“Like I said,” he puffed, “the place is closed.”
“Like I said,” I grinned, “I only want a quick one.”
“Closed,” he puffed again.
“You opened it for a lady.”
He puffed and blinked. “Lady? You got wheels in your head.”
“You’ve got them in your parking lot,” I said. “A big green Caddy. With a lady attached.”
“Not in here, she ain’t.”
He began to rub another glass. He was rubbing the glass right, and me the wrong way. I leaped across the bar and slapped the glass out of his hand. It fell with a loud smashing crash against another beer glass on the bar. Suddenly there was a lot of flying glass, enough to open the ape’s eyes and show me his glimmering anger. He was staring at me and also at the spot where the beer glass had been sitting. The beer glass had been sitting on a twenty-dollar bill. I lifted it and studied it, as carefully as a federal man examining a counterfeit. I let it drop to the bar, a soggy, beer-loaded twenty.
I said, “The dame must have dropped this for you.”
“I’ll drop you,” said the bartender. “I’m going to drop you on your face if you don’t get the hell out of here.”
He had the calm self-assurance that comes with two hundred pounds of seasoned lard. And the fat didn’t stop at his neck. He had a face full of stupidity, the evil, un-tempered arrogance of the muscle boy who has always has gotten what he wanted by slugging. I didn’t relish the idea of tangling with him. I preferred him stirred up, but not in my direction. There would be only one argument for this kind of gorilla.
I waved the argument in his face. Another twenty-dollar bill.
“For a drink of Scotch,” I said pleasantly.
He took the bill and rubbed it around in his big hands. He stuffed it into his apron, reached for a bottle behind him and let me have a hooker.
“I don’t like to drink alone,” I said, fingering the glass. “It’s not sociable. Call the lady.”
“Drink it, mister. Or I pour it down your throat.”
“Can’t we be friends?”
“Drink it,” he barked.
I picked up the glass and brought it to my lips.
Then I changed my mind.
“You drink it,” I said, and tossed it in his face.
That did it. The liquor caught him right between the eyes. He tried to wipe the sting of it away. But he only used one hand for the job. With the other hand he was reaching for a bottle behind him. He swung the bottle blindly at my head. I ducked. The bottle cracked against the bar, sending up a shower of splintered glass. And then he came after me.
He was spry and fast. He was too fast for a man his size. He vaulted over the bar and landed on cat’s feet in position to slug me. He was squinting and scowling at me, not really seeing me but operating out of instinct. I waited for him to come in and when he came I hit out at him. I didn’t play it like a boxer. I hit him quick and hard and deep. He staggered and dropped away, hugging his gut and muttering obscene gurglings at me. He was no amateur at this kind of sport. He sucked himself alive and came again, his head down, ready to butt me where he had been hit. I sidestepped him. He connected with my head, a stiff hammer blow that rocked me and rolled me back against the wall. He danced after me now, still clutching his gut with one hand. I was on my knees when he came down for the last big shot at me. He was hell bent for crushing my skull now. His foot was up and I saw it in forced perspective, a brogan the size of the Empire State building, above my head and on the way down, so close that I could read the brand name on his rubber heel. I rolled away and he missed me. The flat clap of his great foot resounded on the boards, a burst of sound as loud as a gunshot. He had thrown himself off balance and was coming down lopsided. That gave me the chance I needed.
I got up fast and kicked him in the face.
I kicked him again.
A gurgle of animal pain blubbered from his lips and the blood came after the sound, a red blot of gore from his broken nose. He sagged and rolled back and his head knocked once against the slats behind him. Then he lay quiet. He would be asleep and dreaming for a long time to come.
I was in a good mood to collapse with him. I reached across the bar and grabbed the first bottle under my hand. I didn’t know what I drank, but I let it pour down inside me, feeling the hot and burning sting of it pull me slowly back to normality. It washed away my breathlessness but it did nothing to improve my temper.
