“I'll skip this one. I'm too tired.”
“First time I ever saw you turn down the baths.”
I wanted to go but where do you leave an envelope with seven grand in a Turkish bath?
Once in the house I put the money behind the panel, cleaned up the place, changed the sheets, fed the cat, and went into a sound sleep. The next thing I knew the alarm was ringing.
After dressing and shaving I bought the Times and a scratch sheet at a stand three blocks from the house, walked over to Fifth and took a bus downtown. I had the scratch sheet open inside the Times. Salad Days was running at 6 to 1, Henderson had liked her. But there was a horse named Sad Gal at 3 to 1. I thought of Stella and that was enough “hunch” for me. At Radio City I got off and walked over to a luncheonette on 6th Avenue (who calls it the Avenue of the Americas?), had my orange juice and coffee and crisp toast. As I finished my coffee the counterman said, “Anything else, Mr. Jackson?”
“Sad Gal in the fourth,” I said, pushing change for the breakfast toward him, and two singles.
“On the nose?” he said, dead-pan.
“Of course,” I said, wondering if I ought to give Salad Days a play too. I went over to the bank and put the seven thousand into my checking account, which gave me a balance of $7,210—two hundred being the required minimum. I felt honestly relieved when the money was out of my hands, and the balance perked me up as much as if it was all really mine.
I was fairly busy most of the day, but in the afternoon I stepped into the office of Jake Webster, a retired cop who headed the company guards and therefore (just why I never really knew) had a radio in his office. Joe came in a few seconds later, and one or two other horse players. Sad Gal won but the track odds were only 2 to 1. Salad Days paid 5 to 1. As Joe was cursing about some nag that “Was absolutely due to win, sure as hell. Why I got this tip from...” I went down for my afternoon coffee—and six dollars. (I only had afternoon coffee when my horse came in.) I kept thinking of Salad Days and suddenly it occurred to me that it had been a hunch horse after all—I'd forgotten all about collecting my nine dollars in the coffee pot! As I made a note to get the money before stopping for my pre-supper cocktails, I thought how odd it was that Hank's money had made me so jumpy.
Seven thousand isn't small change, but neither was I the type to get excited about money—I'd spent many times seven thousand in my life; I once went through eleven thousand in a year—when I was younger. And here this money—which wasn't mine—had rooked me out of a hunch on Salad Days, by causing me to forget my money in the coffee pot. (This is how a hunch player's mind works.)
A few months later I was going to be bitterly cursing the money for turning my life inside out, making it a nightmare of unreality.
Chapter 2
NOTHING MUCH happened in the few months that followed... before Hank died, or was murdered.
I still had his seven grand in the bank and walked around like the cat who is on a diet of canaries. A few weeks after he'd given me the money, when I didn't hear from him, I called him via his sister's. Hank said he had a selling job with some sort of chemical company, that he had paid five hundred bucks under the well-known table for a top-floor apartment at 29th Street and 2nd Avenue. “Hated like the devil to hand out black-market dough, but I had to get out of Marion's house, and even a hotel room isn't good for us. One thing, walking up those damn five flights of stairs should keep me slim.”
Hank seemed in a good mood. But a month later when I called him at his office he snapped, “George, for Christsake leave me alone. Sorry, didn't mean to go up in the air like that, but... eh... I've got a lot on my mind. I don't want you hooked up to me, can't have anything happen to that money... might need it for a getaway and...”
“Getaway? I repeated. “Not really, Hank.”
“No but... look, Georgie, if you want to help me, leave me alone... until I can explain this mess. Okay?”
That was that. I went on in my usual (and oh so comfortable) rut, playing the horses, bulling at the office... taking care of all my personal wants and whims. I saw Paul Draper dance twice, went up to the Apollo on 125th Street to watch some excellent—if mechanical—tap dancers, and attended the dance recitals at the Needle Trades School and the 92nd Street Y—and of course danced whenever I felt in the mood. Flo and I went through two reunions. The first lasted a long time—almost a week—and ended when we began arguing over how hamburgers should be cooked, which led to some snide remarks on my part concerning her housekeeping, and we took off from there. I think I was the “victor.”
The second reunion was in July, when I had my two week vacation. Flo managed to get hers then too, and with much tender weeping we arranged for a cottage out at Southampton. The cottage turned out to be one of those plain, wooden affairs, furnished very simply. The first day we were there Flo said she didn't think much of it and wished we had one of the big summer places we passed on the way out. I mentioned I had a distant cousin in Easthampton, a boring and rather rich old man who manufactured some sort of insect powder. He had a big house.
Flo insisted we ought to go right over and visit him and maybe stay there for a week or so. She accused me of being a snob and ashamed of her when I refused—I hadn't seen that branch of the family for nearly 15 years, and hadn't cared for them the few times I did see them. And as it happened, at the moment I was very proud of Flo—she really looked fine in a cool, long, summer dress, and a large straw hat.
When I protested that I wasn't a snob, that I wanted to be alone with her in our little cottage, she walked out with this parting shot, “That's the coldest crap in town.”
This was so sudden, so absolutely vulgar, I was speechless, utterly defeated. From the way Flo enjoyed saying it, I knew this was some clever line she had heard at a party, had been carefully saving and nourishing it for just such an occasion. The end result was I had spent $150 to be alone in a cottage (Sky Oil, perhaps in an effort to impress upon their employees the advantages of saving, always gave us our vacation money after we returned from our vacation. Of course advancing myself a few hundred wasn't any trouble to me—with Hank's seven thousand in my account.)
I went over in my mind the few friends I had. Joe would be much too loud and tiresome for two weeks, even if he could get the time off. Mr. Henderson wouldn't be bad, but if he should dunk a hamburger covered with ketchup and mustard in his coffee, as I saw him do one evening after a poker game, I'd be unnerved. Beside, I didn't like to leave the house on 74th Street alone, and he was taking care of Slob.
I waited a day to see if Flo would return, then wired Joe to come down for the week-end, and Flo's brother, Eddie, to come after the balance of the two weeks.
Joe had recovered from the shock of his son, Walter, returning from Germany in May. For some unknown reason, at the last moment Joe decided I must be on hand to welcome the returning prodigal. I had a ticket that night for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's Rouge et Noir, which is one of these traditional ballet things, but Alicia Markova was dancing, and of course she was worth seeing. But Joe was jumpy as a cat and I had to be with him.