left the hall door open and retired to Murray’s private office and sat in his chair, with the door closed.
When the kid came in I called to him through the closed door. “There’s an envelope on the table there,” I said. “Run it over to the Hotel Glade near the station. It’s for a man named August Milani. Make sure you give it to him in person.”
I had left a five-spot on the table along with the envelope. I told the kid to help himself to it. As soon as he left I got the hell out of Murray’s office, ran down seven flights of stairs and caught an elevator the rest of the way. I drove home, changed into my Milani costume, hurried over to the Glade. I made myself slow down on the way in, forced myself to walk with the head-back, shoulders-slouched swagger of my man Milani.
The kid was there when I reached the hotel. He leaned up against the desk, waiting to deliver Milani’s envelope in person. I took it from him, gave him a quarter and watched him go. Then I turned to the desk clerk, a buddy by now—I’d been cultivating him carefully. I winked at him, then ripped open the envelope and snatched up the stack of bills. His eyes bugged.
“Money,” I said.
I fanned the bills for him. He saw the hundreds on the top and the hundreds on the bottom, and all the singles in the middle were just a big flash of green ink.
“Money,” I said again.
And I started dealing the bills out, slapping them one after the other onto the top of the counter. The basic principle is pretty much the same as the one used in a second deal or a bottom deal. Each time I was slapping down two bills, a hundred on top and a single under it. Each time fast fingerwork brought the hundred back on to the top of the stack for the next shot. By the time I was finished there wasn’t any question in the desk clerk’s mind. Quite obviously I had a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
“Jesus,” he said.
“I told you, didn’t I? I leave this town in the longest Caddy Detroit ever made.”
“How did you get that kind of dough?” the clerk said.
I winked at him. “A guy named Rogers,” I said. “The one who left me all them nasty messages.”
“Yeah?” I nodded solemnly. “Yeah,” I said. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Sure.”
“So can I.” I laughed aloud. “And that’s where all this wonderful bread came from. I get paid for keeping secrets. I get paid real nice.”
“What did he do?”
“Who?”
“Rogers,” the clerk said. I was glad to see he could remember the name. “What the hell did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“But—”
“He’s a real nice guy,” I said. “A big-time lawyer. It’s just that he’s got this little secret, see? And he’ll pay to keep it.”
I slapped the roll of bills against the palm of my hand. “And I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “He ain’t done paying yet. That bastard just started.”
I left him there and went to my room at the rear of the hotel. I closed the door, locked it. I tucked the bills into my pocket, dropped the envelope on the floor in a corner of the room. The envelope had Murray Rogers’ return address on it. It would probably still be there in the room on Monday, since the personnel at the Glade weren’t too fanatic about housekeeping.
The window stuck the first time I tried it. I worked on it, got it open. The courtyard in back was littered with trash and broken wine bottles. In the back of the courtyard there was a driveway that ran through to Tupper on the other side of the block. I closed the window. I tried it again, and this time it opened easily.
It would open as easily on Monday.
Monday.
Monday was going to be an important day. The last letter on Murray’s typewriter had Monday’s date on top. And Monday was the day when I would wear the shabby suit and the snap-brim hat for the final time. August Milani was going to die on Monday. Murray Rogers was going to kill him.
11
Friday I sold a unit and a half of our current syndication during the morning without leaving my desk.
I had a lazy lunch in the Panmore Men’s Grill with Jack Kimball, another of Perry’s salesmen. We ate Welsh rarebits and drank Dutch beer and talked shop for two hours. I spent the afternoon looking over some brochures on new syndicates Perry was thinking about handling. There was a bowling alley in Baltimore with a fifteen percent payout, a shopping center in New Rochelle, a St. Louis apartment house. I thought the shopping center offered the safest return and would be the easiest to push, and I typed up a memo to Perry with my recommendation. At five o’clock he handed me a check for my commissions on sales to date. Even with the five-hundred buck advance chopped off, the sum was a decent amount.
I won money at the poker game that night. We played at Ed Hart’s place in a downstairs game room similar to Murray’s. I wound up eighty bucks ahead, mostly by honest play with a few assists from sleight-of-hand. The cheating, such as it was, was almost automatic. Like the palmed-off five spot at the lunch counter a week or so earlier. That sort of habit is a hard one to break. I played fairly well and the cards ran my way, so even without a little of the best of it I would have cleared fifty bucks or so. The cheating was worth the extra thirty to me.
Saturday I slept late, soaked in a tub, cracked a fresh fifth of scotch, drove around town aimlessly, took Barb to dinner. We wound up going to a movie, finally. I held her hand through the show, and now and then she gave me a little squeeze.
Would I hold hands with Joyce? No, of course not. We might leave the movie in a hurry and find a hotel room. We might watch the movie all the way through without any contact at all. But we would never sit holding hands in a theater balcony.
We were too damned hip for that.
After the show I suggested going some place and drinking. Barb said she had scotch at her place. “The seats are comfortable and the privacy can’t be beat,” she said. “And the prices are eminently reasonable, Bill.”
So at her house we sat on her couch and drank her scotch out of coffee mugs because she couldn’t find appropriate glasses. We pretended it was Prohibition and we were in a subtle speakeasy. She did a terrible imitation of Walter Winchell announcing
I don’t remember who suggested dancing. We wound up giving it a whirl. I held her a little closer than necessary and clomped around ponderously and tried to remember how long it had been since I’d done any dancing. That had been a big thing with Carole before we had been married. After the marriage had ended I didn’t have anyone to dance with. A card sharp doesn’t take his girls dancing or dance with them in a living room. He lets them lose his money on the dogs or the horses, takes them to hip parties or clip-joint nightclubs, and once in their apartments he beds them down as soon as possible. But I was dancing with Barbara now, and I was enjoying it.
I kept enjoying it more. Barb’s cheek stayed next to mine. Her perfume was subtle but distinctive, a fresh, cutely sexy scent. I held her close and felt her breasts press against my chest. My arm was around her waist. Somewhere along the way my arm moved a few inches lower and pressed her flanks. They were marvelous. I drew her close and felt the warmth of her loins. She began breathing a little harder. I kissed her and she purred.
We continued dancing. I stroked her and she danced with delicious little hip motions that racked her loins against mine and had the right effect on both of us. I wanted her with a sweet tender ache that improved as it developed. There was no urgency, just the sure feeling that sooner or later the record would end and I would have this girl and she would be divine.
The record ended. The player shut itself off. I still held her and I still stroked her and she still made those delicious movements with her delicious hips, but we were not dancing any more. We slipped into her bedroom, and we took off all our clothes and put them neatly aside, and we rolled into bed.
Her flesh was sweet and yielding. We took a long time loving each other. I touched all of her body, marveling
