34
I lay on my back on a bed in a waterfront hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was a small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it. A spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there and let it prod me.
The reflection of a red neon light glared on the ceiling. When it made the whole room red it would be dark enough to go out. Outside cars honked along the alley they called the Speedway. Feet slithered on the sidewalks below my window. There was a murmur and mutter of coming and going in the air. The air that seeped in through the rusted screens smelled of stale frying fat. Far off a voice of the kind that could be heard far off was shouting: “Get hungry, foks. Get hungry. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry.”
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes. I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn’t quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could be had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices, like Chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I though of Indians and psychics and dope doctors.
I thought of lots of things. It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck.
I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
There was no elevator. The hallways smelled and the stairs had grimed rails. I went down them, threw the key on the desk and said I was through. A clerk with a wart on his left eyelid nodded and a Mexican bellhop in a frayed uniform coat came forward from behind the dustiest rubber plant in California to take my bags. I didn’t have any bags, so being a Mexican, he opened the door for me and smiled politely just the same.
Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs. Across the street a bingo parlor was going full blast and beside it a couple of sailors with girls were coming out of a photographer’s shop where they had probably been having their photos taken riding on camels. The voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe. A big blue bus blared down the street to the little circle where the street car used to turn on a turntable. I walked that way.
After a while there was a faint smell of ocean. Not very much, but as if they had kept this much just to remind people this had once been a clean open beach where the waves came in and creamed and the wind blew and you could smell something besides hot fat and cold sweat.
The little sidewalk car came trundling along the wide concrete walk. I got on it and rode to the end of the line and got off and sat on a bench where it was quiet and cold and there was a big brown heap of kelp almost at my feet. Out to sea they had turned the lights on in the gambling boats. I got back on the sidewalk car the next time it came and rode back almost to where I had left the hotel. If anybody was tailing me, he was doing it without moving. I didn’t think there was. In that clean little city there wouldn’t be enough crime for the dicks to be very good shadows.
The black piers glittered their length and then disappeared into the dark background of night and water. You could still smell hot fat, but you could smell the ocean too. The hot dog man droned on:
“Get hungry, folks, get hungry. Nice hot doggies. Get hungry.”
I spotted him in a white barbecue stand tickling wienies with a long fork. He was doing a good business even that early in the year. I had to wait some time to get him alone.
“What’s the name of the one farthest out?” I asked, pointing with my nose.
“Montecito.” He gave me the level steady look.
“Could a guy with reasonable dough have himself a time there?”
“What kind of a time?”
I laughed, sneeringly, very tough.
“Hot doggies,” he chanted. “Nice hot doggies, folks.” He dropped his voice. “Women?”
“Nix. I was figuring on a room with a nice sea breeze and good food and nobody to bother me. Kind of vacation.”
He moved away. “I can’t hear a word you say,” he said, and then went into his chant.
He did some more business. I didn’t know why I bothered with him. He just had that kind of face. A young couple in shorts came up and bought hot dogs and strolled away with the boy’s arm around the girl’s brassiere and each eating the other’s hot dog.
The man slid a yard towards me and eyed me over. “Right now I should be whistling Roses of Picardy,” he said, and paused. “That would cost you,” he said.
“How much?”
“Fifty. Not less. Unless they want you for something.”
“This used to be a good town,” I said. “A cool-off town.”
“Thought it still was,” he drawled. “But why ask me?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said. I threw a dollar bill on his counter. “Put it in the baby’s bank,” I said. “Or whistle Roses of Picardy.”
He snapped the bill, folded it longways, folded it across and folded it again. He laid it on the counter and tucked his middle finger behind his thumb and snapped. The folded-bill hit me lightly in the chest and fell noiselessly to the ground. I bent and picked it up and turned quickly. But nobody was behind me that looked like a dick.
I leaned against the counter and laid the dollar bill on it again. “People don’t throw money at me,” I said. “They hand it to me. Do you mind?”
He took the bill, unfolded it, spread it out and wiped it off with his apron. He punched his cash-register and dropped the bill into the drawer.
“They say money don’t stink,” he said. “I sometimes wonder.”
I didn’t say anything. Some more customers did business with him and went away. The night was cooling fast.
“I wouldn’t try the Royal Crown,” the man said. “That’s for good little squirrels, that stick to their nuts. You look like dick to me, but that’s your angle. I hope you swim good.”
I left him, wondering why I had gone to him in the first place. Play the hunch. Play the hunch and get stung. In a little while you wake up with your mouth full of hunches. You can’t order a cup of coffee without shutting your eyes and stabbing the menu. Play the hunch.
