Vengeance Is Mine mh-3 Page 5

  I sat across the table wondering if skin could really be that soft and smooth, wondering how much less could be worn before a woman would be stark naked. Not much less.

  The meal went that way without words. We looked, we smiled, we ate. For the first time I saw her objectively, seeing a woman I had and not just one, I wanted. It was easy to say she was beautiful, but not easy to say why.

  But I knew why. She was honest and direct. She wanted something and she let you know it. She had spent a lifetime with five men who treated her as another brother and expected her to like it. She did. To Connie, modeling was just a job. If there was glamour attached to it she took it without making the most of it.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when we left, straggling out with full bellies and a pleasant sensation of everything being almost all right. I said, “Going to tell me the schedule?”

  Her hand found mine and tucked it up under her arm. “Ever been slumming, Mike?”

  “Some people think I’m always slumming.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re going to do. The kids all have a new craze on an old section of town. They call it the Bowery. Sound familiar?”

  I looked at her curiously. “The Bowery?”

  “You ain’t been around recently, bub. The Bowery’s changed. Not all of it, but a spot here and there. Not too long ago a wise guy spotted himself a fortune and turned a junk joint into a tourist trap. You know, lousy with characters off the street to give the place atmosphere all the while catering to a slightly upper crust who want to see how the other half lives.”

  “How the hell did they ever find that?”

  A cab saw me wave and pulled to the curb. We got in and I told him where to go and his hand hit the flag. Connie said, “Some people get tired of the same old thing. They hunt up these new deals. The Bowery is one of them.”

  “Who runs the place?”

  Connie shrugged, her shoulders rubbing against mine. “I don’t know, Mike. I’ve had everything second hand. Besides, it isn’t only one place now. I think there’re at least a dozen. Like I said, they’re modeland-buyer hangouts and nothing is cheap, either.”

  The cab wound through traffic, but over to a less busy street and made the running lights that put us at the nether end of Manhattan without a stop. I handed the driver a couple of bills and helped Connie out of the door.

  The Bowery, a street of people without faces. Pleading voices from the shadows and the shuffle of feet behind you. An occasional tug at your sleeve and more pleading that had professional despair in the tone. An occasional woman with clothes too tight giving you a long, steady stare that said she was available cheap. Saloon doors swung open so frequently they seemed like blinking lights. They were crowded, too. The bars were lined with the left-overs of humanity keeping warm over a drink or nursing a steaming bowl of soup.

  It had been a long time since I had made the rounds down here. A cab swung into the curb and a guy in a tux with a redhead on his arm got out laughing. There was a scramble in his direction and the redhead handed out a mess of quarters then threw them all over the sidewalk to laugh all the louder when the dive came.

  The guy thought it was funny too. He did the same thing with a fin, letting it blow out of his hand down the street. Connie said, “See what I mean?”

  I felt like kicking the bastard. “Yeah, I see.”

  We followed the pair with about five feet between us. The guy had a Midwestern drawl and the dame was trying to cover up a Brooklyn accent. She kept squeezing the guy’s arm and giving him the benefit of slow, sidewise glances he seemed to like. Tonight he was playing king, all right.

  They turned into a bar that was the crummiest of the lot on the street. You could smell the stink from outside and hear the mixture of shrill and raucous voices a block away. A sign over the doorway said NEIL’S JOINT.

  The characters were there in force. They had black eyes and missing teeth. They had twitches and fleas and their language was out of the gutter. Two old hags were having a hair-pull over a joker who could hardly hold on to the bar.

  What got me was the characters who watched them. They were even worse. They thought it was a howl. Tourists. Lousy, money-heavy tourists who thought it was a lot of fun to kick somebody else around. I was so damn mad I could hardly speak. A waiter mumbled something and led us to a table in the back room that was packed with more characters. Both kinds.

  Everybody was having a swell time reading the dirty writing on the walls and swapping stories with the other half. The pay off was easy to see. The crowd who lived there were drinking cheap whisky on the house to keep them there while the tourists shelled out through the nose for the same cheap whisky and thought it was worth it.

