She sent Frankie. At first, the day she came into his office at the Circle Club looking for a job, he didn’t see anything but a looker in a town that was littered with them. That was when she still had her clothes on.
He rocked back in his swivel and stared across his desk at her through the thin, lifting smoke from his cigarette.
“You a dancer, you say?”
“Yes.”
“A good one?”
“Not very.”
That surprised Frankie. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and let his eyes make a brief tour of her points of interest.
“No? What else you got that a guy would pay to see?”
She showed him what she had. Frankie sat there watching her emerge slowly from her clothes, and the small office got steadily smaller, so hot that it was almost suffocating. Frankie’s knitted tie was hemp instead of silk, and the knot was a hangman’s knot, cutting deeply into his throat until he was breathing in labored gasps. The palms of his hands dripped salty water. His whole body was wet with sweat.
When he was able to speak, he said, “Who the hell’s going to care about the dancing? Can you start tonight?”
She could and did. And so did Frankie. For a guy with a temperature as high as his, he played it pretty cool. He kept the pressure on her, all right, but he didn’t force it. Not that he was too good for it. It just wasn’t practical. The threat of being fired doesn’t mean much to a gal with a dozen other places to go. By the time Frankie was desperate enough for threats, he was having to raise her pay every second week to hang on to her.
She liked him, though. He knew damned well she liked him. He could tell by the way the heat came up in her slanted eyes when she looked at him. He could tell by the way her hands sometimes reached out for him, touching him lightly, straying with brief abandon. But she was like mercury. He couldn’t hold her when he reached back.
CHAPTER 7.
The night he decided to try mink, he came into the club late, just as Linda was moving onto the small circular floor in a blue spot. He stood for a minute against the wall, holding the long cardboard box under his arm, watching the emerging dusky body, his pulse matching the tropical tempo of drums in the darkness. Before the act was over, he moved on around the edge of the floor and back to the door of Linda’s room.
Inside, he lay the box on the dressing table and sat down. Waiting, he could hear faintly the crescendo of drums and muted brass that indicated Linda’s exit. The sound of her footsteps in the hall was lost in the surge of applause that continued long after she had left the floor.
She closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, head back and eyes shining, her breasts rising and falling in deep, rhythmic breathing. Light and shadow stressed the convexities and hollows of her body.
“Hello, Frankie,” she said. “Nice surprise.”
He stood up, pulses hammering. “Nicer than you think, baby. I’ve brought you something.”
She saw the box behind him on the dressing table and moved toward it, flat muscles rippling with silken smoothness beneath dusky skin. Her exclamation was like a delighted child’s.
“Tell me what it is.”
“Open it, baby.”
Her fingers worked deftly at the knot of the cord, lifted the top of the box away. Without speaking, she shook out the luxurious fur coat, slipped into it, and hugged it around her body. She stood entranced, her back to Frankie, looking at her reflection in the dim depths of the mirror.
Closing in behind her, he took her shoulders in his hands. Capturing the hands in hers, she pulled them around her body and under the coat. Her head fell back onto his shoulder. Her breath sighed through parted lips. He could feel in his hands the vibrations of her shivering flesh.
She said sleepily, “You’re a sweet guy, Frankie. A lucky guy, too. You’re going places. Too bad I can’t go along.”
“Why not, baby? Why not go along?”
Her head rolled on his shoulder, her lips burning his neck. “Look, Frankie. When I go for a ride, I go first-class. No cheap tourist accommodations for Linda.”
“I don’t get you, baby. You call mink cheap?”
“It’s not the mink. It’s being second. It’s the idea of taking what’s left over.”
“You mean Taffy?”
She closed her eyes and said nothing, and Frankie laughed softly. “Taffy’s expendable, baby. Strictly expendable.”
“Just like that? Maybe she won’t let go.”
“How the hell can she help it?”
“She’s legal. That always helps’.”
