Sinner Man

by Lawrence Block

  “No.”

  “Nothing to it. The Polacks who go to Seven don’t ask for anything fancy. A shot, a beer. Most you have to do is toss the shot into the beer for the lazy ones. No tricky cocktails, no food to serve, nothing to mess with. You’re open six nights a week, Monday through Saturday, open at seven and close at three. The pay is two bills a week, a little over ten grand a year. Think you can handle it, Crowley?”

  I look at him. “You’re handing me the job?”

  “If you want it.”

  “Why?”

  His smile was a lazy one now. “Let’s see,” he said. “Say there’s this hotster from nowhere who hits town with his eyes open. A heavy type but none of the heavyweights know him. Too big to ignore. Big enough so he has to be on the right side or not around at all.” I finished my drink.

  “This hotster,” he said. “He can’t just hang in the middle of the air. The town is nice and neat, no trouble and no heartache. The right people take care of each other and the road is smooth and soft. What you got to do is take this hotster and find out what he wants. Then you hand it to him and you’re friends. So you’re this hotster, Crowley. I’m guessing all you want is the inside track and two bills a week for a soft touch. I’m guessing you know the game and you play the right rules. Did I guess right?”

  I wondered what would happen if I said no. I didn’t want to find out.

  “You guessed right.”

  “I usually do. So you’ll be a part of us and we’ll have a piece of you. If you save your money we can throw nice things at you. You got five grand you can spare right now?”

  I didn’t.

  “Too bad,” Baron said. “There’s this con mob out of Denver that needs fast money. They’ve got a rag ready to go and they ran out of capital. They’re small time but the payoff is pretty. Five grand now buys twenty when the con goes through. If it goes through. The risk is there but the odds are nice.”

  He took the cigar from his mouth and studied the tip of it. He looked at me again. “Round Seven is closed now,” he said. “I think it opens up on Monday. That all right with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fine. You meet Johnny at Cassino’s around dinnertime Monday. He’ll have the keys and run you over there. Sooner or later you’ll want a car, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ll get a good price when you’re ready to buy. We take care of our own.” He smiled again. “This time you get a chauffeur. Johnny runs you over there Monday. He’ll fill you in on the details. There’s nothing to do but open and close, take the money and make the drinks. Deliveries are all arranged for. It’s no worry of yours.”

  I nodded again.

  “All you have to do is nothing, Crowley. A check comes once a week in the mail. The check is from Ruby Enterprises. That’s the corporation that owns Round Seven. The check is a hundred a week. You steal the other hundred from the till.”

  I must have looked puzzled. “Two reasons,” he said. “One, it saves you money. The yard a week you steal is tax-free. Two, it looks better in the books. If Ruby pays a guy two bills a week to tend bar in a losing business somebody might wonder. This way it’s just another hundred lost.”

  “I get it.”

  “I thought you would, Crowley. That’s all there is. You do your job and no more. If there’s something special for you to do you’ll hear about it. Don’t ever call me and don’t ever come here unless I ask for you. Monday, dinnertime, Cassino’s, you meet Johnny. Goodbye, Crowley.”

  * * *

  Johnny and Mustache dropped me off at my hotel. This time the heavy stuff was over. I sat up front with Mustache while Johnny spread himself all over the back seat. They even talked to me.

  Mustache’s name turned out to be Leon Spiro. Johnny turned out to be Johnny Carr. I told Johnny I was sorry I hit him and he told me he was sorry he hit me. We were practically necking by the time they let me out of the car. I watched them drive away. I stood on the corner and smoked a cigarette. A cab came by and I hailed it. He stopped for me and I got into the back seat.

  I told him to take me to Noomie’s.

  “That’s a pretty rough neighborhood, Bud. Sure you want to go there?”

  I told him to just drive. I made my voice hard and flat and there must have been something in it that made him crane his neck around to look at me. I don’t know what he saw in my face but it was enough.

  He turned around and drove in chilly silence through dark streets. He didn’t talk any more.

