Then the music changed to a waltz and she danced among the black men slowly and gracefully, as though among four ebony pillars, very dose to them but never touching them.
The act ended. The applause rose and fell in thick waves. The light went out and it was dark again, and then all the lights went up and the girl and the four black men were gone.
“Keeno,” Tony Acosta breathed. “Oh, keeno. That was Miss Adrian, wasn’t it?”
Malvern said slowly: “Yeah. A little daring.” He lit another cigarette, looked around. “There’s another black and white number, Tony. The Duke himself, in person.”
Duke Targo stood applauding violently at the entrance to one of the radiating booth aisles. There was a loose grin on his face. He looked as if he might have had a few drinks.
An arm came down over Malvern’s shoulder. A hand planted itself in the ashtray at his elbow. He smelled Scotch in heavy gusts. He turned his head slowly, looked up at the liquor-shiny face of Shenvair, Duke Targo’s drunken bodyguard.
“Smokes and a white gal,” Shenvair said thickly. “Lousy. Crummy. Godawful crummy.”
Malvern smiled slowly, moved his chair a little. Tony Acosta stared at Shenvair round-eyed, his little mouth a thin line.
“Blackface, Mister Shenvair. Not real smokes. I liked it.”
“And who the hell cares what you like?” Shenvair wanted to know.
Malvern smiled delicately, laid his cigarette down on the edge of a plate. He turned his chair a little more.
“Still think I want your job, Shenvair?”
“Yeah. I owe you a smack in the puss too.” He took his hand out of the ashtray, wiped it off on the tablecloth. He doubled it into a fist. “Like it now?”
A waiter caught him by the arm, spun him around.
“You lost your table, sir? This way.”
Shenvair patted the waiter on the shoulder, tried to put an arm around his neck. “Swell, let’s go nibble a drink. I don’t like these people.”
They went away, disappeared among the tables.
Malvern said: “To hell with this place, Tony,” and stared moodily towards the band stage. Then his eyes became intent.
A girl with corn-blond hair, in a white wrap with a white fur collar, appeared at the edge of the shell, went behind it, reappeared nearer. She came along the edge of the booths to the place where Targo had been standing. She slipped in between the booths there, disappeared.
Malvern said: “Yeah. To hell with this place. Let’s go, Tony,” in a low angry voice. Then very softly, in a tensed tone: “No — wait a minute. I see another guy I don’t like.”
The man was on the far side of the dance-floor, which was empty at the moment. He was following its curve around, past the tables that fringed it. He looked a little different without his hat. But he had the same flat white expressionless face, the same close-set eyes. He was youngish, not more than thirty, but already having trouble with his bald spot. The slight bulge of a gun under his left arm was barely noticeable. He was the man who had run away from Jean Adrian’s apartment in the Carondelet.
He reached the aisle into which Targo had gone, into which a moment before Jean Adrian had gone. He went into it.
Malvern said sharply: “Wait here, Tony.” He kicked his chair back and stood up.
Somebody rabbit-punched him from behind. He swiveled, close to Shenvair’s grinning sweaty face.
“Back again, pal,” the curly haired man chortled, and hit him on the jaw.
It was a short jab, well placed for a drunk. It caught Malvern off balance, staggered him. Tony Acosta came to his feet snarling, catlike. Malvern was still rocking when Shenvair let go with the other fist. That was too slow, too wide. Malvern slid inside it, uppercut the curly haired man’s nose savagely, got a handful of blood before he could get his hand away. He put most of it back on Shenvair’s face.
Shenvair wobbled, staggered back a step and sat down on the floor, hard. He clapped a hand to his nose.
“Keep an eye on this bird, Tony,” Malvern growled swiftly.
Shenvair took hold of the nearest tablecloth and yanked it. It came off the table. Silver and glasses and china followed it to the floor. A man swore and a woman squealed. A waiter ran towards them with a livid, furious face.
Malvern almost didn’t hear the two shots.
They were small and flat, close together, a small caliber gun. The rushing waiter stopped dead, and a deeply etched white line appeared around his mouth as instantly as though the lash of a whip had cut it there.
A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came from her. There was that instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems as if there will never again be any sound — after the sound of a gun. Then Malvern was running.
He bumped into people who stood up and craned their necks. He reached the entrance to the aisle into which the white-faced man had gone. The booths had high walls and swing doors not so high. Heads stuck out over the doors, but no one was in the aisle yet. Malvern charged up a shallow carpeted slope, at the far end of which booth doors stood wide open.
Legs in dark cloth showed past the doors, slack on the floor, the knees sagged. The toes of black shoes were pointed into the booth.
Malvern shook an arm off, reached the place.
The man lay across the end of a table, his stomach and one side of his face on the white cloth, his left hand dropped between the table and the padded seat. His right hand on top of the table didn’t quite hold a big black gun, a .45 with a cut barrel. The bald spot on his head glistened under the light, and the oily metal of the gun glistened beside it.
Blood leaked from under his chest, vivid scarlet on the white cloth, seeping into it as into blotting paper.
Duke Targo was standing up, deep in the booth. His left arm in the white serge coat was braced on the end of the table. Jean Adrian was sitting down at his side. Targo looked at Malvern blankly, as if he had never seen him before. He pushed his big right hand forward.
A small white-handled automatic lay on his palm.
“I shot him,” he said thickly. “He pulled a gun on us and I shot him.”
Jean Adrian was scrubbing her hands together on a scrap of handkerchief. Her face was strained, cold, not scared. Her eyes were dark.
“I shot him,” Targo said. He threw the small gun down on the cloth. It bounced, almost hit the fallen man’s head. “Let’s... let’s get out of here.”
Malvern put a hand against the side of the sprawled man’s neck, held it there a second or two, took it away.
“He’s dead,” he said. “When a citizen drops a redhot — that’s news.”
Jean Adrian was staring at him stiff-eyed. He flashed a smile at her, put a hand against Targo’s chest, pushed him back.
“Sit down, Targo. You’re not going any place.”
Targo said: “Well — okey. I shot him, see.”
“That’s all right,” Malvern said. “Just relax.”
People were close behind him now, crowding him. He leaned back against the press of bodies and kept on smiling at the girl’s white face.
5
Benny Cyrano was shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top of a big one that was his body. His small dapper legs and feet in patent leather shoes were pushed into the kneehole of a dark sheenless desk. He held a corner of a handkerchief tightly between his teeth and pulled against it with his left hand and held his right hand out pudgily in front of him, pushing against the air. He was saying in a voice muffled by the handkerchief: