In the kitchen the dinner hour rush was over; Johnny could see only a single red jacket and a sprinkling of whites behind the glistening steel tables. Hans was seated at Dutch's old desk, and Johnny drew off a mug of coffee at the big urn and walked over to him. He didn't particularly want the coffee, but he did want to talk to the first cook, who sat staring off into space, his hands idly shuffling a stack of loose invoices.
“You got the sugar, Hans?” Johnny upended a box and sat down beside him, and the tall man silently opened a drawer and removed two glassined envelopes which he handed to Johnny, who noted the tremor in the offering hand and the bloated lids on the redrimmed eyes. Hans's nerves seemed very nearly out of control.
“Freddie said anything yet?” Johnny asked him and watched the negative curl of the lip and the shake of the head.
“I dislike that man,” Hans said suddenly, then attempted to smile in self-disparagement of his own vehemence. “I shouldn't say that. He's within his rights in taking his time in making up his mind. Yet it means so much to me. And I have not been sleeping well. And I have not had word-” His voice trailed off, and his eyes came back to Johnny as if again becoming aware of his presence. “You'd think he'd realize the impossible position in which he places me. I'm neither fish nor fowl. I give orders, but where is the authority to enforce them?” He waved the bills in his hand at Johnny. “These tradesmen. What respect can they have for me?”
“It'll work out, Hans,” Johnny said soothingly. He sipped at the strong black coffee, and in his mind cast about for a lead-in remark in which to mention Myrna to Hans. He wanted a reaction from the first cook. An occasional raised voice was the only disturbance in the quiet kitchen, and up front a busboy went from counter to counter turning out the lights in the forward end of the long room. Darkness crept toward them, and the goose-necked light on the desk spotlighted their corner.
This is the way it must have been for Dutch, Johnny thought suddenly, sitting here targeted by this same light on the desk. He himself had walked in here many a morning through the service door and found the old man reading or nodding over his book. But the murderers had not come through the service door. Johnny frowned; why would old Dutch let himself be spotlighted in such a manner if he had heard the noise of entrance-even a key- from any unaccustomed direction? The old man was scarcely a fool. Unless he had been asleep.
Johnny stared at the far wall, trying to concentrate on a teasing tickle in the foreground of his mind. If Dutch had been asleep, the light would have been on, and the intruders would have been warned. But suppose Dutch had been awake and had switched off his light and had sat there in the dark watching them? Johnny shook his head; that didn't make sense, either, for if the old man had done that, why expose himself to them later? Unless it had seemed important….
He ran his eyes around the rectangular room. From where he sat he could see the fire door which led down to the storeroom below. He could see three of the tall windows which, though not barred, were always securely locked from the inside. He could see the small door leading into the bakery ovens which was locked only occasionally. It had been a bone of contention whether it had been locked that night. He could see the two massive walk-in boxes with their heavy steel corner bracings and their brass padlocks. He could see-
He stifled an impulse to jump to his feet; he could feel his pulse accelerate. He turned his head to look at the cook, and with an effort kept his voice casual. “Hans?”
The tall man looked up from his shuffled invoices. “Yes?”
“When'd you have the butcher last?”
Hans smiled sourly, as though reminded of another cross to bear. “He will be here in the morning. Another front office economy. Whoever heard of a hotel kitchen with a butcher being called in twice a week to dress out four days work in advance? Ridiculous. You simply cannot function-”
“I asked you when he was here last!”
The cook looked startled at the vigor of the interruption. “Why, twice a week he comes; what then? Three days ago, four days ago; from week to week it varies. I can look it up. I remember he ruined a loin of pork. Ridiculous. I say-
“Has that big box been opened since the night Dutch was killed?”
Hans sucked in his breath, and his eyes widened. “1 have not opened it. There has been no need. I have not-”
“Gimme your keys.” Johnny was on his feet, palm extended. He hefted the huge key ring placed in it by the tall man. “Which one is the meat box key?”
Hans silently picked it out for him, and Johnny walked across to the twelve foot high meat locker with the cook on his heels. Johnny unlocked the big padlock and handed it to Hans. The tall man's voice was husky. “You don't think-?”
“Won't have to think in a minute.” Johnny threw back the long bar handle, and the big door creaked open. Inches of frost clung to its inner side, and a breath of frigid air drifted out with a swirling mist. An ammoniac smell wrinkled Johnny's nostrils unpleasantly, and he stepped inside and tried to quell a shiver. This damn place was fantastically cold after the heat of the kitchen. “Where's the lights, Hans?”
The cook reached over his shoulder and snapped on the switch, and bright daylight washed over them. Johnny took a quick look around the floor with particular attention to the corners of the freezer; he started to step around the butcher's block for a better look, and a strangled sound from behind him caused him to pivot sharply. The white-faced Hans was staring at the rows of frozen carcasses suspended from their heavy hooks, and Johnny turned in the direction of the stricken gaze. One look was enough; he cleared his throat. “I don't see any government stamp on that one, Hans. Let's get out of here.”
The cook did not appear to have heard him. Shock had transfixed him; Johnny put a hand on his arm to recall him. With a convulsive movement Hans threw off the hand and dropped to his knees and addressed a hoarse torrent of guttural pleading to the body on the hook.
“Hans!” Johnny said sharply. “Hans!”
Roughly he placed his hand under the chin of the kneeling man, and at the sight of the glassy unrecognition he waited no longer. He caught Hans as his body slipped away from the short right hand punch that had blanked out the staring eyes, and Johnny picked him up and carried him outside and laid him down on a counter.
He hesitated an instant, then stepped back inside the locker and with a hurried two hand lift removed the chilled, slippery body from the hook on which it hung and laid it out on the floor. He left the box, closed the door, threw over the long bar, and headed for a telephone.
Chapter IX
Detective James Rogers sat at the shabby desk in the corner of the kitchen and wrote busily in his notebook while Johnny squatted on the upended box and watched him. Once again the kitchen was quiet; it was three hours since Johnny had found the body in the meat locker, had called the police, and the cloud of investigators had descended upon the place as they had the night Dutch had been killed. The body had been removed, and Hans had been given a needle and taken upstairs, and the uniformed and plainclothesmen had done their big and little jobs and departed, and only Detective Rogers remained.
In the silence he wrote on, less rapidly, pausing to frown at the wall, and he finally slipped his pen back in his inside breast pocket while he riffled pages and re-read what he had entered. He sighed deeply, closed the book with a snap, and looked over at Johnny. “A ringtailed wowzer of a mess, brother.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agreed. “Look, before you put that notebook away-I couldn't reach Joe this morning-”
“Out of town all day.”
“-so I'd better give this information to you. Were you with him when he called me last night?”