  7

  I paid the cabby and tipped him. He drove away and left me alone with the night. The streets were empty. There were no signs of life anywhere but I could feel the presence of people—doorway sounds, back-alley sounds. Soft sounds and an undercurrent of tension below the placid surface.

  Noomie’s didn’t look like much. A white frame house, a red-and-green sign that winked in neon with the name of the place—and nothing more. A few years of dirt kept the windows opaque.

  I crossed the street and knocked on the door. After a few seconds it opened. The girl at the door was a shade lighter than the maid at the hotel. Her figure was good, her eyes very tired. Behind her in shadows I could make out a dark Negro built like a boulder. The girl looked me over and wound up with her tired eyes on my face.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Crowley,” I said.

  “It rings no bells,” she said.

  I looked beyond her into a too-dark hallway. “Anne Bishop here?”

  “Big blond girl?”

  “A little brunette. And you can stop playing games, sweetheart.”

  She grinned softly and pointed past the bouncer, toward the darkness. I walked that way and nobody stopped me. The darkness lasted a long time and then gave way to a large low-ceilinged room that wasn’t much brighter. A handful of red and green unshaded bulbs on the ceiling gave the room an odd Christmas-tree look. I lit a cigarette, shook out a match and dropped it to the floor.

  People sat at tables and drank. There was a four-man combo on a very small stand—piano and bass and drums and tenor saxophone. The tenor was in the middle of a long, liquid, moody solo. They had a small spotlight beamed at the stand and it showed how smoky the room was.

  I picked up a rye and soda at the bar and then looked around for Anne. I almost missed her because for some reason I thought she’d be sitting alone, waiting for me. She wasn’t. I found her at a small table over on the left with Tony Quince.

  I walked over to them. There was a third chair at the table and I took it. They both said hello to me.

  “Nat Crowley,” Quince said. “Long time.”

  “Just a few days.”

  “You making out all right?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  Quince was drinking sour red wine again. I saw him sip his drink, set it down and let his face relax into a slow, easy smile. “Where you been?”

  “Here, there. I thought I’d run into you at Cassino’s.”

  “I only go when I want to watch a fight,” Quince said. “Porter goes again a week from Wednesday. He’s up against somebody name of Jackson. You could do worse than go along on him.”

  I thanked him for the tip. We talked a little more, listened to more music. He finished his wine and put a few singles on the table. He stood up.

  “Got to run,” he said. “Later, Anne. I’ll see you, Nat.”

  I watched him leave and wondered who he was. Then Anne leaned across the table and took another of my cigarettes. I gave her a light and she blew a little smoke in my face.

  “Like the music?” Anne asked.

  “Uh-huh.” I looked at the taut lips, the blue eyes. “I didn’t know you knew Tony.”

  “I know everybody,” she said.

  “You belong to him?”

  It was hard to tell whether she was angry or amused. “I don’t belong to anybody, Nat. I’m the chick who walks by herself. Straight out of Kipling, with a twist.”

  “All right,” I said.
r />   “I did him a favor tonight. I ran him an errand. I like to do favors for people.”

  “You did me a favor,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “It worked?”

  “It worked.”

  “I just ran a little interference,” Anne said. “I just made a connection. ‘An ancient and heavenly connection.’”

  The poem again. “So now we’re ‘dragging ourselves through the Negro streets at dawn,’” I said, “‘looking for an angry fix.’”

  She was very surprised, very confused. Something was out of place in her calm little scheme of things. “You know the poem,” she said. I nodded.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “You’re no beatnik. I don’t get it. You just read Ginsberg for kicks?”

  “A hobby. Everybody needs a hobby.”

  “Sure. Who are you, Nat? Where do you fit in?”

  I shrugged. “Just a hotster looking for a place to be cool.”

  “Sure. A man from here and there looking to do this and that. You’re complicating things, Nat. You’re breaking the pattern. People aren’t supposed to do that. They’re supposed to stick to stereotypes. It’s easier that way.”

