Butcher's Moon

Grofield tossed the memo book on the bed. “Pick a number,” he said.

Seven

Frankie Faran had indigestion. He figured it was probably that Chinese food at Mr. Lozini’s house last night; not that there was anything wrong with Mr. Lozini’s cooking, but just that Chinese food never did seem to sit right in Frankie Faran’s stomach. But of course when you were invited to Mr. Lozini’s house for dinner, you couldn’t show up and then not eat, no matter what kind of food Mr. Lozini was cooking that night.

But boy, had he paid for it all day today. Lived on nothing but Alka-Seltzer and bread until he came down to the club around eight-thirty in the evening, when he had two bowls of the soup du jour, which happened to be onion tonight. Onion soup was supposed to be good for the digestion.

Angie, the waitress he’d been shtupping lately, came back to the office around ten, but he just couldn’t get in the mood tonight. “I’m under the weather, honey,” he said.

“Gee, that’s too bad.” She was tough, but a good girl. Although she was thirty-seven, she was so skinny and bony, it was like being in bed with a teen-ager. She had twin sons, around twelve years of age, both in the custody of their father, an Army man who’d married again and was now stationed in Germany with his family. Sometimes when she’d had too little to drink Angie would get maudlin about those two boys, so far away across the ocean. Faran could live without that kind of crap, but otherwise she was a very, very satisfactory girl, and all in all it was a small price to pay.

”It was something I ate,” he said.

”You want anything from the bar?”

“Jesus, no. How’s it doing out there?”

She shrugged. “It’s a Friday night,” she said.

Good, in other words. The New York Room was closed Mondays, did a steady and unspectacular business Tuesdays through Thursdays with live entertainment from two fat strippers, and did great Friday-Saturday business with a live jazz group that also played a lot of rock music. Sunday there was no live entertainment, just family dining and later on recorded schmaltz music for the Geritol crowd to dance to. But Friday and Saturday paid the rent and made the profit.

Angie said, “You want anything else?”

“I guess not,” Faran said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Hope you feel better.”

He watched her go out, and felt worse.

Legal closing in Tyler was midnight during the week, one a.m. on Friday and Saturday. At twenty after one, with a few customers still finishing up at the tables outside, Faran sat at his desk with the night’s receipts and an adding machine and did a little work. He was totaling the Master Charge slips when the door opened and Angie came in again, looking scared. “These men—” she said, and made a nervous hand gesture at the two guys walking in behind her.

Faran looked at them and knew exactly what they were here for, and couldn’t believe it. Knock over one of Mr. Lozini’s operations? Nobody could be that crazy.

But Jesus, they had the look. Both tall, mean-faced, dressed in dark clothing, cold eyes scanning the room as they came in. And they had their left hands in their jacket side pockets.

And only Angie was scared. Through the open doorway, before one of the guys closed it, Faran could see the crew working away out there the same as always: putting chairs upside down on tables, closing up the bar. So the two of them had come in like sheepdogs cutting one lamb out of the flock, taking Angie, having her lead them back here to the money without disturbing anybody else. Calm, quiet, fast, and professional.

But didn’t they realize what kind of place they’d hit? Angie, moving to one side and leaving a clear sight line between Faran and the two heisters, was showing her fright more and more now that she was in private. “These men,” she said again, and her voice was skittering all up and down the scale like some kind of crazy opera exercise, “these men wanted me to—they’ve got—I couldn’t—”

“Okay, honey,” he said. He felt he shouldn’t stand up from behind the desk, but he patted the air toward her with both hands, trying to calm her down. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re not gonna hurt anybody.”

“That’s right,” one of them said. “You know what we want.”

The other one said to Angie, “Dear, you’re perfectly safe. Think of all this as a great story to tell next week.”

“Boys,” Faran said, “you’re making a mistake here.”

“Just leave your hands flat on the desk,” the first one said.

“I’m not stupid,” Faran told him, and pressed his palms down on the desk to prove it. “But maybe you don’t realize whose money this is. Maybe you don’t know the local situation.”

The first one had come over close to the desk, and now he reached out and picked up the thin stack of rubber- banded twenties that Faran had already counted. “We know the local situation, Frank,” he said.

Faran frowned at him. Did this guy know him? Both men were wearing hats and mustaches and horn-rim glasses with clear lenses; Faran tried to squint past all that veneer to see the faces. The one nearest him, scooping up the tens and the fives and the ones and putting them away in his jacket pockets, had a broad craggy face with dark wide-set eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. The other one, his back leaning against the door as he kept saying soothing amiable things to Angie, was more slender and easygoing in his looks, with a sort of dark actorish face beneath the disguise, the features sharp and self-confident, but without the first man’s stony meanness.

Faran had never seen either of them before in his life, he was sure of it. He said, “Listen, you can take the whole joint, for all of me. But if you really know who owns this place and what the local story is, you’re sure as hell going out of your way to find grief.”