The Noir Novel
Page 53
I made it on rubber legs to the kitchen and the refrigerator to open the door and lean my head against the cool inner wall as I stared at eggs, milk, and pot cheese before I fished out a can of tomato juice.
Pouring the juice into a glass I tried not to think of all the things it reminded me of, took it with me back to the living room and collapsed into the big chair by the door where I gulped the juice. The sudden cold shock made me ache all the way down. Then my stomach heaved once, twice, and settled down to lay still.
Sitting there, staring dully into the empty glass, I was like a chorus girl who looks at her ripped nylons and torn bra and wonders who in hell had brought her home last night after what had happened.
Slowly, in the silence of the room, I sorted memories into chronological order. First, I was Steve Walters; second, after a call from the boys and wondering what I was in for, I had gone to their hotel and found myself in a closed room full of blank stupid faces and cigar smoke.
And sitting in the middle of the room, looking like a bilious green toad, was Sam Talmadge, a synonym to people in the know of big money. Talmadge. The biggest. He said yes and he said no and he grunted at the right times to let everyone know they were talking to him and nobody else. And by the time the ashtrays were filled, Talmadge had the Egret Club down the road and I was in as manager because a local Vegas boy always makes a good front for a big boss who lives elsewhere.
Mine was a real success story, without an involved pattern to follow. Anyone could do it if he came from the right side of the tracks. Only the right side is the wrong side, which immediately means you have to be tough to survive. It’s a requirement, an inflexible law of nature, much more demanding than the college education and specialized training required of doctors or engineers. Your school isn’t a classroom but your strict attendance is required in the joints where the other tough guys hang out, for that’s where you get your start. Strict attendance, which means you have to start playing hooky from regular school when you’re very young.
You have to be a smart kid and know how to maneuver. Go down the list of rules and start operating where the list leaves off. That’s smart operation and that’s the way to get the big guys who seem to do nothing but chomp on cigars to notice what a bright young man you are, worth cutting in on a simple test deal, hijacking a store or rolling a lush. After that you’re on your way, a warming up hot shot, pointed out by other kids who stayed in school.
Your old man and old woman don’t care. Why question the extra money in the house? Anyway, they’re down at the neighborhood, family-type beer joint, where life is dim and no one notices or sees the scum on the glasses and the spit on the floor.
And don’t forget the girls with their first cheap permanents and tin jewelry who will do anything for you because you’re an operator. They make you feel big, a man, and you can’t learn fast enough to become even smarter. If you’re ambitious you go to night school in the back rooms and you learn how to cut yourself in on the better deals; you learn to spot a sucker by the color of his eyes. You do your favors for the guys with the hand-painted neckties.
The cops notice you, you’ve graduated, marked as a company man. Everything is routed right down the line, everything except an old-age-retirement plan. The silent men who sit like Buddhas in their veils of cigar smoke own you, but you haven’t noticed it yet.
People, for one of thousands of reasons or accidents are always dropping out, disappearing, and dying, so they create active opportunities for advancement. If you have style and keep impressing the right people, you can get into the class stuff, might even wind up with a nice refined spot in the Hacienda Club in Las Vegas which is in Nevada, an action where the suckers know good grammar and wouldn’t think of misspelling their names on an I.O.U.
But that’s not the end of the ladder. A likeable character, popular with the trade, one day may be called into a closed hotel room and a bilious toad named Talmadge will make him manager of the Egret. That was what had happened to me. I had graduated into a specialty, achieved the reward held out to me twenty years before in the joint down on the corner in the old neighborhood.
But there’s one thing you don’t do, not if you’re a smart kid, and you’ve finally got your deal. You can have your bender, your laughs, but you mustn’t wake up the next morning with a blank spot, sitting in your apartment in the bright Vegas sunlight, nursing your head, and wondering where you’ve been.