I walked around and tried to see if anybody walked behind me in any particular way. Then I sought out a restaurant that didn’t smell of frying grease and found one with a purple neon sign and a cocktail bar behind a reed curtain. A male cutie with henna’d hair drooped at a bungalow grand piano and tickled the keys lasciviously and sang Stairway to the Stars in a voice with half the steps missing.
I gobbled a dry martini and hurried back through the reed curtain to the dining room.
The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.
35
It was a long ride for a quarter. The water taxi, an old launch painted up and glassed in for three-quarters of its length, slid through the anchored yachts and around the wide pile of stone which was the end of the breakwater. The swell hit us without warning and bounced the boat like a cork. But there was plenty of room to be sick that early in the evening. All the company I had was three couples and the man who drove the boat, a tough-looking citizen who sat a little on his left hip on account of having a black leather hip-holster inside his right hip pocket. The three couples began to chew each other’s faces as soon as we left the shore.
I stared back at the lights of Bay City and tried not to bear down too hard on my dinner. Scattered points of light drew together and became a jeweled bracelet laid out in the show window of the night. Then the brightness faded and they were a soft orange glow appearing and disappearing over the edge of the swell. It was a long smooth even swell with no whitecaps, and just the right amount of heave to make me glad I hadn’t pickled my dinner in bar whisky. The taxi slid up and down the swell now with a sinister smoothness, like a cobra dancing. There was cold in the air, the wet cold that sailors never get out of their joints. The red neon pencils that outlined the Royal Crown faded off to the left and dimmed in the gliding gray ghosts of the sea, then shone out again, as bright as new marbles.
We gave this one a wide berth. It looked nice from a long way off. A faint music came over the water and music over the water can never be anything but lovely. The Royal Crown seemed to ride as steady as a pier on its four hawsers. Its landing stage was lit up like a theater marquee. Then all this faded into remoteness and another, older, smaller boat began to sneak out of the night towards us. It was not much to look at. A converted seagoing freighter with scummed and rusted plates, the superstructure cut down to the boat deck level, and above that two stumpy masts just high enough for a radio antenna. There was light on the Montecito also and music floated across the wet dark sea. The spooning couples took their teeth out of each other’s necks and stared at the ship and giggled.
The taxi swept around in a wide curve, careened just enough to give the passengers a thrill, and eased up to the hemp fenders along the stage. The taxi’s motor idled and backfired in the fog. A lazy searchlight beam swept a circle about fifty yards out from the ship.
The taximan hooked to the stage and a sloe-eyed lad in a blue mess jacket with bright buttons, a bright smile and a gangster mouth, handed the girls up from the taxi. I was last. The casual neat way he looked me over told me something about him. The casual neat way he bumped my shoulder clip told me more.
“Nix,” he said softly. “Nix.”
He had a smoothly husky voice, a hard Harry straining himself through a silk handkerchief. He jerked his chin at the taximan. The taximan dropped a short loop over a bitt, turned his wheel a little, and climbed out on the stage. He stepped behind me.
“No gats on the boat, laddy. Sorry and all that rot,” Mess-jacket purred.
“I could check it. It’s just part of my clothes. I’m a fellow who wants to see Brunette, on business.”
He seemed mildly amused. “Never heard of him,” he smiled. “On your way, bo.”
The taximan hooked a wrist through my right arm.
“I want to see Brunette,” I said. My voice sounded weak and frail, like an old lady’s voice.
“Let’s not argue,” the sloe-eyed lad said. “We’re not in Bay City now, not even in California, and by some good opinions not even in the U.S.A. Beat it.”
“Back in the boat,” the taximan growled behind me. “I owe you a quarter. Let’s go.”
I got back into the boat. Mess-jacket looked at me with his silent sleek smile. I watched it until it was no longer a smile, no longer a face, no longer anything but a dark figure against the landing lights. I watched it and hungered. The way back seemed longer. I didn’t speak to the taximan and he didn’t speak to me. As I got off at the wharf he handed me a quarter.
“Some other night,” he said wearily, “when we got more room to bounce you.”
Half a dozen customers waiting to get in stared at me, hearing him. I went past them, past the door of the little waiting room on the float, towards the shallow steps at the landward end.
A big redheaded roughneck in dirty sneakers and tarry pants and what was left of a torn blue sailor’s jersey and a streak of black down the side of his face straightened from the railing and bumped into me casually.
I stopped. He looked too big. He had three inches on me and thirty pounds. But it was getting to be time for me to put my fist into somebody’s teeth even if all I got for it was a wooden arm.
The light was dim and mostly behind him. “What’s the I matter, pardner?” he drawled. “No soap on the hell ship?”
“Go darn your shirt,” I told him. “Your belly is sticking out.”
“Could be worse,” he said. “The gat’s kind of bulgy under the light suit at that.”
“What pulls your nose into it?”
“Jesus, nothing at all. Just curiosity. No offense, pal.”
