‘It’s dark in there,” I said, “but if you’re game—” I rose.
Ellen rose, and I saw Nick’s eyes, and then he saw me watching him and he looked away. This Ellen was a girl who could have Nick any time she wanted him, I would guess.
Before we got to the playroom she said, “Were you kidding about the thirteen hundred, Pete?”
“I wasn’t kidding. I’ll take my three payments for the Merc out of it, and you can have the rest. There should be a cool thousand dollars for you.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Fifty-fifty, like we agreed. Oh, Pete, isn’t it wonderful?”
It was wonderful. Dancing in the dark, and I could smell her perfume and feel the firm lushness of her and forget about John and the headlines and the brown-eyed man with the .32.
Almost.
There was thirteen hundred and ninety-six dollars in the pile. Two dollars I’d had left of the seven, and fourteen Ellen had given me. That meant I’d won thirteen hundred and eighty dollars. We stacked it on the coffee table in Ellen’s apartment, and she insisted we break it down the middle.
To which I agreed, after a token resistance. I stowed it carefully in my wallet, and stood up.
“Going?” she asked, and I nodded.
Her smile was dim. “Bad company I’ve been?”
“No. Want to get down and make those payments in the morning, and get this in the bank. I’ll be seeing you.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” she said, and stood up to kiss me. Then she stood back and looked at me. “You’re a dog, you know, a cad.”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t crowd me, kid. Buy yourself some new clothes tomorrow. Give yourself a time.”
“I’ll look at rings,” she said smiling.
“A ring for your nose, if anything. Good night, Ellen.”
It was around three, and damp and cold. I cut down to Santa Monica Boulevard and took it all the way to Westwood Boulevard and turned right. There was no traffic; the town was asleep, slumbering under the night mist.
My apartment building’s on Westwood, south of Wilshire, small apartments built around a court. I parked on the street in front and walked up on the outside to the second floor, feeling a hundred and seven years old and jumpy.
The wine, I thought. I hope I never get broke enough again to drink wine. And I thought of Brown-Eyes for some reason, and I must have had a flash of prescience, because I felt a coldness in my stomach.
One room, kitchenette and bath, with stall shower. Even the GI chicken coops out here have that, stall showers. It’s practically the town crest.
I didn’t use it tonight; I was bushed. I was asleep in ten minutes.
It was almost noon when I opened my eyes again. Fuzzy in the mouth and some ache at the small of my back, but otherwise whole. I stretched and considered the ceiling which needed a coat of paint. Though not at these rentals, the manager assured me. I didn’t spend enough time here, anyway, to worry about it.
I stretched and got up and went into the kitchenette to put a low flame under the bottom half of the coffee maker. Then I had my shower and put on a terry cloth robe and picked up the morning paper outside the door.
It was the Times, and my only excuse is that the family had always read it. It is a sort of west coast replica of the Chicago Tribune and, at least with the Trib, you can read the sport pages. With the Times, you need a very strong stomach to read the sport pages.
The headline read: Threatened UN Forces Begin Mass Retreat From Pyongyang.
A short time ago MacArthur had considered the whole deal a wrap-up, and whatever can be said about him, he’s no lad to make rash statements. The Chinese Commies were now in it up to the hips. And the boys wouldn’t be home for Christmas.
I’d missed some Christmases myself. This one wasn’t my war. Yet. To hell with the headlines.
The water was bubbling in the coffee maker and I measured the coffee into the upper half of the dingus and put it on. I stirred it as the water came through, let it bubble for a minute in the upper half, and turned off the gas.
A simple way to make a complete breakfast. Three nourishing cups of coffee with sugar but no cream. The cream was sour.
The Rams had walloped the Packers 51 to 14 and were once again in the division lead. For the Bears had dropped one to their south side friends, the Cardinals, and there’d be a division play-off if the Bears got past Detroit. Tank Younger of the Rams would not be available for the Bear game if it happened. Tank was going into the army. Someone else would have to take care of Sprinkle.