My hand came away damp from my forehead. I remembered going back to the Hacienda to check out my stuff and pick up my dough. On the way out I had run into Mike French and asked him to have a drink with me to celebrate. It was public relations. French had always been a good customer who visited Vegas regularly from L.A., and a sort of gambler you didn’t have to worry about: he didn’t press the game too far either way. Somewhere along the line Mike had been a smart kid, too. We recognized each other. It takes one to tell one.
Mike French was a big, detached guy with breezy manners that made him easy company. He liked to talk but didn’t ask any questions and didn’t give any answers. It was hard to pin his operation, but whatever it was it seemed to include making friends and keeping his mouth shut. A hard guy to tell anything about. Maybe he shook the dice for recreation, maybe for contacts. Maybe both. It was his business.
But when Mike wasn’t working a table he had a fast eye for girls; you couldn’t miss the way his eyes followed the shapely clientele, especially if they were young and flashy. Little ladies, young and flashy, down on their luck were almost sure to wind up with Mike before the night was out. Maybe he liked the way made easy: maybe he was sympathetic. Either way this was also none of my business.
For me Mike was a dull knife; a casual shrug of the shoulders when I thought about him, which was never; he didn’t do me any good but he didn’t stand to do me much harm either. That’s the way to figure it safe in a gambling town; everything’s odds and if you aren’t the dealer you must be the sucker. If I had to tie one on, Mike was probably as safe as any guy to do it with.
We had gone over to the bar at the Prospector, a dim trap done in hand-tooled rustic with waiters dressed like cowboys. We had two apiece while he talked gambling and other trade topics and I was just about to duck out when she came along, a beat-up kid with too much make-up on even for the evening. Not that she was too old, but the story of her life was etched in the lines around her eyes, and she had that half-dazed look they all get after being kicked downfield for goals. Tonight she was a lush blonde; only the next morning knew what she would be in the daylight.
She slid in next to Mike as if she had had plenty of practice slipping in on the party when the gents are drinking: as if she had been expected and was a little late. After giving me a nod that meant I was just another male, she tilted her head for a good long look at Mike. Instinctively I felt sorry for her: she had been really pretty not too long ago. The sorrow was because her lips went slack and ugly at the corners as she stared up at Mike who suddenly seemed to have lost a lot of color.
“Mike,” the girl spoke softly, “I’ve been looking for you.” Her tongue was a little thick and the words came out sloppy and loose.
“What’re you doing here?” Mike was tense as he held his voice down. “Who brought you?”
“I brought myself,” she slurred. “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?”
Mike shot me a nervous glance as he reached for his wallet. Whatever the situation was he didn’t like it. “If you need a stake—”
“Keep it,” the girl shoved his hand. “Who needs dough?” She hoisted a black patent leather bag onto the table, snapped it open, and took out a roll of bills for Mike and me to see. “I got lucky for once,” she said. “Looking for you, I ran up big.” She laughed and it sounded like a nail scratched over rusty tin. “I’m lucky as hell, huh, Mike?”
I cleared my throat. “Look,” I said, “I think I’d better shove off—”
“No,” she reached out and grabbed my sleeve. “No you don’t.
We’re going to have a party, and I want you here. I want somebody around to tell me when it’s over how much fun I had.” Her eyes glittered in the semidarkness. “Sometimes I don’t remember and this time I don’t want to forget—” her voice drifted off. Then she squared off at Mike. “Buy me a drink!”
Mike shrugged for my benefit as he motioned for the bartender.
“What’re you having?” he asked his unwelcome guest.
She glanced indifferently at the glasses on the table, but her hand trembled as she fumbled with the bag. “The same as you,” she said and we knew she didn’t care as long as it was high proof.
Her tough talk was a sort of protective coat, even with a thick tongue there was a finer quality in her voice. She was wound up tight.
“You get your drink and blow,” Mike said to her. “You’re asking for trouble here. You don’t know what you’re messing with.” He spoke in clipped accents as he signaled the bartender and ordered three double scotches, doubles. The girl turned on her seat and really looked at me for the first time.
