“Well, here’s something to go on with.”
His open hand came up and exploded against the side of my face. I saw it coming and rolled with the slap, taking some of the weight out of it, but it was hard enough to make my head ring and send me staggering.
He waited for me to straighten up, then he thrust his dark, blood-congested face into mine.
“Go on, shamus,” he said in a low, vicious whisper, “hit me!”
I was tempted to hang one on his jaw. Very often a guy of his build can’t take a punch on the jaw, but I knew he wanted me to hit him. I knew if I even threatened to hit him I’d be in a cell in seconds flat with three or four of his biggest men to keep me company. I didn’t move. The side of my face where he had hit me burned hotly.
We stared at each other for a long moment, then he stepped back and yelled at Candy, “Get this punk out of here before I kill him!”
Candy grabbed my arm and swung me out of the room and pulled the door shut. He let go of me and stepped back, his red, weathered face angry and scared.
“I told you, didn’t I, you damned fool?” he said. “Now you’ve really started something. Get the hell out of here!”
I touched my face.
“I’d like to meet that ape up a dark alley. So long, Sergeant. At least I don’t have to work for him.”
I walked down the passage, through the double swing doors and on to the street.
It was nice to see the sun was still shining and the men and women coming back from the beach were still looking like human beings and still acting like them too.
Chapter 4
I
Sam’s Cabin, at the unfashionable end of St. Raphael’s promenade, was a big wooden shack of a place, built out over the sea on steel piers.
There was a parking lot and though it was only five minutes to six o’clock, there were some thirty cars already parked, and not a Cadillac nor a Clipper among them.
The parking attendant was a fat, elderly man, who smiled cheerfully as he told me that the parking was free.
I walked the length of the narrow jetty and into the bar room. The bar ran the width and one side of the room. There was also a snack bar equipped with twelve electric spits, which at this moment were busily roasting twelve fat chickens.
About eight or nine men were propping themselves up against the bar, drinking beer and dipping into the dill pickle bowl.
Beyond open double doors at the far end of the room I could see a railed verandah, shaded from the evening sun by a green awning. There were tables out there, and that’s where the crowd was. As I was hoping to do some serious talking with Fulton, I decided I’d stay inside and away from the crowd. I went over to the doors and looked the crowd over to make sure he hadn’t already arrived, then, not seeing him, I picked a corner table in the bar room by a big open window and sat down.
A waiter came over, wiped the table and nodded at me. I told him to bring me a bottle of Black Label, some ice and two glasses.
A few minutes after six o’clock Tim Fulton came in. He was wearing a pair of baggy grey flannel trousers and an open-neck, blue shirt. He carried his jacket over his shoulder. He looked around, saw me and grinned. Then he came over, his eyes on the bottle of Black Label.
“Hey, there, buster,” he said. “So you’ve got the flag waving already? Couldn’t you wait for me?”
“The bottle’s not open yet,” I said. “Sit down. How’s it feel to be a free man?”
He blew out his cheeks.
“You don’t know anything until you’ve been through what I’ve been through. I should have my head examined for staying so long with him.” He flicked the bottle with his fingernail. “You reckoning to uncork this or do we just sit and admire it? “
I poured him a drink, dropped a chunk of ice into his glass, then made myself one. We touched glasses as boxers will touch gloves and nodded to each other. We drank.
After my interview with Creedy and then with Katchen, the ice-cold whisky certainly hit a spot. We lit cigarettes, sank further down in the basket chairs and grinned at each other.
“Pretty nice, huh?” Fulton said. “If there’s one thing I like better than anything else it’s to sit where I can listen to the sea and drink good whisky. I don’t reckon a man could wish for anything nicer. Okay, there are times when a woman can take the place of pretty well anything, but when a guy wants to relax he doesn’t want a woman. I’ll tell you why: women talk: whisky doesn’t. This is a bright idea of yours, buster.”
I said I was full of bright ideas.
“I’ve another bright idea,” I went on. “After we’ve had a few drinks, it might be an idea to try some of that chicken cooking there.”
“Yeah. Those birds are the best on this stretch of coast,” Fulton said. “Make no mistake about that. Okay, you can go to Alfredo’s, the Carlton, the Blue Room, or if you can get in, even the Musketeer Club. They serve chicken too. They give it to you with five waiters, silver forks and orchids. The bill will knock your right eye out. Here, they just throw it at you, but, brother, is it good. And it’s cheap.” He finished his drink, put down his glass and sighed. “I come here twice a week. Sometimes I bring my girl; sometimes I come alone. It makes me laugh to think of all the rich suckers going to the shakedown joints and paying five times what I pay and getting something not so good. The joke is none of them would dare be seen here because their rich pals would imagine they were economizing, and in this town, to economize is a deadly sin.”
I made him another drink and freshened mine to give him the illusion that I was drinking level with him.
“But, and there’s always a but,” he said, shaking his head, “this place is beginning to slip. A year ago we got guys and dolls in here who were friendly, nice and homely. Now the tough boys have discovered it. They are as fond of stuffing their bellies as I am, so they come. We’ve got this gambling ship anchored out in the bay: that attracts them the way rotten meat attracts flies. Sam’s worried. I was talking to him only the other week. He tells me the people who made his business are fading away and these tough boys are taking their place. There’s nothing he can do about it. Last month there was a fight here and a knife was flashed. Sam got it under control quick, but that’s the kind of thing that’ll scare people away. He reckons if there’s another knife fight in here, he’ll be owning just another racketeer’s restaurant.”
I said it was bad and looked over at the group of men standing at the bar. They were big and flashily dressed, with the hard watchful eyes of men who don’t care how they make their money so long as they make it.
“Bookies,” Fulton said, following my gaze. “They’re okay so long as they stay sober. The boys who cause the trouble don’t show until it’s dark.” He lit another cigarette and pushed the pack over to me. “Well, how did you get on with the old man: lovely character, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. That long room of his and his searchlight eyes. I’d hate to have to work for him.”
“You said it, brother! I’ve got me a nice little job now driving an old lady to the shops, holding her shopping bag and generally helping to make life easier for her. She’s a nice old thing, and, after Creedy, I reckon she’s going to do my ulcer a lot of good.”
“Talking about nice old ladies,” I said, “who is this character Hertz?”
Fulton grimaced.
“What are you trying to do—spoil my evening? Have you run into him?”
“He was with Creedy when I blew in. He struck me as a pretty tough egg. Who is he? What’s Creedy doing mixing with a type like that?”
“He takes care of people,” Fulton said. “Creedy employs him now and then as a bodyguard.”
“What’s Creedy want with a bodyguard?”
Fulton shrugged.
“These rich punks get inflated ideas. They think people are going to shoot or stab them. Have a bodyguard and people imagine you’re important: window dressing, like the signs in his parking lot. Big-shotting himself to death. But you don’t want to get the wrong idea about Creedy. He’s tough. Maybe he doesn’t look like it, but he’s as tough and as dangerous as any of the gun-and-knife punks who come in here. He practically runs this town. It was
