There’s one thing nice about the guys who play rough. They can always tell when they got a sucker or somebody who’s not such a sucker. “Twenty minutes,” he said. His cigar glowed to a cherry red as he pulled on it. “They turn the lights back on out here then.”
A cab cruised in and slowed down. I picked up my case and walked over. The driver was a young kid with his hair slicked back and he gave me the eyes up and down while I opened the door. I said, “Town.”
The cop moved out of the shadows and stepped off the curb. The kid leered, “What do I get paid with?”
So I took out the roll in my pocket and riffled through the twenties and fifties until I found a pair of singles and threw them on the seat beside him. He tucked them in his pocket fast and got polite all of a sudden. “Town it is, friend,” he told me.
I shut the door and looked back out the window. The cop was still there, but his face was all screwed up in a scowl and he was trying to figure out how he had made such a big mistake twice in figuring me for a sucker and for a poor sucker at that.
The cab spun to the main drag and I settled back against the cushions after telling the kid to take me to the Hathaway House. I watched the pattern of the lights shriek into a blaze of color and thought that so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.
But it was about what I had expected.
Chapter Two
The cab driver and the bellhop had a signal rigged up. If I had gone in cold I would have gotten the treatment. The Hathaway House was the best hotel in town and it didn’t take to anybody who wasn’t lined with dough. The bellhop and the desk clerk had a signal system too, because I got a lot of smiles and nobody asked me to pay in advance. The hop did everything he was supposed to do and collected a five for it.
He laid the key on the table and said, “Would you like anything brought up, sir?”
I said, “What have you got?”
“The best of everything. Whisky if you want it. Women too.”
“What kind of women?”
“You won’t be disappointed.”
“The woman might be though. Maybe some other time.”
“Sure, anything you say. Just ask for Jack. That’s me.” He grinned on one side of his face. “I can get you anything you want in town.”
He had wise little eyes like he knew everything there was to know. “I might do that,” I said. He nodded and pulled the door shut. When he was gone I turned the lock and threw the bolt into the hasp and stripped off my clothes. I took out some clean underwear and socks from the case, tossed them on the bed with my shaving kit and stuffed everything else back in the case. Tomorrow I’d throw the works in some trash can and start over fresh.
Tonight I was going to clean up if I had to ream out each pore individually, then crawl in between fresh sheets and stay there until I felt damn good and ready to get up.
It was the sun that awakened me. It started at my feet and warmed its way up to my face until I had it full in the eyes. It was a bright, beautiful day that had gotten off to a good start. I stretched, got up and took a look out the window. It was a very beautiful day. It even made the town look good. And from up where I was looking down you’d never know that the place was called Little Reno because the saloons and gambling joints were still closed and aside from the black dots that were women in the shopping district, the streets were peacefully calm and deserted.
No, not quite deserted. There was a drunk lying in the gutter down there. A dog came over, smelled him and backed away.
I took another shower to wash the sleep off me, shaved fresh and called up room service for a breakfast. When they took my order I had the switchboard girl put me on an outside line to a fancy men’s shop and reeled off a list of things I needed. I had just finished breakfast when a beaming clerk from the men’s shop came in with a tailor to finish me off in party clothes. Luckily for me I’m one of those guys who walk right into a ready-made outfit, so there wasn’t much to be done except let out a few things. I’m not a small guy, either.
The clerk walked off happy with a couple hundred bucks, a fat tip and all I needed was a haircut. I got that downstairs.
Barbershops are funny places. Like the three monkeys, only in reverse. For some reason, barbers seem to be frustrated reporters, orators and G-men all wrapped up together. While they have you strapped down to a chair they make you listen to a summary of events that would make a news commentator blush. I told the guy working on me to cut it as short as he could get it and that’s all I ever did get to say to him. He took it from there, started jawing about the people and the town and how he’d run it if he was mayor, got sidetracked into national politics then branched off into the first war, the second war and was well into his third.
If I had been listening I would have noticed the way he lost track of things and concentrated on shaving around my ears, but I was paying too much attention to the rhythm the old colored boy was putting into the shine on my new shoes and missed it all. He whipped off the towel and nodded to me in the mirror. His face looked funny. His smile was all porcelain when he took the buck and something in his throat made his tie bob up and down.
I was climbing into my coat when the bellhop who could get me anything in town poked his head in the door and grinned at me. “Thought I saw you come in here. There’s a call for you at the desk. Guy says it’s important and I told him to hang on while I rounded you up.”
“Thanks.” His fingers picked the quarter out of the air that went with it. I went back into the lobby of the hotel and he pointed to a row of booths.
“Number four. You can take it in there.”
I closed the door, picked up the phone and said hello.
I was thinking that I sure was a popular guy for somebody who had never been in the town of Lyncastle in his life. Maybe it was going to be fun after all. A nice, nasty kind of fun a lot of people wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
The voice cracked in the middle when it said, “Hello... hello, Johnny?”
I said, “That’s right,” and waited to hear the rest of it.
“Well, speak up, boy. Good Lord, you had a nerve running off like that last night. Took me right until now to find the cabbie that brought you to town.”
He spoke like I was supposed to know him and I did. It was the old boy from the railroad station and he sounded like he was calling off trains. Everything all at once and jumbled. Like three trains on the same track at the same time. You know.
“Sorry, Pop,” I said. “Had a long trip and I needed some sleep.”
He exploded into a barrage of words. “Johnny, boy, are you out of your head? What’s the idea coming back You git yourself outa that hotel right now and get down here. I haven’t been able to sleep a wink all night just thinking. That’s all, just thinking. You git caught up with and you know what’ll happen. I don’t have to tell you about this town. You know what’s gonna happen soon as you step outside the door. Now you call a cab and get down here, understand? There’s a bus going west in thirty minutes and I got your ticket all made out.”
I had been looking out the window of the booth and saw them come in. Two of them. One was the bruiser who guarded the railroad station after dark. The other was a little smaller, not quite as chunky. His face was all happy-looking like he’d just stepped on a snake and there wasn’t any fingers on his hands because they were all rolled up into fists. He had a bulge on his hip too. A pair of bulges. One on each side.
I said, “Too late, Pop. They’re here now.”