I grabbed the neck of the bottle and heaved it against the long mirror behind the bar. I wanted noise now and lots of it.
“Come on out!” I yelled. “You’re in here somewhere!”
The sound of my voice sank quickly into the silence. But nobody answered me. Nothing stirred. There was a sick and bubbling noise of breathing from the bartender. I walked away from him, not wanting to see him anymore. I went through the door behind the bar, into the kitchen.
A naked bulb swayed from a frayed cord. I reached up and clicked on the light. The place was a masterpiece of rot, a pigsty. A large table stood in the corner, completely buried under a monstrous pile of unwashed dishes. On the big black stove, a huge pot of spaghetti sat alongside a plate full of cold dried fish. The roaches scurried over the walls and down to the table, nibbling the delicacies with careless abandon. A greasy hotplate held a glass pot filled with a scummy mixture somebody had once imagined was coffee. The silence hung over the filth in layers. The smells and the silence rose up to play games with my stomach. The butterflies had suddenly turned into moths and they were big ones, running a race up my throat. I backed out of there, holding my nose.
But nothing blocked the aerial road to my ears.
There was something stirring behind me. There was something moving in a hidden wall, through a door on the side of the restaurant.
The door was marked: LADIES.
Which was where I should have looked for her in the first place. Because that’s where she was.
CHAPTER 6
She was standing over the wash basin, fiddling with her blonde hair, running her long fingers through it, adjusting her make-up as if this were the powder room in the Chambord.
Beautiful? Up close, her figure was tailored to promote male clutch and grab, a bundle of bumps and hollows that made my hand sweat on the doorknob as I stood there nibbling at her with my eyes. And when she moved her head, the small gesture was a perfect thing, the cool, smooth poise of an actress, the easy, smiling greeting of a dame who knows how far a man can be pushed—and what to do when he falls. She showed me her starched white smile as if I might be a cleaning woman on the way in to pick up her cosmetic debris. She had the ability to freeze up quickly, telegraphing her distaste as casually as she breathed. She turned away from me petulantly and started dabbing lipstick over her mouth. She didn’t need the added color. Her lips were as lush and ripe as unplucked fruit. She spoke to the mirror.
“You don’t read, do you, cutie?”
“Never went to college,” I said.
“The door is marked Ladies in big black letters.”
“Does that include you?”
She burned me with her bright green eyes. “Clever boy. Obviously a clever boy. Obviously nasty, too.”
“It’s going to be even more obvious to you in a few shakes,” I said.
“And tough?” She seemed to be talking to herself in the mirror, her eyebrows arched, her wet mouth pursed and full as she completed her cosmetic contortions. Then she stuffed the lipstick away in a fancy bag and straightened her blouse and readied for her jacket on the chair near the wall. She slid into the jacket with the grace and poise of a fashion model. She didn’t look at me anymore. “God save me from the big, tough, bad man,” she said quietly.
I was in no mood for bathroom badinage. I stepped behind her as she adjusted her collar in the mirror. I stepped fast and I stepped close, so close
that she could feel my breath on her beautiful neck. It was all very funny for her, even now. She still smiled at herself in the mirror, watching me carefully with her cat’s eyes.
“Out,” I said “I don’t like dialogue with girls in the can.”
“Nobody’s coaxing you, cutie.”
“Out,” I said again, “or I’ll have to jerk you out.”
“I don’t react to jerks.”