“You work over at the Hacienda,” she said. As the bartender moved away she reached across Mike and put her hand on mine. “I like you. I like your looks.”
“Good,” I said. “I like being liked.” When you’ve watched them come and go the way I have you learn not to mess around with them no matter how sorry they make you feel.
She moved back and let go of my hand as she smiled cynically. “I get it,” she said.
“No offense,” I said.
The dazed look clouded her eyes again. “Forget it,” she dismissed me and turned again to Mike. “Don’t think you’re getting rid of me with one lousy drink,” she said.
“I told you,” Mike said, “you’re looking for trouble.”
I killed the drink, paid my tab, and ambled toward the table they had taken in a booth. From across the room the girl had a finger-snapping kind of class. Her simple red dress proved that she didn’t need a build-up anywhere. She was legit 36-24-36. But she would have been luckier if she had been flat-chested and bowlegged. That’s what her eyes seemed to say. The narrow belt around her waist and her shoes were black patent leather to match the bag and on her everything looked more than it cost. And she had taste of a sort which made her pathetic. There was nothing personal in the way I felt sorry for her. She might have been one of a thousand others who had got a thought of sympathy from me.
In my absence nothing had improved between them. Mike still looked sore because she was next to him and the grim lines were even deeper around her mouth.
“Just remember, Mike,” the girl said as I sat down, “you had a choice.”
Mike looked at me and grinned stiffly. Maybe it was the light in the place, but close up he looked like he had been dead for a week.
“Kept your word.” The girl turned to me with unexpected brightness. “You came back. I should have met you a long time ago.”
“I’ve been around that long,” I said.
She gave me a lopsided smile. “You’ve probably picked up a lot of connections around here,” she said.
“I’ve got trouble,” the girl laughed wildly. “Trouble to spread around. I came all the way from L.A. and I brought my trouble with me. A book full of trouble. You can’t unload me tonight, Mike.”
This was turning into a personal fight which was none of my business and I was all for keeping it that way as the bartender brought the drinks and put them down in front of us.
“Look,” I said when he walked off to punch the cash register keys, “You’ll have to excuse me. Gotta run along.”
The girl leaned toward me across the table. “You can’t run out on me,” she said. “I told you that.”
My big mistake was looking at her instead of leaving, because her eyes and lips were fixed in black desperation. She was counting on me; she wanted me to stay, bad. Because I hesitated a second too long she was the dealer, I the sucker. “At least I’ve got to make a call,” I said.
“You’ll come back?” the anxiety flashed again in her eyes. I glanced at Mike; his face was a mask. “Sure,” I said with a wink of promise, “right back.”
Moving off around the curve of the bar I knew her eyes followed me. Out of her sight I climbed another stool and ordered a drink to give me time to stay out of the picture long enough for them to say the things to each other I didn’t want to hear. When I returned to say my good-byes and clear out, the girl looked scared about something.
“Me and the plumber,” I said.
“Don’t be a comedian,” she snapped, the smile vanished as suddenly as it appeared. “Everybody thinks he’s king of yaks and I’m sick of laughing at crappy routines.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her, Steve,” Mike put in, “she’s gone. Four or five off the top of the bottle and she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“You big bastard,” the girl said with slow emphasis, “don’t you wish I didn’t?”
In the moment of awkward silence she hoisted her drink and took a long, loose drag. It was time for refreshment so I drained the glass to the bottom before I put it down again. I looked across at Mike, focused on his eyes, and realized with surprise he was drunk. He was that kind of a drinker: normally a hell of a capacity, but sometimes it crowded up on him.
Suddenly the girl laughed that flat laugh of hers again. “I know some hymns,” she said. She swiveled around to face Mike. “You want to hear a hymn, you filthy bastard?”
