“Crowded, isn’t it?” she said.
Frankie grinned. “I like crowds.”
He was trying to think of what the hair reminded him of when he got the nudge. His eyes popped down to the program in his hands and back up to the dame. Inside, he’d gone breathless and tense, the way a guy does when he’s on the verge of something big.
“What’s your name, baby?”
The red and white smile flashed again. “Call me Taffy. Because of my hair, you see.”
He saw, all right. He saw a hell of a lot more than she thought he did. He saw number four in the third, and the name was Taffy Candy. One would bring ten if Taffy won, and even Frankie, who was no mental giant, could add another cipher to eight thousand and read the result.
Don’t give yourself time to think, that was the trick. If you start thinking, you start figuring odds and consequences, and you’re a dead duck. He stood up and slapped the program against his leg.
“Hold a spot for me, baby. If I’m on the beam, it’ll be a big day for you and me and a horse.”
He hit the window just before closing time and laid the eight grand on Taffy’s nose. At the rail of the track, he watched the horses run, and he wasn’t surprised, not even excited, when Taffy came in by the nose that had his eight grand on it. It was astonishing how quickly he was becoming accustomed to good fortune. He was already anticipating the breaks as if he’d had them forever. As if they were a natural right.
Like that girl in the stands, for instance. The girl who called herself Taffy. Standing there by the rail, he thought with glandular stirrings of the warm pressure of flank, the strangely alluring two-toned pastel hair, the brown eyes and scarlet smile. A few days ago, he wouldn’t have given himself a chance with a dame like that. He’d have taken it out in thinking. But now it was different. Luck and a few grand made a hell of a difference. The difference between thinking and acting.
With eight times ten in his pocket, he went back to the stands. Climbing up to her level with his eyes full of nylon, he grinned and said, “We all came in, baby, you and me and the horse. Let’s move out of here.”
She strained a mocking look through incredible lashes. “I’ve already got a date, honey. I’m supposed to meet a guy here.”
“To hell with him.”
Her eyebrows arched their plucked backs, and a practiced tease showed through the lashes. “What makes you think I’d just walk off with you, mister?”
Frankie dug into his pocket for enough green to make an impression. The bills were crisp. They made small ticking sounds when he flipped them with a thumb nail.
“This, maybe,” he said.
She eyed the persuasion and stood up. “That’s good thinking, honey,” she said.
A long time and a lot of places later, Frankie awoke to the gray light that filtered into his shabby apartment. It was depressing, he thought, to awake in a dump like this. It was something that had to be changed.
“Look, baby,” he said. “Today we shop for another place. A big place uptown. Carpets up to your knees, foam rubber stuff, the works. How about it, baby?”
Beside him, Taffy pressed closer, her lips moving against his naked shoulder with a sleepy animal purr of contentment.
So that day they rented the uptown place, and moved in, and a couple months later Frankie bought the Circle Club.
The club was a nice little spot tucked into a so-so block just outside the perimeter of the big-time glitter area. It was a good location for a brisk trade with the right guy handling it. The current owner was being pressed for the payment of debts by parties who didn’t like waiting, and Frankie bought him out for a song.
It was a swell break. Just one more in a long line. Frankie shot a wad on fancy trimmings, and booked a combination that could really jump. With the combo there was a sleek canary who had something for the eyes as well as the ears. The food and the liquor were fair, which is all anyone expects in a night spot, and up to the time of Linda Lee, business was good.
After Linda Lee, business was more than good. It was booming. The word always goes out on a gal like Linda. The guys come in with their dames, and after they’ve had the quota of looking that the tariff buys, they go someplace and turn off the lights and pretend that the dames are Linda.
Linda Lee wasn’t her real name, of course, but it suited her looks and her business. Ostensibly, the business was dancing. Actually, it was taking off her clothes. In Linda’s case, that was sufficient. As for the looks, they were Linda’s, and they were something. Dusky skin and eyes on the slant. Black hair with blue highlights, soft and shining, brushing her shoulders and slashing across her forehead in bangs above perfect unplucked brows. A lithe, vibrant body with an upswept effect that a guy couldn’t believe from seeing and so had to keep coming back for another look to convince himself.
She sent Frankie. At first, the day she came into his office at the Circle Club looking for a job, he didn’t see anything but a looker in a town that was littered with them. That was when she still had her clothes on.
He rocked back in his swivel and stared across his desk at her through the thin, lifting smoke from his cigarette.
“You a dancer, you say?”
“Yes.”
“A good one.”
“Not very.”
That surprised Frankie. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and let his eyes make a brief tour of her points of interest.
“No? What else you got that a guy would pay to see?”
She showed him what she had. Frankie sat there watching her emerge slowly from her clothes, and the small office got steadily smaller, so hot that it was almost suffocating. Frankie’s knitted tie was hemp instead of silk, and the knot was a hangman’s knot, cutting deeply into his throat until he was breathing in labored gasps. The palms of his hands dripped salty water. His whole body was wet with sweat.
When he was able to speak, he said, “Who the hell’s going to care about the dancing? Can you start tonight?”
She could and did. And so did Frankie. For a guy with a temperature as high as his, he played it pretty cool. He kept the pressure on her, all right, but he didn’t force it. Not that he was too good for it. It just wasn’t practical. The threat of being fired doesn’t mean much to a gal with a dozen other places to go. By the time Frankie was desperate enough for threats, he was having to raise her pay every second week to hang on to her.
She liked him, though. He knew damned well she liked him. He could tell by the way the heat came up in her slanted eyes when she looked at him. He could tell by the way her hands sometimes reached out for him, touching him lightly, straying with brief abandon. But she was like mercury. He couldn’t hold her when he reached back.
The night he decided to try mink, he came into the club late, just as Linda was moving onto the small circular floor in a blue spot. He stood for a minute against the wall, holding the long cardboard box under his arm, watching the emerging dusky body, his pulse matching the tropical tempo of drums in the darkness. Before the act was over, he moved on around the edge of the floor and back to the door of Linda’s room.
Inside, he lay the box on the dressing table and sat down. Waiting, he could hear faintly the crescendo of drums and muted brass that indicated Linda’s exit. The sound of her footsteps in the hall was lost in the surge of applause that continued long after she had left the floor.
She closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, head back and eyes shining, her breasts rising and falling in deep, rhythmic breathing. Light and shadow stressed the convexities and hollows of her body.