He took the cigar from his mouth and studied the tip of it. He looked at me again. “Round Seven is closed now,” he said. “I think it opens up on Monday. That all right with you?”
“Sure.”
“Fine. You meet Johnny at Cassino’s around dinnertime Monday. He’ll have the keys and run you over there. Sooner or later you’ll want a car, right?”
I nodded.
“You’ll get a good price when you’re ready to buy. We take care of our own.” He smiled again. “This time you get a chauffeur. Johnny runs you over there Monday. He’ll fill you in on the details. There’s nothing to do but open and close, take the money and make the drinks. Deliveries are all arranged for. It’s no worry of yours.”
I nodded again.
“All you have to do is nothing, Crowley. A check comes once a week in the mail. The check is from Ruby Enterprises. That’s the corporation that owns Round Seven. The check is a hundred a week. You steal the other hundred from the till.”
I must have looked puzzled. “Two reasons,” he said. “One, it saves you money. The yard a week you steal is tax-free. Two, it looks better in the books. If Ruby pays a guy two bills a week to tend bar in a losing business somebody might wonder. This way it’s just another hundred lost.”
“I get it.”
“I thought you would, Crowley. That’s all there is. You do your job and no more. If there’s something special for you to do you’ll hear about it. Don’t ever call me and don’t ever come here unless I ask for you. Monday, dinnertime, Cassino’s, you meet Johnny. Goodbye, Crowley.”
Johnny and Mustache dropped me off at my hotel. This time the heavy stuff was over. I sat up front with Mustache while Johnny spread himself all over the back seat. They even talked to me.
Mustache’s name turned out to be Leon Spiro. Johnny turned out to be Johnny Carr. I told Johnny I was sorry I hit him and he told me he was sorry he hit me. We were practically necking by the time they let me out of the car. I watched them drive away. I stood on the corner and smoked a cigarette. A cab came by and I hailed it. He stopped for me and I got into the back seat.
I told him to take me to Noomie’s.
“That’s a pretty rough neighborhood, Bud. Sure you want to go there?”
I told him to just drive. I made my voice hard and flat and there must have been something in it that made him crane his neck around to look at me. I don’t know what he saw in my face but it was enough.
He turned around and drove in chilly silence through dark streets. He didn’t talk any more.
7
I paid the cabby and tipped him. He drove away and left me alone with the night. The streets were empty. There were no signs of life anywhere but I could feel the presence of people — doorway sounds, back-alley sounds. Soft sounds and an undercurrent of tension below the placid surface.
Noomie’s didn’t look like much. A white frame house, a red-and-green sign that winked in neon with the name of the place — and nothing more. A few years of dirt kept the windows opaque.
I crossed the street and knocked on the door. After a few seconds it opened. The girl at the door was a shade lighter than the maid at the hotel. Her figure was good, her eyes very tired. Behind her in shadows I could make out a dark Negro built like a boulder. The girl looked me over and wound up with her tired eyes on my face.
“I don’t know you.”
“Crowley,” I said.
“It rings no bells,” she said.
I looked beyond her into a too-dark hallway. “Anne Bishop here?”
“Big blond girl?”
“A little brunette. And you can stop playing games, sweetheart.”
She grinned softly and pointed past the bouncer, toward the darkness. I walked that way and nobody stopped me. The darkness lasted a long time and then gave way to a large low-ceilinged room that wasn’t much brighter. A handful of red and green unshaded bulbs on the ceiling gave the room an odd Christmas-tree look. I lit a cigarette, shook out a match and dropped it to the floor.
People sat at tables and drank. There was a four-man combo on a very small stand — piano and bass and drums and tenor saxophone. The tenor was in the middle of a long, liquid, moody solo. They had a small spotlight beamed at the stand and it showed how smoky the room was.
I picked up a rye and soda at the bar and then looked around for Anne. I almost missed her because for some reason I thought she’d be sitting alone, waiting for me. She wasn’t. I found her at a small table over on the left with Tony Quince.
I walked over to them. There was a third chair at the table and I took it. They both said hello to me.
“Nat Crowley,” Quince said. “Long time.”
“Just a few days.”
“You making out all right?”
“I can’t complain.”
Quince was drinking sour red wine again. I saw him sip his drink, set it down and let his face relax into a slow, easy smile. “Where you been?”
“Here, there. I thought I’d run into you at Cassino’s.”
“I only go when I want to watch a fight,” Quince said. “Porter goes again a week from Wednesday. He’s up against somebody name of Jackson. You could do worse than go along on him.”
I thanked him for the tip. We talked a little more, listened to more music. He finished his wine and put a few singles on the table. He stood up.
“Got to run,” he said. “Later, Anne. I’ll see you, Nat.”
I watched him leave and wondered who he was. Then Anne leaned across the table and took another of my cigarettes. I gave her a light and she blew a little smoke in my face.
“Like the music?” Anne asked.
“Uh-huh.” I looked at the taut lips, the blue eyes. “I didn’t know you knew Tony.”
“I know everybody,” she said.
“You belong to him?”
It was hard to tell whether she was angry or amused. “I don’t belong to anybody, Nat. I’m the chick who walks by herself. Straight out of Kipling, with a twist.”
“All right,” I said.
“I did him a favor tonight. I ran him an errand. I like to do favors for people.”
“You did me a favor,” I said. “Thanks.”
“It worked?”
“It worked.”
“I just ran a little interference,” Anne said. “I just made a connection. ‘An ancient and heavenly connection.’”
The poem again. “So now we’re ‘dragging ourselves through the Negro streets at dawn,’” I said, “‘looking for an angry fix.’”
She was very surprised, very confused. Something was out of place in her calm little scheme of things. “You know the poem,” she said. I nodded.
“That’s weird,” she said. “You’re no beatnik. I don’t get it. You just read Ginsberg for kicks?”
“A hobby. Everybody needs a hobby.”
“Sure. Who are you, Nat? Where do you fit in?”
I shrugged. “Just a hotster looking for a place to be cool.”
“Sure. A man from here and there looking to do this and that. You’re complicating things, Nat. You’re breaking the pattern. People aren’t supposed to do that. They’re supposed to stick to stereotypes. It’s easier that way.”
“You’re building castles,” I said.
“You think so?” Her eyes said the liquor was reaching her. It didn’t make her giddy or sloppy. Just sadder, deeper. “You don’t understand, Nat. Everybody has an image. They hand it to you or you pick it out for yourself in a department store. Then you hold on to your image and live with it. You can’t get tricky with an image. It’s what you are.”