“Thanks but no.”
“Why not?”
She asked me for a cigarette. I took out two, lit them both and gave one to her. She smoked half of it before she said anything. “Because I don’t want to be kept.”
“Huh?”
“I’m independent. I live in a dump. Not because I have a big romantic love for dumps or for wearing a dress too many times or for working. But because it’s better that way. It would be easy to let you pay all the bills, Nat. Move in on you, let you take care of rent and clothes and everything else.”
She finished the cigarette and threw it out of the car. “Then you’d own me,” she went on. “Then you’d have that hold, that upper hand. And I don’t want that.”
“So pay your own way.”
“I can’t afford it. I’m just a working girl.”
I didn’t exactly get it. “I’m not hiring you as a slave girl. I’m just selling you a free trip to Las Vegas.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s no sale, Nat.”
I got mad. “Do you really think you can say no to me anymore? In this town?”
She shook her head. “Because you’re such a big man now, is that it? Have you forgotten what you were when I first met you, Nat? Other people might not remember, but I do. No,” she said, “it’s not hard to say no to you, Nat. You make it easy.”
She was wrong.
I didn’t sleep with her that night. I went upstairs to her apartment and we had a few drinks. Then we called it a night. I left her there, went back to my car and drove back to the Stennett. I put the car away and elevated to my own apartment. It was a pretty impressive place now. Not too long after Baron’s death I had had the management get rid of their furniture and replaced it with furniture of my own. I had gone to one of the better furniture stores and picked out French Provincial pieces, expensive but worth it. The place made a good show when we had important people in from out of town and it was comfortable when I was there by myself. The hotel-room feeling was gone.
I got a bottle of rye from the bar and poured myself a drink. I stirred it with a silver stirrer and drank most of it in a few minutes.
Then I got on the phone.
I called the club where Anne worked and asked for Lundgren, the skinny Swede who managed it. It took them a few minutes to find him. Then he said hello to me.
I said, “Annie Bishop works for you. Right?”
“That’s right, Mr. Crowley.”
“Yeah. Well she doesn’t work there anymore.”
“She’s quitting?”
“She’s quitting. When she comes in, you tell her she’s quitting. You understand?”
He understood. I hung up while he was still trying to tell me how glad he was to do me a favor. I called Noomie’s.
“If Anne Bishop comes in,” I said, “she doesn’t get served.”
They didn’t ask why. It was an order and their business consisted in part in obeying orders from certain people. I was one of those people. They assured me she wouldn’t be served.
I put down the phone and finished my drink. I lit a cigarette and wondered why I was going to all this trouble just to take a girl to Las Vegas. It would have been easy enough to find some other broad who was tickled to go. It would have been even easier to tell Tony that Gordon should arrange a girl for me. They have pretty girls in Las Vegas, obliging girls, friendly girls. Girls who don’t go for verbal wrestling matches but keep their wrestling on a purely physical plane.
So why all this trouble for Annie Bishop?
Hell, she had it figured right. It was all a business of holds, of getting the upper hand. That was the way she saw it, the way she played it. That was the code of the jungle, or whatever the hell you want to call it. So that was the way it would go.
I picked up the phone book again and thumbed through it. I put in a call to a man named Hankin. He was a slum landlord with tenement property all over town. He happened to own a few run-down buildings on the street Anne lived on. Including hers.
“Nat Crowley,” I said. “You busy?”
He’d been sleeping and he still wasn’t exactly awake. But I was Nat Crowley and he had to be nice to me if he were going to stay in business. He had tenements with too many violations in them. We fixed these things for him, and he was nice to us.
“What can I do for you, Nat?”
“About one of those rockpiles of yours,” I said. I gave him the address. “Do the tenants have leases?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like leases.”
He didn’t like leases or rent control or lots of things. I said, “There’s a tenant of yours who ought to get evicted. Anne Bishop.”
“I know who you mean. She pays her rent first of every month, like a clock.”
“Call her in the morning and tell her to move out within a week. Can you do that?”
“She pays by the month, Nat. So she’s paid up through the first of October. But I can tell her to get out by then.”
“Do that,” I said.
“Sure, Nat. Anything I can do—”
“I appreciate it.”
I hung up on him and built myself a fresh drink. Then I went back to the phone and made a few more calls.
It took three days.
She called me at the Stennett. It was around noon and I was asleep when the phone rang. I yawned, lit a cigarette, answered it.
“You’re a son of a bitch, Nat,” Anne said.
I laughed softly.
“A real son of a bitch. Why didn’t you have a few goons come over and beat me up? Or something subtle, like acid in the face?”
“I like your face.”
“Uh-huh. All of a sudden I don’t have a job. All of a sudden I don’t have a roof over my head. All of a sudden I can’t even buy a drink in this goddamned town. Isn’t that cute?”
I dragged on my cigarette. “It sounds rough.”
“Doesn’t it? You don’t issue invitations, Nat. You issue ultimatums. I don’t like ultimatums.”
I didn’t say anything. I smoked my cigarette and let her dangle on her end of the phone.
“No place to live, no job, nothing to do. What am I supposed to do, Nat?”
“You should leave town.”
“Should I?”
“Sure. You should come to Las Vegas. With me.”
A pause. “An ultimatum, Nat?”
“Call it an invitation.”
Another pause, followed by a question: “When, Nat?”
“Pack. I’ll call the airport.”
15
We had a nonstop jet complete with pretty hostesses, a silken takeoff and a featherbed landing. Somebody’s hireling met us at the airport and drove us to the High Rise in a Cadillac that was still shining. Everybody drove Cadillacs in Las Vegas. They weren’t even status symbols. Just union cards.
The High Rise was one of the big ones — a lot of glitter, a lot of lushness, big names for entertainment and roulette wheels that never quit turning. The manager called me by name and gave me a heavy handshake. He helped me sign in while a sharp-eyed kid went away with our bags. The manager took us to our suite all by himself. It was on the fifth floor and it was big. There was a private bar stocked with liquor and a private slot so I could throw away quarters without getting out of bed. He said he hoped everything was all right. I wondered if I were supposed to tip him but he went away before I could give the problem too much thought.
I opened a suitcase and started hanging things in a closet. Without saying anything, Annie went over to the bar and I heard ice clinking. She came over and handed me a glass of rye and soda. She had gin and tonic. We touched glasses and drank.
“You’re all right,” I said. “Every room should come with an in-house cocktail waitress.”
“Maybe they all do.”
“Something wrong?”
Her eyes were hard to read. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just dazzled. The VIP treatment is a new one.”