You have to like the ones who end up weary and alone, but still determined to survive. And this pretty woman was a survivor.
“So you’re telling me there’ll be no dance after we finish dinner?”
She smiled. “No dance. But maybe a cup of coffee?”
“You’re on,” I said.
The swarthy-faced boss-master grabbed her just as we were walking out the door.
“This is my last offer, blondie—fifty bucks for the night!” he said drunkenly. “And don’t tell me you’ve never sold it for less than that.”
And suddenly I realized just what “a tough night” in waitress talk implies.
They not only have to hustle tables and wash glasses and smile for tips when their backs ache and their feet hurt, but they also have to put up with the ass grabbers and bleary-eyed drunks who find that a bar is the only place their machismo routine will seem believable even to themselves.
Hervey was ahead of me, going out the door.
When I heard what the broad-shouldered, bigbellied jerk said, I stopped cold in my tracks and turned to look.
There was an expression of disdain on Stella’s face, backdropped with fear.
When he offered her fifty bucks for the night, her lower lip trembled, more hurt than angry. It looked as if she had just about reached the end of her rope.
She made an attempt to ignore him and just walk away.
But he lurched at her drunkenly, trying to slap her on the fanny.
It wasn’t a smart move.
His hand somehow got tangled in her apron. There was a loud ripping sound. Still entangled, Stella’s momentum pulled him over sideways in his chair.
I expected the other three men at the table to laugh.
But they didn’t.
Instead, when their boss fell, their faces showed only submissive worry—like dogs who know their master is about to go on a rampage.
I had figured the guy as only loud and boresome—not fearsome. But his men were scared of him, sure as hell.
He had ripped Stella’s dress at the pocket. There was a gaping hole there, showing just a swatch of her skin-colored panties. She still trembled between fear and anger. Like a little girl, it looked as if she was about to cry.
“Goddamn bitch,” the boss-master said, jumping to his feet.
“Don’t touch me,” Stella said softly, backing up. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Where do you get off treating me like that?” the guy roared. “I could buy and sell this place if I wanted—and you right along with it!”
I felt Hervey’s hand on my shoulder. “There are four of them,” he said.
“Yeah. Bad odds.”
“Should be at least six.”
“That would make it fair.”
“Any way of getting them outside? I’d hate to have to pay for all this nice furniture.”
“That guy can buy and sell the place. Didn’t you hear? He’s rich. We can send the bill to him.”
Stella saw me coming back through the door, and she started to angle toward me, keeping a close eye on the swarthy-faced guy. He pursued her like a cat after a mouse.
When she was close enough, I took her hand and pulled her behind me.
It brought the guy up short. It was the first really close look I’d gotten of him. He was just over six feet tall and weighed maybe two-forty. He looked like an ex-pro lineman who, in a pinch, could summon all the speed and strength of bygone days—but only for about a minute or so.
He was easy to read. Like all bullies, he’d go for the kill quickly—maybe try to get me down on the ground and punch me into oblivion.
“This is none of your business, buster,” he said darkly, still eyeing the waitress.
“I’m a Boy Scout,” I said. “I make a living protecting ladies from fat jerks like you.”
“You can’t talk to me like that!”
“Gee, I thought I already had.”
Behind him, his three men moved away from the table. They were all sizable enough. But they had that look about them—that pasty suburban look of too many drinks and too many cookouts and too, too little exercise.
Still, there were three of them.
“I think you ought to apologize to this nice lady,” I said.
“And I think you ought to mind your own business, buddy boy.”
“Maybe we ought to slip outside and discuss this in . . . a little more detail.”
“The only place you’re going to see me, buddy boy, is in court if you so much as touch me.”
I stuck out my hand suddenly. “In that case, I think we ought to shake and make up.”
I grabbed him when he tried to slap my hand away. It was reassuring when he tried to slap me: His hand came around in a big slow arc, as if on trolleys.
And I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble with a guy that slow.
As his hand finished its arc, I grabbed him with one fist by the collar, swung him around, and jammed him through the walkway.
Anticipating my move, Hervey was holding the door open.
He went sprawling out onto the sidewalk on his face. Neon lights threw a ghostly illumination upon the parking lot. The boss-master got quickly to his feet and touched his nose.
It was bleeding.
Hervey was ready for the other three when they came through the door. And he didn’t give them any time to get the upper hand. He cracked the first one flush on the chin with a right, then caught the second guy cold with a left that carried his full weight.
They both went down in a heap, groaning and holding their faces.
But the third one was smarter. He poked his head through the door, then ducked back when he saw Hervey waiting.
And then he reappeared, a knife in his hand.
It was not the sort of knife you would have expected a businessman to carry. It was one of those stiletto-shaped fighting knives small enough to belt undetected to your calf.
Before the boss-master almost crushed my spine to jelly, I remember thinking that the guy seemed unexpectedly adept with it. Maybe he had had some training in Nam.
