Maybe I got lost in the music. My foot started tapping, picking up the rhythm all by itself. The cigarette sat between my thumb and index finger and burned itself up. And I didn’t even notice the girl until she was sitting across the tiny table from me.
When I looked up at her she smiled. It was a nice smile on a nice face, neatly heart-shaped, with strong sound features. Her hair was black and her eyes were blue, a combination as perfect as it is rare. She was wearing very dark red lipstick and a little too much eye makeup. She was short and slender and probably twenty-five, give or take a few years.
“Hello,” I said. “Have a seat.”
“I already did.”
“So you did,” I said. “What else would you like?”
“Gin and tonic.”
“That’s a warm-weather drink.”
“I’m a warm-weather girl.”
There was probably an answer for that one but I didn’t want to bother hunting for it. I turned around and there was the waiter, patiently waiting. “She’ll have gin and tonic,” I told him. “I’ll have rye and soda.”
He went away. My pack of cigarettes was on the table. She took it, selected a cigarette, tapped it twice on the top of the table and put it to her lips. I gave her a light.
I said, “I didn’t know they used B-girls here.”
“I’m not a B-girl.”
“Or hustlers, then.”
She didn’t frown. She smiled. “Or a hustler.”
“Then what are you?”
“Just a sweet all-American girl,” she said. “My name is Anne. Anne Bishop.”
“Nat Crowley.”
She nodded as if she had known this all along. “New in town, Nat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“From where?”
“All over. Mostly Miami.”
The waiter came back about then and put drinks in front of us. I reached for my wallet and he told me he would run a tab. I nodded to let him know that was fine with me. He left us alone again. The trio had moved into an up-tempo thing. The piano ripped off a harsh, driving solo, then stopped to swap four-bar choruses with the drummer. It was nice.
“You working, Nat?” Anne asked.
“No.”
“Retired?”
“For the time being,” I said.
“What do you do for a living, Nat?”
“This and that.”
“And where do you do it — here and there?”
I nodded and watched her smile. Blue eyes and black hair and very dark red lipstick. Sweet small beauty against a background of smoky jazz. I sipped my drink and looked at her.
“This and that, here and there,” she said. “You’ve got your hand out and your fingers curled, Nat. You’re looking for the connection.” She paused and her eyes softened. “‘The ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.’ But I guess you don’t read poetry, Nat. Do you?”
The phrase she quoted was from a long poem by one of the better clowns on the West Coast. I told her I didn’t read poetry. And wondered how come she did and what she was doing at Cassino’s and why.
“I didn’t think so. Not a reader of poetry. But a very poetic person, in your way. Here and there. This and that. You have poetry in your soul, Nat Crowley. And I’m going to make that connection for you. You stay right here, Nat. You sit in your chair and drink your drink and listen to the music until a man comes to talk to you. And in the meantime I will make myself disappear.”
She started to get up. I said, “How do I find you again?”
“Why should you want to?”
“To buy you another warm-weather drink. You hardly touched that one.”
A smile. “Noomie’s,” she said. “An after-hours club. I generally hang out there from three on. The liquor’s expensive but the music moves me.”
“Better than these guys?”
She looked at the stage. The trio was working on “These Foolish Things,” turning it into a slow gutty blues. “Much better,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll fall by. Any problem getting in?”
She was standing now. She looked at me, at my hat, at my shoes, at what was in between them. “Not for you,” she said. “Not for you.”
And then she turned on her heel and headed across the room. I watched her encase herself in a phone booth, drop a dime and dial a number. She talked for maybe fifteen seconds, then returned the receiver to the hook and left the booth. She walked out of Cassino’s without looking back at me.
I traded my empty glass for a new drink and nursed it along in time to the music. I thought about Anne Bishop and her exit line with the little ritual that preceded it, the up-and-down look with the eyes bright and sharp. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me.
The trio tried “How High the Moon.” A grubby little kid with a shoeshine box came into the place and pestered a few of the customers until the bartender told him to get the hell out. The kid got the hell out.
Questions.
Who was Anne? How did the outfit connections go together with the poetry and why was there so much makeup under the blue eyes? Where did she fit in and where was I going to fit in and where in the world did we go from here?
Questions.
I must have got lost — in the questions if not in the music. When the bit came I almost missed it. But not quite.
Two of them came through the door. They wore dark suits and dark ties and dark hats. One of them had a mustache. I saw the other one flash a look at the bartender. He gave a very gentle nod in my direction which I managed to catch out of the corner of one eye.
It was hard not to turn around. I let my fingers play with a cigarette and a match. I got the cigarette going and sat very still while they came over and took seats on either side of me. For a few minutes we let it lie. Nobody said anything.
“Crowley?”
It was the one with the mustache. I nodded a little and let my eyes look at him. His face showed nothing.
“We’re supposed to take you with us. Mr. Baron wants to see you.”
Their faces didn’t show me a thing. I had never seen such a total lack of expression anywhere. At least the Mona Lisa is puzzling. Their faces were simply empty. They could have been taking me to meet Mr. Baron or to swim in the Niagara River. There was no way to tell.
And it was their party. I nodded again, put enough money to cover the tab on the table and stood up. The twins stood up with me. Mustache led me to the door while his buddy walked behind me. They took me down the street to a black Ford parked next to a No Parking sign. Mustache got behind the wheel. I sat next to him. The other twin sat next to me.
I wondered how long you had to live in this city before they let you sit by the window.
6
It took me three blocks to get lost. The street signs were invisible in the darkness but they wouldn’t have meant much to me if I had seen them. I did figure we were heading west, but my knowledge of Buffalo’s geography didn’t take in the lower west side, which is where we went.
There was a river in that direction but we stopped before we got to it. We turned down a very old and very narrow street and pulled up in front of a sprawling brick house with a sad old elm in front. Mustache cut the motor. His twin got out of the car and motioned me to follow. I followed.
One of them poked the doorbell and we waited for something to happen. I glanced at the house and at the houses on either side of it. Baron’s house was better than his neighborhood. The other houses needed painting and their lawns could have used a haircut.
A servant noiselessly opened the door. He looked at us and stepped back. Small eyes looked at us, eyes set close together in a broad forehead.
“We got Crowley,” Mustache said. “Mr. Baron around?”