A Touch of Danger

by James Jones

  Inside, everything about the place had been done on the cheap the same way. A warped wooden dance floor of junk lumber had been laid down in sections. The junk tables and chairs, throw-aways from the cafes and tavernas in town, looked dangerous to use. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, the place was doing an enormous business and everybody seemed to love it. A lot of young Greek locals were there, a lot of rich kids of summer residents, and a lot of the Athenian tourists. And, of course, a lot of hippies from the Construction. A number of kids danced barefoot on the packed dirt around the edges of the dance floor.

  The word that I was there went ahead of me. As I’d expected. The boy at the door had passed it on. A wave of sullen anger passed across the dance floor and through the tables, when the hippies saw me. The others, the locals and the rich kids, didn’t notice me. I sat down at a rusty table, and stolidly ordered a Scotch. I hadn’t expected any different.

  A lot of people were seated around. Steve and Diane were at a sort of favored, owner’s table. Myopic Chuck was with them. Georgina Taylor was sitting with them, too. Georgina got a hollow-eyed disturbed look, when she saw me, and avoided looking in my direction. Right next to them were Sweet Marie and Slow John. With John and Marie was Jason, the Paris “recording star,” so stoned on hash he kept falling over. John and Marie had to keep propping him up. Nearby was the elegantly bearded Gruner, smiling as always.

  On his way to the dance floor with some hippie girl type Gruner paused, with a sardonic grin, and said hello.

  “I won’t sit,” he grinned. “You understand why.”

  “Sure,” I said, and grinned back. He was a good-looking guy, Gruner. Be a shame if anything happened to him. But I couldn’t worry about that now. I tossed off the rest of my drink and ordered another.

  When I reordered, Steve got up and sauntered over. With a flick of his blue eyes Steve stopped my waiter.

  Behind him at the table Chuck got up, too. But Diane grabbed him by his shirt tail. Apparently he’d been told to stay away. She tried to make him sit back down, but he refused.

  There was a definite authority about Steve, here in his own joint. I could see why Marie said he had the flair. It was a little flagrantly displayed, maybe.

  “I’d rather you didn’t order that second one.”

  I looked up at him. “Oh? How come? You mean you’re buying one?”

  “No. I’m asking you to leave.”

  I pursed out my lips. “What if I don’t want to?”

  “It would be easy for me to have you thrown out.”

  I let my eyes run around at all the hippies all around me. One by one they dropped their gaze, as mine swept past them. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you’ve got the muscle. Certainly not without creating such a rumpus you’d get your joint closed down. They’re just waiting for something to jump on you with, chum.” I turned suddenly to the waiter, another youngster from the Construction. “Here. You. Young man. Bring me a bottle of Scotch.”

  The waiter looked at Steve.

  “Tell him not to bring it,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  Steve stared at me, expressionless. With those weird, stoned eyes.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  His knuckles were resting on the table top. I watched them turn white. For a long moment he didn’t move a muscle. Then slowly, he lowered his eyelids in a slow blink of assent to the waiter.

  The waiter nodded a jerky nod, and went off to the bar.

  I grinned at Steve. “Why don’t you sit down? Take a load off your feet, and save a little face at the same time.”

  He slid into one of my chairs. Behind him Chuck had come up in a slow, consciously ominous way. He made as if to slide into another.

  “Not you,” I said. “You don’t sit at my table, Four Eyes.”

  It was an appellation I suddenly remembered from my childhood. Back then, it was the worst insult you could call a boy who had to wear glasses. I didn’t think things had changed that much in a generation.

  He reacted just the way I hoped he would. Behind his glasses his magnified, enormous eyes went a wild, crazy enormous fiery red. A bubble of spittle pooled at a corner of his mouth. As he hunched forward, his voice came out in that high, low-keyed, falsetto scream I’d heard before.

  “I don’t have to take that from you, you punk bastard! I’ll break your face. I’ll break your teeth! I’ll pop out your eyeballs! You won’t have a solid bone in your punk body!”