She said it fast and she said it hard. And at the same moment she swung her body around so that she faced me. Her right hand looped her alligator bag in the direction of my head. When it connected, it felt as though the alligator was still in it. The heavy metal clasp caught me on the jaw, under my right eye. I grabbed for my face in a reflex of shock and pain because the damned ornament had the sting of a dozen needles along the rim of my jaw and scratching hard as I ducked away. She came after me like a virgin fighting for her honor, her long nails clutching and grabbing at my head, pulling my hair and screaming for Mac to come and help her. In the wildness of the moment, the alligator came at me again, flailing the air in a rush of movement, forcing me to cover up and hold my head away from the needles on the clasp. I sidestepped her whirling arm and grabbed her low, around the soft underbelly of her elegant chassis. I threw her away from me and at the same time pulled the handbag out of her hand. She slipped and staggered against the mirror, sending up a spray of glass on the mangy dressing table. A box of powder flew into the air, hit the wall and filled the small room with a smoke-screen of perfumed chalkiness. Then she was grabbing a jagged hunk of the mirror and aiming it at my face. The bitch looked like a lady but fought with the skill of a Pier 8 longshoreman. I quit fooling, then.
I aimed a right cross at her jaw and when my hand came close to her I opened my palm. When my hand hit her cheek it sounded like a canoe paddle slapped hard on water.
“You play too rough for a girl,” I said.
She screamed, but the crack of my hand only invigorated her. Something like enjoyment lighted her eyes. She unwound herself and came after me again. Her white teeth showed me a hard smile, but there was something in it that convinced me she was adept at this pastime and would want more.
“Tough,” she panted. “Tough is the way I like it.”
“You’re going to get it,” I told her.
She was on me and all over me, digging in with her long and pricking nails. She stabbed at me as if she were using knives. She laughed loud and laughed high, squealing her amusement as I wrestled her back to the wall and held her there.
“I’m going to level you, baby,” I said to her. “Do you walk out of here nice, or do I have to squeeze you down to my size?”
“Tougher and tougher,” she shouted. Her free arm came up and slammed out at me, catching me on the ear. She wanted more fight. She was licking her lips over our intimate struggle.
I had my fingers on her pretty neck. I squeezed. She began to suck air, still yelling, “Tough. Tough. Tough.” She yelled it louder, and then with a sibilant sigh.
All of a sudden her squirming hips hit me and ground to a slow halt. Her body sagged and her eyes closed. Her face clouded as she fought to loosen my hands. I was mad enough to slap her again but I held back. She was fading out.
In the last moment of consciousness, her lips parted and she showed me her smile again.
And then she fainted.
I kicked the door open and carried her back to the dining room. She lay in my arms, calm and relaxed. Her head rested against my shoulder and I smelled her subtle, expensive perfume. This dame had class. She was dressed in elegant finery, but in the close-up, the details of her facial perfection rose to stagger me. She was a classic beauty, and her face in repose was something out of a man’s good dreams. The tautness of her torso made me wonder for a second whether she was really asleep or only faking it. But she was asleep all right. Nothing happened when I pinched her flesh.
I put her down in a chair. Quick.
Holding a doll like this could make a man forget his initial purpose. I stood back from the chair she rested on and gave her a quick run-down. A surge of impatience bubbled through me because of her easy faint. I wanted her awake and alive. I wanted her conscious so I could ask her the questions that were burning me up. All of a sudden I could look at her objectively. I could remember that this was the dame who had started for Kay’s flat and then turned on her high heels and scrammed out to this cesspool.
Who the hell was she anyhow? I went back into the john and opened her alligator bag and examined the contents. I found an address book and I stuffed it away for future reference. Next came a driver’s license issued to one Serena Harper, Age 25, Address, 6534 East 83rd Street. There were only a few cosmetics in the bag, and a pair of black gloves and a package of Chesterfields, complete with a gold lighter. The initials GD decorated the face of the lighter, done in a fancy, curlicued design.
Everything about her was fancy. Relaxed and unconscious under my eyes, she looked for all the world like somebody’s debutante kid sister, upper-class and ready for the bachelors in her set to show her the town and make dignified passes at her. There was something ageless about her face. She had the pert nose and pixyish features of a gamin and her yellow hair helped heighten the effect. She wore it in a long pageboy cut, in rolling swirls that dropped below her shoulders and added charm to the picture. But she couldn’t charm me anymore. My face stung with the pain of her needle nails. In the mirror over the bar I looked like the guy the three musketeers took turns dueling. I wiped the thin threads of blood off my face with a bar towel and tried to wipe the pain away with a double hooker of Scotch.
