I didn’t really want any, but I didn’t want to look like a lightweight. “Same as before.”
He set the drink down in front of me, and a man next to me turned and gave me the eye. He looked like he was in his forties, with thin brown hair on top and an oft-broken nose.
“You want to paint my portrait, Gertrude?” I asked, and his expression got harder.
“Goddamn it, Gleason,” the man said. “I told you a million times not to serve kids in here.”
“Who’s a kid?” I said, self-consciously deepening my voice, fortifying my feeling of adulthood with the thought that I had just had carnal knowledge of a woman in her middle thirties.
“You’re a kid,” the man said, apparently unable to read my thoughts. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “And you smell like shit, too. Go home and wipe your ass and come back when you’re twenty-one.”
“This is a speakeasy,” I protested, feeling my voice rise. “There’s no minimum age.”
“There sure as hell is. I pay off the law, and one of their conditions for looking the other way is, they don’t want to see any goddamn kids in here. You understand me? Now scram.”
He took my drink off the table and handed it back to Gleason, and I suddenly felt like I was ten years old.
“Shit, Gleason, I got Stanley Gerard coming down from K.C. tomorrow. I don’t want him to see anything like that, got me?”
“Yes, sir, Mister Shelton.” Gleason nodded with great dignity as I slid off my stool and headed for the door, my cheeks burning with shame and rage. I went to my car and sat for a while, dreaming of revenge, and then I headed for home.
4. The Duesie
The next day I stayed around the house reading. Around four-thirty in the afternoon I headed over to my girl’s house, just a block away from Mildred’s. Sally was home and her parents weren’t, and they weren’t expected back until evening. We screwed furtively in her room upstairs, and as I was zipping back up I said I’d be going.
“Now? But I thought we might go to a picture show,” Sally whined.
“I’m feeling a little peaked. I think I’d better go on home,” I said with a pout to show what a physical wreck I was. She scowled and turned away from me, and didn’t acknowledge me as I left. Outside in the car I laughed out loud. What I was feeling was horny and dirty, still, and what I wanted now was my dirty, drunken, middle-aged gal Mildred.
I stopped by the blind pig for a bottle, and Norman was once again alone, so I let him buy me a drink.
“Shit, these hot days like this it ain’t worth staying open. I’m barely making my nut here.”
“How big’s the nut?” I asked. “If you’re paying more than twenty bucks a month rent you’re being robbed.”
“I pay seventeen-fifty, and that ain’t the problem. I have my stock to account for, and I have to pay people to stay in business. In case you ain’t heard, this stuffs against the law around here.” He knocked his back and poured another.
“Who do you pay? The cops?”
“Them first, and then there’s other guys. Guys from out of town. Costs me damn close to a hundred and fifty bucks a month just to open the goddamn door.”
Downstairs someone opened the big carriage house doors and started up a car. Then the door shut and the driver tapped the horn, and I looked out the window in time to see a Graham Custom Eight, obviously the pride and joy of the ape behind the wheel, who wheeled out onto the street and burned rubber up 12th, honking his horn again at the corner.
“That’s one of the guys I gotta pay to stay in business. He rents the garage space downstairs.”
“What’s his racket?” I asked.
“His racket is, people pay him so they can stay in business,” Norman said, a little irritated. Again he wanted to give me another drink, but I demurred and started to leave. I stopped at the door and asked him if he knew the owner of the Royal Crown.
“Larry Shelton? I know who he is. He don’t know me from a snake’s dick.”
“All right,” I said. “See you.”
I parked in Mildred’s garage again. When I knocked on the front door there was no answer, so I tried the knob. It opened and I went inside.
“Mildred?” She didn’t answer, and I wondered if she wasn’t passed out upstairs. “I got you a bottle.” The downstairs was neat and clean, and so was the upstairs. The bed was neatly made, and turning it down I saw that the sheets had been changed. Mildred wasn’t as sloppy a drunk as I’d thought.
I could have gone back to Sally’s and made her happy by taking her to a movie like she wanted, but instead I headed for the Royal Crown and hoped I wouldn’t have to clash with Larry Shelton.
Parked in front of the Royal Crown was the only Duesenberg SJ I had ever seen outside of the pages of a magazine. I parked a few doors down and hopped out. I stood before the SJ for a minute, wondering where it had come from and to whom it belonged. Its top was down, and shortly a yokel slouching down the sidewalk slopped to join me, whistling in admiration.
“You know what that is?” he asked.
Paying the dope, I scratched my head. “Some sort of convertible?” I said.
“‘At there is a Duesie SJ.”
“Like the Jesuits?”
“Nuh-uh, it’s a Duesenberg. Some of ’em’s got a ram’s horn manifold’ll boost you right up to four hundred horsepower.”
“This one?”
“You’d never know unless you drove it, or looked under the hood.”
“Golly Moses,” I said. “Imagine just leaving it on the street like that. Somebody might just open the hood and take a look inside at the manifold.” I was tired of pulling the hillbilly’s leg and I left him standing there gaping, tormented by the temptation I had just placed in front of him. I didn’t blame him, though. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, black and white with red trim, and it made that Graham I’d spotted earlier look like a galvanized trash barrel on wheels.
The sun was low and the temperature dropping, but the Royal Crown wasn’t hopping quite yet. Gleason spotted me at the door and shook his head, jerking it at Shelton, who sat there talking to a swell who looked like he might belong to the Duesenberg. At any rate, the man was wearing a suit that wouldn’t have seemed shabby behind the wheel of a car like that. Shelton’s back was to me, and two stools down from him sat Mildred, still able to balance on the stool despite the approaching dusk. She had on the same thin sleeveless dress as the day before, probably the only flattering summerweight one she had. I took the stool next to hers despite Gleason’s frantic, silent attempts to wave me away, his head shaking so hard his jowls shook like rubber balloons filled with water.
“Gin,” I said, “and another gimlet for the lady.” He just stood there looking at me, lips tight, and then he turned disgustedly and made a single drink, which he placed in front of me. Then he leaned down.
“Leave the chippie alone,” Gleason whispered. “She’s with those fellows tonight.”
“The hell with that,” I said in a normal tone of voice. “I said another gimlet for the lady.”
Gleason shook his head disgustedly, and Mildred, sensing that some free booze was on offer, turned my way. She looked nice, I thought, better than she had last night before things got started, and she smiled in recognition. “Hello, there, Wayne.” Her eyes promised the foulest of biblically proscribed delights.
“Mildred.”
Gleason put the gimlet down in front of her.
“You sure are sweet.”
“Thanks. I stopped by your house with a bottle, only you weren’t there.”
“Nope, I was here.”
“You want to go drink it, once you finish that?”