Boldt

by Ted Lewis

“So,” Jack says, “all you want me to do is follow number one on the Hit Parade against the wishes of Draper and Florian.”

  “That’s right,” I say to him.

  He sighs and reaches for the bottle but I lean forward quickly and lift it off the table. Jack shrugs and settles back in his seat again.

  “And the thing about it is,” I say to him, “you’re going to do it.”

  “I’m going to do it.”

  “Yes, because the day after tomorrow I’m going to get Styles in such a way that Draper and Florian won’t be able to do a thing about it except maybe try and have me taken out in two or three years’ time. Apart from that, you don’t really care what happens to yourself because you’re beyond that kind of self-respect. I’ve got five hundred dollars in my pocket just for you putting your feet in your shoes, and there’s another five hundred to come in a couple of days’ time. That’ll buy you a lot of bourbon except during the couple of days you’re working for me.”

  There is a long silence and eventually Jack says, “Okay, I’ll do it. You got a deal. What do I care?” I take out the envelope with the money in it that I picked up from my apartment on the way over. Jack looks at the envelope. I put the bottle down next to it.

  “Who’s Styles coming for?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t you worry about that,” I tell him. “All I want from you is where Styles goes all day.”

  Then I go on to tell him where Styles is staying and who he’s staying with and the address of Styles’s wife. Then I describe Lesley to him and ask him if he’s got anybody reliable to put on her at a moment’s notice.

  “Tony Copeland. He does work for me from time to time.”

  “I know him. He’s good. But if we have to use him, just tell him about the girl, nothing else.”

  “Sure,” he says.

  I get up. “Well there you go,” I tell him. “You start tonight; we’ll be around him some of the time but don’t take any notice of that. Just call me at Sammy’s tomorrow at eleven.”

  I stretch out my arm, take hold of the doorknob and open the door.

  “Well,” Jack says, “thanks for dropping by. I hadn’t made any plans for the rest of my life anyway.”

  I go out and close the door behind me.

  Clark’s is pretty full considering it’s early evening, but then Clark’s is pretty full most hours of the day. Murdock isn’t there when I arrive so I go and sit at a table on the raised part at the far end and it’s not long after I’ve sat down that I’m joined by Agnes and Marcia.

  “Hello, Mr. Boldt,” Agnes says. “You going to buy us working girls a drink?”

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” I tell her. “But you’re hardly working girls. Working girls usually dislike what they do.”

  “Yeah, we’re just lucky I guess,” Marcia says.

  A waiter comes and takes the order.

  “Where’s Moses?” I ask them.

  “He’s busy,” Agnes says.

  “So early in the evening?”

  “It’s never too early for Moses,” Marcia replies.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You should try it sometime,” Agnes says. “You might surprise yourself.”

  “The day I get to that I’ll shoot it off,” I tell her.

  “You never can tell,” Agnes says. “There’d always be us to ease you into it. Now that couldn’t be bad, could it?”

  “That part’d be okay.”

  “Then why not try that part now? Whoever you’re waiting for can wait for you. It only need take as long as you want it to.”

  I shake my head.

  “You never stop trying, do you?” I say. “You know if I go with you, then five minutes later you’re helping Moses stuff his cock up my ass.”

  “Or maybe in your mouth,” Marcia says.

  “But seriously,” Agnes says. “Moses is busy.”

  “I’ve never known Moses to tire himself out.”

  “Come on,” Marcia says. “Moses’d never try it on with you. Not with a cop.”

  “Moses’d try it on with anybody, even a cop. Moses isn’t scared of anybody.” Agnes is just about to give me an answer to that one, too, when Murdock walks through the far door.

  “In any case my company’s just arrived,” I tell them.

  “So we see,” Marcia says. “Why not ask him what he’s doing for the next half hour.”

  “On second thought, don’t bother,” Agnes says.

  “Yeah,” I say, “now piss off. I’ve got my own business to discuss.”

  “Sure,” Agnes says. “Don’t stay away too long. There are too few characters left in the world today.”

  The girls get up and move down to the lower level and start mingling with the customers. Murdock gets a drink at the bar then comes up the steps and joins me at the table.

  “I traced the number,” Murdock says.

  “And?”

  “An apartment on Sternwood Avenue.”

  “And?”

  “No subscriber listed or unlisted. The last person to hold that number vacated that apartment almost a year ago. A guy called Sherman used to have a small bar in the block but he gave it up and left town. Which would seem to indicate that apartment is empty.”

  “That’s what it would indicate,” I say to Murdock. “And that being the case, let’s go take a look.”

  We get up and Murdock says, “You in your own car?”

  I nod.

  “We’d better go in that then.”

  “We’d better,” I say, and we leave the atmosphere of Clark’s to its occupants.

  The apartments on Sternwood Avenue are like a thousand others—

  flat, faceless, the only indication that life exists beyond the brickwork being the lights dotted about the blank-looking walls.

  Murdock and me sit in the car and look at the apartments.

  “Apartment 28,” Murdock says.