  I just looked at him. But I had my feet together under me. I’d looked him over and he didn’t have anything on him except his karate lessons, which of course didn’t show.

  But before either of us could move, Steve was on his feet in front of Chuck and pushing against him with his chest, pushing him backward.

  “All right, now. All right, now.”

  “Tell him to go away and sit down,” I said, calmly. But the crazy murderousness I’d seen had my heart thumping regularly in my ears. I’d found out what I’d wanted to know, anyway. He was perfectly capable of what I thought he was capable of. Especially if insulted properly. Girgis was a great insulter of hippies.

  “You heard what he said,” Steve said. “You go and sit with Diane. Take care of Diane for me.”

  “I don’t have to!” Chuck whispered. “I don’t have to take it!”

  “Go on,” Steve said. Slowly, he bellied him back away from me. And after a moment Chuck turned and walked away. But he didn’t go back to the table to Diane. He walked to the entrance lane, and then out through the fence and into the night.

  “Where’s he going?” I said. “To get that machete of his?”

  “You think about that machete a lot,” Steve said. He sat back down, and grinned, and shook his head. But his face was white under his tan.

  “Machete? What machete?” I said. “I don’t know anything about any machete.”

  “He wouldn’t need that machete to take you,” Steve said seriously. “He’s tough.”

  “He’s also crazy,” I said. “As a bedbug.”

  “You take an awful lot of chances, mister.”

  “That’s how I get my kicks,” I said. “Because I really honestly don’t give a damn. And I like to fight. Especially kid karate experts.”

  Steve looked at me with contained, but unconcealed hatred. “Do you run over everyone the same way?”

  “No.” I grinned. “Just the lucky chosen few.”

  Behind me the young waiter came up with the bottle I had ordered. He put it on the table with some new glasses. He didn’t set it down lightly. He was as angry as the rest.

  “You took an awful chance just coming here, you know.”

  I poured a drink for myself. Then I poured one for him. He didn’t touch his. “I figured you wouldn’t let your pals beat me up right in your joint.”

  “No, but I’m not responsible for what happens to you once you’re outside that fence.”

  I just grinned at him. “Of course not.”

  “Would you mind telling me how you knew he wasn’t at St. Friday’s?”

  I borrowed a line from Pekouris. “Oh, I have my little ways. Of finding out all sorts of things. Why don’t you go and get him for me? I would like to talk to him.”

  “Are you crazy? After what you said to him? Go and get him yourself. If you think you want to.”

  I smiled. “No, I guess not. I don’t want to give away any more odds, to go up in there alone this late at night. I figure I’ve given away enough, coming here.”

  “You sure have.”

  “I don’t see how you figure it,” I said. “You two boys are prime suspects in a murder case. You ought to go to the police and prove your innocence.”

  “I figure if we sit tight, we’ll be all right. We’re not without friends.”

  “You mean like your rich silent partner?”

  “He’s one.”

  “He’s one.”

  I didn’t disillusion him. “You want to know what I think? I think probably you two did it togethe
r.”

  That got to him. For the first time. He didn’t like for even me to be thinking that. “Did it ever occur to you we might both be innocent?”

  I grinned at him. “I’ve thought of that. It’s not a good money bet.”

  “You’re one of those people who instinctively hates any lifestyle that’s not his own, Mr. Davies.”

  “Is that the way you figure it, huh? But what interests me is what’re you going to do. You can’t hide him. Not here.”

  “Who says I need to hide him?”

  I shrugged. “Nobody. And he could never make it to Athens and get on a plane.”

  “There are other things.”

  “Sure. If he runs—and even makes it somewhere, like Turkey, on a little boat—Interpol will have his picture all over Europe and the Middle East in two days. You want him to live on the hop in the Middle East? I don’t think you’ve got the connections.”

  “I’ve got money, now.”

  “You’d be robbed blind in five days. You’d never be able to trust a soul. You’ve never really lived in the real lower depths. I have. There’s no milk of human decency down there.”

