The manager’s name was Tom Connors.
At the bar of the Raven, I ordered a scotch and water, and I said, “Tom around?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Pete Chambers.”
“Just a minute.”
The bar was a sort of tap room, separated from the main room, with booths against the walls, and one tired waiter. The bartender signalled to the waiter, who went away and came back with Tom. Tom rubbed a big paw across my back. “Hi, pal. Long time no.”
“Have a drink, Tom.”
“Don’t mind if I do. Gin and tonic, in an old-fashioned glass. And no check on any of it. This guy’s a pal of the house.” He got his drink, saluted me with it, said, “It’s a fact, pal. Really long time no.”
“Can we sit in a booth, Tom?”
“Why not? Bring your drink.” We moved away from the bar and slid into a booth opposite one another. He said, “What’s personal, pal?”
“You know a guy named Frank Palance?”
“Yep.”
“What kind of guy?”
“Don’t know what kind of guy. Customer, period. Pays on the nose and no squawk.”
“Who’s Rose Jonas?”
“Doll sings here.”
“Now what’s the connection between them?”
He drank gin from the wide glass, his teeth clicking against it, and he grinned over the rim. “I like it when you talk to me like that, pal. Real legal-type jabs.”
“What’s the connection?”
He pushed away the empty glass and folded his hands on the table. “Boy loves girl. That’s the connection.”
“Does girl love boy?”
“She don’t.”
“How’s it shape?”
“She’s playing him.”
“She got somebody? A real boyfriend?”
His eyebrows went up as he nodded. “Big.”
“Who?”
“Joe April.”
I shoved that through a sieve in my mind. Nothing came out. I said, “Joe April? Can’t be as big as you saw I’ve never heard of him.”
“West Coast hood. Frisco. Moved into town with a little mob. Plays it big and throws the loot around like toilet paper. He’ll either make it in this town, or he’ll get cooled fast. Got a lot of guts, but I’m not too sure about the brains. I’ve seen them all, pal. The smartest are the quiet ones. This guy’s got too much flash.”
“And Rose Jonas?”
“He brought her in from the Coast.”
“Then what’s with Frank Palance?”
“This April guy’s been knocking off every jane in town. Palance is a good-looking boy. I figure she’s using him for a stick against April. I also figure it don’t work. I figure April’s got a bellyful of Rose. And I got a hunch Rose knows it. She’s even been short of dough lately.”
“Let’s say April stopped laying it on the line. This Frank Palance, from what I hear, is no piker. Rose shouldn’t be starving.”
“You don’t know Rose, pal. Loves a buck, but she can spend it faster’n any dame you ever saw. She can flip for champagne for the house, two hundred customers, just because she likes the applause.”
“She any good?”
“Fair.”
“Good-looking?”
“Beauty.”
“You think she likes Frank?”
“I think she hates him.”
“But why?”
“When a dame deals from a cold deck, and it goes wrong, she tears up the cards. You know dames. The way she looks at him sometimes, when he don’t know she’s looking.” He shook his head. “Brother, it ain’t good.”
“How’d he meet her?”
“April introduced them.”
“How’s he know April?”
“Search me.”
5.
I picked up old Ben at seven-thirty. We had a couple of drinks, talked a while, and took a cab down to South Street. We got there at five minutes to eight. South Street, in the springtime, at five minutes to eight, is quiet, smoky, desolate, the old buildings dark and jagged. We got out of the cab and I paid. The street was empty except for a black car, parked and silent, a man at the wheel. Nothing else. I followed the old man into a narrow hallway that smelled of spice. We clumped up a flight of wooden stairs. A door at the head of the stairs gave back the legend by the yellow hall-light: Frank Palance, International Freight Forwarder. The old man mumbled, “Pretty fancy title.” He shoved a big key in the door, pushed the door in, left the key stuck in the lock. He flipped on a light, and we were in an old-fashioned, large, one-room office. There was a desk, chairs, benches, filing cabinets, a phone, and a large safe at the wall opposite the entrance door.
I said, “It’s a little eerie down here, isn’t it, this time of night?”
“Naw. Why eerie?” He pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk and produced a bottle and a couple of tumblers. “It’s scotch,” he said. “That’s your drink, ain’t it?”
“What about you?”
“I can drink anything.” He poured into the tumblers. “Want water with yours?”
“Please.”
He went to a corner sink, turned the faucet, let the water run.
He came back and handed me the glass. He drank his neat. He pulled up a chair, sat, and put his legs up on the desk. He kept refilling the glass, drinking the whiskey like water. I sat on a wooden bench and used my drink nibblingly. He began to tell me stories of the sea, and an hour went by like that. Then the door swung open silently, and a man said, “Hi, skipper.”
He had made no noise coming up. He was a lithe man, tall, and he needed a shave. He had black, quick-moving eyes, heavy black eyebrows, a square jaw, and a strong chin. He wore dark wide trousers, a black turtle-neck sweater, a pea-jacket and a seaman’s visored cap. One hand was weighed down with a big valise.
The old man got his feet off the desk and stood up. I set my glass down on the bench and stood up too. The young man put down the valise and shook hands with old Ben. He said, “Hi, skipper,” again, and then he said, “Who’s your friend?”
“Pete Chambers.”
“Well... I’ve heard of you.” He stuck his hand out and I shook it. He said, “I’m Frank. The black sheep.” He smiled. His teeth were white and large. He pushed his cap back on his head. His hair was black, thick and curly. He saw the bottle on the desk, poured into his father’s glass, drank to the bottom, and set the glass down with a bang. He said, “Okay. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“We’re going to talk, son. Now.”
Frank pointed a thumb at me. “In front of him?”
“He’s a friend. Ain’t nothing you can say in front of me, you can’t say in front of him. I don’t care if you murder people, you can say it in front of him. He’s a friend, and I trust my friends.”
“Okay. Okay. He's a friend.”
“Are we going to talk?”
“Sure. What’s worrying you, skipper?”
“I don’t think you’re transporting legitimate goods, that’s what’s worrying me.”
“Forget it.”
“How’d you get into this anyway? What kind of a racket are you in? Where’d you get the money to buy your own freighter? And a house up in Scarsdale? And all the high living?”
“I haven’t started yet.” He bent to the valise, opened it, and brought out a steel strong-box. He put it on the desk, tapped it. “Take a look. Here’s the proceeds of the cargo I freighted to South America... in cash... American bucks. You want to know how much? One hundred and fifty thousand clams, that’s how much. And ten percent of it, net, after expenses, is mine. Not bad, huh? And it’s going to get better. I’m working on that now.”