Savage Lover [= Sinner Man]

9

It was my second Sunday, my second day off. I crawled out of bed somewhere in the middle of the afternoon and found my way to the phone, which was ringing. It was Anne Bishop.

“That date of ours,” she said. “It’s still on?”

I shook my head to clear it, which hurt. The night before I’d been Round Seven’s best customer and an even better customer of an after-hours joint called Moon High. Now my head was the size of a basketball and ached.

“Date,” I said.

“You were going to take me for a long ride. And dinner.”

I remembered. “An hour,” I said. “I’ll pick you up.”

I put the phone to bed and turned into the bathroom for a shower and a shave. I cooked water for coffee and drank it scaldingly black until things settled down between my ears. I put on a new suit and a sincere tie, and went downstairs.

I slipped into a restaurant around the corner for breakfast. I sat at a table and ordered bacon and eggs and some more coffee. The coffee was grim — I tried to drink it without tasting it. I looked at my watch. It was time to get Annie.

The watch was pancake flat, the size of a half dollar. Lou Baron had given it to me a couple days ago. First there had been a phone call one afternoon telling me about someone who owed money and hadn’t paid. I had gone to the address Baron gave me, had found the guy and had beaten him up. I had used fists on his face and feet on his ribs. The next day somebody had dropped off a package at Round Seven and had told me it was for me. The watch had been inside. Engraved neatly on the back was the legend, To Nat from Lou Baron, in tiny script. The watch even kept time.

The sky outside was seven various shades of gray. I went back to the Stennett and told the doorman to find my car for me. He brought it out from the garage and I gave him a dollar. I looked at the Lincoln and smiled. It was low and lovely with plenty of spirit under the hood. I got behind the wheel, put the top down and looked up at the gray sky again. I turned a key in the ignition and drove to the house where Annie lived.

I hit the horn. Time passed while she hurried down four flights of stairs. Then the front door flew open and she ran down the walk to the car. I opened the door for her and she bounced into the seat beside me.

She was wearing brown loafers, black tights, a soft brown skirt and a black cashmere sweater. She looked like a wood nymph. “A ride in the country,” she said. “It sounds like a groove.”

“It’s the wrong day for it.”

“That doesn’t matter, Nat. I want to look at trees and smell fresh air. I want to get high on oxygen. And it’s not a bad day.”

I told her it would probably rain.

“I hope not,” she said. “I like this car with the top down. Wind blowing my hair around. I like it.”

We drove around looking for the country and we couldn’t find it. We took one of the principal streets straight out of town and that didn’t do any good. It was just a big city street that kept on in the same vein even when the city stopped. We tried other roads, still looking for the country, and we found everything else. We found housing developments and school districts and country clubs. We found highways and freeways and throughways and causeways. We did not find the country.

“Oh, hell,” she said. “We’re halfway to Albany, I think. This isn’t working out, Nat.”

“Should I turn around?”

“I guess you might as well.”

I found a Texaco station and pulled in for a transfusion. He wiped my windshield, checked my oil and water, filled my tires. I gave him a credit card and he performed rituals with it. Then I turned the Lincoln around and aimed it at the city again.

“There used to be country,” Annie said. “The city ended at the Kenmore line and after that there was country. I used to live just inside the city line. There were big vacant lots to play in. Now they’re all ranch houses.”

She stretched out a hand. I lit a cigarette and put it between her fingers. She took a very long drag and blew out smoke.

“We used to go for drives in the country every Sunday,” she went on, “when the weather was nice. Pack a picnic lunch, spread a tablecloth or a blanket and eat outdoors. Or my old man would build a campfire and we would bake potatoes in the coals and grill steaks over it. None of the charcoal briquette stuff. Just a plain wood fire. My brother and I went around picking up dead wood and my old man would build a fire. Now they have anti-fire laws and everybody has a brick barbecue in the backyard and there isn’t any country anymore. Just a chain of suburbs running from Buffalo to New York. Let’s find some place that cooks rare steaks and makes big drinks. I want to get high, Nat.”

So we found a place just outside of Buffalo whose decor was colonial American, with hardwood Windsor chairs and ladderback barstools and plenty of wooden timbers holding up the ceiling. Anne got going with a double gin and tonic and had two more before they brought the food around. We passed up steak and settled on roast beef, which seemed to be the special. They brought us each a big slice an inch thick with roasted potatoes and creamed spinach on the side. Afterward I had brandy and she had more of the gin and tonic. She shot high as a kite.

“There’s no country anymore,” she said. “Isn’t that rotten?”

“You still playing that song?”

She had eyes like an owl. “It’s not a song. It’s the sad truth. Nothing is the way it used to be. It never is. I don’t belong here, Nat.”

“Where do you belong?”

More gin. “In a bus called Limbo on a one-way street. Going the wrong way. You remember those houses we passed today? The split-levels?”

I remembered ugly houses set row on row, like crosses in Flanders Field. They all looked different, with different paint jobs and different landscaping — but they also all looked the same.

“In a suburb,” she said. “In a fifteen-thousand-dollar split-level trap with a husband in my pocket and a baby in my uterus. Picture this. The husband works for a big company. His salary isn’t too great but they have a dandy pension plan. I have charge accounts and heavy furniture and a washing machine. And my bridge game is lousy but it’s something to do while you trade platitudes.”

It sounded familiar, I thought. It was Donald Barshter’s life.

“Where I belong,” she was saying. “By the book, by all the rules. The rules fell flat. You know why? Because I started liking jazz. All right, that’s easy — you find the husband and you make him build a stereo rig in the basement recreation area. But I liked jazz the wrong way. I went to clubs. I met men and I talked to them. I’m a good listener. I learn things.”