  “So, since you traced it, what do you suggest we do? If your suspicions about Styles are right, we don’t go and ask the janitor. He’s just as likely to be paid off as anybody else if there’s a contact in that apartment.”

  “Yeah, well let’s establish which apartment it is first,” Murdock says. “I’ll go take a look on my own.”

  He gets out of the car, crosses the street and disappears into the brightly lit lobby of Sternwood Apartments. When he’s out of sight, I look up into the night sky and watch the stars trying to sparkle through the city’s evening haze. When I’ve done that for a while, I just sit there and watch the lobby of Sternwood Apartments and after five minutes or so a guy walks out into the night. This guy sort of catches my attention because he doesn’t look the kind of guy to live in a place like Sternwood Apartments; he’s a young guy dressed the way young studs dress—leather jacket, collar turned up, brown cowboy boots. Maybe he’s running a visiting service, but I watch him walk to the end of the block and go into the bar on the corner. That must be the bar the previous occupant of the apartment sold out and it’s not a stud’s bar. But, Christ, maybe the guy just wants a drink to wash out his mouth. All the same, I keep my eyes on the bar for the few minutes it takes until I’m aware that Murdock is approaching the car. He gets in and says, “Well, it’s occupied all right. You see a guy just come out in a leather jacket and stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the occupant.”

  “He make you?”

  “He never saw me. I was outside the apartment door moving by slow, and I heard the T.V. When I heard it snap off, I legged it down to the other end of the corridor around the corner then when he’d closed the door I took a peek just as he hit the stairs.”

  “That’s kind of interesting.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it just.”

 
“The thing is, he just went into the bar on the corner and is still in there.”

  We think about it for a moment.

  “I’ll go into the bar while you take a look at the apartment,” I tell him. “I want to take a look at the guy.”

  “Supposing he makes you,” Murdock says, “or maybe somebody else in the bar does?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ve never been in there in two years,” I tell him. “And I’d have to be awfully unlucky to bump into somebody we know.”

  “The guy could still make you.”

  “Look. I’ll worry about that,” I tell him. “Give me the phone number and I’ll call you from the bar if he moves out before you’re through.”

  “Yeah,” Murdock says, “and it’d be just my luck if some drunk’s phoning his girlfriend.”

  I begin to get pissed off.

  “Look, just go up there will you, and stop acting like you’re about to piss in your pants.”

  “Listen,” Murdock says, twisting around to face me, “I just want this done right, you understand? My reasons aren’t your reasons, you know what I mean?”

  “Just get up there will you and stop bleating.”

  “I’ll do that,” Murdock says, getting out of the car and slamming the door. When he’s gone, I take my glasses from the top pocket of my coat then I take my coat off and lay it on the driver’s seat. I take off my tie and holster, wrap them in my coat and stuff the coat under the seat. Then I put on the dark glasses and roll up my shirt sleeves, get out of the car and lock it and cross the street, down the block and into the brightly lit bar.

  It isn’t exactly bulging with customers. There’s a man and a woman sitting at a corner table quietly arguing about something that’s important to their lives; they look up briefly when I come through the door and then they go back to their soft intensity. A couple of guys are sitting at the far end of the bar watching a movie on T.V. The bartender’s watching the movie as well, arms folded, leaning against a shelf at the back of the bar. The young guy is sitting on his own reading a paper he’s got spread out on the counter in front of him, his elbows and his drink resting on the open newspaper.

  I walk to the near corner of the bar and the young guy takes no notice of me whatsoever. Neither does the bartender. He just stays where he is, arms folded, staring up at the T.V. screen as Audie Murphy uses his other expression as he talks to the girl. I stand there for a minute or so and I don’t want to cause too much hassle but I’ve got to say something unless it’ll look crazy.

  Before I can say anything the young guy speaks without looking up from his paper.

  “Arthur,” the young guy says. “There’s a guy.”

  The bartender turns his head slightly then takes one last lingering look up at the screen, hauls his body from against the shelving and ambles over to my end of the bar, looking at me without saying anything. I don’t say anything either, so for a minute or two it’s a complete standoff then finally the bartender manages to move his mouth and he says, “What’ll it be?”

  It occurs to me that that must have been one of the lines I’d caught from the movie that’s flickering away above our heads.

  “You sell drinks?” I ask him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “We do that, from time to time.”

  “Am I in luck tonight?”

  “Well, I could maybe arrange something.”

  “That’s fine,” I say to him. “In that case, I’ll have a vodka and a twist of lemon, but if you don’t have the lemon, don’t bother sending out for it just on my account.”

  The young guy gives a short sharp laugh but he still doesn’t look up from his paper or change his position in any way.

  “Or maybe you have to import the vodka yet?” I say to the bartender but by that time the bartender has turned away and has started on his hard work. I sit down on a stool at the bend of the bar a couple of stools away from the young guy and look up at the T.V. screen. Audie is drawing his gun and he shoots one of the villains. At the sound of the shot, the bartender stops work and looks up at the T.V., but, of course, by that time he’s too late; he’s missed the action and he swears to himself as he turns back to his work, almost hurling the ice into my glass. Then he turns back and brings the drink over. Instead of throwing it at me he sets it down in front of me and walks back to where his leaning was interrupted.

