”
“But he was alive an hour ago!”
He tried to keep the impatience from his tone. “He was an old man, Sally. He'd seen it all. And he went quick. A lot of us might like to go as quick some day.” He could hear the sibilant sounds as she sniffled into the operator's mouthpiece. “Pull yourself together, ma. There's something I want to know.”
“Y-yes-?”
“Who did Freddie call just now?”
“Freddie? He hasn't made any c-calls.”
“For God's sake, I heard him make it! Ten minutes ago, maybe. No longer.”
“He hasn't called anyone. Not from his room, anyway.”
He removed the receiver from his ear and stared at it questioningly before replacing it with a shrug. “So you blew one, ma. Forget it. You're a little shook. It's not the end of the world.”
“I didn't blow anything! He hasn't called a s-soul!”
He could hear the rising hysteria in her voice, and he made his own soothing. “Sure, sure, ma. Forget it. I musta blown a fuse up here. I'm gonna lie down for a few minutes after I shower. Tell Paul to call me if he needs me.” He hung up the phone and stared at the far wall, finger and thumb tugging absentmindedly at an ear lobe. “Now who in the hell could he have called?” He shrugged again. “Tough break. It's for sure the kid don't miss many.”
He worried it around under the steaming hot water, and after a cold rinse emerged no nearer a solution. He slid into fresh underwear, and glanced at his watch on the bureau; scarcely more than an hour since he had stood in the alley and watched the lights come on in the kitchen far down the side of the building.
Max was gone, and Dutch was gone, and Dumas-if that was his name-was gone, all violently, and judging from their temper the police knew little more than he did. Johnny ran a comb through thick, damp hair; it was just about time that a thread frazzled somewhere on the fringe and gave a man something he could follow up to the counterpane.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to divorce his mind from his still queasy stomach. He opened a drawer and looked in at a carton of cigarettes, changed his mind, and closed the drawer again. He went back into the bathroom and wrung out a towel in cold water, returned to the bed, stretched out, and placed it over his eyes. Deliberately he tried to make his mind a blank; he tried to withdraw physically from the painful hammering just behind his eyes.
The phone woke him. Bright sunlight poured in the room as he sat up with a start, and he blinked as he reached for it. “Yeah?”
“It's Sally.”
“Christ.” Unbelievingly he looked at the sun. “You still downstairs?”
“I'm at the apartment. It's noontime.”
“Noontime! Man, was that ever a blackout-”
“I sent Paul up to look at you. He said you were sound asleep, so I told him to leave you alone. He didn't have any trouble the balance of the shift.”
“You callin' for anything special?”
“Well, you wanted to know about anything that looked even a little bit unusual-”
“So what's unusual?”
“Well, we wouldn't notice it on our shift, but Myrna mentioned when I relieved her last night that 1224 has had every meal in her room since she checked in three days ago.”
“Sick, probably.”
“Myrna says not. I looked at the registry card, and she's a Mrs. Carl Muller, from Bremerhaven, Germany.”
Johnny frowned. “Could be something, at that You did right to call me. I'll probably be by the place in an hour or so, ma. Put some beer in the refrigerator, huh? See you soon.”
He swung his legs off the bed to the floor and stood up. His eyes were as gritty as though they had been well sanded, but outside of that he felt fine. He dropped to the floor and did a dozen pushups, then went into the bathroom and shaved. He dressed leisurely; he couldn't remember the last time he had been up this early in the day. He felt good.
He rode the main elevator down to the lobby and walked back through the bar to the kitchen, returning to normal after the luncheon rush. He waved to Hans, the first cook, standing to the left of the big range, a tall man with a perpetually sour expression. “Have someone throw a few eggs in a skillet for me, Hans? 'N a handful of home fries.”
Johnny drew a big mug of steaming coffee from the big urn and carried it over to the butcher's block in the corner which he always used as a table. He upended a ginger ale case for a seat, and seated himself as Hans himself silently placed on the block a platter containing a half dozen eggs sunnyside up and a heaping mound of potatoes.
“Thanks, Hans.” Johnny sugared his black coffee liberally, and looked up at the tall man standing beside him, and at the look on Hans's face he remembered. “Oh. Last night.” Johnny shook his head. “Rough. Police talk to you yet?”
“They were here this morning.” Displeasure wrinkled Hans's brow. “They don't know any more than I do.”
“They got a way of worrying things till they come up with an answer. Freddie say anything? He going to give you a shot at the job?”
