“Listen to me, Ray. Over half of everything he owns is in my name. It has to be that way, for the looks of it. It’s mine legally. We don’t need Dixie. We don’t need him at all.”
He laughed again, and there was a sudden tension in the sound. “That’s not the point. It’s not just the lettuce. Think, baby, think. Dixie grabbed me off the force for his personal bodyguard. I’m the strong-arm guy. I do the dirty work. In the last couple years I’ve made more enemies than any one guy ought to have, and every one of them would love to see me dead. Who keeps me alive? I’ll tell you, baby. Dixie Cannon. Fat little Dixie Cannon. God knows how he ever got the power he’s got, and God knows how he keeps it, but he did and he does. He’s all that stands between me and something I don’t like to think about. Just one little man between Ray Butler and the full treatment. Just one fat little man who looks like Santa Claus with a shave.”
He stopped, tucking her fair head under his chin, his hands moving along the sidelines of her torso, and after a while he added dreamily, “But I’m growing. Slowly, I’m growing. I’ll let you know when I’m ready, and when that time comes, there’ll be no question and no more waiting. We’ll take care of Dixie Cannon, and we’ll take care of anyone else who thinks he wants a piece of Ray Butler.”
She lifted her face again to his pleasure, her bright hair hanging, and again there was the molten merging of their bodies. After a long time, she shuddered and twisted from his arms.
“Okay, Ray. Maybe we ought to have a drink to the time.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Sorry, baby, but I just stopped off on my way to somewhere else. I’m on a job for Dixie.”
“Where?”
“Out to Club 44-40. The Schultz twins’ place. Dixie’s moving in.”
“Be careful, Ray. I’d die if anything happened to you.”
He lifted a hand with thumb and index finger tip to tip in the okay sign. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to Ray Butler, baby. Nothing but good luck. The kind that was meant for the two of us.”
He went out into the hall past the maid, who was dusting, and outside to Dixie Cannon’s blue Caddy in the drive. Thirty minutes later he was at Club 44-40.
* * * *
It was a sweet joint. Even on a day as hot as this, it had a cool, secluded look. Remote from the blistering concrete highway at the end of a white gravel drive, it sprawled with an effect of leisure beneath the drooping pale green branches of weeping willows.
Ray parked the Caddy in shade and went up to heavy double doors. They were unlocked, and he pushed his way inside, standing for a moment in the soft air-conditioned shadows of the lobby to tune his senses to the reduced momentum and volume of the club’s interior stirrings. Looking straight ahead through the small lobby, he could see a litter of chairs and tables, a dance area that was hardly more than a nominal concession to active patrons. Swinging his gaze clockwise through an arch, he picked up in dark glass a reverse view of a section of the bar. The angle showed him the back of a bald head that was not visible directly, and he went over to the arch and through.
The bartender watched his approach from under heavy lids. He stifled a yawn with a clean bar rag and shot a glance upward at the lighted dial of a clock.
“We’re not open yet. Mac. Come back in a couple hours.”
Ray covered red leather with the seat of his cords and leaned forward on his elbows.
“It’s nice in here. Nice and cool and quiet. I’ll have a Collins, I think. While I’m drinking it, you can tell the twins I’m here. Tell them it’s Ray Butler with a word from Dixie Cannon.”
Heavy lids flicked up reflexively and then dropped over a glitter of pupils. The bar rag made a swift swipe at mahogany that didn’t need it.
“Maybe. And maybe you’re Joe Blow with a bag full of brushes. You got identification?”
Ray laughed. “You’re hurting my feelings,” he said. “A guy gets to thinking he’s known around, and then some joker wants credentials. You’d better fix the Collins and see the twins.”
The bartender vacillated a moment longer between the unknown reaction of the twins and the nearer threat of a still, brown face. Then he reached for the gin. He mixed the Collins and left the bar through a door at the rear. Ray watched him go and began the pleasant work of uncovering the maraschino cherry that lay on the bottom of his glass. Spinning on the stool, he saw beside the door through which the bartender had gone a garish monster of a juke box, with bubbles rising endlessly in colored tubes. He went back, carrying the Collins, and deposited a nickel. A female voice with a cultivated sob lamented. It struck Ray as rather amusing. A fine laugh, really. He leaned against the box and heard the platter through, working at the Collins as he listened. The Collins was just finished and the platter back in the stack when the bartender returned. He jerked a thumb at the door.
“You can go on back. It’s the door at the far end of the game room.”
Ray nodded and set the empty glass on top of the juke box. He went through the door into the game room, and the reason for the nominal concession of space up front was immediately apparent. Most of it was utilized here, in the main business of the club. A nice layout. Better than that, it was
