the throat as Monk's weight and impetus toppled him backward. They went floorward with a crash that shook the whole apartment. Johnny reached up hungrily from beneath and encircled the thick-set body in his arms. His veins felt like molten lava. Ignoring the pounding hands, he applied the constriction with every ounce in him, and Monk stiffened and groaned. Johnny was barely conscious of a burning in one ear as he worried the burden in his arms in a side-to-side movement until it screamed like a stricken horse for seconds before it went limp.
Johnny clawed himself savagely up to his knees. He picked Monk up and smashed him at eye level into the wall, picked up the sodden mass that rebounded within range of his reaching hands and smashed it again.
He was reaching for Monk again when he heard a thin, piercing edge of sound he dimly associated with Stacy, and then a great white light flared brilliantly and he pitched forward into a retreating darkness.
Detective James Rogers strode into the emergency room to find Johnny sitting stripped to the waist upon the examination table. “Well, he's alive,” he said bitterly. “No thanks to you.”
A white-uniformed intern approached the table, needle and catgut in hand. “Give me a minute with that ear, now,” he announced with professional cheeriness, “and we'll have it as good as new.”
Johnny bowed his head, and the room became silent. When the intern stepped back Johnny looked at the watching detective. “How's the girl, Jimmy?”
“About out of her mind,” the sandy-haired man replied tartly. “What the hell would you expect? You scared her worse than Carmody did. She got the door open finally and ran screaming down the hall, and a couple of the neighbors ran in and beat you off what was left of Monk. And a damn good thing, or I'd be taking you in for at least manslaughter. As it is, only that bruise on her wrist stands between you and an aggravated assault charge.” He turned as he saw that he had lost Johnny's attention.
Stacy Bartlett stood in the emergency room doorway, a hospital robe thrown over the shoulders of her dress. She walked directly to Johnny. “Thank you,” she said quietly. Her usual fresh color was missing, her features were haggard and the soft lips were bloodless. “I'm staying here tonight,” she continued conversationally, and Johnny nodded. “Tomorrow I'm going back to the farm. You remember you said once that I might not care to gear myself up to the tough set of circumstances in this town, as you put it? I don't, any more.”
“I messed things up for you, kid. I really did.”
“Don't feel that way, please.” She extended a hand gravely, and he took it. “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.”
When she had gone it was some seconds before Johnny reached for his undershirt and eased it on over the bandaged ear. He slid off the table and picked up his shirt as Detective Rogers resumed his irritated monologue. “I don't care what this Carmody is, Johnny, I've told you time and time again that things like this are going to get you in-”
“Ahhh, bag it, Jimmy,” Johnny said shortly. He worked his jacket on carefully over his shoulders. “Who'd miss the sonofabitch?” He moved toward the door. “Or me, either?”
CHAPTER XIV
The ring of the telephone aroused Johnny from a blank-eyed inspection of the wallpaper in his room. He heaved himself laboriously to his feet from the depths of his armchair and picked up the receiver from the night table beside the bed. “Yeah?”
“I want to see you, Killain. Right now.”
“Who the hell-” Johnny began, and recognized the crackling-syllabled voice of Lonnie Turner before he had completed the question. “You've got a nerve, man!”
“Don't be childish,” the staccato voice rapped at Johnny over the wire. “What's your room number?”
“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.”