He scythed the knife back and forth at Hervey’s belly a few times, driving him away from his fallen comrades. Hervey had left his own fishing knife back aboard Sniper, and for that I was glad. Knife fights are a messy business. And even if you win, you usually end up pretty badly cut. And I didn’t want that to happen to a friend like Hervey. He was better off unarmed.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. I was watching the guy with the knife. Then all of a sudden, I felt a tremendous impact and there was a blinding white light in my head.
The boss-master had hit me from behind, all 240-some pounds of him.
It knocked the wind out of me. And almost knocked me out completely.
I didn’t have time to worry about Hervey now. The boss-master had me down on the ground, throwing punches at my face. His dark eyes were bugged out like a creature gone mad, and I could smell his sour cigar breath as he wheezed with effort.
He got a couple of glancing shots in before I finally got my wind back. There was a metallic taste of blood in my mouth. Strangely, then, I heard someone whistling: a loud, shrill two-fingered whistle.
With supreme effort, I grabbed the boss-master by his safari jacket and threw him off me. I got shakily to my feet. And when he saw me coming at him, blood on my face and blood in my eyes, a transformation came over him. He looked like one of those pro wrestling dramatists begging for mercy.
“Look,” he was saying, “let’s talk this over.”
He stuck his palms out, trying to hold me away.
“Naw,” I said. “Let’s not.”
“I’m going to have you arrested,” he said. “I swear to God I’ll have you arrested.”
“You do that,” I said.
I gave him a solid overhand right that collapsed his nose. Blood spewed as if pressurized. It sent him wheeling backward—and that’s when the guy with the knife came to his aide.
The fal
len boss-master looked up at him through the blood.
“Kill them,” he said in a wild voice. “Kill both of’em, goddamn it!”
While the guy with the knife held us at bay, the other two men got slowly to their feet.
Each of them produced knives, too.
And that’s when I knew that we had had it.
Behind us was the concrete wall of the bar and restaurant. And they had all the escape perimeters blocked.
The boss-master had recovered his confidence now. He took the knife from one of his men, and said to him, “Al—you go bring the car around. We’re not going to stick around after I get done with buster boy here.”
“Right, boss.”
His face pasted with blood, and his eyes bugging, the swarthy-faced guy came at me with the knife. He said, “You think you’re a funny guy, don’t you, buster boy? Well, I’m going to give you and your friend big smiles. Great big smiles. Won’t that be nice?”
I’d forgotten about the waitress. She had watched all of this grimly. But when the boss-master came at me with the knife, she ran across the sidewalk and started beating on him with her two small fists. He swung to knock her away and caught her on the chin with his elbow.
She collapsed with an oomph, holding her face.
“Any suggestions, Dusky?” Hervey said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah—teach me how to fly real quick.”
“Maybe we won’t have to fly.”
“Huh?”
And that’s when I saw what he meant. The shrill whistle I had heard—it had been Hervey calling for his big Chesapeake, Gator.
The dog came bull-assing through the neon-lit night, yellow eyes glowing like a dragon, or some hound from hell. His growl was so deep that it sounded like something rumbling within the earth.
The dog was no diplomat. It didn’t stop to consider who he should attack first—it just happened that the boss-master was closest.
He never saw what hit him. The dog came off all fours, all slathering teeth and fury, and grabbed the guy neck-high. There was a sickening sound of flesh being stripped.
“Jesus Christ!” the boss-master screamed hoarsely, clutching his Adam’s apple.
One of his men tried to pull the dog off him. He succeeded—but almost lost his hand in the process. That dog was hell on wheels. There was nothing cold or calculating in his attack—nothing like the way a police dog goes after someone. The Chesapeake acted like a lion reincarnated from the days of Christians in Rome.
“The car! Where in the hell is that car?”
As one of the men said it, a big blue Cadillac came screeching up to the sidewalk. With Gator still in a frenzy, the men didn’t hesitate. They piled their fallen boss into the backseat and jumped in after him. There were gunshots as they pulled away, but the slugs smacked harmlessly into the wall behind us.
I didn’t know if they were just bad shots—or if they were reluctant to add first-degree murder to their sales charts.
Hervey was testing the knuckles of his left hand gingerly. They were already starting to swell.
“You okay?” he asked.
“It’ll be a day or so before I can whistle,” I said, touching my swollen lip.
The Chesapeake watched the Cadillac disappear, sniffed at one of the knives they had left behind, then lifted his leg and pissed on it.
“Anyplace you want to take that dog of yours, it’s okay with me,” I said.
“He does kind of grow on you.”
“I’m going to order the two biggest steaks they have at the restaurant. One for myself—and one for him.”
“I think he’d like that—huh, Gator?”
The dog looked at him and sighed as if sorry the excitement was so quickly over. He made about three circles, then plopped down at Hervey’s feet.
“My God, I think they were really going to kill you!” It was Stella. She had gotten back to her feet. Her blond hair was mussed, and there was a growing bruise on her chin. She was still shaking.
I went over and took her by the arm gently. “I think they were considering it.”
“I just can’t believe it. I’m going back inside and call the police.”
“You do that. And then you can have some supper with us.”