I filled another glass and brought it to sleeping beauty. She reacted to it almost immediately, licking it feebly, then opening her eyes and batting them at me sleepily. She stared at me, as wide awake as if she had stepped out of a cold shower.
Her eyes appraised the damage to my face. She smiled coyly.
“Did I do that to you, cutie?”
She reached her hand to my face to examine the scratches. I slapped it down hard on the table. One of the hookers bounced off and crashed against the wall.
“Nursing isn’t your racket, sister,” I said. “I don’t like your bedside manner.”
“A big tough man,” she cooed. “My bedside manner is terrific with cruel men. I love them when they’re tough. Like you.”
I’d read about dames like this in Kraft-Ebbing. Now I was meeting one of them in person. She might be interesting to try sometime. But not now. I pushed her away again, but she didn’t change her perpetual smile when the blow came. She had worked her chair around to mine. She had made herself really cozy and there was only one way to keep her off. I got up. I stood over her and leaned on the table and stared into the deep green pits of her eyes. She looked away and her eyes caught the figure of Mac, the bartender, lying in the sawdust. She smiled a sly and secret little smile at him and when she lifted her pretty face my way, a new and respectful look shone there.
“You wasted the twenty,” I said.
“I like you better and better, cutie.” She bubbled with fresh enthusiasm now. “Mac must have been a hard man to beat.”
“Mac was stubborn, and unreliable. How stubborn are you?”
“I have absolutely no resistance,” she said with a laugh. “What do you expect me to be stubborn about?”
“Information.”
“What kind?” She reached for her purse, but I slapped her arm away and kicked the alligator to the wall. She stared at it as though it might be a living thing. Then she shrugged and returned her bright eyes to me. She weighed me in her intellect, not for a minute losing her impish smile. She must have found me confusing because the depth of her gaze leveled out suddenly and she no longer seemed anxious to fight me with words. A note of seriousness crept into her voice. “You’ve been through my bag, is that it?”
“Just for the lau
ghs,” I said. “I know all about you, Serena.”
“Then why the questions?”
A flick of fear scampered across her eyes and was lost. She blinked and showed me her Grade A look of wide-eyed innocence. I sat down beside her again and enjoyed seeing her recoil a little. Not much. Not anything spectacular. But enough to show me that she expected hot words from me.
“Tell me about Kay Randall,” I said.
“Kay is a customer of mine,” she said.
“What do you sell her?”
“Dresses. Gowns. I’m a dressmaker, cutie.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” I said. “When did you see Kay last?”
“Day before yesterday. She came into my shop and ordered a new gown. I fitted her and started work on it for her.”
“You were on your way to see her tonight. What changed your mind?”
Serena shrugged and giggled, titillated by some secret thought. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, but didn’t light it. When she talked, the white stick bobbled and bounced in her red lips. There was a single wrinkle in her smooth forehead, a line that came through when she was demonstrating her ability to think deeply. “I didn’t go in to see her because I imagined it was too late. I had an idea for changing the design in her new gown. I thought Kay would be interested. But I changed my mind.”
“And then you came roaring out here?”
“I always roar. I like to drive fast.”
I let the silence build around us. I watched her. The hand that lifted the match to her cigarette was as steady as a steel girder. She sucked and blew at the butt, taking long, deep drags and letting the smoke come through her nose. The smoke closed her right eye, but it did nothing to her simpering smile. She continued to smoke and grin, enjoying the pause. If she was acting, she could walk off with the Academy Award. But the weight of her personality, the zany, unpredictable flightiness of her began to irritate me. It was time to drop the bomb and step back to see how it hit her.
“Kay Randall was murdered tonight,” I said.
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