So long, Tank.
A drunken father had beat his two-year-old son to death with the buckle end of a strap. Dorothy Davendish, privately known as Miss Casting Couch of 1950, was complaining that she wasn’t getting the kind of roles she deserved. “All they can see is my body,” she was quoted. “I want a role I can get my teeth into.” A cinnamon roll, that would be. The Christmas decorations were already up on Wilshire, and the merchants were sharpening their pencils.
Unemployment was at a new low, and the aircraft plants were starting to hum. I thought back to Ellen’s palaver yesterday afternoon and wondered how serious she’d been about it all. She’d certainly talked marriage enough.
You could do worse, Pete Worden, a lot worse.
I was into the classifieds, now, and here were all the ads of the friendship clubs. Matrimonial agencies was too realistic a phrase; they were now friendship clubs.
Lovely little widow of fifty-eight summers seeks the companionship of a refined elderly gentleman of like interests.
The major interest in a mixed companionship was no longer major with the widow, undoubtedly. The lovely little lady was lonely. And who wasn’t?
My phone rang.
It was Jake. “Say, Pete, that Al Calvano called me a few minutes ago. He wanted to know who you were and where you live.”
“Don’t know the man,” I said.
“The guy you slugged last night. He’s a rough operator, Pete. I told him nothing. I called Nick about it, too. You could use protection, chum.”
“I could tell the police,” I said.
“Why annoy Nick? He doesn’t want the police in his business.”
“Between my neck and Nick’s business, I’ll worry about my neck,” I said. “I owe Nick nothing.”
“Aw, Pete. You know I didn’t have to call you. I didn’t have to stick my nose into it.”
“All right,” I said. “Quit crying on my shoulder. Tell Nick I would like a man I won’t be ashamed to be seen with. One who doesn’t talk out of the side of his mouth.”
“Sure. One’s on the way. Wait for him, huh? You took those boys last night, I hear.”
“You heard right. Where did you disappear to?”
“Me and Vickie were holding hands. We’re in love. Huh.”
“Did you get her the new Studebaker yet?”
“It’d be cheaper to get a new girl. Anything you want at Hollywood Park?”
“Not today, thank you. I’m making the payments on my car and buying a new sport jacket. If I get a tip, I’ll call you.”
“Yo. Wait for that man now, Pete. You’re my meal ticket.”
He hung up, and I went over to the closet where I’d hung up my jacket last night. The wallet was there, fat and comforting. Six hundred and ninety-eight dollars and wouldn’t the boys at Triangle Loan be glad to see me.
I was shaving when the door chime chimed. Nick’s boy? Or Brown-Eyes? I stood there, the razor in my hand, half my face shaved, the other half still lathered.
A few seconds and I went quietly to the door. “Who’s there?” I called.
“Nick sent me, Worden.”
Would Brown-Eyes know Nick was sending a bodyguard? I doubted it. I opened the door, keeping my body to the right of it.
A squat man, blue-black showing on his cheeks despite his tan.
“Well,” I said. “Johnny Three-Craps. I’ll bet you relish your job.”
“I’m not fussy,” he said. “Nick pays good.”
I held the door open wider and he came in. He looked around my modest home and sniffed. “Nick figures you’re a big wheel. It beats me.”
“I have a renowned brother,” I explained. “What’s your name?”
“Mike Kersh. Why?”
“In case I want you to bring me a drink or something. Sit down, Mike. I’ll be ready in a minute. Sorry I drank all the coffee.”
“I’ll live without it,” he said. “What’d you make last night?”
“Over twenty bucks. What’d you make?”
“Funny fellow,” he said acidly. “You heard from Calvano?”
I shook my head. “Rough man I hear.”
“When he’s hopped up, and he usually is. He knows I work for Nick, though, and he sees us together, he might simmer down. Nick ain’t the kind of man a jerk like Calvano would want to buck.”
