Coats chuckled.
“I was going to say something. I guess I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Lefty Byrne mightn’t like it.”
Her gaze was a baby stare, steady and gently thoughtful, and provocative.
“But,” she suggested demurely, “Lefty isn’t here.”
Sam Coats guffawed and slapped his knee.
“That’s good! Well if men are the same — ain’t women?” He swung around and sidled his chair along behind the desk. “I like ’em smart, kiddo. Up on their toes. Out to grab what they can. But — on the square — I always thought you was too good-lookin’ to be anything but dumb.”
The girl evaded his reaching hand, but her smiled stayed put.
“Don’t!” she whispered. “Not here. Lefty—”
Coats’s eyes narrowed.
“Yeah?” he questioned. “Lefty?”
“He... he might be coming back.”
She drew further from him in the pause, while the Big Shot’s blunt fingers began softly to drum the desk.
“Listen,” he said, “listen here, kiddo. Tell me th’ truth. Would you care a lot if he didn’t? Would you mind it, that is, if somebody with a real roll was ready to be good to you?”
She lost the smile at that — gasped.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
The gold tooth flashed again.
“You heard me. You’ve got ears — and brains. A skirt like you could dazzle this town if she had things. If she was hooked up right. What th’ hell are you alive for? Just to sit around and help the butter-an’-egg men get ready for an ice bag in the morn-in’? Or to waste time on a cheap gun that ain’t got nerve enough to stick with his racket?”
The girl straightened.
“That’s — Lefty? Where is he, Sam? Why are you talking that way about him? About him not — coming back?”
Coats had caught himself, and his eyes were veiled to her.
“That’s somethin’,” he said, and coughed, “somethin’ that could be taken care of. I got connections in Florida — and believe me, he’ll go where the best dough is.” He got up and crossed to a filing cabinet; pulled open one of the steel drawers, and from the drawer produced a bottle and glasses. “How about a ‘first to-day’?” he asked. “This is the McCoy, kiddo. Stuff you never get uptown. My own private stock, with th’ music of th’ bagpipes in every drop.”
She had started to refuse, but something was buzzing suddenly in the back of her mind. She had to stay, and that meant she must play the game as nightly she played it at the Gold Slipper. Play it the Spartan Tennessee’s way, with a glass in one hand and the reins firmly in the other, until she knew what was coming up for Lefty.
Out by the garage door, Walsh and two or three others still were loitering. Coming in, she’d wondered why they were sticking so close to-day with the big car; wondered why they had been so set on avoiding her eye. Now, after that sodden miscue of Coats’s, terror was throbbing in her throat.
Yes; she must stand by. If she could only make a party of it, run it in her maddest madcap manner, get them whooping it as she knew they often did, get upstairs to Lefty—
Staring at her with the bottle uncorked, big Sam Coats said: “Well, what do you say?”
She gave him the Tennessee look and the Tennessee gurgle.
“If it’s as good as you say it is, pour me one as big as I ought to want it.” Then, as if it had been a swift inspiration, she wanted to know: “How about having the boys in?”
“Why?” grunted Coats.
Both coolness and promise were in her slow glance.
“I’m a hard woman in a hard world, Sammy,” she drawled. “Starting now, when anybody talks fur coat to me — I want witnesses!”
Coats’s eyes went wide.
“What a gold digger my baby’s turnin’ out to be!” He gave her an ecstatic squeeze in passing, and roared happily through the office door: “Gang! Front and center!”
IV
It called for a flawless technique, the handling of that day’s wild whoopee party in Sam Coats’s garage, for it was a party epic in its potentialities. The Scotch, as plentiful as powerful, early proved a distillation not only of bagpipe music, but of stout Highland combativeness. Twice the thick-shouldered Mr. Walsh had to separate two of his partners of the touring car crew, and once Walsh himself was at the verge of a clash with Coats.
Ardently wishing they’d slaughter one another, but uncertain whether they would, Dorcas O’Donnell vindicated herself as an accomplished mistress of ceremonies by directing the removal of the radio from the office to the garage floor.
“I love to dance,” she shrilled, “when I don’t have to. And what a stag line!”
Coats, maudlin by then, claimed her first.
“When th’ rest a’ you dance,” he hiccoughed, “is when I’m too tired. Whose liquor is it, anyhow? And whose joint — an’ whose dame?”
“You ought to ask Lefty,” some one suggested.
“Shut up!” Coats roared then. “Lefty ain’t here, see?”
But Dorcas O’Donnell had marked the source of the jeering invitation, and that was the man she danced with next.
“What’s the joke about Lefty?” she asked him when they were at the far end of the floor.
Her partner’s tongue was almost, but not quite as loose, as she had hoped it would be.
“Joke?” he said. “Well, if you call it that. Him an’ Sam had an arg’ment about some coin — and Sam’s got the coin. Playin’ close to his vest with it; I’ll say he is. Under his vest. It’s in his money belt now, next to his skin.”
“Yes?” the girl breathed. “And what about Lefty?”
The well had run dry.
“That’s somethin’,” the rum runner told her, belatedly cautious, “that you’ll have to ask Coats.”
When she danced next with Coats, she did try again. But, “He’s gone on erran’ — a long erran’!” was all he told her.
A while after that, Coats went into the office and called one of his men — the straightest one, except for Walsh, of the crowd. The girl, close to the door, overheard an interchange that froze her heart.
“Now, lissen here, Buck,” Coats was saying in a hoarse whisper. “This goes. My mind’s made up. I’m tired a’ hearin’ that broad with her Lefty this and Lefty that, an’ ‘Where the hell is Lefty?’ ”
“Yeah?” said Buck. “It goes — but, what?”
“The works!” snarled Coats. “You’re goin’ to take him out in the ear to-night, and you ain’t goin’ to bring him back. Give him a water ride, see? Take him ’way out an’ sink him. I told the skirt I might be sendin’ him to Florida. Well, I will — inside a shark!”
He came from the office, weaving, to find the life of the party faint and white.
“What’s the matter, kiddo? Gettin’ sick? An’ me just after openin’ another case!”
She rallied bravely.
“No; I’m just beginning to have a good time. But we need more girls. I was just thinking — there’s a couple over in my house. Hostesses. They’d love to come over.”
“Fine!” endorsed Coats. “Phone ’em.”
“I can’t. They haven’t a phone. I’ll have to go after them.”
The host glowered and grunted.
“You wouldn’t come back!”
“I will. I promise. Won’t you believe me — Sammy?”
“All right,” Coats said. “I believe you. But I’ll send Walsh with you, just for luck.”
Walsh went, but the girl left him waiting on the sidewalk when they had turned her corner. Breathless, she flew up the stairs to her own small flat and to the rear window.