“Nothing too serious, though,” I assured her. “If you’ll give me your keys, I’ll unlock your spare and—”
Her voice turned to a wail. “But I haven’t got one! Isn’t that ridiculous?”
For an ordinary run-of-the-mill female it would no doubt have been ridiculous indeed but in this case it seemed more like a daring gamble meriting admiration.
I smiled brilliantly and said, “No cause for alarm. I’ll stop off at the next gas station and send a man back.”
“But I’m so dreadfully late. I’m supposed to meet a friend at the hotel in Danvers. It’s so very important to me!”
“I can drive you on in,” I suggested hopefully. “Then you can come back later with a repairman.”
“That would be just wonderful. But you’re sure I wouldn’t be putting you out?”
“Not in the least. I stop off in Danvers every morning for breakfast.”
Which was true. So she got into the car beside me and as we rolled back into our lane she laughed and took a fetching red band off her hair and let it blow in the wind. A truly beautiful, girl; so arresting that when we passed a house around the next bend a woman working in the front yard stood up and stared; a prim-looking woman who was either critical or envious, I couldn’t tell which.
My blonde turned out to be Trudy Miller, a dancer. She didn’t say exactly what kind of a dancer but I got the impression soft light, exotic settings, and high cover charges would be involved.
Nor was I bashful with my own personal background; Larry Bowman, 32, single; a coin machine operator in that I owned a string of a hundred-odd juke boxes in the clubs and taverns north of Central City.
This appeared to thrill Trudy; a glamorous business. But I think I would have gotten the same effect by telling her I hemmed doilies for a living. She was obviously a girl who’d learned that making men feel important is good business.
And she was so good at it that the five-mile run into Danvers was over before I had time to suggest a broadening of our acquaintance; before she said I was a living doll and thanks and was rushing into the Danvers Hotel.
I rolled on around the corner, parked in my usual spot beside my usual restaurant and went in to my usual breakfast. This had been a part of my routine for a year now; since I’d bought a small house out on Crystal Lake; where — being no specialist in the kitchen — I didn’t even bother with coffee except on weekends. That made the restaurant in Danvers a real convenience — the first civilized spot on the fifteen-mile run between Crystal Lake and Central City.
Red-headed Connie Higgins was waiting with my orange juice and as I sat down at the counter, she glanced at her watch. “You’re two and a half minutes late.”
“Couldn’t be helped. A lady had a flat tire.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll bet she didn’t have a flat chest, though.”
Connie was no slouch in the figure department herself. She slapped a napkin down in front of me and turned to the coffee urn as I said, “Quite the contrary, but let’s talk about you. On our next date, we’ll take a ride and you can let your hair blow in the wind. You’ll probably look very gay and reckless.”
She snorted attractively. “I’ll probably be bald by that time. Some women lose their hair late in life.”
“Then we’ll make it tomorrow night. I’ll knock off early.”
“I wouldn’t hear of you neglecting duty. I’ll just run along behind and hold the spare wrench while you fix juke boxes.”
“That’s a heap but a girl’s place is in the suicide seat of a cream convertible.”
Connie sighed. “I wish you’d get that tub painted black. It stands out like a bonfire in a coal mine.”
I said, “The better to find you in the dark, sweet Wear something girlish,” and left her a dollar tip to start her day off right.
I passed the hotel again on the way out of Danvers toward Central City and my office-warehouse but Trudy Miller was not in sight, nothing of her remaining except a faint aura of the perfume she’d worn and an empty match cover labeled Palermo Club that she’d dropped on the floor of the car.
So, with the victim having experienced no pain whatever from the first injection of trouble, he went about his day’s affairs; a routine somewhat heavier than usual because my one and only employee, Jim Palos was on a hunting trip in Canada.
Not that I minded having Jim on vacation. A dependable worker, he still had annoying traits that could probably have been bunched under one word — impatience. He wanted to get up there fast and we’d never been able to agree on how often he rated a raise or how much his pay check ought to be fattened.
I’d been tempted more than once to let him go but it’s hard to tell a man he’s through when you can’t explain exactly why, so I’d ridden along.
My place was still there; nobody had blown it into the street, so I unlocked the door and went to work on a machine that had been an innocent bystander in a fight at the 52 Club and had gotten its nice shiny front all scratched up.
There were a few phone calls but none of any importance until I found Mack Carson on the other end. Mack was one of the nine local operators in the resort lake area around Central City. We hadn’t formed an organization exactly but we got together once in a while to keep the territory fairly divided and to discuss mutual problems.
And the big mutual problem of the moment was Gus Largo and his protection racket.
Mack Carson lost no time in bringing him up. “My box at the Kenton Lake Spa was wrecked last night.”
“Largo?”
“Who can prove it? A drunk. He beat it. Nobody stopped him.”
“Have Largo’s boys been pushing you harder lately?”
“That’s a silly question, Larry. You know the guy and what he’s capable of.”
“I don’t quite agree with the rest of you on that. He wants us in that so-called union of his but so far it’s been mostly threats.”
“Well, he sure threatened the hell out of my box at Kenton Lake.”
“That might not have been Largo.”
“Maybe not,” Mack said, “but the rest of us can’t help being scared. We’ve got more to worry about than you. We’ve got wives and kids.”
That was true. I had only myself and my boxes and not being vulnerable to the dirtier tactics of Largo’s kind I’d become a sort of rallying point for the others. I was in a position to match dirty looks with the big thug so the boys had used me for a buffer — the get-Larry-Bowman-in-and-I’ll-join-too type of thing.
So far it had worked and I thought I knew why. I tried to explain it to Mack. “Largo can’t afford to push his neck out very far right now. You know that. He’s going before the racket committee in Washington.”
“Uh-huh. He’ll go down there and take the Fifth all over the place and then come back here and beat our brains out.”
“I don’t think so. There’s that secretary of his you’re forgetting about. It’s not generally known and I want you to keep it under your hat, but she’s ready to turn on him. She’s not open to prosecution and there’s nothing to keep her from talking her head off.”
“Nothing except maybe she won’t have a head by the time she gets there.”
“You’re misjudging Largo, Mack. He’s clever and devious and he’s scared. Sure he threatens — nobody can get him on that. But he’s not going to do anything to Gloria Dane or have anything done to her because the finger would point straight at him. You’ve got to remember it’s not just local law on his neck. He’s been careless with his income tax and the Federal boys are keeping him awake nights.”
Mack wanted to be convinced but he was having a tough time selling himself on how safe we really were. “Okay, Larry. I hope it’s like you say. I’ll hold out a while longer and I know the rest of the boys will too. But if the rough stuff starts — the real rough stuff—”