Lonnie Turner's office was in the Emerson Building, a block off Eighth Avenue on Fifty-third, and Johnny emerged from the third-floor elevator directly into a tastefully decorated green-and-gold waiting room complete with platinumed receptionist.
He looked around him approvingly. “Lonnie got this whole floor?” he asked the good-looking girl behind the rectangular limed oak desk.
“Mr. Turner has this floor,” she agreed pleasantly. Johnny admired the white blouse and the expanse of trim wool suit visible from his side of the desk; this girl was no midget. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Turner, sir?”
“No appointment.”
The girl managed to look doubtful, glance at her watch and reach for the phone at the same time. “The name, please?”
“Johnny Killain,” he told her. “What's yours?”
The look she directed upward changed from surprise to amusement as she intercepted his eyes upon the well-shaped, ringless fingers of the capable-looking left hand upon the phone. “The name is Bartlett, Mr. Killain. Stacy.”
“Miss Stacy Bartlett.” Johnny lingered over the syllables. “I like that.”
“Thank you.” She said it demurely. Johnny examined cameo features which were no miniature, large brown eyes, full mouth and a clean sweeping nose that was an asset to the prominent cheekbones slightly orientalizing the eyes.
“The hair doesn't match the coloring,” he told her after an inspection of the conservatively cut but dazzlingly blonde upsweep.
Her answering smile was unruffled. She had a very nice smile, Johnny thought. “I can't get used myself to that first look in the mirror mornings, Mr. Killain, but when I went looking for work it really seemed almost a requirement.”
“You a Polska, Stacy? How long since you run barefoot on the farm?”
“I'm a Polska,” she admitted. “And it hasn't been so very long.” She leaned back in her chair and took another look at him. “You know, I've been here three months now, and you're the first person to notice that I'm Polish or from the country. I was beginning to feel quite citified, with the help of the hair.”
“It's a class job,” Johnny conceded, “but it's not you. An' Stacy-that had to be Stacia when you were in pigtails.”
She smiled her agreement. “Stacia didn't seem to go with the hair.” The brown eyes appraised him coolly as she lifted the receiver. “Without appointment, a Mr. John Killain to see you, Mr. Turner.”
Now I'd give a Confederate dollar bill to know just what wheels that introduction started turning, Johnny thought.
Stacy was still on the phone. “Yes. Right away, Mr. Turner.”
“So I'm in like Flynn?” he asked the girl as she opened the center drawer of her desk and removed a small key ring.
“Yes, indeed,” she replied, a blonde eyebrow quirked gracefully. “I'll have to let you in, since Monk isn't here.” She pushed back from the desk. “It's through this door, and straight-”
“Did you say Monk?” Johnny asked sharply. When she turned to look at him in surprise he held up a hand negatively. “Never mind. Excuse the interruption.” He followed her to the three identical heavy-hinged doors at the rear of the reception room and nodded at the keys in her hand. “Lonnie expectin' a raid?”
“All kinds of people call on Mr. Turner,” she said gravely as she unlocked the left-hand door. She turned in time to catch his careful assessment of the woolen suit.
“Nice,” he told her, and she colored faintly. He measured her with his eyes. “About five-ten? Vitamins should take you, kid. How much you weigh?”
“One-forty-nine.” She nibbled ruefully at her lower lip. “Honestly, I don't know why I'm being so-truthful!” She examined him again as though trying to find the answer in his appearance.
“Nineteen?”
“Twenty-one.” Her color rose still higher at this skeptical look. “Well, nearly-”
“Cocktails tomorrow after work?” At her silence he grinned at her. “Ice cream sodas?”
“I'm not a child,” she replied with dignity. “If I go, I think I'd like to try the cocktail.”
“You haven't before? Well, you got to start apprenticin' to be an adult sometime,” Johnny agreed. “What time you get off here?”
“Four-thirty.”
“I'll be stage-door Johnny downstairs at four-thirty tomorrow.”
She nodded as though she were still a little surprised at the whole idea. A faint line of puzzlement appeared between the sleek brows. “Do you-are you usually so impetuous, Mr. Killain?”
“Johnny,” he reminded her. “An' it depends on the provocation.”
He watched the renewed tide of color roll up from beneath the prim white blouse as without another word she opened the door, which eased back silently on its heavy hinges. He blew her a kiss from just inside as the door closed behind him. He listened to the solid-sounding chunk with which it fitted into the sill again, and he shook his head. Take a tank to breach that baby…
He looked around expectantly at the small, brightly lighted room, which didn't have a stick of furniture in it. The walls and ceiling were a pale green, and the only break in the monotonous expanse was a single-paned opaque window high up on the opposite wall. A lookout, Johnny thought. One-way glass. His eyes were still upon it when beneath the window a door, painted the same pale green and set so flush with the wall as to seem a part of it, opened quietly, and Johnny's expectations were realized as a squat man in a dark business suit stepped through.
“Well, well, Monk!” Johnny greeted him elaborately. “Small world, huh? You screenin' the admissions here? I always did wonder what you did for a livin', besides escortin' shysters.”
“So now you know.” The squat man stooped swiftly and began a light-patting manual examination of Johnny's slacks and sport coat from ankles to shoulders, front and back, with particular attention to hips and armpits.
“You think you know me that well?” Johnny asked mildly.
Monk didn't reply. Stepping back from Johnny, he raised his voice and addressed the window in the wall ahead of them. “No iron,” he said clearly, and motioned Johnny ahead of him. They waited at the front wall until the door silently opened inward. Electric, Johnny decided. Or electronic. From the doorway he glanced upward casually. The observation post was enclosed; the man behind the one-way glass who operated the door below upon an all- clear was not visible. And his one-way glass, Johnny realized, permitted him to see every movement in the room- except straight beneath him.
“Let's go, Killain,” Monk said impatiently. “Third door on the right inside. Walk right in.”
“Sure,” Johnny said soothingly. “You put everyone through this windmill?”
“We know who to do it to.” The dark face was arrogant.
“Is that right?” With the sound of his voice still in the air, Johnny turned slightly and hammered a solid muscle-punch to Monk's right arm. The squat man's mouth opened and closed, soundlessly; his features turned gray as he sagged against the door frame. Johnny reached quickly beneath a wide lapel, removed a snub-nosed revolver from the holster slung right-to-left across Monk's body and dropped it into his own jacket pocket.
Monk gamely pulled himself off the door jamb as he tried to recover; he lowered his head to charge. In the split second before momentum developed Johnny reached out and took the straining neck in his right hand, fending off wild swings with his left. Monk thrashed valiantly in the constricting grip, and then Johnny's searching thumb moved over a quarter inch and found the pressure point he sought. Monk's eyes rolled up until only the whites were visible, and he slumped loosely in Johnny's grasp.
Johnny eased him floorward quietly, listening for investigatory sounds overhead, but the little scuffle had apparently attracted no attention. He pushed the still figure back inside the bare room, and, as he had expected, when he cleared the inner side of the opened door it swung back into the wall by itself, eerily silent.
He entered briskly through the third door on the right and realized immediately he was in Lonnie Turner's private office. The decor was impressive, lavish, lush. The carpeting was luxuriantly thick, the lighting indirect and subdued. The promoter's desk was a massive mahogany monument, the four pastel telephones neatly arranged in its center its only touch of color. The chairs scattered liberally throughout the room were overstuffed