“Married? You think Taffy and I are married?” He laughed again, his shoulders shaking with it. “Taffy and I are temporary, baby. I never figured it any other way. Nothing on paper. All off the record. We last just as long as I want us to.”
She twisted against him, her arms coming up around his neck. Her breath was in his mouth.
“How long, Frankie? How long do you want?”
His hand moved down the soft curve of her spine, drawing her in. He said hoarsely, “As far as Taffy’s concerned, I quit wanting when I saw you. Tonight I’ll make it official.”
She put her mouth over his, and he felt the hot, flicking of her tongue. Then she pushed away violently, staggering back against the dressing table. The mink hung open from her shoulders.
“Afterward, Frankie,” she whispered. “Afterward.”
He stood there blind, everything dissolved in shimmering waves of heat. At last, sight returning, he laughed shakily and moved to the door. Hand on the knob, he looked back at her.
“Like you say, baby—afterward.”
CHAPTER 8.
He went out into the hall and through the rear door into the alley. There was a small area back there in which he kept his convertible Caddy tucked away. Long, sleek, ice-blue and glittering chrome. A long way from the old Plymouth.
Behind the wheel, sending the big machine singing through the streets, he felt the tremendous uplift that comes to a man who approaches a crisis with assurance of triumph. His emotional drive was in harmony with the leashed power of the Caddy’s throbbing engine. Wearing his new personality, he could hardly remember the old Frankie. It was impossible to believe that he had once, not long ago, been driven by shame to a longing for death. Life was good. All it required was luck and guts. With luck and guts, a guy could do anything. A guy could live forever.
At the uptown apartment house, he ascended in the swift, whispering elevator and let himself into his living room with the key he carried. The living room itself was dark, but light sliced into the darkness from the partially open door of the bedroom. Silently he crossed the carpet that wasn’t actually quite up to his knees and pushed the bedroom door all the way open.
Taffy was reading in bed. Her sheer nylon gown kept nothing hidden, but what showed was nothing Frankie hadn’t seen before, and he was tired of it. He stood for a moment looking at her, wondering what would be the best way to do it. The direct way, he decided. The tough way. Get it over with, and to hell with it.
From the bed, Taffy said, “Hi, honey. You’re early tonight.”
Without answering, Frankie walked over to the closet and slammed back one of the sliding panels. He dragged a cowhide overnight bag off a shelf and carried it to the bed. Snapping the locks, he spread the bag open.
Taffy sat up straighter against her silk pillows, two small spots of color burning suddenly over her cheekbones. “What’s up, Frankie? You going someplace?”
He went to a chest of drawers, returned with pajamas and a clean shirt. “That ought to be obvious. As a matter of fact, I’m going to a hotel.”
“Why, Frankie? What’s the idea?”
He looked down at her, feeling the strong emotional drive. “The idea is that we’re through, baby. Finished. I’m moving out.”
Her breath whistled in a sharp, sucking inhalation, and she swung out of bed in a fragile nylon mist. Her hands clutched at him.
“No, Frankie! Not like
this. Not after all the luck I’ve brought you.”
He laughed brutally, remembering the old man. “It wasn’t you who brought me luck, baby. It was someone else. That’s something you’ll never know anything about.”
He turned, heading for the chest again, and she grabbed his arm, jerking. He spun with the force of the jerk, smashing his backhand across her mouth. She staggered off until the underside of her knees caught on the bed and held her steady. A bright drop of blood formed on her lower lip and dropped onto her chin. A whimper of pain crawled out of her throat.
“Why, Frankie? Just tell me why.”
He shrugged. “A guy grows. A guy goes on to something better. That’s just the way it is, baby.”
“It’s more than that. It’s a lot bigger than that. You think I’ve been two-timing you, Frankie?”
He repeated his brutal laugh. “Two-timing me? I’ll tell you something, baby. I wouldn’t give a damn if you were sleeping with every punk in town. That’s how much I care.” He paused, savoring sadism, finding it pleasant. “You want it straight, baby? It’s just that I’m sick of you. I’m sick to my guts with the sight of you. That clear enough?”
