On the streets of a big city people smile and the lights are bright. But there is an alley world of darkness, double-dealing and death; in this world you need muscles and brains to take a stepand only the lucky ones live long.These two worlds meet in Hotel Duarte. Johnny Killain had a fistful of experience with both worldsand with Hotel Duarte:The girl in 1109 was a schoolmarm from a small western town; but when she visited the city she left her morals at home, stripped off the drab veneer and became an armful of seething hell.The ';salesman' in 1938 peddled death on the sideuntil he turned up cold very cold on a hook in the hotel icebox.Johnny had the keys to all the doorsto lust, love, greed and murder!