“Well, get the hell out of my way then.”
“Sure. I’m just resting here.”
He smiled a slow tired smile. His voice was soft, dreamy, so delicate for a big man that it was startling. It made me think of another soft-voiced big man I had strangely liked.
“You got the wrong approach,” he said sadly. “Just call me Red.”
“Step aside, Red. The best people make mistakes. I feel one crawling up my back.”
He looked thoughtfully this way and that. He had me into a corner of the shelter on the float. We seemed more or less alone.
“You want on the Monty? Can be done. If you got a reason.”
People in gay clothes and gay faces went past us and got into the taxi. I waited for them to pass.
“How much is the reason?”
“Fifty bucks. Ten more if you bleed in my boat.”
I started around him.
“Twenty-five,” he said softly. “Fifteen if you come back with friends.”
“I don’t have any friends,” I said, and walked away. He didn’t try to stop me.
I turned right along the cement walk down which the little electric cars come and go, trundling like baby carriages and blowing little horns that wouldn’t startle an expectant mother. At the foot of the first pier there was a flaring bingo parlor, jammed full of people already. I went into it and stood against the wall behind the players, where a lot of other people stood and waited for a place to sit down.
I watched a few numbers go up on the electric indicator, listened to the table men call them off, tried to spot the house players and couldn’t, and turned to leave.
A large blueness that smelled of tar took shape beside me. “No got the dough—or just tight with it?” the gentle voice asked in my ear.
I looked at him again. He had the eyes you never see, that you only read about. Violet eyes. Almost purple. Eyes like a girl, a lovely girl. His skin was as soft as silk. Lightly reddened, but it would never tan. It was too delicate. He was bigger than Hemingway and younger, by many years. He was not as big as Moose Malloy, but he looked very fast on his feet. His hair was that shade of red that glints with gold. But except for the eyes he had a plain farmer face, with no stagy kind of handsomeness.
“What’s your racket?” he asked. “Private eye?”
“Why do I have to tell you?” I snarled.
“I kind of thought that was it,” he said. “Twenty-five too high? No expense account?”
“No.”
He sighed. “It was a bum idea I had anyway,” he said. “They’ll tear you to pieces out there.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. What’s your racket?”
“A dollar here, a dollar there. I was on the cops once. They broke me.”
“Why tell me?”
He looked surprised. “It’s true.”
“You must have been leveling.”
He smiled faintly.
“Know a man named Brunette?”
The faint smile stayed on his face. Three bingoes were made in a row. They worked fast in there. A tall beak-faced man with sallow sunken cheeks and a wrinkled suit stepped close to us and leaned against the wall and didn’t look at us. Red leaned gently towards him and asked: “Is there something we could tell you, pardner?”
The tall beak-faced man grinned and moved away. Red grinned and shook the building leaning against the wall again.
“I’ve met a man who could take you,” I said.
“I wish there was more,” he said gravely. “A big guy costs money. Things ain’t scaled for him. He costs to feed, to put clothes on, and he can’t sleep with his feet in the bed. Here’s how it works. You might not think this is a good place to talk, but it is. Any finks drift along I’ll know them and the rest of the crowd is watching those numbers and nothing else. I got a boat with an under-water by-pass. That is, I can borrow one. There’s a pier down the line without lights. I know a loading port on the Monty I can open. I take a load out there once in a while. There ain’t many guys below decks.”
“They have a searchlight and lookouts,” I said.
“We can make it.”
I got my wallet out and slipped a twenty and a five against my stomach and folded them small. The purple eyes watched me without seeming to.
“One way?”
“Fifteen was the word.”
“The market took a spurt.”
A tarry hand swallowed the bills. He moved silently away. He faded into the hot darkness outside the doors. The beak-nosed man materialized at my left side and said quietly:
“I think I know that fellow in sailor clothes. Friend of yours? I think I seen him before.”
I straightened away from the wall and walked away from him without speaking, out of the doors, then left, watching a high head that moved along from electrolier to electrolier a hundred feet ahead of me. After a couple of minutes I turned into a space between two concession shacks. The beak-nosed man appeared, strolling with his eyes on the ground. I stepped out to his side.
“Good evening,” I said. “May I guess your weight for a quarter?” I leaned against him. There was a gun under the wrinkled coat.
His eyes looked at me without emotion. “Am I goin’ to have to pinch you, son? I’m posted along this stretch to maintain law and order.”
“Who’s dismaintaining it right now?”
“Your friend had a familiar look to me.”
“He ought to. He’s a cop.”
“Aw hell,” the beak-nosed man said patiently. “That’s where I seen him. Good night to you.”
He turned and strolled back the way he had come. The tall head was out of sight now. It didn’t worry me. Nothing about that lad would ever worry me.
I walked on slowly.