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.
36
Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked almost