  It sure was fun. Nuts.

  Connie smiled at a couple of girls she knew and one came over. I didn’t bother to get up when she introduced us. The girl’s name was Kate and she was with a crowd from upstate. She said, “First time you’ve been here, isn’t it, Connie?”

  “First . . . and last,” she told her. “It smells.”

  Kate’s laugh sounded like a broken cowbell. “Oh, we’re not going to stay here long. The fellows want to spend some money, so we’re going over to the Inn. Feel like coming along?”

  Connie looked at me. I moved my head just enough so she’d know it was okay by me. “We’ll go, Kate.”

  “Swell, come on over and meet the gang. We’re meeting the rest later on. They wanted to see all the sights including . . .” she giggled, “those houses where . . . you know.” She giggled again.

  Connie made a mouth and I grunted.

  So we got up and met the gang. If it weren’t that I had Connie with me they would have treated me like another character too. Just for a minute, maybe, then a few fat guts would have been bounced off the walls. There was Joseph, Andrew, Homer, Martin and Raymond and not a nickname in the pack. They all had soft hands, big diamonds, loud laughs, fat wallets and lovely women. That is, all except Homer. He had his secretary along who wasn’t as pretty as she was ready, willing and able. She was his mistress and made no bones about it.

  I liked her best. So did Connie.

  When I squeezed their hands until they hurt we sat down and had a few drinks and dirty jokes then Andrew got loud about bigger and better times elsewhere. The rest threw in with him and we picked up our marbles and left. Martin gave the waiter a tenspot he didn’t deserve and he showed us to the door.

  Connie didn’t know the way so we just followed. The girls did all the steering. Twice we had to step around drunks and once we moved into the gutter to get out of the way of a street brawl. They should have stayed in the gutter where they belonged. I was so hopping mad I could hardly speak and Connie rubbed her cheek against my shoulder in sympathy.

  The Bowery Inn was off the main line. It was a squalid place with half-boarded-up windows, fly-specked beer signs and an outward appearance of something long ago gone to seed.

  That was from the outside. The first thing you noticed when you went in was the smell. It wasn’t. It smelled like a bar should smell. The tables and the bar were as deliberately aged with worm holes and cigarette burns as the characters were phony. Maybe the others couldn’t see it, but I could.

  Connie grimaced. “So this is The Inn I’ve heard so much about.”

  I could hardly hear her over the racket. Everybody was running forward to greet everybody else and the dames sounded like a bunch of pigs at a trough. The fat bellies stood back and beamed. When the racket eased off to a steady clamor everybody checked their coats and hats with a one-eyed bag behind a booth who had a spittoon on the counter to collect the tips.

  While Connie was helloing a couple of gaunt things from her office I sidled over to the bar for a shot and a beer. I needed it bad. Besides, it gave me a chance to look around. Down at the back of the room was a narrow single door that hung from one hinge and had a calendar tacked to it that flapped every time it opened.

  It flapped pretty often because there was an unending stream of traffic coming and going through that door and the only cha
racters inside there had on evening gowns and tuxes with all the spangles.

  Connie looked around for me, saw me spilling down the chaser and walked over. “This is only the front, Mike. Let’s go in where the fun is. That’s what they say, anyway.”

  “Roger, baby. I need fun pretty bad.”

  I took her arm and joined the tail end of the procession that was heading for the door on one hinge and the calendar.

  We had quite a surprise. Quite a surprise. The calendar door was only the first. It led into a room with warped walls and had to close before the other door would open. The one hinge was only a phony. There were two on the inside frame nicely concealed. The room was a soundproof connection between the back room and the bar and it was some joint, believe me.

