cared deeply about his boss’s health. Sure.
“And you think he ought to delegate authority, more,” I said.
“What?”
“He ought to trust the people around him. Give them some responsibility.”
“Yeah,” Moey said, smiling, nodding. “He ought to do that.”
“Don’t you still handle the local end of Trans-American for him?”
“Sure. He gets out of my way on that. It’s just the Flamingo he don’t want anybody touching. You’d think he was a goddamn artist. You’d think it was a goddamn picture he was painting.”
“Maybe to him it is.”
Sedway shrugged. “Maybe. But it ain’t his
By that I took him to mean the money Siegel was spending was mostly that of the boys back east. Lansky and Costello and Adonis and Luciano-although Luciano wasn’t back east, anymore, unless you viewed Sicily as east of New York, which I guessed it was. Whatever the case, the deported “Charlie Lucky” was said to still be running things, albeit at a distance.
“What am I supposed to do till Ben comes around?”
“Have some fun. You can run a tab on anything except gambling. Food’s good here. Hit the bar. Ride a horse. Have a swim.”
“I didn’t bring bathing trunks. Never occurred to me.” Back in Chicago, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it.
Sedway was turning to go. “You can get a suit in the gift shop. I got to hook back up with Ben. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Why don’t I just come with you…?”
He stopped and turned and looked at me. “Look, Nate. You better get this straight right now. You do things Ben’s way when you’re in Ben’s world, which is where you are. Ben wanted you to relax after your long train ride. So that’s what you’re going to do. Is relax.”
He pointed a finger at me and went out.
I slept for an hour, in my clothes, and then got up and undressed and showered and unpacked and put on a sportshirt and slacks and prowled the place. I had a rum cocktail in a replica of a forty-niner saloon, complete with bullet-scarred mahogany bar and saddle-shaped leather bar stools; then I rode on into the main casino, where the ceiling was covered with pony hide and the walls ornately papered and peppered with bawdy house nudes in heavy gold-gilt frames. Despite these distractions, I played blackjack for a couple hours and ended up ahead a few bucks. I bought a swimming suit in the gift shop, or rather charged it to my room, where I went back to put the thing on, feeling somehow foolish to be wandering across a landscaped lawn with a towel around my waist in the middle of December.
But the pleasantly warm desert air took that thought away, and for a moment I wondered if I was still asleep, as this seemed nicer than real life; when I dove into the blue pool, the cool water refreshed and awoke me, making me realize I was not dreaming. I was in fact in a desert oasis, getting paid for this.
I stretched out on a deck chair on the sandstone apron by the pool and let the sun have at me. It was getting late in the afternoon, but I could feel the warmth on me, like a soothing blanket. Maybe my Chicago pallor would go away. I would walk into the A-l office a bronze god, and sweep that pretty secretary of mine off her feet. Fat chance.
I was sleeping again. It was my third nap of the day. But then for months now I’d been sleeping more than usual. My habit was to sleep six hours or so each night, especially since the war, after which I’d started having cold-sweat nightmares. Actually, immediately after I got back from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, I’d had mostly sleepless nights. It had taken a good long time to work up to six hours per.
But lately I’d been sleeping twelve hours. And catching naps, too. I was working hard, sure, but no harder than normal, and doing damn little field work. Why was I so tired?
Hell, I wasn’t tired. I was escaping. I was at a point in my life where I’d rather be asleep than awake. Where I’d rather be out like a light than alert and thinking.
When I was asleep I was safe, safe from memories and pangs. I was kind to myself in dreams-with the exception, of course, of the occasional combat nightmare-and when Peggy came to me, in dreams, it was as a lover, not as a love lost.
She would speak to me in my dreams. Tell me she loved me. Call out to me.
“Nate,” she’d say. “Nate. Nate!”
I opened my eyes, slowly.
Before me, in the soft focus of Hollywood and the half-awake, was a vision of Peggy. The sun was behind her, making a halo around the dark curly mane of her hair; her skin was golden, not pale, but her eyes were as violet as ever, her mouth scarlet and smiling, teeth white as purity. This wasn’t Peggy. Not the Peggy who’d bolted from my office, hating me. This was the Peg of my heart. Of my dreams.
“Nate!”
I blinked. Sat up on the lounge chair.
“Peggy?” I said. My mouth was thick with sleep. It tasted as bad as she looked good.
And did she ever look good. She loomed over me, little woman that she was, her trim figure caught in a damp black swim suit, top half of her breasts peeking out whitely above the black. She was still smiling, but she’d hidden the white teeth away for the moment. She’d plucked the dark eyebrows some, making them more conventionally curved. The sun had made her freckles stand out more. She was a little thinner, the chipmunk chubbiness of her cheeks gone. She at once looked younger and older than I remembered her.
She sat on the edge of the lounge chair.
I ran a hand through my hair, waking up, wishing I could brush my teeth.
“How are you, Nate?” she asked.
“Okay.” I said. “Okay. How are you?”
“Okay,” she said.
She smiled tightly at me.
I smiled tightly at her.
“I didn’t write,” I said. “I didn’t know where to write.”
“I know. I didn’t write, either.” She shrugged. “I thought a clean break was best.”
I said nothing.
She said, “You’re not surprised to see me, though.”
“I thought maybe you might still be out here,” I admitted.
“Didn’t you know?”
“How could I?”
“You’re a detective, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, not a psychic. You didn’t even tell your family where you were. You dropped off the face of the earth.”
She shrugged again. “I just dropped off the face of Chicago.”
“Same difference. Anyway, you look great.”
“You look good, too.”
“No I don’t. I’m fat.”
A half-smile crinkled one cheek. “You are a little pudgy. How much do you weigh?”
“Almost two hundred pounds.”
“How do you account for that?”
“I’m just your typical successful businessman. Fat and sassy.”
“Really.”
I sighed, smiled one-sidedly myself. “All I do these days is eat and sleep. It’s my way of compensating.”
“Compensating for what?”
“The loss of my girl.”
Her smile disappeared, then returned briefly, just a twitch, and she said, “I hope you didn’t come looking for me.”
“I didn’t. I’m here on a job.”