She came back to him, slowly, lifting her arms like a supplicant. He waited until she was close enough, then he hit her across the mouth again. Turning his back, he returned to the chest and got the rest of the articles he needed. Just a few things. Enough for the night and tomorrow. In the morning he’d send someone around to clean things out.
At the bed he tossed the stuff into the overnight bag and snapped it shut.
Over his shoulder he said, “The rent’s paid to the end of the month. After that you better look for another place to live.”
She didn’t respond, and remembering his toothbrush, he went into the bathroom for it. When he came out she was standing there with a .38 in her hand. It was the same .38 he’d once considered killing himself with. That had been the old Frankie, of course.
Not the new Frankie. Death was no consideration in the life of the new Frankie.
“You rotten son of a bitch,” she said.
He laughed aloud and started for her, and he just couldn’t believe it when the slug slammed into his shoulder.
He looked down in amazement at the place where the crimson began to seep, and his incredulous eyes raised just in time to receive the second slug squarely between them.
And like the night the old man died, it was funny. In the last split second of sight, it wasn’t Taffy standing there with the gun at all. It was the old man again.
The old man with a memory like an elephant.
The old man who always waited until it really hurt.
FAIR GAME
Originally published in Manhunt, September 1953.
There were lots of advantages to being the mayor’s personal chauffeur and bodyguard. Ray Butler thought. For instance, besides earning you a small percentage in this and that, it gave you many excuses to see the mayor’s wife.
A maid told him that she was on the terrace, and he found her there in a sunsuit that almost wasn’t. She was stretched out on a chaise longue behind a pair of dark glasses. His eyes flicked over golden legs and torso broken briefly by scraps of thin fabric. The muscular action incidental to his smile didn’t disturb his face much. It was smooth and hard and brown, like the polished hull of an acorn. There was only a swift flash of white in a margin of red, a deepening toward black of eyes that were normally a shade darker than the face. A hard and handsome boy, Ray Butler. A lot of women carried him around in their heads a long time before they finally lost him in the confusion of things that come and go.
For the maid’s benefit, he said, “Good morning, Mrs. Cannon. I understand you have an errand for me.”
“Good morning, Ray.”
She swung her long, sleek legs off the lounge and stood up, stretching lazily in the sunlight. Her full, firm breasts were thrust up by a deep breath against the frail restraint of her halter. “It’s hot out here. Perhaps we’d better go inside.”
She shrugged into a thigh-length jacket that increased, by paradoxical design, both the coverage of her body and the impression of its nakedness, and he followed her through glass doors into a room that was cool and shadowed. She turned, then, and surged back against him with a little sound that was almost like a whimper, her face lifted and her eyes suddenly glazed.
“Ray,” she said. “Ray…”
The palms of his hands were damp with sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature, and he dried them in her honey-colored hair, dragging her head back savagely and talking into her throat.
“It’s been a thousand years, baby. A thousand long years!”
“I know, Ray, I know.”
Their bodies strained for maximum contact, groping hungrily with countless tiny receptors, and after a long time she relaxed with a sigh, hanging limply in his arms. Her voice was a spent whisper.
“How long, Ray, how long?”
“As long as it takes, baby. Until I say when.”
“Say it now. Say it right now.”
He laughed softly. “You didn’t read your fables when you were a kid. Don’t you remember the one about the goose that laid the golden eggs? The moral is, you don’t kill it. Not literally, not figuratively. Dixie Cannon, mayor of this town and your husband, is the goose, baby.”
“Listen to me, Ray. Over half of everything he owns is in my name. It has to be that way, for the looks of it. It’s mine legally. We don’t need Dixie. We don’t need him at all.”