  Plenty of thousands went into the making of the place and there were plenty of thousands in the wallets that sat at the fancy chrome-trimmed bar or in the plush-lined seats along the wall. The lights were down low and a spot was centered on a completely naked woman doing a strip tease in reverse. It was nothing when she was bare, but it was something to watch her get dressed. When she finished she stepped out of the spot and sat down next to a skinny bald-headed gent who was in one hell of a dither having a dame alongside him he had just seen in the raw. The guy called for champagne.

  Everybody whooped it up.

  Now I saw why the place was a popular hangout. The walls were solid blocks of photographs, models by the hundreds in every stage of dress and undress. Some were originals, some were cut from magazines. All were signed with some kind of love to a guy named Clyde.

  Connie and I tipped our glasses together and I let my eyes drift to the pictures. “You up there?”

  “Could be. Want to look around?”

  “No. I like you better sitting where I can see you personally.”

  A band came out and took their places behind the stand. Homer excused himself and came around the table to Connie and asked her to dance. That left me playing kneeses with his mistress until she looked at the floor anxiously and practically asked me to take her out there.

  I’m not much for dancing, but she made up for it. She danced close enough to almost get behind me and had a hell of an annoying habit of sticking her tongue out to touch the tip of my ear. Homer did all right for himself.

  It took an hour for the party to get going good. At eleven-thirty the place was jammed to the rafters and a guy couldn’t hear himself think. Andrew started talking about spending money again and one of the girls squalled that there was plenty of it to throw away if the boys wanted some sporting propositions. One of them got up and consulted with a waiter who came back in a minute and mumbled a few words and nodded toward a curtained alcove to one side.

  I said, “Here we go, kid.”

  Connie screwed up her face. “I don’t get it, Mike.”

  “Hell, it’s the same old fix. They got gambling tables in the back room. They give you the old peephole routine to make it look good.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Everybody got up and started off in the direction of the curtain. The pitch was coming in fast now. I began to think of Chester Wheeler again, wondering if he made this same trip. He had

  needed five grand. Why? To play or to pay off? A guy could run up some heavy sugar in debts on a wheel. Suicide? Why kill yourself for five grand? Why pay off at all? A word to the right cop and they’d tear this place down and you could forget the debts.

  One of the girls happened to look over her shoulder and screamed, “Oh, there’s Clyde. Hello, Clyde! Clyde . . . hello!”

  The lean guy in the tux turned his cold smile on her and waved back, then finished making his rounds of the tables. I felt my mouth pulling into a nasty grin and I told Connie to go ahead.

  I walked over to Clyde.

  “If it ain’t my old pal Dinky,” I said.

  Clyde was bent over a table and the stiffness ran through his back, but he didn’t stop talking until he was damned good and ready. I stuck a Lucky between my lips and fired it just as the lights went down and the spot lit up another lewd nude prancing on the stage.

  Then Clyde swung his fish eyes on me. “What are you doing here, shamus?”

  “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  “You’ve been here too long already. Get out.” The stiffness was still in his back. He threaded through the tables, a quick smile for someone here and there. When he reached the bar a bottle was set up in front of him and he poured himself a quick shot.

  I blew a stream of smoke in his face. “Nice layout.”

  His eyes were glassy with hate now. “Maybe you didn’t hear me right.”

  “I hear you, only I’m not one of your boys to jump when you speak, Dink.”

  “What do you want?”

  I blew some more smoke at him and he pulled out of the way. “I want to satisfy my curiosity, Dink. Yeah, that’s what I want to do. The last time I saw you was in a courtroom taking the oath from a wheel chair. You had a bullet in your leg. I put it there, remember? You swore that you weren’t the guy who drove a getaway car for a killer, but the bullet in your leg made you out a liar. You did a stretch for that. Remember now?”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “You sure came a long way, kid. No more wheel spots for you. Maybe now you do the killing?”

  His upper lip curled over his teeth. “The papers say you don’t carry a gun anymore, Hammer. That’s not so good for you. Keep out of my way.”

  He went to raise his drink to his mouth, but I swatted his elbow and the stuff splattered into his face. His face went livid. “Take it easy, Dink. Don’t let the cops spot you. I’ll take a look around before I go.”

