The dining room was dim, candlelit, divided by a low wall into two halves. It would have looked crowded with thirty people in it. The captain shoved me in a corner and lit my candle for me. I said I would have a double Gibson. A waiter came up and started to remove the place setting on the far side of the table. I told him to leave it, a friend might join me. I studied the menu, which was almost as large as the dining room. I could have used a flashlight to read it, if I had been curious. This was about the dimmest joint I was ever in. You could be sitting at the next table from your mother and not recognize her.
The Gibson arrived. I could make out the shape of the glass and there seemed to be something in it. I tasted it and it wasn’t too bad. At that moment Goble slid into the chair across from me. In so far as I could see him at all, he looked about the same as he had looked the day before. I went on peering at the menu. They ought to have printed it in Braille.
Goble reached across for my glass of ice water and drank. “How you making out with the girl?” he asked casually.
“Not getting anywhere. Why?”
“Whatcha go up on the hill for?”
“I thought maybe we could neck. She wasn’t in the mood. What’s your interest? I thought you were looking for some guy named Mitchell.”
“Very funny indeed. Some guy named Mitchell. Never heard of him, I believe you said.”
“I’ve heard of him since. I’ve seen him. He was drunk. Very drunk. He damn near got himself thrown out of a place.”
“Very funny,” Goble said, sneering. “And how did you know his name?”
“On account of somebody called him by it. That would be too funny, wouldn’t it?”
He sneered. “I told you to stay out of my way. I know who you are now. I looked you up.”
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face. “Go fry a stale egg.”
“Tough, huh,” he sneered. “I’ve pulled the arms and legs off bigger guys than you.”
“Name two of them.”
He leaned across the table, but the waiter came up.
“I’ll have bourbon and plain water,” Goble told him. “Bonded stuff. None of that bar whiskey for me. And don’t try to fool me. I’ll know. And bottled water. The city water here is terrible.”
The waiter just looked at him.
“I’ll have another of these,” I said, pushing my glass.
“What’s good tonight?” Goble wanted to know. “I never bother with these billboards.” He flicked a disdainful finger at the menu.
“The plat du jour is meat loaf,” the waiter said nastily.
“Hash with a starched collar,” Goble said. “Make it meat loaf.”
The waiter looked at me. I said the meat loaf was all right with me. The waiter went away. Goble leaned across the table again, after first taking a quick look behind him and on both sides.
“You’re out of luck, friend,” he said cheerfully. “You didn’t get away with it.”
“Too bad,” I said. “Get away with what?”
“You’re bad out of luck, friend. Very bad. The tide was wrong or something. Abalone fisher—one of those guys with frog feet and rubber masks—stuck under a rock.”
“The abalone fisher stuck under a rock?” A cold prickly feeling crawled down my back. When the waiter came with the drinks, I had to fight myself not to grab for mine.
“Very funny, friend.”
“Say that again and I’ll smash your goddamn glasses for you,” I snarled.
He picked up his drink and sipped it, tasted it, thought about it, nodded his head.
“I came out here to make money,” he mused. “I didn’t nowise come out to make trouble. Man can’t make money making trouble. Man can make money keeping his nose clean. Get me?”
“Probably a new experience for you,” I said. “Both ways. What was that about an abalone fisher?” I kept my voice controlled, but it was an effort.
He leaned back. My eyes were getting used to the dimness now.
I could see that his fat face was amused.
“Just kidding,” he said. “I don’t know any abalone fishers. Only last night I learned how to pronounce the word. Still don’t know what the stuff is. But things are kind of funny at that. I can’t find Mitchell.”
“He lives at the hotel.” I took some more of my drink, not too much. This was no time to dive into it.
“I know he lives at the hotel, friend. What I don’t know is where he is at right now. He ain’t in his room. The hotel people ain’t seen him around. I thought maybe you and the girl had some ideas about it.”
“The girl is screwy,” I said. “Leave her out of it. And in Esmeralda they don’t say ‘ain’t seen.’ That Kansas City dialect is an offense against public morals here.”
“Shove it, Mac. When I want to get told how to talk English I won’t go to no beat-up California peeper.” He turned his head and yelled: “Waiter!”
Several faces looked at him with distaste. The waiter showed up after a while and stood there with the same expression as the customers.
“Hit me again,” Goble said, snapped a finger at his glass.
“It is not necessary to yell at me,” the waiter said. He took the glass away.
“When I want service,” Goble yelped at his back, “service is what I want.”
“I hope you like the taste of wood alcohol,” I told Goble.
“Me and you could get along,” Goble said indifferently, “if you had any brains.”
“And if you had any manners and were six inches taller and had a different face and another name and didn’t act as if you thought you could lick your weight in frog spawn.”
“Cut the doodads and get back to Mitchell,” he said briskly. “And to the dish you was trying to fumble up the hill.”
“Mitchell is a man she met on a train. He had the same effect on her that you have on me. He created in her a burning desire to travel in the opposite direction.”
It was a waste of time. The guy was as invulnerable as my great-great-grandfather.
“So,” he sneered, “Mitchell to her is just a guy she met on a train and didn’t like when she got to know him. So she ditched him for you? Convenient you happened to be around.”
The waiter came with the food. He set it out with a flourish. Vegetables, salad, hot rolls in a napkin.
“Coffee?”
I said I’d rather have mine later. Goble said yes and wanted to know where his drink was. The waiter said it was on the way—by slow freight, his tone suggested. Goble tasted his meat loaf and looked surprised. “Hell, it’s good,” he said. “What with so few customers I thought the place was a bust.”
“Look at your watch,” I said. “Things don’t get moving until much later. It’s that kind of town. Also, it’s out of season.”
“Much later is right,” he said, munching. “An awful lot later. Two, three in the A.M. sometimes. People go calling on their friends. You back at the Rancho, friend?”
I looked at him without saying anything.
“Do I have to draw you a picture, friend? I work long hours when I’m on a job.”
I didn’t say anything.
He wiped his mouth. “You kind of stiffened up when I said that about the guy stuck under a rock. Or could I be wrong?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Okay, clam up,” Goble sneered. “I thought maybe we could do a little business together. You got the physique and you take a good punch. But you don’t know nothing about nothing. You don’t have what it takes in my business. Where I come from you got to have brains to get by. Out here you just got to get sunburned and forget to button your collar.”
“Make me a proposition,” I said between my teeth.
He was a rapid eater even when he talked too much. He pushed his plate away from him, drank some of his coffee and got a toothpick out of his vest.
“This is a rich town, friend,” he said slowly. “I’ve studied it. I’ve boned up on it. I’ve talked to guys about it. They tell me it’s one of the few spots left in our fair green country where the dough ain’t quite enough. In Esmeralda you got to belong, or you’re nothing. If you want to belong and get asked around and get friendly with the right people you got to have class. There’s a guy here made five million fish in the rackets back in Kansas City. He brought up property, subdivided, built houses, built some of the best properties in town. But he didn’t belong to the Beach Club because he didn’t get asked. So he bought it. They know who he is, they touch him big when they got a fund-raising drive, he gets service, he pays his bills, he’s a good solid citizen. He throws big parties but the guests come from out of town unless they’re moochers, no-goods, the usual trash you always find hopping about where there’s money. But the class people of the town? He’s just a nigger to them.”