  “It’s a good thing for us the police didn’t hire you, isn’t it?” Steve said. He got to his feet.

  I looked up at him quizzically. “Tell me something, are all the hippies like you two? Where’s all this peace and human kindness stuff I’ve been hearing so much about?”

  “We offer. It isn’t often accepted.”

  “So you start hitting back. Like everybody else. Hunh? Like me. What’s so different?” I looked around the place. All I saw was sullen anger. “You want to know what I think? I think you’re all hypocrites. All of you. And all of these.

  “Take away the long hair and the wild clothes and you’re nothing but a small-time hood, who sells marked-up booze and hash to,” I looked around again, “a bunch of ordinary middle-brow suckers—who think they’re different too because their clothes and hair are different. Hypocrites.

  “And your sidekick is just a punk, a paid gunny, a bodyguard who happens to use a machete instead of an iron.”

  Steve’s knuckles, resting on the tin table, clenched themselves into a fist. He nodded once and walked away without a word. But at least I had gotten my little speech in. Why not, since I was going to pay up for it in a little bit? I gave myself the right.

  Feeling savage, I poured myself another drink from the bottle and looked around. The hippies around me all looked away sullenly. The others, the locals and the rich kids, didn’t even know what was going on. I didn’t see how. The atmosphere was as charged as an electrical storm cloud bank that hadn’t flashed yet.

  Across the way Sweet Marie got up from her table and came striding over in her coltish walk and sat down.

  “I think you ought to leave, Mr. Davies.”

  “I’ll leave in a little bit,” I said.

  “Please, I wish you’d leave now. They all hate you. They all think you’re some kind of cop. I’m afraid something will happen if you stay.”

  “Nothing’ll happen as long as I’m here,” I said. “It’s after I leave that it’ll happen.”

  “Please go.”

  “Have you thought about what we talked about?”

  “I’ve thought about almost nothing else. I’m going to do what you suggested. But —” she shrugged guiltily. “I can’t get the money from John. He won’t give it to me.”

  “Then take it from me. Like I said. Consider it a loan. You can pay me back when you’re settled in New York.”

  In her open sweet way she squeezed my hand lying on the table, and smiled her wide smile. “You’re really something special, do you know that?”

  “I see you’ve got that boy Jason on your hands.”

  “He’s going back to Paris,” she said. “He’s broke.”

  “I hope he can still sing, when he gets there.” I looked over at Jason. “It always seems to come down to the money, in the end, doesn’t it?”

  “It seems to. It shouldn’t. Now will you please go?”

  “Yes.”

  She gave me a long, worried look and left, and I poured myself another drink. After drinking it, I left money, picked up the bottle and started to make my way out.

  As I got up, two of the hippies sitting farthest from me slipped out of their seats and slipped off into the dark around the dance floor the other way. I grinned to myself after them.

  At Steve’s table I paused. Suddenly, I tossed the bottle to him. He either had to catch it, or let it fall and smash.

  “Here,” I said. “A present.”

  I waited. But Steve, the caught bottle resting on his lap, didn’t say anything. It was childish of me, but that was what I wanted from him. Feeling quite calm, I left.

  They let me get below the rocky outcrop before they hit me. I didn’t know how there were so many of them. I had only seen two leave. But there were plenty.

  Three of them came at me from the side. I tagged one with a left hook right on the button that put him out of it all. Another I missed on his jaw, but caught him square in the Adam’s apple, which was just as good, and he fell down choking. The third ran right on past me and didn’t turn or stop.

  By this time another had jumped on my back from behind. By now they were coming in from everywhere. They were dropping from the chandeliers. I reached back for his shirt and flung him off over my head, and into two others who were running at me from the front. All three went down, but they all got right back up. By then two more were on my back from another direction behind me. I carried them out into the beaten-down parking lot where there was better footing, and managed to throw them off. I took two punches in the face doing it, and tagged one of the swingers with a right. Suddenly, without ever intending to, I yelled. A kind of combative bellow. And slugged somebody in front of me. I certainly didn’t have to worry about hitting any friends. I wasn’t scared. I was having fun. The yell had just popped out of me. Actually I was enjoying myself. It seemed I’d been waiting for this a long time. Then another lit on my back, and at the same time still another dove in with a football tackle and the three of us crashed down.