  “You’re building castles,” I said.

  “You think so?” Her eyes said the liquor was reaching her. It didn’t make her giddy or sloppy. Just sadder, deeper. “You don’t understand, Nat. Everybody has an image. They hand it to you or you pick it out for yourself in a department store. Then you hold on to your image and live with it. You can’t get tricky with an image. It’s what you are.”

  “And you? What’s your image, Annie?”

  “Annie,” she said. “Nobody calls me Annie. Maybe I like it. I’ll have to let you know.”

  They brought us more drinks. She was still cooking with gin and tonic. I stuck to my rye and soda.

  “My image,” she said. “That’s easy, Nat Crowley. My image is the little girl who grew up too fast. Little girl burning her candle at both ends because it sheds a wondrous light. Little girl getting dizzy in fast circles. And not giving a damn.”

  “How little?” I asked.

  A blank look.

  “How old, Annie?”

  “Twenty-two,” she said.

  “You look older.”

  “I’m supposed to. Part of the pattern. I’m supposed to look older because I’ve grown up so fast and am so world-weary. That sort of thing.”

  “Part of the image?” I asked.

  “Part of the image.”

  “Uh-huh. And what’s underneath it?”

  There was a moment of softness. Then tension tied up the mouth and the eyes hardened slightly.

  “Oh, the hell with it,” she said. “Let’s dance, Nat.”

  We danced, we drank, we danced. It was easy to lose track of the time and everything else. They didn’t believe in letting you nurse a drink at Noomie’s. They brought you a fresh one as fast as they dared, and they dared once every five or ten minutes. I would have got very drunk if they had put a full ounce in each drink. They didn’t come close.

  But I couldn’t resent it. An after-hours spot is a tough operation. You have to grease the local law and the state liquor authority boys at the same time. It’s expensive.

  So it was a few minutes after five, maybe later. We were back on the postage-stamp dance floor and we were dancing, if you could call it that. The song was slow and bluesy. Anne was in my arms, dancing close, her head snug against my chest, the perfume of her hair reaching my nostrils. It was good perfume.

  “Nat…”

  I looked at her.

  “Don’t tell me too much, Nat. It’s all a contest, all a test of leverage. All a question of the upper hand. Don’t tell me too much.”

  “Too much gin and tonic?”

  Her eyes cleared. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. Hold me close, Nat.”

  I held her close again. Something made me think of Ellen. Nothing specific, nothing concrete. Vague and patternless thoughts that I pushed from my mind.

  The music ended. We found our way back to the table and drank the two fresh drinks that were waiting for us there. I crooked a finger at the waitress and she gave me the tab. It was an impressive one. I put a lot of money into her hand and she didn’t even think about bringing me change.

  “Come on,” I said to Anne. “I’ll run you home.”

  “I didn’t know you had a car.”

  “I don’t. I’m good at getting cabs.”

  We left the nightclub and walked out into sunshine. People were getting up to go to work. The neighborhood looked much worse, now that I could see it. Paintless frame houses yawned at the sun and looked ready to collapse. Garbage cluttered the street and the yards. The shirts and underwear on everybody’s clotheslines were ready for the rag barrel.

  “God,” Anne said. “It’s bad enough in the dark. We should have left earlier. Let’s get out of here, Nat.”

  I caught us a cab and she gave the driver her address. The cab took off and we slid into silence.

  Her lipstick had worn off and her makeup was smudged, maybe from dancing with her cheek against my jacket. She looked a little like a whore in church except that there was a strange cloak of innocence that covered her and kept her pure. Maybe Anne was a saint in a whorehouse. So, even though I wanted to touch her, to take her hand, to kiss her, I did none of these things. I waited.

  In a little while the cab pulled up in front of a dingy brick building five stories tall. We turned and looked at each other. I wanted to say something clever but nothing occurred to me. Her mouth opened, and she hesitated for several seconds. “All right,” she said finally.

