«Listen, Tony.» The porter held his sleeve tightly. «There’s a big black car down the block, the other way from the hacks. There’s a guy standing beside it with his foot on the running board. This guy that spoke to me, he wears a dark-colored, wrap-around overcoat with a high collar turned up against his ears. His hat’s way low. You can’t hardly see his face. He says, ‘Get Tony,’ out of the side of his mouth. You ain’t got any enemies, have you, Tony?»
«Only the finance company,» Tony said. «Beat it.»
He walked slowly and a little stiffly across the blue carpet, up the three shallow steps to the entrance lobby with the three elevators on one side and the desk on the other. Only one elevator was working. Beside the open doors, his arms folded, the night operator stood silent in a neat blue uniform with silver facings. A lean, dark Mexican named Gomez. A new boy, breaking in on the night shift.
The other side was the desk, rose marble, with the night clerk leaning on it delicately. A small neat man with a wispy reddish mustache and cheeks so rosy they looked roughed. He stared at Tony and poked a nail at his mustache.
Tony pointed a stiff index finger at him, folded the other three fingers tight to his palm, and flicked his thumb up and down on the stiff finger. The clerk touched the other side of his mustache and looked bored.
Tony went on past the closed and darkened newsstand and the side entrance to the drugstore, out to the brassbound plateglass doors. He stopped just inside them and took a deep, hard breath. He squared his shoulders, pushed the doors open and stepped out into the cold damp night air.
The street was dark, silent. The rumble of traffic on Wilshire, two blocks away, had no body, no meaning. To the left were two taxis. Their drivers leaned against a fender, side by side, smoking. Tony walked the other way. The big dark car was a third of a block from the hotel entrance. Its lights were dimmed and it was only when he was almost up to it that he heard the gentle sound of its engine turning over.
A tall figure detached itself from the body of the car and strolled toward him, both hands in the pockets of the dark overcoat with the high collar. From the man’s mouth a cigarette tip glowed faintly, a rusty pearl.
They stopped two feet from each other.
The tall man said, «Hi, Tony. Long time no see.»
«Hello, Al. How’s it going?»
«Can’t complain.» The tall man started to take his right hand out of his overcoat pocket, then stopped and laughed quietly. «I forgot. Guess you don’t want to shake hands.»
«That don’t mean anything,» Tony said. «Shaking hands. Monkeys can shake hands. What’s on your mind, Al?»
«Still the funny little fat guy, eh, Tony?»
«I guess.» Tony winked his eyes tight. His throat felt tight.
«You like your job back there?»
«It’s a job.»
Al laughed his quiet laugh again. «You take it slow, Tony. I’ll take it fast. So it’s a job and you want to hold it. Okey. There’s a girl named Eve Cressy flopping in your quiet hotel. Get her out. Fast and right now.»
«What’s the trouble?»
The tall man looked up and down the street. A man behind in the car coughed lightly. «She’s hooked with a wrong number. Nothing against her personal, but she’ll lead trouble to you. Get her out, Tony. You got maybe an hour.»
«Sure,» Tony said aimlessly, without meaning.
Al took his hand out of his pocket and stretched it against Tony’s chest. He gave him a light lazy push. «I wouldn’t be telling you just for the hell of it, little fat brother. Get her out of there.»
«Okey,» Tony said, without any tone in his voice.
The tall man took back his hand and reached for the car door. He opened it and started to slip in like a lean black shadow.
Then he stopped and said something to the men in the car and got out again. He came back to where Tony stood silent, his pale eyes catching a little dim light from the street.
«Listen, Tony. You always kept your nose clean. You’re a good brother, Tony.»
Tony didn’t speak.
Al leaned toward him, a long urgent shadow, the high collar almost touching his ears. «It’s trouble business, Tony. The boys won’t like it, but I’m telling you just the same. This Cressy was married to a lad named Johnny Rails. Rails is out of Quentin two, three days, or a week. He did a three-spot for manslaughter. The girl put him there. He ran down an old man one night when he was drunk, and she was with him. He wouldn’t stop. She told him to go in and tell it, or else. He didn’t go in. So the Johns come for him.»
Tony said, «That’s too bad.»
«It’s kosher, kid. It’s my business to know. This Rails flapped his mouth in stir about how the girl would be waiting for him when he got out, all set to forgive and forget, and he was going straight to her.»
Tony said, «What’s he to you?» His voice had a dry, stiff crackle, like thick paper.
Al laughed. «The trouble boys want to see him. He ran a table at a spot on the Strip and figured out a scheme. He and another guy took the house for fifty grand. The other lad coughed up, but we still need Johnny’s twenty-five. The trouble boys don’t get paid to forget.»
Tony looked up and down the dark street. One of the taxi drivers flicked a cigarette stub in a long arc over the top of one of the cabs. Tony watched it fall and spark on the pavement. He listened to the quiet sound of the big car’s motor.
«I don’t want any part of it,» he said. «I’ll get her out.»
Al backed away from him, nodding. «Wise kid. How’s mom these days?»
«Okey,» Tony said.
«Tell her I was asking for her.»
«Asking for her isn’t anything,» Tony said.
Al turned quickly and got into the car. The car curved lazily in the middle of the block and drifted back toward the corner. Its lights went up and sprayed on a wall. It turned a corner and was gone. The lingering smell of its exhaust drifted past Tony’s nose. He turned and walked back to the hotel and into it. He went along to the radio room.
The radio still muttered, but the girl was gone from the davenport in front of it. The pressed cushions were hollowed out by her body. Tony reached down and touched them. He thought they were still warm. He turned the radio off and stood there, turning a thumb slowly in front of his body, his hand flat against his stomach. Then he went back through the lobby toward the elevator bank and stood beside a majolica jar of white sand. The clerk fussed behind a pebbled-glass screen at one end of the desk. The air was dead.
The elevator bank was dark. Tony looked at the indicator of the middle car and saw that it was at 14.
«Gone to bed,» he said under his breath.
The door of the porter’s room beside the elevators opened and the little Mexican night operator came out in street clothes. He looked at Tony with a quiet sidewise look out of eyes the color of dried-out chestnuts.
«Good night, boss.»
«Yeah,» Tony said absently.
He took a thin dappled cigar out of his vest pocket and smelled it. He examined it slowly, turning it around in his neat fingers. There was a small tear along the side. He frowned at that and put the cigar away.
There was a distant sound and the hand on the indicator began to steal around the bronze dial. Light glittered up in the shaft and the straight line of the car floor dissolved the darkness below. The car stopped and the doors opened, and Carl came out of it.
His eyes caught Tony’s with a kind of jump and he walked over to him, his head on one side, a thin shine along his pink upper lip.
«Listen, Tony.»
Tony took his arm in a hard swift hand and turned him. He pushed him quickly, yet somehow casually, down the steps to the dim main lobby and steered him into a corner. He let go of the arm. His throat tightened again, for no reason he could think of.