42 Days For Murder

Chapter Six

About half an hour later I was just stalling around, on what I could remember of the SARI waltzes. There was nobody dancing; only about a dozen couples in the booths, though the bar was packed and noisy. Lester came over and grinned at me and said:

“Shean, will you play something we can dance to?”

I said: “Sure, if you hit the kitty. And don’t put in two bits. Go first class with a buck.”

He looked pained and split the difference with a half dollar and I started out with a slow fox-trot. Kewpie came over and started to bellow out the chorus, and I couldn’t decide whether that or his saxophone playing was worse.

I knew he’d do both, too enthusiastically, through the evening, and that I’d have a chance to decide. Lester and his blonde and two other couples started to cavort around and when Kewpie got through with his chorus he decided he’d take his sax out of wraps. He started to unpack it and I started to go to town on the tune.

It was an old-timer. BREEZE. The one that blew the gal away, according to the lyrics. An old Goodwin and Hanley number. A honey to go to town on. I got hot on it; it was always a pet of mine, and I could see two good-sized parties leave the bar and head for the back room and dance floor. Some of them started to dance and some went in the booths and I put in a few more licks for good measure and quit just in time because Kewpie had the mouthpiece on his sax and was showing signs of joining in, dry reed and all.

Lester came over right then. He took off his glasses and started polishing them and his eyes looked as big as saucers. He hissed at me:

“One of them’s the Wendel woman! Hazel told me!”

I looked over at Kewpie, who was mouthing his sax reed and looking interested. Lester got the idea and said loudly: “That was fine, Shean! D’ya know WHERE OR WHEN?”

“That’s a show tune. I don’t know whether this place has got a license to play that sort of stuff.” I looked at the kitty and then at Kewpie. And then winked.

Lester was getting smart. He bounced another fifty cent piece in the cat and Kewpie said: “That’s working, Shean, old kid. That’s the stuff to give the troops. If they think we’re working here because we like music they’re nuts. What key you taking it in?”

I said: “E flat, and if you play flat on that damned thing I’ll take it away from you and shove it down your neck.”

He said happily: “The same old Shean!” and we started out.

Things got going good by eleven o’clock. I’d spotted the Wendel woman by then and the crowd she was with and had been paying more attention to them than I had to the music — though this didn’t seem to make any difference to anybody. Rucci had brought over at least ten assorted women and all of them had gushed over the music and said it must be wonderful to be able to play like that. The old line. Assorted women is right; blondes, brunettes, and one red head. All of them the same general type, however. Looking for excitement and all drinking too much by far.

The Wendel party was the exception, apparently they were nursing their drinks. There were six in the bunch, altogether; and my boss, Rucci, and a startlingly blonde gal he seemed to favor sat with them the bulk of the time.

The Wendel girl was prettier than I’d thought she’d be from her picture. Medium-sized, quite dark, and apparently not too fond of talking. At least she seemed to spend most of her time either listening or dancing.

There was a big bald-headed man that I thought might well be her lawyer, Crandall.

Very boisterous in manner but the kind of manner that doesn’t mean a thing. All on the surface. He had light blue eyes that didn’t look merry at any time. Just smart and cagy. A tough baby, I figured.

There were two men that might have been twins, though they didn’t look at all alike. The same type, exactly. My guess was private cops and that they were the guards Wendel and Joey Free had mentioned.

They had two girls with them and the less said about the girls the better. They both looked as if they should have been working for Lester’s big blonde divorcee mama. That is, if the big tramp was running the kind of place that she looked as though she should be running.

It bothered me, this last. I couldn’t figure why nice people like this Wendel girl would be out with such trash. And apparently friendly with Rucci and his girl friend.

But I kept on playing, sitting sidewise on the bench so I could watch the dancers, and pretty soon I decided I had the answer. The whole crowd was the same; just a mixture. You’d see girls that had lady written all over them dancing with men that had hustler written as plainly.

And the opposite. Decent-looking men playing around with tramps.

I just put it down to Reno and let it go.

Kewpie and I quit at four and there was still a crowd. My arms and hands ached from whaling away at the box and my head ached worse from hearing Kewpie sing and play consistently out of tune. He had damned little more idea of pitch than an alley tom-cat. And Rucci had kept on bringing gals over and introducing me but hadn’t brought any of the Wendel crowd.

He’d tried to please; I’ll give him that. He kept sending out to the bar for drinks for Kewpie and me until I told him plenty. I hadn’t lied; one hell of a lot of the customers had done the same and we didn’t want to take a shingle from the roof and tell them no. Kewpie and I cut thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, which wasn’t bad for a week night, and he said: “You see, Shean! I told you this was a good spot and it is. Kewpie knows, by God! We’ll do better over the week-end always, and when we get a live one in we’ll really go to town. Wait until Monday night.”

“Why wait until Monday?” I asked.

He grinned and said: “It ain’t any different than any other sporting town, Shean. A bunch of the gals lay off on Monday, because it’s a slack night for them, and they give the spot a play. A lot of them will hustle a John who’s good for dough and bring him along. And any dumb prostitute will spend as much as a dozen business men herself. You know that.”

I said I had that recollection, even though I’d been out of the business for a little while. We ate, then drove back to the hotel, and Kewpie walked on to the rooming house he was honoring, after telling me he’d drop up and see me around noon the next day.

I parked the car and went up to the room and didn’t find Lester. He’d left the club around two and he’d told me he was going to take the big bum home, then go to bed. He’d had about five more drinks than he could really hold and I’d told him it was a good idea. Just about the time I’d decided to call the desk and find out if the big gal was registered in the hotel, he came in.

He’d been pretty well plastered when he left the club and now he really had a load. I looked at him and said:

“Well, well! And you the boy that doesn’t believe in drinking. Maybe it was something you ate.”

He didn’t answer me. He just waved his hands in front of his face and stumbled for the bathroom. I followed him in and kept him from taking a header while he heaved, then said: “This ought to be a lesson, kid. You’re just one of the kind that can’t take it. This ought to show you.”

He said, in an all-gone voice: “I couldn’t help it, Shean. She kept saying ‘Let’s have another one, honey’ and what could I say? I couldn’t very well tell her I didn’t believe in drinking.”

“Why not?”

He managed to straighten up a little. “It wouldn’t have been polite.”

I’d been trying to keep from laughing, but this was too much. I asked: “Did you slap her face, or were you too drunk?”

He looked puzzled and asked what that meant. I said: “Hell! Usually when I’m trying to make a gal and get her too drunk she passes out on me. If she don’t get that drunk, she’s still sober enough to slap my face. Did you give in?”

He said: “My God, Shean! I’m sick! Don’t rib me now. I can’t stand it!”

I said: “That’s just your notion,” and proved him wrong during the time it took him to get to bed. This was about an hour. He’d get a shoe off and then have to make another run. He undressed in sections, as it were. I felt sorry for him, but I laid the lash on his back just the same.

He’d bawled me out for hangovers too many times. Though, of course, always in a polite way.