“If he’s sane.”
Mike shrugged and went over to pick up the Times while I went back to the bathroom to finish shaving.
When I came back to the living-room to put on a shirt, Mike was shaking his head. “You a Republican or something, reading a sheet like this?”
“A reluctant Republican,” I admitted. “What’s your party, Mike?”
“Well, I was a Commie for a while, but I guess I’m a Democrat now. Though them Democrats aren’t much above the ward level.”
“They never get above the ward level, Mike,” I told him. “What soured you on the Kremlin?”
“Come again?”
“The hammer and sickle. What killed the Commies for you?”
“You got to change your mind too much,” Mike said. “One day it’s an imperialist war and the next it’s to kill fascism and the hero of today is a heel tomorrow. You never know where you stand. You argue one way today and you’re eating your words tomorrow. It’s humiliating. You take a man like Taft—and who would?—but you take him, he keeps believing one way, even when he knows he’s wrong.”
I put on my jacket and felt for the fat wallet. “Well, I guess you wrapped that up. You ever been on television, Mike?”
“You kill me,” he said. “I sure don’t understand why Nick wants to keep you alive.”
“He probably wants to keep me alive long enough for Jake to get this money away from me, twenty at a time. Yours not to reason why, Mike.” I started to open the door.
“Wait,” he said, and stood up quickly.
I waited while he came over to edge in front of me. “I’ll go through the doors first, and especially this one.”
He went through, and I followed his short, broad frame along the rail-guarded catwalk to the stairs. It was after one o’clock now and unseasonably warm.
“That wind from the desert,” Mike said. “What do they call it?”
“Santa Ana.” The air was dry, almost gratingly dry.
“Where we going?” Mike wanted to know.
“A loan agency to make some payments. Thanks for your contribution last night, Mike.”
“That’s my standard game, what you saw last night. Why do I stay with it?”
I didn’t answer him. Why did I buck the ponies? Why did Dewey run again?
The place was near Pico, a narrow office in a one story building with a big neon sign jutting over the sidewalk: The House of Cordial Lending.
It reminded me of rush week at school, and the way they treated you before you took the button. And after, oh, yes, after—
The girl behind the counter in there looked at my coupon book and frowned.
“It’s all right,” I said, “it’s happened before. I’ll even go crazy and pay a month ahead.”
She was still frowning, looking at the three coupons that shouldn’t be in the book, “You realize, Mr. Worden, that your equity in that car vanishes with the first delinquent payment, and—”
“You read the wrong book,” I told her. “Look, lady, this isn’t the first time. This has happened before.”
Her face was very cool, and her voice. “Mr. Worden, I’m not concerned with what happened before. I—”
And then she was looking past me, and staring, staring at Mike Kersh. And he was staring at her, and he looked like they try to make Bogart look.
“Don’t blast her, Killer,” I said quietly. “She’ll get hep before long.”
“The dame hadn’t ought to argue like that with you, boss. Maybe she don’t know who you are, boss.”
She continued to stare at Mike as she addressed me. “Perhaps you’d better see our Mr. Gertska?”
I shook my head. Mike shook his head.
She looked down at the book in her hands, and began to tear out the coupons. Her hands were trembling. “Did you say one ahead, Mr. Worden?”
“Check.” I opened the fat wallet and began to peel out twenties.
Out in the car again, Mike said, “I’ll bet I could do all right in the pictures, you know? With a good agent, I’ll bet I’d make it.”
I was still chuckling.
“And you with that bend in your horn, that helped,” Mike went on. “You ought to get that schnozzle unbent, and you’d do all right with the dames.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” I told him.
“Though with that broad you had last night, I guess you don’t need advice—Damn it, that wind’s killing me.”
I could feel it, too. In my throat and nostrils and sinus. The humidity must be down to nothing.
And here was a bar and a sign in the doorway: Open.
I pulled in next to the curb and said, “I’m buying. And I hope they’ve got something to eat.”
