Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 2, February, 1955
The Revolving Door
by Sam Merwin, Jr.
He just kept thinking about it. It would be so nice to walk right out of the hotel and be free... even if he got killed for it...
Marty looked up from the cards as the maid came out of the bedroom with the used sheets rolled up in her arms. His dark regard caught her pale blue eyes and held them. She paused politely, waiting for him to speak, while he flipped through the file of his thoughts, searching desperately for something to say. Finally, as she made some small movement, he managed it.
“What’s your name?”
“Ellen, sir.” They were the first words she had spoken to him in the nine days he had been there, save for the routine, “Do you mind if I come in, sir?”
He wasn’t used to being called “sir.” It threw him off stride. But then, he wasn’t used to wanting to talk to a woman like this. He wasn’t used to living in a hotel like this. He wasn’t used to being alone.
He said, “You’re a good girl, Ellen.” The words sounded ridiculous in his inner ears.
But she merely nodded and said, “Thank you, sir. It’s a lovely day out, sir.” Then she went on her way to the linen closet in the hall beyond, leaving the door open behind her.
Marty told himself she hadn’t meant anything by it. Or had she? She couldn’t have. No one knew he was staying here in this hotel, not even Ryan. The maid came back, carrying towels — the pale yellow towels of the hotel. As she disappeared through the bedroom door, on her way to the bathroom beyond, he wondered how many of those elegant towels were stolen by guests every year. This place, he thought, was so elegant probably not even the guests would steal.
This elegance was a vital factor in Marty’s plan. He had worked the whole scheme out almost a year before, when it became evident that he was losing control of the rackets, that Big Nick was muscling his way up to the top. Marty never kidded himself — that was one of the keys to his survival. Ten years ago, even five, he’d have squashed Big Nick and his boys like so many mosquitoes.
But running the rackets was like being a big league ball player — you had just so many base hits, just so many catches, in you. Then it was time to quit, before the game caught up with you. It was quitting time for Marty.
He’d figured the whole thing out. Convert capital into cash — then take a walk and disappear. He had the cash, five neat envelopes, each containing a crisp package of a hundred thousand-dollar bills. They were in a neat alligator-skin briefcase, locked securely in the hotel safe. If need be, he could discard the briefcase and stash the envelopes in his pockets — but they’d ruin the cut of his suit.
The case was his sole piece of luggage when he’d walked into the hotel. He had bought a couple of big suitcases since — by telephone. Suitcases and shirts and ties and underwear and pajamas, all neatly monogrammed with the initials GS. George Smithers — he liked the Smithers touch instead of Smith. It was smart, where Smith would have been stupid. Just as coming to this hotel was smart.
They wouldn’t come after him here. To raise a ruckus in this haven for the very rich, the very important, would be to invite the sky to fall in on them. Even if they knew he was there — which they didn’t. They wouldn’t touch him here.
The one factor he hadn’t figured was that it would take so long for Ryan to arrange transport out of the country. Six days ago, when Marty called him, Ryan had said it would take another week. One more day to go. Ryan thought he was using the name of Gregory Somers — that would be the name on the passport the lawyer was getting for him. And when he registered as George Smithers, Marty had told the desk-clerk he wished to remain incognito during his stay. Those were his words — “I wish to remain incognito.” Marty smiled to himself as he looked at the cards on the table in front of him. A Yale professor couldn’t have said them better.
The king of clubs was hopelessly buried. Marty thought of cheating himself at solitaire, then gathered the cards with a swift, deft gesture and shuffled them for another try. The maid — Ellen — came out and paused by the door and said, “Is there anything else, sir?”
He said, wishing she’d call him Mr. Smithers, George, anything but that goddam “sir.”
“I guess not. You can leave the door open, though.”
He looked after her, wondering why nothing was ever the way it was in the movies. In a place like this, he’d expected the maids would be all dolled up in short black dresses with frilly aprons and caps, like the pants on lamb chops in fancy restaurants. Not in simple, pale green frocks that melted into the walls. And Ellen was no chick. She was well into her placid thirties and broad across the beam. Still, he thought, staring after her, not a bad pair of hips. Not fancy, maybe, but practical. A broad that is a broad, he thought.
Whoa — he was getting island happy. And women were not, had never been, his weakness. But nine days — and nine nights — without a single drink was a hell of a long time for a man like Marty. If you didn’t smoke or play the chicks, there had to be some compensation. For more than twenty years, alcohol had been Marty’s. The very best of alcohol, in the very best mixture, taken slowly, steadily, never enough to addle his wits but enough to keep his nerves from snapping like used-up rubber bands under the never-easing tension of his work.
But lately, as his confidence crumbled under the assault of Big Nick and his musclemen, it had been getting him. And now, when he wanted one of those special drinks only Louis, his houseman, knew how to make — a julep, of special, uncommercial Kentucky bourbon, spiced with crushed mint and topped by an armagnac float, he couldn’t afford to. He couldn’t trust Louis any more than he could trust any of the others. Not with Big Nick making the power play he’d been making lately. He couldn’t trust anybody, not even Ryan — though he had enough on that slick shyster to keep him in line until he was safely out of the country.
And there were a lot of places in the world where Gregory Somers, American, could settle down and live like an emperor on five hundred grand. Five hundred gees would buy a lot of juleps — with armagnac floats. As a kid, he’d resented his alien parentage, the accent he’d had to work so hard to get out of his voice. But now he was grateful. His Spanish and Italian might be gutter-glib — but with them, he could get by anywhere except maybe in Russia. And who wanted to go to Russia except a lot of crazy Commies?
The door of the room across the hall was open and Marty could hear faint strains of hot jazz coming his way. Illinois Jacquet on tenor sax — that kind of music was something he knew about. Hearing it now, in these surroundings, it gave him a lift and made him a little sad, all at once. It reminded him of all the good times, all the good places, all the good music, all the chicks he was kissing good-by. To hear it better, he got up and strolled to the door and stood there, listening.
The husky kid had moved in across the hall three days earlier. Marty had seen him, passed him in the hall, maybe a half dozen times. A great tall kid, maybe six-three, with shoulders like a football player. A crew-cut kid with a slightly busted nose and an otherwise round, healthy, untroubled face. An unpressed-tweed and flannels kid, an Ivy League kid who would never have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to. The kind of a kid who belonged in a place like this. Marty wondered what a kid like that thought about, how he felt. He wondered if Ellen called him “sir,” or “Mr. Wiggensworth,” or whatever his name was.