“I am to talk to him this afternoon. I certainly hope-”
“Possession is nine points of the law,” Johnny reminded him. “You're on the ground, and you're producin'. That's the main thing.”
Hans shrugged, not too cheerfully, and walked away to supervise a boy cleaning the interior of a small refrigerator. Johnny attacked his eggs. One thing about a kitchen run by Dutch and Hans, he mused: the sauces and the relishes might have a little less tang or brio than in a French kitchen, but damn if you couldn't literally eat off the floor. Cleanliness came even before godliness with these people.
He ate steadily, only an occasional twinge in his jaw reminding him of the skirmish of two evenings ago. He lingered over his coffee, then looked up and around for Hans as the memory of Sally's telephone call came to him. “Hans!”
“Yes?”
“Who's rushin' the trays upstairs these days?”
“Richie Gordon.”
“He around?”
“In the boiler room, probably. He always is.”
Johnny finished his coffee, stacked his dishes and carried them over to the rack. He re-crossed the long room to the rear, opened the massive fire door and descended the spiral metal staircase to the storeroom below. He threaded his way through the narrow passageway created by the high piled cases of canned goods on either side and approached a huge door heavily padded with asbestos. The door opened outward as Johnny reached for it, and he peered through the gloom dispelled scarcely at all by the widespaced naked light bulbs. “Eddie? Richie in there?”
White teeth shone in the dark face, but the rich voice was disconsolate. “He shuah is, Mist' Johnny. Him an' all the money.”
The heavy door creaked shut behind Johnny as he stepped inside and joined the tightknit kneeling semicircle. A slim, uniformed youngster with the face of a choir boy was speaking earnestly to the medium-sized green dice he held in his hand. “-one's for the coach and carriage, children … hit it quick for papa, and we're over the hill and far away. Little big ol' natural comin' up… I can feel it… I can feel it jus' as plain-”
“That's what she said,” a basso profundo growled from his audience. “Throw the damn dice, Richie.”
The boy's arm swung forward, and the dice clanked off the furnace front, spun dizzily, and stopped, and the boy leaped into the air, straight as an arrow. “Eleven! Nice little dice-”
Heavy breathing and disgusted mutters drifted upward; green money fluttered downward, and Fred, the day bartender, straightened stiffly and backed out of the circle, shaking his head ruefully as he caught Johnny's eye. “Ain't that kid somethin'?”
“You boys are missing a bet, Fred. The kid's lucky. You ought to make up a pot and take him around to a real game. He ties a few passes together there, you guys'll have had a good season, and God knows seems like every time I walk in here he's either puttin' on a hand or just finished one.
“Maybe you're right, at that. He's sure enough got us all working for him here. You'd think this game was a benefit. We'll play hell gettin' our money back from him, the way he's goin'.”
The boy rubbed the dice briskly on his sleeve, speaking to them as equals. “-whisper to me one time, now, and we burn down the grandstand… comin' up, comin' out, comin' out, comin' up… one time now… hah!”
He rolled a nine, and made it right back; threw a four, and rolled interminably before taking down the money with two deuces; rolled a seven; rolled an eleven, and sevened out looking for an eight. The circle around him was decimated; silent figures on their knees glumly watched the boy stuff loose bills in his pockets, and the dice lay idle on the floor. The spirit, as well as the money, was gone from the game.
Johnny caught the boy's eye. “Got a minute, Richie?”
“Sure thing, John.”
Johnny led him into a corner, and looked down into the precociously wise hazel eyes in the young face. “1224, Rich.”
The boy made a wry face. “Not a dime.” *
“Not for three a day?”
“Notfornothin'.”
“She sick?”
“Naah.”
“What's she look like?”
Richie's arm made a sweeping gesture. “Like a million more middle-aged dames. Kinda gray, kinda mousey-”
“I might make that run for you tonight, kid. Or tomorrow.”
The hazel eyes examined Johnny thoughtfully. “Now that'd be a brand change, for sure.”
“Let it be my problem, huh? If you think I'm around, give me a buzz upstairs.”
Richie shrugged. “Be my guest. I still think-”
“Your career's not in thinkin', kid.”
Richie smiled, bent swiftly, and picked up the dice. “Little head-to-head, John?”
“Not with you, Rich. I believe you.”
On the way back upstairs he remembered that he had told Sally he would come up by the apartment. His pace quickened a little; it seemed like a better idea now than when he had first thought of it. He whistled tunelessly as he ran up the metal stairway.