It was a long and narrow place, dim and cool. A thin, tall, pale bartender was reading a Racing Form at the near end of the bar.
“You got any eastern beer?” Mike asked him.
The bartender named a few and Mike named one, and he set a bottle of it on the bar, and a glass. And looked at me.
“Anything to eat?” I asked him.
“Hamburger.”
“Two of them,” I said, “and a bottle of that beer while I’m waiting.”
There is one thing about this town, almost any place you go they have hamburger sandwiches. And almost all of them are good. I am another Wimpy when it comes to hamburger.
Mike took a good, long pull at his beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You remind me of somebody, but I can’t remember who,” he said. “A killer, this guy was, I seem to recall. You ever kill anybody?”
“Seventeen, one night,” I told him.
“Now we’re getting funny again.”
“No kidding. They gave me a Bronze Star for it, after they counted.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “Oh, yah. I missed this last one. And never got out of the country in the first one. I guess Nick’s kids will be about right for this one shaping up. I’m glad I’m not a Commie any more.”
The bartender brought my hamburgers and I said, “Another pair of those,” and indicated the bottles.
“I guess I never really was,” Mike went on, “but Nick was organizing the taxi drivers in Chi at the time, or trying to, rather, and there were some of them long hairs volunteered. Well, I’m a guy that’s seen some rough stuff in my day, but those bastards, Jeez—” He shook his head. “They eat that trouble, you know? And talk—They’ll make you think black is white when they get through spieling.” I said nothing.
The bartender said, “If you ask me—”
“Nobody asked you,” Mike said, and turned again to me. “So I guess I’m really a Democrat. I think that’s what Nick is.”
I was thinking of Joe Devlin, who’d lost the arm at Attu. I’d seen worse, after that; the Seventh was a busy Division. But it was always Joe I thought of, because Joe had been a very good man in front of a piano, maybe one of the three best in the world for his kind of music. And now he was a night watchman in a Milwaukee brewery.
“This one I’ll buy,” Mike said. “And charge it up to Nick. Expenses.”
“Make mine whisky,” I said.
“You talk too much,” I said. “Where were you hiding?”
“Don’t blow your top. We got to get along, being together all the time. What you getting so hot about?”
“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s go. I want to buy a sport coat.”
“Just let me finish this beer. Have another shot while you’re waiting. On Nick.”
I had another shot and he finished his beer, and we went out into the sandpaper dryness again. These spells never last long, only until the wind shifts back to the west again. But they shrivel your skin while they last.
In Hollywood at Poole’s, I found what I wanted, a brown Harris tweed, neat and gaudy enough. Even Mike approved of it.
Then I cut down on Doheny, down the hill to the paint store. I parked in front and said to Mike, “My girl. Do you have to come along here, too?”
“Here especially,” Mike said. “If I was laying for a guy, this is just the place I’d wait.”
“I may want to kiss her, or like that. You going to watch?”
“Unless she’s got a friend. You go for this matinee stuff?”
I didn’t answer that. I took the box with my sport jacket in it from the rear seat, and we went across the street.
In front of the paint store window Mike paused. “You ever use one of them rollers? Some guys claim they’re easier than a brush.”
“You are the talkingest man I ever met,” I told him. “My girl’s upstairs, Tiger. What the hell do I care about rollers? Come on.”
We went along the steps that led up the side, up the stair-wide corridor that smelled of white lead today. Mike edged in front of me when we got to the top of the stairs. Mike pressed the button and the two-tone chime chimed.
And my love opened the door. In a hand-knit dress, she stood there, her hair low on her neck. A dress that hugged her more prominent charms, a yellow dress that brought out the vivid black of her hair.
“Wow,” Mike said quietly.
“New dress,” I said.
“Do you like it? I got it this morning. On sale, but still two hundred, Pete. Hand-knit. Do you like it?”
“It does something for you,” Mike said.
Don't Cry For Me Page 3