She looked at her wristwatch and shook her head wearily. “I still have another hour before I’m off duty.” She locked her blue eyes in on mine. “But afterwards? I’d like to see you afterwards. Maybe we can have a drink. And calm down.”
“Sure,” I said.
She took out her order pad and scribbled something on the back.
“That’s my apartment number. Stop by in an hour or so. I need a shower. Maybe that’ll help. I’d like to wash this whole night away. . . .”
8
She was still in the shower when I got to her apartment.
The room smelled of light perfume and soap, and there was a maidenly neatness about the place.
Earlier, before I left to see her, there had been an awkward moment with Hervey. After all, it had been pretty obvious that his daughter was interested in me—and that I was interested in her.
But he had just laughed it away. “My God,” he had said, “go see the poor woman. After what happened to her, she’s in no frame of mind to be alone.”
So we had eaten our steaks and walked back to Sniper to present Gator his. He accepted the pound of raw meat from my hand as if it was expected—and just what in the hell took me so long?
“I probably won’t be gone more than an hour,” I told Hervey.
“For God’s sake, MacMorgan, quit actin’ like a guilty husband. You’re a growed man. Stay as long as you like—or for as long as that lady needs you.”
“I’m just trying to tell you what my plans are.”
“And damn it, I’m just tryin’ to tell you I don’t care what your plans are. I’m gonna have me another shower; carry a couple of cold beers up to that motel room, turn the air conditioner up full, and then watch Johnny Carson on TV. I got a feelin’ we ain’t gonna have much time for fun up in the ’glades.”
“It hasn’t exactly been a circus here.”
“That’s the damn truth!” He eyed his swollen hand ruefully, then chuckled. “But hell, it’s been too long since I’ve been in a fight. Makes a guy feel young. I have half a mind to pay a visit to that pretty blond waitress myself.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “Sure.”
I walked along the docks and across the parking lot through the warm September night. There was the fragrance of lime in the air. Mosquitoes whined in my ears, and far out in the darkness of Florida Bay was one frail light—the solitary light which marks the night strongholds of human existence in all rural or desolate places.
When I knocked on her apartment door, I heard Stella call, “Dusky?”
“Right.”
“Give me just a sec, huh?”
I waited outside, swatting mosquitoes. Finally, the door cracked open. A pale eye ascertained that it was me, then the door swung open completely, accompanied by a cold blast of air-conditioning.
I hurried inside.
She told me she hadn’t finished her shower. She had a big bath towel wrapped around her, and a smaller towel tied around her hair.
“Boy,” she said awkwardly, “I’m glad you came.”
And for lack of anything better to say, I answered, “Me too. Go on and finish your shower.”
With her hair covered by the towel, the bare lines and structure of her face stood out. She had one of those ranch-woman faces: skin weathered and slightly lined, the childish blue eyes peering out tremulously and in mild surprise that she, too, was growing older.
And if her face didn’t tell you that she had once been the vision of youth and beauty, the rest of her certainly did. She had long tapering legs woodcolored with sun, and her hips were so slim they suggested that, at one time or another in her life, she would probably have trouble with childbirth.
“You want a drink?”
&nb
sp; “Beer’s fine.”
“I brought some of the Tuborg with me—isn’t that the kind of beer you were drinking tonight?”
“That was thoughtful, Stella.”
“It’s in the icebox. If you don’t mind, I’d like a gin and tonic. And call me Stell, okay? All my friends call me Stell.”
Stell went back to her shower while I fumbled around in the little kitchen, making her drink.
If you want to really learn about someone, study the place where he or she lives. It can tell you more about what people are and who they are in five minutes then they can tell you in an hour.
So while I made the drink, I studied the apartment of this new woman, Stella.
She liked photographs better than paintings. It’s the hallmark of the pragmatic type. At school, she had probably been better in math than art or English. On the wall was a black-and-white photograph of a pelican in flight. There was a snapshot quality to the photograph. It captured nothing of that normally awkward bird’s grace in the air.
The living room was small and neat, with the typical apartment furniture: couch and two chairs stuffed with foam, made to look expensive and sell cheap—and disintegrate after a couple of years’ wear. There were little plaster knickknacks on the shelves and tables; toadstools and elves and green frogs. On the coffee table was a stack of benign magazines—Ladies’ Home Journal and Apartment Life—and the only books around were a couple of gothic-romance paperbacks.
There was a sterility about the place that bothered me. It was like walking into a model home—nothing homey or human about it. The barrenness of her apartment was in complete contradiction to the woman’s eyes, which suggested her share of miles on that living road of hurt and joy and the day-to-day routine.
Ever the snoop, I listened at the bathroom door to make sure she was still busy, then glided into her bedroom.
It was not exactly a gentlemanly thing to do—but then I’ve never claimed to be a gentleman.
On the night table beside her bed was one of those little gilded picture frames you buy in the dimestore. On one side of the frame was a photograph of her in a cheerleader’s uniform. There was a big blue C on the front of her sweater, and she wore a short blue pleated skirt. She was a very pretty sixteen.
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