She was smoking a cigarette. It fell from her fingers and started to scorch the linen tablecloth. She didn’t notice it. I picked it up and put it out.

“So I learned a subculture. Isn’t that handy? I learned a subculture. I learned there were things happening that didn’t happen in split-levels. I learned that some people get along without a pension plan. And I found out something. Annie Bishop just couldn’t make it in a split-level. She couldn’t swing with the bridge-and-canasta set. She’d be living in a world without colors.”

She started to drink more gin and tonic. I took the glass away from her and told her to go easy. She pouted at me, then forgot about the drink.

“That split-level,” she said. “That imaginary split-level. I took it and I put a sign on it. Know what the sign said?”

“What?”

“That’s easy,” she said. “It said, ‘Annie doesn’t live here anymore.’ Like the song. Buy me another drink, Nat.”

She had one more drink and went over the edge. She made the john just in time and came out a few minutes later with a green look. I paid the bill and steered her outside to the car. I drove her to her apartment, carried her upstairs and undressed her for bed. By then she was out cold. I wedged her under the covers, tucked her in and turned off the lights.

When I got outside again it had started to rain. I put the Lincoln’s top up and drove back to the Stennett. I turned the car over to the doorman and went inside. There was a message for me at the desk, a number to call. I didn’t recognize the number and called from the pay phone in the lobby instead of from the phone in my room. I didn’t want to go through the switchboard.

I didn’t recognize the voice that answered. I told it who I was. Then there was silence for a minute, and then there was Baron’s voice. “Nat,” he said. “Glad you called. Get over here, will you?”

I told him I would. I went back outside and got my car back. The doorman was puzzled but he decided to humor me. Then I drove over to Baron’s house.

I parked in front, got out of the car and nodded at the sad old elm tree. I rang Baron’s bell and the beady-eyed servant opened the door. He led me to the living room. Johnny was sitting on the couch and Baron was in his chair. I sat in the chair I’d used before and Baron offered me a cigar from the cedarwood box. I passed it up. He unwrapped one for himself and used his little gold knife on it. Then he lit it and smoked.

“Everything okay, Nat?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“I called five-thirty, maybe six. You were out.”

“I was with a girl.”

Baron laughed. “That’s good enough. How’s everything at Round Seven, Nat? Somebody drop a package there?”

“There’s one in the safe now.”

“That’s good. A guy’ll be by Thursday or Friday to pick it up. Meanwhile it sits. You know what’s in the package?”

I shook my head.

“You want to know?” he asked.

“It’s none of my business.”

He laughed again. “You got a good attitude, Nat. Straight and simple. How’s that watch work?”

I looked at my watch. “It works fine.”

“Keep good time?”

I nodded. “I like it,” I said. “Thanks.”

“What the hell,” he said. “You did a good job. Smooth and proper. I like your style, Nat.”

He liked my style — and Tony Quince liked my style. I didn’t even know I had one. I watched Baron set the cigar in the ashtray and open the gold knife again. He ignored me for the moment and concentrated on cleaning and trimming his fingernails. He still had that tremendous aura of power. It wasn’t the sort of thing you got used to. It grew, the more you knew him.

He was going to die and Tony was going to take his place. I wasn’t sure I believed that.

“Ever been to Philly, Nat?”

“I’ve been there.”

“You know the town?”

“A little.”

That satisfied him. He nodded thoughtfully and went on trimming his nails. Then he folded the knife and put it away again. He picked up the cigar. It had gone out and he scratched another match to relight it.

“There’s this plane,” Baron said. “Leaves two, two-thirty in the morning, gets into Philly around three-thirty, quarter to four. Johnny’s holding a ticket for you. It’s a round-trip ticket. The return is open — you make your own reservations. Depending on how much time you need.”

He said that much and stopped. It was my turn to ask a question. I decided to wait him out.

“Guy meets you at the airport,” Baron went on. “He knows what you look like, a general description. You wear a black bow tie and make things a little easier for him. He’ll pick you up, finger the contract for you. How you do it is up to you.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

He looked surprised or pretended to. It was hard to tell which. “There’s this other guy,” he said. “You hit him. Johnny’s got a nice clean gun, can’t be traced, you can pitch it down a sewer when you’re done. You look funny — something the matter?”

“I don’t want it, Lou.”

“You want a drink? You nervous?”

“I don’t want the job.”

“Porky,” he called. “Make Nat a drink, huh? He likes rye and soda, not too much soda.” We sat there not saying anything and Porky mixed me a drink and brought it silently to me. His dark face was absolutely expressionless. I sipped the drink.

“Drink okay, Nat?” Baron asked.

“It’s fine.”

“Not too much soda?”

“Fine.”

“You want the job,” he went on, in the same tone of voice. “It’s a pretty deal. Philadelphia called up, said there’s a job to do and please send a man. I owe Philly a favor. And it’s nice, it’s pretty. Not an important hit, just a punk with large ideas, a wise punk who’s getting in the way. The price is five grand. That’s a very good price for such an easy hit.”

“I still don’t want it.”

“You still don’t want it. You hot in Philly or something?”

“No.”

“You’re too rich to have a use for five grand?”

“That’s not it. I’m not a killer. And I don’t want it.”

His eyes narrowed and we looked at each other. He smoked his cigar and I drank my drink. There was tension in the air, static electricity hovering in the room. We went on looking at each other.

“You’re not a killer, Nat?”

“No.”

“You never killed anybody? I don’t mean in a war, that doesn’t count, it’s not the same. I mean killing that’s not legal.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought about Ellen and had trouble looking into his lazy eyes. They weren’t so lazy anymore.

“I can see it,” he said. “The way you move, the way you talk, the way you act. You killed people, Nat. You sure you didn’t?”

No answer.

“I told you I’d throw good things at you,” