Recognizing the essential morality of this point of view, she bent forward and with a single finger tapped her companion below the elbow. Though he had hardly sensed Owner’s heavy-handed treatment at all, he rose automatically at that light touch, wiped his nose on his sleeve and told himself thoughtfully aloud: ‘The question got to be settled this Sunday. Father Bzozowy keeps Belgian hares. Somebody stole all four valve caps on me again. Why do they keep playing the same record all the time?’ And went for the door like a sleepwalker without even pausing to see whether the girl, whatever she was to him, was still with him or not.
How any man could find any door in such a stupor there was no way of telling – but he made it with the girl on his heels and right there she turned, stuck out her tongue at Antek and told him obscurely: ‘That’s for short measurement,’ and was gone, shopping bag, cream soda, zombie and all, to the very first bar that would let the pair of them sit around out of the cold and the wind and the wet for a little half hour or two.
Frankie watched Antek’s second triumph in as many minutes with an eye turned inward upon a sea of faces, like faces borne on a shoreward tide. Cousin Kvorka’s moonlike mug, full of a clumsy yet gentle anxiety, for he had something of Umbrella Man’s native gentleness; Record Head Bednar’s harassed face, brooding under its shaggy brows, looking like that of a man who has acted so heroically all the days of his life that he no longer has enough courage left to get him through the nights; Sophie’s eyes, full of a pale suspicion; Sparrow’s intense, peaked and eager look wanting to tell him something and being somehow afraid to say it and then smiling with Nifty Louie’s thin, disdainful smile as though to say, ‘You don’t have the whole story yet, Dealer.’
Molly Novotny’s face, full of a dark and steady appeal, upthrust trustingly to his own.
There was something had to be straightened out with the punk before he could take off with Molly. That punk wasn’t helping matters much, if what Molly said was true, buying people drinks and everyone knowing the kind of wad Louie had carried. How many people had Louie counted out his money for before he’d counted it out for the punk? There wouldn’t be one who remembered seeing another man’s money that night.
‘How come I’m never around when he’s doin’ the buyin’?’ Frankie asked himself broodingly. The punk was going to have to be straightened out all right, this business about Louie looked like it might not blow over for three weeks yet.
So first of all he’d have to get straight himself. He motioned to Antek for a double shot to start getting straight on right away.
For way down there, in a shot glass’s false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all. Bednar was certain to find that death at the hands of person or persons unknown actually meant death due to causes unknown; so that it didn’t really matter after all. Any more than it would matter after he and Molly Novotny had gone away together. Vi would take good care of Zosh then, till Zosh was back on her feet again and married to some fellow, some sort of doctor, who’d take better care of her than Frankie ever had. So that after a while there’d be hardly any hard feelings left at all and he and Molly would go to visit Soph and this real good guy she’d married and they’d all wish each other good luck and really mean it.
He finished the shot and tried to remember: What was it he had had to worry about? He had the situation beat and it hadn’t been as tough as he’d thought it was going to be. He motioned to Antek with the shot glass and Antek brought over the bottle to save shoe leather.
Sparrow shuffled in and stood in the doorway trying to locate someone in the dimness. Frankie could see him clearly against the light from the street but did not call out. He sat and studied, one minute, this alley nomad with the forehead so high it looked capable of holding everything while all that ever actually sank into it were blows. It was time to check up on the punk.
As he came toward the back Sparrow’s eyes searched furtively along the bar rail as though he’d lost something there.
‘I think you’re still in the junkin’ stage,’ Frankie greeted him with a calculated scorn, ‘spyin’ for dimes along the bar rail, you must be down to your last nickel.’
‘Who wants to be rich?’ the punk evaded him. ‘You think I want to be the richest guy in the cemetery?’
‘How come when you’re with me you’re always broke ’n the other times you’re buyin’ the drinks?’ Frankie put it bluntly.
‘It ain’t just when I’m wit’ you I’m broke,’ the punk assured him lightly, squatting down across the table from the dealer, ‘it’s all the time.’
‘That ain’t the way I heard it. They tell me you’re spendin’ awful easy these last couple days. Did one of them easy bucks have a little blood on it, Solly?’
For one moment Sparrow didn’t really seem to get it: his jaw hung slack. Then his eyes sought something along the floor and he answered in a mumble without meeting Frankie’s eyes at all. ‘I had a couple bills Wednesday night but you wasn’t around. It was Stash’s Christmas bonus check ’n me ’n Vi was lookin’ for you to help us tear a hole in it. We come in here lookin’ for you ’n we drank half of it up waitin’ for you. You think I’d be drinkin’ Louie’s bloody bucks up in here?’ His eyes met Frankie’s at last. And demanded an answer in turn.
‘I’m just askin’ whose dough you’re spendin’,’ Frankie heard himself apologizing and felt dismayed: he’d backtracked to everybody for years but never before to the punk.
‘Whose dough you think I was spendin’?’ Sparrow had the offensive at last. Everyone else made Frankie buckle – why shouldn’t he? Sparrow thought excitedly.
‘I thought maybe Antek was givin’ you credit again,’ Frankie said weakly.
‘You’re the only guy can run a tab on Owner these days,’ Sparrow pursued his victory. ‘You want to start a new one wit’ him now? I’ll call him over.’
It looked like Frankie had not only been outmaneuvered but was going to buy the drinks to boot. He pushed the bottle toward Sparrow and while the punk drank alone the dull drums of suspicion began beating another tune. Between the fumes of whisky there he began probing into darkened corners, like a man looking for a lost coin in an unlit steam room with the heat on full. Yet couldn’t quite touch anything that felt real for all his probing.
‘I’ll tell you somethin’ now,’ Sparrow decided after finishing a second shot, apparently not even noticing that he was drinking alone. ‘Pig is settin’ by the Safari in a new suit ’n really buyin’ – how come he couldn’t even get in there by the front door before ’n now it’s like he owns the joint?’
‘What good would it do Pig to strongarm Louie?’ Frankie asked foggily. ‘Who’d give him a square count? He wouldn’t know if he had forty bucks ’r four hundred.’
‘Owner’d give him some kind of count, Frankie,’ Sparrow decided. ‘You want to ask Owner if he give Pig a square count?’
‘Don’t pertend to be that dizzy,’ Frankie scolded him hotly. ‘Don’t think that dizzy act can get you out of everythin’. I know you better than you know yourself.’
‘All I want to know is this,’ Sparrow asked quietly, with no further dizziness at all. ‘Who’s wearin’ the new suit – me or Piggy-O?’
‘That doesn’t prove much,’ Frankie grumbled; but this time he filled both glasses. Then shifted his cigarette to the corner of his mouth till it dangled and Sparrow realized swiftly, ‘Now he’s gettin’ set to pull one of his corny movie acts on me.’