  I take a sip of my drink and there is a sudden burst of energy from the young guy. He lifts up his drink from off the spread- out paper and turns over the page, and when he’s done that, he puts his drink and his elbows in exactly the same places as before.

  The movie drones on and the quiet argument at the corner table continues almost inaudibly and the bartender and the other two guys and myself watch the T.V. Then the young guy straightens up and stretches his arms above his head like someone who’s been asleep, and when he’s done that he slaps a palm on the newspaper and says, “Arthur, give me one more will you then I got to be getting back.”

  Arthur picks a glass off the unit he’s been leaning against and without taking his eyes off the T.V. screen wanders over to the draught tap and sticks the glass underneath. He pulls on the tap and only when the glass is half full does he look down at what he’s doing.

  “One of these nights the T.V.’s going to break down, Arthur,” the young guy says, “and you’re going to have to learn to do everything all over again instead of using braille.”

  “Yeah,” Arthur says, looking back up at the screen as he puts down the drink in front of the young guy. I look through the night black-plate glass and across the road down to where the car’s parked. No flashing lights. Murdock’s taking his fucking time. The young guy drinks half of his beer in one long pull. When he’s finished taking his first gulp, he doesn’t put his glass down, as if he’s going to make the second half disappear as quickly as the first, and then maybe tell Arthur good night and slide off his stool back to the apartment. So I say to him, “I used to be a beer drinker, your age.”

  He looks at me.

  “Yeah,” I tell him, drank it all the time, just like you drank that. Bang. Straight down. Then the next thing I know I’m getting these pains in my gut so I go see the Doc and he says, ‘Cut out the beer, otherwise you’ll have gut trouble the rest of your life.’ So I say, ‘Sure Doc, I’ll do that, thanks a lot.’”

  The guy is still looking at me, his face a mask.

  “So you know what I do?”

  There’s still no response and still no flashing lights from down the street.

  “So you know what I did?” I raise my glass with the vodka in it. “I went on to this stuff. Crazy, I know. I mean if the beer was screwing up my gut, what would this stuff do, know what I mean? But let me tell you something even crazier. After I go onto this stuff, my stomach’s fine. Never acts up again. Not once. And I went onto this some time ago, I can tell you.”

  “That’s very interesting,” the young guy says and stops looking at me while he raises his glass to his lips. Still no headlights.

  “Yeah, I can tell you,” I tell him. “Been plenty of years since I was a young guy like yourself.”

  I move a stool closer.

  “You ever use this stuff?” I ask him, pointing at my glass.

  “Sometimes,” he says, then he downs some more of his beer, trying to get it all down in one but this time he doesn’t quite manage it.

  “I tell you you should switch like I did,” I tell him. “Here, why not join me in one.”

  The movie’s just finished and the bartender is passing by, so before the young guy can object, I order two more vodkas and this time the bartender actually hears the first time and looks at the young guy and says, “You want one?”

  Christ, I got a bartender who discusses business.

  The young guy shakes his head.

 
I shrug and say to the bartender, “In that case make mine a double.” Then I turn to the young guy, “No, don’t get me wrong; I’m new around here and so I drop in the first bar I see and try and drum up a little conversation, no more than that.”

  “No more than that,” the young guy says, staring at me.

  “Well actually, now you mention it,” I say to him, “I’m kind of new in town and this is my first night, and you looked like a guy who’d know his way around, know where the action is, know what I mean?”

  Still no sign of headlights but Murdock walks into the bar and goes over to the counter midway between the young guy and the two guys watching T.V.

  “And what sort of action would that be?”

  The bartender puts my drink on the bar but he doesn’t go away; he stands there and looks from me to the young guy and back again and listens in on our conversation.

  “You looking for broads?” the young guy asks.

  Murdock raps on the bar but the bartender takes no notice.

  “Well...” I say.

  “No, I didn’t figure you were looking for broads,” the young guy says. Then he slips off his stool and grabs me by the shirt, pulling me to him and saying, “I don’t like fags trying to make me, you know that? In fact, I can’t stand them being around me.”

  The bartender still doesn’t move. The two guys continue watching T.V. but the couple at the table stop their arguing and watch the scene and so does Murdock, as if he’s some guy passing through and taking in the local color.

  “Well, look,” I tell the young guy, “you got me wrong. Listen, I only—”

  “Yeah, I got you wrong all right,” the young guy says, pushing me backward as he walks out of the bar. I straighten up my shirt and get back on my stool.

  “Some guys,” I say to the bartender, trying to grin, playing out the end of the scene. I feel in my back pocket and begin to draw out my wallet.

  “Leave it,” the bartender says. “I don’t want it. Drink your drink up and clear out. This ain’t no fags’ bar, and I don’t want no one coming in who thinks maybe he’s going to change the atmosphere of the place.”

  “Listen—” I begin, but the bartender cuts me off.