  My old friend Dinky Williams who called himself Clyde was reaching for the house phone on the end of the bar when I left.

  To cross the room I had to walk around behind the spot and it took me a minute to find the curtain in the semidarkness. There was another door behind the curtain. It was locked. I rapped on the panel and the inevitable peephole opened that showed a pair of eyes over a nose that had a scar down the center.

  At first I thought I wasn’t going to get in, then the lock clicked and the door swung in just a little.

  Sometimes you get just enough warning. Some reflex action shoves you out of the way before you can get your head split open. My hand went up in time to form a cushion for my skull and something smashed down on my knuckles that brought a bubbling yell up out of my throat.

  I kept going, dove and rolled so that I was on my back with my feet up and staring at the ugly face of an oversize pug who had a billy raised ready to use. He didn’t go for the feet, but he didn’t think fast enough to catch me while I was down.

  I’m no cat, but I got my shoes under me in a hurry. The billy swung at my head while I was still off balance. The guy was too eager. He missed me. I didn’t miss. I was big, he was bigger. I had one bad hand and I didn’t want to spoil the other. I leaned back against the wall and kicked out and up with a slashing toe that nearly tore him in half. He tried to scream. All I heard was a bubbling sound. The billy hit the floor and he doubled over, hands clawing at his groin. This time I measured it right. I took a short half step and kicked that son of a bitch so hard in the face that his teeth came out in my shoe.

  I looked at the billy, picked it up and weighed it. The thing was made for murder. It was too bulky in my pocket so I dropped it in the empty shoulder holster under my arm and grunted at the guy on the floor who was squirming unconsciously in his own blood.

  The room was another of those rooms between rooms. A chair was tilted back against the wall beside the door, the edge of it biting into the soundproofing. Just for kicks I dragged the stupe over to the chair, propped him in it and tilted it back against the wall again. His head was down and you could hardly see the blood. A lot could go on before he’d know about it, I thought.

  When I was satisfied with the arrangement I snapped the lock off the door to accommodate the customers and tried the other door into the back room. This one
was open.

  The lights hit me so hard after the semidarkness of the hall that I didn’t see Connie come over. She said, “Where’ve you been, Mike?”

  Her hand hooked in my arm and I gave it an easy squeeze. “I got friends here too.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, some people you don’t know.”

  She saw the blood on the back of my hand then, the skin of the knuckles peeled back. Her face went a little white. “Mike . . . what did you do?”

  I grinned at her. “Caught it on something.”

  She asked another question, one I didn’t hear. I was too busy taking in the layout of the place. It was a gold mine. Over the babble you could hear the click and whir of the roulette wheels, the excited shrieks when they stopped. There were tables for dice, faro spreads, bird cages and all the games and gadgets that could make a guy want to rip a bill off his roll and try his luck.

  The place was done up like an old-fashioned Western gambling hall, with gaudy murals on every wall. The overhead lights were fashioned from cartwheels and oxen yokes, the hanging brass lanterns almost invisible in the glare of the bright lights inside them. Along one wall was a fifty-foot bar of solid mahogany complete with brass rail, never-used cuspidors and plate-glass mirrors with real bullet holes.

  If ever I had a desire to be surrounded by beauty, I would have found it there. Beauty was commonplace. It was professional. Beauty was there under a lot of make-up and too much skin showing. Beauty was there in models who showed off what they liked to advertise best. It was like looking into the dressing room of the Follies. There was so much of it you tried to see it all once and lost out with your hurry.

  It was incredible as hell.

  I shook my head. Connie smiled, “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” That was an understatement. “What’s the pitch?”

  “I told you, Mike. It’s a fad. It caught on and spread like the pox. Pretty soon it’ll get around, the place will be jammed and jumpin’, then the whole deal will get boring.”

  “So they’ll move on to something else.”

  “Exactly. Right now it’s almost a club. They’re fawned over and fought over. They make a big splash. Wait till it all catches up with them.”