He laughed again, and there was a sudden tension in the sound. “That’s not the point. It’s not just the lettuce. Think, baby, think. Dixie grabbed me off the force for his personal bodyguard. I’m the strong-arm guy. I do the dirty work. In the last couple years I’ve made more enemies than any one guy ought to have, and every one of them would love to see me dead. Who keeps me alive? I’ll tell you, baby. Dixie Cannon. Fat little Dixie Cannon. God knows how he ever got the power he’s got, and God knows how he keeps it, but he did and he does. He’s all that stands between me and something I don’t like to think about. Just one little man between Ray Butler and the full treatment. Just one fat little man who looks like Santa Claus with a shave.”
He stopped, tucking her fair head under his chin, his hands moving along the sidelines of her torso, and after a while he added dreamily, “But I’m growing. Slowly, I’m growing. I’ll let you know when I’m ready, and when that time comes, there’ll be no question and no more waiting. We’ll take care of Dixie Cannon, and we’ll take care of anyone else who thinks he wants a piece of Ray Butler.”
She lifted her face again to his pleasure, her bright hair hanging, and again there was the molten merging of their bodies. After a long time, she shuddered and twisted from his arms.
“Okay, Ray. Maybe we ought to have a drink to the time.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Sorry, baby, but I just stopped off on my way to somewhere else. I’m on a job for Dixie.”
“Where?”
“Out to Club 44-40. The Schultz twins’ place. Dixie’s moving in.”
“Be careful, Ray. I’d die if anything happened to you.”
He lifted a hand with thumb and index finger tip to tip in the okay sign. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to Ray Butler, baby. Nothing but good luck. The kind that was meant for the two of us.”
He went out into the hall past the maid, who was dusting, and outside to Dixie Cannon’s blue Caddy in the drive. Thirty minutes later he was at Club 44-40.
* * * *
It was a sweet joint. Even on a day as hot as this, it had a cool, secluded look. Remote from the blistering concrete highway at the end of a white gravel drive, it sprawled with an effect of leisure beneath the drooping pale green branches of weeping willows.
Ray parked the Caddy in shade and went up to heavy double doors. They were unlocked, and he pushed his way inside, standing for a moment in the soft air-conditioned shadows of the lobby to tune his sen
ses to the reduced momentum and volume of the club’s interior stirrings. Looking straight ahead through the small lobby, he could see a litter of chairs and tables, a dance area that was hardly more than a nominal concession to active patrons. Swinging his gaze clockwise through an arch, he picked up in dark glass a reverse view of a section of the bar. The angle showed him the back of a bald head that was not visible directly, and he went over to the arch and through.
The bartender watched his approach from under heavy lids. He stifled a yawn with a clean bar rag and shot a glance upward at the lighted dial of a clock.
“We’re not open yet. Mac. Come back in a couple hours.”
Ray covered red leather with the seat of his cords and leaned forward on his elbows.
“It’s nice in here. Nice and cool and quiet. I’ll have a Collins, I think. While I’m drinking it, you can tell the twins I’m here. Tell them it’s Ray Butler with a word from Dixie Cannon.”
Heavy lids flicked up reflexively and then dropped over a glitter of pupils. The bar rag made a swift swipe at mahogany that didn’t need it.
“Maybe. And maybe you’re Joe Blow with a bag full of brushes. You got identification?”
Ray laughed. “You’re hurting my feelings,” he said. “A guy gets to thinking he’s known around, and then some joker wants credentials. You’d better fix the Collins and see the twins.”
The bartender vacillated a moment longer between the unknown reaction of the twins and the nearer threat of a still, brown face. Then he reached for the gin. He mixed the Collins and left the bar through a door at the rear. Ray watched him go and began the pleasant work of uncovering the maraschino cherry that lay on the bottom of his glass. Spinning on the stool, he saw beside the door through which the bartender had gone a garish monster of a juke box, with bubbles rising endlessly in colored tubes. He went back, carrying the Collins, and deposited a nickel. A female voice with a cultivated sob lamented. It struck Ray as rather amusing. A fine laugh, really. He leaned against the box and heard the platter through, working at the Collins as he listened. The Collins was just finished and the platter back in the stack when the bartender returned. He jerked a thumb at the door.
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 10