  On the ground I tried to kick my feet loose, but the boy who had tackled me held my legs tight against his chest. I kept punching away with both hands, at anything that got in front of my face. I connected four times. I could hear muffled voices yelling, “Get him. Get him. Grab him. Hold him.” They were all in English, and they all had American accents.

  In one of those moments of absolute quiet that come in a free-for-all like this one, I found that odd. And somehow strange.

  Somebody was cursing and booting me in the side. Between bodies I caught a glimpse of the scared, light faces of the Greek cab drivers all turned toward me, from where they sat up on their coach boxes. Then something hit me in the side of the head and bells rang and colored lights exploded, and wheeled in the dark sky, and burned themselves out and down to zero lighting in the black night like a dying pyrotechnic display. Very beautiful. Very satisfying.

  Chapter 35

  WHEN I CAME TO, it was Sonny Duval’s hairy face I saw. He was kneeling above me and gently slapping my face.

  “Let me alone,” I muttered. When I moved my jaw to speak, I could feel it was okay. So I added, “Can’t a guy take a nap around here?”

  “What happened?”

  I ignored him and started doing a little assessing. There was a throb in my right temple, from a small knot just above the ear. My arms and legs seemed okay. My teeth were okay. My face felt puffy again, like that first night at Chantal’s, but there was only a tiny spot of blood. Lobo Davies, the Tsatsos Tackling Dummy. 60 drachs, step up and take your shot. I could charge admission.

  I had jammed my left thumb hooking. There was a sharp bite of pain in my left side every time I breathed. That would be from the kicking I remembered, before I went out.

  Wearily, I forced myself to sit up and made myself cough, and hawked and spit on the ground. There was no blo
od in it.

  In all, I was in pretty good shape. They hadn’t chest-stomped me afterward. Hadn’t kicked in my jaw. I felt a kind of liking for them. No maiming; just good, clean old American fun.

  “The cab drivers said a gang beat you up.”

  I made myself roll over onto my hands and knees, trying not to wince from the bright pain in my side. I got one foot under me, then the other. Sonny stepped to help me. I waved him away.

  “Damn it, what happened?”

  I pushed myself up, and a bright spotlight of pain in my side made me go lightheaded for a second and made my scalp tingle. If there was anything at all, I might have a cracked rib down there. But that was all. I wasn’t feeling the best I’d ever felt. On the other hand I’d taken a lot worse beatings than this in my time.

  I looked at Sonny, and gave him my No. 4, tough-but-pitiable grin. “Where did you come from?”

  “I just got here. The cab drivers told me you were over here in the weeds.”

  “Ah, yes. The happy cab drivers. The grandstand seats.” I looked over at them. They were back on the ground, smoking.

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “Nothing. A bunch of the hippie kids. It’s my own fault. I asked to see some guts and muscle, and I got shown some. If any of those boys are draft dodgers, it’s not through any lack of desire to fight.”

  “Draft resisters,” Sonny said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Have it your way,” I said. “Draft resisters. I’m too tired to argue.”

  I forgot about my side, and took a weary, deep breath which made me jump and cut it off halfway in. “Let’s get something straight. I’m not against draft dodgers. I wish I’d had the guts to be one myself. I just wish everybody in the world would be a draft dodger. Instead of only just Americans. Now leave me alone,” I said. “I’m sort of tired.”

  “You don’t seem to be very upset by it all.”

  “I’m just wondering if I should go back in there and have one drink,” I said.

  “I’ll go in with you, if you want,” Sonny offered.

  “You would, hunh? You’re a regular fire-eater, aren’t you?”