Doom Service

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In the cloakroom behind the bell captain's desk in the Hotel Duarte, Johnny Killain straddled a suitcase leisurely, leaned back and, propping his shoulders comfortably against another bag, elevated his feet. He removed his cigarettes from the breast pocket of his uniform, shook one free from the pack and lipped it up into his mouth. Beyond the cloakroom, through the intervening closed door, he was aware of the familiarly hushed after-midnight sounds of a big-city hotel.

In the flare of his lighter, his face was almost forbidding. High cheekbones jutted boldly beneath deep-set pale eyes and tufted blond brows, and the craggy features dominated by a several-times-broken nose were bronzed to an extent suggesting prolonged exposure to a tropical sun. The mouth even in repose was a hard line, and the close-cropped unruly hair was the kind that sturdily resisted comb and brush.

He looked up inquiringly as the cloakroom door was thrust open and Paul Sassella looked in at him. Paul, a stockily taciturn middle-aged Swiss, was Johnny's right-hand man on the hotel midnight-to-eight shift. “Booth phone, Johnny. Second from the end.”

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