  I waited.

  “All right,” she said again. “Pay him, Nat. Pay him and come upstairs.”

  I paid him and tipped him. We stepped out of the cab onto the sidewalk. We didn’t hold hands or exchange soulful looks. I followed her up the stairs and through the doorway and waited while she opened the inner door with her key. Her apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up and we climbed all those stairs in silence.

  Her apartment wasn’t much but it looked livable. Anne had an Oriental rug on the floor and Miró prints in plain black frames on the walls. The living room held a coffee table, a couch, two chairs and a table with a hi-fi on it. There was no television set. There wasn’t room for one.

  I waited while she put the latch on the door. When she turned around a part of her mask fell away and I could see more of her. She was frightened.

  Not of me, not of what was coming next. It was more a fear of something within herself than a fear of a tangible experience. But she looked so horribly afraid that I had to reach for her—and that did it. She came to me soft and soundless and burrowed her face in my chest.

  I spoke her name.

  “Hurry,” she whispered. “No words. The bedroom’s right through there in the back. Please hurry.”

  I picked her up and carried her there. She was easy to carry. I put her down on the edge of the bed and stood looking at her.

  “The light,” she said, pointing.

  I couldn’t remember turning it on. But a cord dangled from a bare bulb on the ceiling. I yanked it and the room was darker. There had been no preliminaries. We held each other briefly, then parted. We undressed ourselves in darkness and silence.

  When we were naked together I reached for her and the physical contact of our bodies was electric in intensity.

  We met in pure blind need. I felt her body beneath me, her small breasts cushioning my chest, her arms locked hard around me, her legs fastened around my hips.

  In the silence and darkness our bodies battled together. I felt her nails in my back, her teeth in my shoulder. The union was neither slow nor gentle. It began quickly and rushed forward like a young river plunging for the sea.

  It was more animal than human—blind and hungry and desperate. We were caught up in fury and need and love and hate and fear. There was nothing held back. There was nothing but our mutual race to the top.

  Once duri
ng the race we changed positions. Just once. I think she wanted to feel something like a sacrifice. So, her dark hair hanging over her eyes, she did it so that it looked as if she were impaling herself.

  The sensation was something like being sucked in and then expelled. What it was like for Anne I’ll never know, except that she did have that expression on her face of being a sacrifical offering on an altar.

  Of being in an agony.

  Her face twisted in a grimace each time she sank down on me to the hilt. I worried her swollen nipples each time she went through that act.

  Several times she flung her head back, her thigh muscles corded in the extremity of her body’s arching, and a kind of high whine came from her throat.

  It was almost too much for me. So I flipped her back to where she had been at the start, with Nat Crowley dictating matters.

  Then there was no longer that sacrificial expression on Anne’s face. There was only a look of fierce oblivion, eyes shut tight—and Anne shouting obscenities as I made the plunges through center.

  We reached the heights together. For a slice of time everything dissolved and the world went away. Then I rolled free of her and we lay on our backs in the darkness and listened to our ragged breathing.

  “I get up at noon,” she said a little later. Her voice was flat, spent, empty. “Be gone before I wake up, Nat.”

  I stayed at her side until I was sure she was sleeping. Then I dressed in the darkness and went back to the Malmsly.

  8

  Thursday night at the Round Seven. The fourth night of an easy, lazy job. The middle of the second week in Buffalo.

  It was raining outside and the rain made the crowd lighter than usual. Only four of fifteen stools were filled and all three of the wooden tables were empty. A man in faded Levi’s and a loose flannel shirt sat tossing off shots of bar rye and chasing them with short beers. A pair of skinny kids, soldiers home on leave, sat drinking draft beer and boasting about women. An old drunk worked his way slowly but surely through a bottle of Corby’s.

  There was no television set and no juke. The last owner had left a small radio behind the bar. I turned it to the one station in town that hadn’t been taken over by adolescents and soft music played. I polished glasses.