“Shut up!” Mike said with sudden fury as he shook his head to see only one of her.
She turned to me. “First,” she said deliberately, “I think I’m gonna tell you a story. Because you’re here, that’s why,” she waved her hand. “It’s a story about me and somebody else and I can tell it right up to the end because the end is right now. Tonight.” She pounded the bar and tilted her head for a sidelong look at Mike. “Huh, Mike?”
I wasn’t exactly following her but her crazed eyes made me uncomfortable and as I felt my head fog, I had to get out of there and latch on to food because liquor can do terrible things to an empty stomach. The girl was back at me again and I was vaguely aware that she had opened her purse and taken out a soft leather-covered loose-leaf book.
“You can write the end of the story if you want.” She tried to hand me the book but I wouldn’t touch it, and when Mike reached for it she dropped it into her purse and laughed with wicked triumph before she lifted her drink again. “You’d probably be bored,” she laughed at me. “It goes back about five whole years. That’s right, isn’t it, Mike? I was so damned dumb then I didn’t even know—”
Mike’s hand shot out and hit her hard across the face to break her laugh into two uneven sounds. For a moment the three of us sat there like wax figures. It was a lunatic’s dream. My head was whirling. I gripped the edge of the table.
“Just a second,” I managed to say to Mike.
The girl came to life again. “You scummy, lousy—”
He hit her again and she fell back in the seat. Now her face was a blank as tears welled in her eyes and coursed down her cheeks. Even with the juke blasting, the place was as still for me as the bottom of the ocean.
I boosted myself to my feet, reached across the table and scooped up Mike’s necktie. “That’s enough, Mike,” I said, but my voice sounded strangely far away.
His fist came up into my face and it was like having a stick of dynamite exploding inside my head. That was the end of the line. After that there was nothing but the black velvet road that led me through insane dreams.
Mike must have packed a wallop that reached all the way back to Chicago. Anyway, here I was the morning after with my head in my hands, a guy who specialized in knowing where he was and how he had arrived. Only why didn’t I know how I had reached my apartment?
After my stomach settled down to a dull burn I went back to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. I was just turning up the flame under the pot when the phone rang in the living room. It was Gwynn.
Gwynn had a sunny fade-proof beauty, and if I couldn’t get excited over the boost into the Egret it was because of her. Lately, to be truthful, since our first date, I’d been thinking of quitting. Until I did, we just didn’t belong together, no matter how pleasant it could be. It was all right for the rackets to own me, but they could never own her.
“I must have a bad connection,” she said. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I hung one on, baby,” I said. “It’s so bad I don’t even remember what happened.”
“I called you last night,” she said. “To invite you over for dinner.”
“Oh, no,” I groaned.
“If you’re suffering it only serves you right. I still have two of the largest steaks in town in the ice box. Who was the woman?
“Woman?” I said, falling for it.
“There had to be a woman. I’d have heard from you otherwise.”
“Look, honey,” I pleaded, “I’m tortured. I could cut my throat. Are you at the office?”
“Wake up,” she laughed. “It’s Saturday. I’m my own gal again until Monday. Oh, Steve”—her voice rose in a question—“what am I going to do with you?”
“Give me up as a bad job, I guess,” I said and crossed my fingers. “First, though, give me a chance to square it. Let me take you to lunch.”
“Well”—she hesitated for effect—“okay. I’ll consider it a mission of mercy.”
“Good girl,” I said. “I’ll see you at the Desert Club”—I checked my watch—“in twenty minutes.”
“The Desert Club, no less,” she said in mock awe.
“Nothing but the best. When a girl buys steak—” Suddenly I broke off. Staring absently around the room while I talked to her, my eyes had fixed on a dark object in the shadow of the door leading into my bedroom. I had stared at it for some time but it had been slow in registering. Only a part of it was in view, but enough. It was the butt of the .38 that I wear inside my coat in a holster. A funny feeling crept down the back of my neck.