He hadn’t carried a gun in years.
But the darkness was heartening. It meant his self-inflicted term of confinement was drawing to its close. He listened to a news program on television, but it had nothing of interest to him. He thought about Louis, about those thousands of wonderful juleps he’d mixed over the years. Thought about them until they merged into a single tall, frost glass with a sprig of green mint peeping out over its ice-rimmed top. Hell, he could even smell the blend of mint, bourbon and rare armagnac that held out its delightful promise of relief from tension. He thought about the big punk across the hall — Binny, that was a laugh! — having drinks with a girl in his room and no worries about Big Nick on his stupid, Ivy League brain. Marty ran a suddenly dry tongue across the roof of his mouth.
Hell, it was his last night — Ryan had said a week, and the week would be up tomorrow morning. He thought of calling Ryan and giving him a nudge. But it didn’t pay to look anxious — not with a sharp character like Ryan. Marty picked up the phone instead and called for bar service.
After all, he was human, wasn’t he? And this was his last night. He hadn’t believed he could ever crave a drink so badly. His whole being was starved for one.
It took half an hour — Louis had used to make them ahead of time and store them in the refrigerator. Putting a julep together properly took time and trouble. And it was ten to one — no, a hundred to one — the room service bartender wouldn’t do the job properly.
When the same watery-eyed waiter who had brought his lunch came in with it on a tray, Marty eyed it like a cat inspecting a new kind of food in its dish. Then, slowly, he lifted it from the tray and inhaled its fragrance. So far, so good. His hand was steady as the proverbial rock when at last he lifted it to his lips...
Halleluja, it was good! He told himself, as the mellow fluid floated down his gullet, that it wasn’t really as good as the ones Louis mixed, that it only seemed so because he hadn’t tasted any liquor at all for so long. He took a long pull at it, then lowered the tall pewter tumbler and said to the waiter, who was still standing by, “Tell your barman to make three more — and bring them up at half-hour intervals.”
When the man had gone, Marty sat down on the sofa and looked at the drink on the table in front of him, and felt the good whiskey and brandy flow through him like liquid gold and lived — just lived.
When he had finished the fourth julep, Marty debated with himself about ordering four more. But his wits were still with him, and he knew he’d had all he could afford to take if he was going to be sharp on the morrow. Hell, he was going to have to be sharp on the morrow. He got up just a shade unsteadily and moved sedately toward the bedroom, turning the lights off carefully behind him. He hung up his clothes carefully and dropped, naked, into bed, where he fell almost immediately into the first sound sleep he had enjoyed in more than a week. The first two nights in the hotel, he had slept well, but since then it had been purgatory.
When he woke up, suddenly, he was clammy with sweat. Nightmare, he thought, and tried to put the pieces of it together. But it wasn’t nightmare, it was something far worse. He’d made a slip, a bad slip.
And they knew where he was!
It was cat and mouse, and he was the mouse. He had played this game himself much too long not to recognize what was going on. How he had ever missed it in the first place he couldn’t imagine. Tricked by his own stupid weakness for drink!
The aftertaste was the tipoff. It was faintly sharp but not unpleasant, like the usual aftertaste of whiskey — a taste he knew all too well. It was the aftertaste of his own private whiskey, the special private stock, laid down more than forty years ago by some Kentucky colonel. Marty had bought the whole supply for himself when the estate went on the block more than a decade ago. It had a distinct individual quality, imparted by a combination of local springwater and non-commercial distillation.
It was his own brand of julep — or rather Louis’ — and as part of the game they had mixed it for him. He recognized all too well the brand of humor behind the game. Big Nick had even taken over Marty’s own kind of joke!
Panic rode him like a witch on a broomstick. He fumbled his way out of bed, turned on the lights and began to walk some more. He was shivering in his sweaty nakedness and, outside, the grey of dawn was bringing renewed life to the office building across the street. He couldn’t plan coherently. All he could think of was that Big Nick knew where he was and was waiting for him.
He reached for the phone on the living room table and gave Ryan’s private home number to a sleepy-voiced switchboard operator. He stood there, still shivering, while it rang twice, three times, four times, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven times without an answer.
Then he saw the white triangle under the hall door. He went over and picked it up, not warily but resignedly. Then he switched on the lights and looked at it. It was a letter, in an envelope, with the name George Smithers scrawled on it in a semi-literate, too-familiar hand. Violet ink and verbena — Louis even had his suite number under his name. He tore open the envelope, unfolded the letter inside and read —
George—
We’ll try and do as well for you tonight. We don’t want you to go thirsty.
As ever, you louse,
Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped Louis that last time. But Louis’ too-silent perfection had gotten on his nerves at a time when they were stretched singing taut. And that “we” he used — it meant Louis and someone else, of course. Louis and who? Big Nick, of course. It was like that phoney to grab his houseman as well as his business. The creep had never had an original thought or idea in his life.
And where was Ryan? Marty tried him again, and again, kept trying every fifteen minutes, as the dawn became morning outside. For something to do, he bathed and shaved and got dressed, just as if it mattered any more.
It looked as if he were going to have to wait and get the lawyer at his office. What a time for Ryan to be out on the town, or wherever he was!
Between calls, he stood in the window and studied the blank face of the office building across the street. He wondered which one of those hundreds of sheets of glass covered the stake-out from which they had been watching him. Once, in his cold fear and fury, he almost raised his fist and shook it at the building, in a gesture of desperate defiance. But that would simply tell them their little game of cat and mouse was working on him.
At nine-fifteen, he called Ryan’s office. The lawyer wouldn’t be in yet, but his secretary would, and she’d know when he was coming in. What was her name? Miss Nourse — a plump, homely, efficient girl who knew when to keep her trap shut. As Ryan’s secretary, she had to.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Somers,” she said, “Didn’t Mr. Ryan get in touch with you? He said he was going to before his plane left yesterday.”
“Before — his — plane — left?” Marty heard himself repeating Miss Nourse’s bland phrase like an idiot. “Where’d he go?”
“He’s been so overworked,” she said, as if Marty were just any client. “The doctors told him he needed a rest. He took off for Honolulu yesterday afternoon. I saw him off from the airport.”