And so the Tropical.
The Tropical was a modest operation in comparison with those other places the Family had offered him and, in fact, was used as a trial-run spot for people being considered for top managerial positions in the countless hotels, resorts, niteries and other such establishments owned by the powerful Chicago syndicate. The Tropical was a motel, consisting of four buildings with sixteen units each; two heated swimming pools, one indoor, one out; and a central building housing a restaurant and bar, both of which sported a pseudo-Caribbean decor meant to justify the motel’s name. It was located ten miles outside of Sycamore, Illinois, and was devoted to serving honeymooning couples, some of whom were actually married. Lots of legit businessmen out of Chicago, as well as Family people, used it as a trysting ground, and so, accordingly, the Tropical made damn good money for its size.
Nolan himself had been serving a trial run at the Tropical before his money was stolen; now he was there on a more permanent basis, to observe the progress of others undergoing trial runs, doing little more than watching, really — just some mental note-taking and reporting back to Felix on the behavior and capability of the temporary managers. He would break in each new man (whose stay would range from three to six months) and see to it that a sense of continuity was maintained in between these pro tempore managers.
Which meant he mostly sat around.
And considering the salary he was drawing, that didn’t make for such a bad setup. At least, not when Sherry was around.
Sherry was young, almost obscenely young, a pretty blonde child who spent most of her time in and out of bikinis. She had applied for a waitress job at the beginning of Nolan’s stay at the Tropical, but she couldn’t keep the food and coffee out of customer laps, and rather than fire her, Nolan found a place for her. The place was between the sheets of his bed, and when she wasn’t there, she was adding to the Tropical’s already erotic atmosphere by sunning in her hint of a bikini around the outdoor pool. She was not a brilliant girl, nor was she an empty-headed one, and if she did talk a trifle much, he’d gotten used to it quickly; anyway, her voice was melodious and soothing, so if you didn’t listen to the words, it was no trouble at all.
Now she was gone.
The summer was over and there was no sun for her to lie under. She’d begun to get itchy at the tail end of September, and yesterday, when she got the call from her father saying her mother was sick, she’d decided to go back to Ohio and help out her folks. She and Nolan had had their most emotional night last night: she crying and Nolan making an honest effort to be cheerful and kind about the whole thing. She swore she’d come back the next summer; Nolan didn’t mention that he hoped to be long gone from the Tropical by then. He just nodded and eased back up on top of her again.
He tried to bank the one ball in and missed. He said, “Shit,” and chalked up his cue.
“Want some company?”
“No,” Nolan said. He shot again; this time the ball went in.
“Hey. I said, want some company?”
“No,” Nolan said.
The kid doing the asking was maybe eighteen, skinny, with long, greasy hair and a complexion like a runny pizza. A fat kid, older by a couple years probably, came sliding up to the table like a hog to slaughter. The skinny kid had on jeans and a gray work shirt with a white patch on the breast pocket that identified the shirt’s origin as Ron’s Skelly Station and the kid’s name as Rick; the fat kid had on a yellow short-sleeve shirt with grease stains and massive underarm sweat-circles, and the buttons over his belly couldn’t button.
“Hey, Chub,” Rick said to his friend. They were like two balloons, one with the air let out, the other inflated to bursting. “You know what feeling I got about this guy, Chub? I got this awful feeling he’s some kind or prick or something.” There was emphasis on the word “prick.”
Chub, however, said nothing. He just stood there, shifting his weight, from foot to foot and looking Nolan over.
Rick went on. “I mean, I ask him does he want some company and he says, ‘shit no.’ He’s some kind of antisocial bastard, I think. What do you think, Chub?”
Chub, apparently, didn’t know what to think. He’d come over to have a laugh with ol’ Rick, but now that he was here and had a look at Nolan, he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. After a moment he tapped his skinny friend on the shoulder and gave him a flick of the head that said, come on, don’t mess with this dude.
But then reinforcements arrived: two older guys, looking like something out of a fifties hot rod movie, came up from the other end of the hall to see what was the hassle. One of them actually had on a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a cigarette pack stuffed in at the shoulder; he was an emaciated sort with pipe-cleaner arms down under the rolled sleeves, who made the skinny Rick look healthy. His cohort, however, was more genuinely menacing: a sandy-haired, greasy-haired, wide-shouldered bear with close-set, glittering eyes; he wore jeans and a T-shirt under a black cotton vest, and had biceps the size of California grapefruit.
“Okay,” Nolan said. “Who wants to play some eightball?”
He played once with Rick and lost. His mind was still elsewhere. But the crowd around began making snide remarks about his shooting, and it brought his mind into focus. When he played the fat kid, for a five, he broke and didn’t sink any; then next time his turn came around, he sank all the little-numbered balls and the eight, leaving Chub’s stripes scattered all over the table. A murmur went through the small crowd, and pipe-cleaner arms stepped up, and Nolan took five from him the same way. He did it to all of them, except that most times he was running the balls right from the break.
He was good at pool; he was, in fact, good at most games. He’d been playing in a low-stakes poker game regularly with some Sycamore businessmen and had found it an enjoyable enough time killer. Good as he was at games, he was not a gambler. He was interested in pool and card playing for the chance to exercise his mind and to hone his skill; he didn’t like to play with pros, because they had their life in the game, and you don’t want to screw around with people in something they make a living at. The best amateur doesn’t want to play the worst pro, because the game is a lark to the amateur, whereas the pro is deadly serious, and sometime you’ll find yourself with a broken head and stuffed in a garbage can if you fuck with the pros and win.
Also, Nolan never hustled. Pool or cards or anything. He could go into a pool hall like this one and almost always clean the place out, if he felt like it; same with lots of small-town, high-stakes card games. But you made enemies that way. Same as when you diddled the pros, the amateur who thinks he’s a pro can get pretty mad himself.
Like this crowd around him was now.
“Some kind of smart-ass hustler, buddy? That what you are?” It was the first kid, Rick — skinny Rick with the bad complexion. “Come in here and shoot real shitty and say you don’t want to play, and then when we beg you, you say okay and wipe our butts, is that it?”
The bear with the close-set eyes, who seemed to be the leader of this small-time pack, said, “Just lay our money on the table, hustler. Just lay what you stole from us on the table, and you can walk out of here with your ass.”
Nolan glanced over toward the proprietor, who was standing by the counter where he served up beers. The proprietor was an elderly guy with a flannel shirt and baggy pants and apron on. He was aware of what was going on, but knew he couldn’t do anything about it; these were his usual customers, and he was looking the other way, toward some tables down at the other end of the room, which nobody was using right now.