“You stay the hell away from me, Turner. I don't-”
“I'm not fussy about standing around down here until someone recognizes me,” the promoter interrupted. “Give me the room number, and stop being a jackass.”
“Six-fifteen,” Johnny told him reluctantly. The phone clicked in his ear, and Johnny made an effort to stir himself from the lethargic state of mind into which he had drifted before the phone's ring had jerked him awake. What could be important enough to Turner to bring him over here? Johnny shook his head; it wasn't worth the effort to force himself to think. In two minutes the answer would be on his threshold.
He opened the door at the promoter's knock and stared at the apparition he had admitted. Lonnie Turner was huddled in a shapeless coat sizes too large for him, and he had a black snap-brim hat pulled down over his eyes and a woolen scarf over mouth and chin.
“Costume party?” Johnny inquired sourly, closing the door. “Or is that your disguise when you're out hirin' murderers?”
“I see no more humor in this damned masquerade than you do,” Turner said coldly, disposing of the articles with jerky movements of his arms. He rubbed his hands together briskly, blew on them and ran them lightly over the pompadoured white hair. He paced the room in short, choppy strides as Johnny watched him, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of the expensive-looking suit.
“Light somewhere, will you?” Johnny said in disgust. “You'd give anyone the twitch, just watchin' you.”
“I want to know where I stand with you,” the promoter said, wheeling abruptly. “I suppose you blame me for-”
“You're goddam right I blame you!” Johnny interrupted truculently.
“I knew I had to talk to you,” Lonnie Turner said in a self-satisfied tone. “I don't want you going off half-cocked because of what happened.” Authority and arrogance mingled in the expressive voice. “I'll admit I might have been a little more prescient as far as Monk was concerned in view of his reaction to the girl during the period of her employment, but I refuse to concede that I contributed in any manner at all to his actions.”
“You refuse to concede-” Johnny echoed bitterly. “You're not talking to your lawyers, Turner. You threw the kid overboard!”
“She threw me overboard,” Turner corrected him sharply. “I'm not in the habit of continuing to employ help who sell me out to the other side, for reasons of romance or anything else. Keith should have told me a week ago that you'd been seeing her. She couldn't have worked for me for five minutes afterward. I hired her in the first place because I thought her lack of sophistication would prevent this sort of thing.”
“You bastard, you had an obligation-”
“Don't tell me about my obligations, damn you!” the promoter interrupted angrily. “I run my business to suit myself!” The healthily tanned features were flushed. “Obligations! What about her obligation to me? Am I supposed to wet-nurse some foolish girl who deliberately chooses up sides against me? Be yourself, Killain. And blame yourself. Don't blame me. You're of age, if she isn't.” He quieted down a little. “Of course I wished the girl no personal harm, and I certainly never dreamed that Monk would take it upon himself to go over there and act as he did, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand still and have you snatch the rug out from under me just because you in your sublime ignorance feel that I should have had more control of a situation that you yourself provoked!” His voice had risen sharply again.
“If you won't stand for it, you can sit for it,” Johnny told him, his voice hard. “You and I are through, mister.”
Lonnie Turner was plainly striving to retain a grip upon himself. “I didn't come over here to make threats, Killain. I didn't come over here to argue with you. I knew you'd react this way. Through circumstances I bitterly regret, you possess information that can inestimably damage my freedom of action if misused. I'm just asking that before you throw me to the wolves you disregard aroused emotion for a moment and realize that basically nothing has changed in our situation.”
“You're a fine one to talk about throwin' to the wolves!” Johnny commented harshly. “You're also goin' to a hell of a lot of trouble, it strikes me, for a man whose only concern is standin' off a tax case he probably could beat.”
The white-haired man slapped his palms together in exasperation. “Will you kindly permit me to be the judge of my concern? I've never bothered to ask you what gives you your kick out of life, Killain. Mine happens to be the unhampered conduct of my own affairs in my own way. Once I stand a tax examination under the gamy circumstances rife in this case I've got those people looking down my throat for all time.”
Johnny needled him deliberately. “I still think you fixed that fight.”
Turner refused to rise to the bait. “So we're back at that point again? The answer is the same-I had no interest whatever in fixing it or having it fixed. I categorically deny that I had anything at all to do with it.”
Johnny shook his head stubbornly. “You'd make a good witness, mister, but what about the facts? Every goddam spoke in the wheel goes right back to you. Roketenetz, Gidlow, Hendricks, Keith, Chavez, Carmody, Munson-you pulled the strings on every single one.”
He could see the glistening shine on the high forehead. “Hendricks? If he came back to life and walked through that door I'm not sure I'd recognize the man. I may have met him three or four times, never socially. Can't you get it through your thick head that in the course of a year just about everyone in the fight game at least walks through my office?” He drew a deep breath. “We're wasting time. I want your word that the situation is unchanged.”
“You want my word!” Johnny growled. “What you'll get from me is the back of my hand, or my shoe tattooed to your tail. If you can't control Carmody, I'm supposed to believe you can control those other muzzlers you're supposed to keep off Sally's back? Grab for a bailin' bucket, buster; you're on your own. For my money you're not even capable of runnin' your own business, even if you're clear on the other, which I doubt. I don't trust you, Turner, not-” He broke off at the ring of the telephone, hesitated and shuffled over to the night table. “Yeah?”
“Dameron, downstairs. Can we come up?”
“I'm busy, Joe,” Johnny said impatiently.
“We'll be right there,” the heavy voice said blandly, and the connection was broken.
“Company,” Johnny announced, and turned to see the promoter putting his hat, coat and scarf back on.
“I won't forget this, Killain,” he said in a brittle tone. “If the day ever comes that I drop this decision, the ripples will reach you, so help me.”
“Ahhh, turn it off!” Johnny snapped testily. “You had me fooled for a while, Turner. You're like a kid playin' store, an' because you got money everyone's supposed to say 'yessir.' What you haven't got you try to buy, and what you can't buy you try to scare. The hell with you.”
The intense, furious features glared back at Johnny from the doorway. “Just keep on living until I can get to you!” Johnny started for him, but the door opened and closed, and the promoter was gone. Johnny hesitated an instant, reopened the door, looked up and down the deserted corridor and left it ajar. He walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge.
A brief tap on the door preceded the entrance of Lieutenant Joseph Dameron and Detective Ted Cuneo. The lieutenant dropped heavily into the leather armchair before the television set, picked up first one foot and then the other and studied each critically. “It's hell to get old,” he said finally, and passed a hand tiredly over his face, the apple cheeks of which were tinted nearly purple from the temperature outside. “Good thing you're on the sixth floor instead of the sixteenth.”
“Aren't the elevators running, for God's sake?” Johnny demanded.
“Just thought I'd like to see who you were shooing down the back way,” Dameron said easily.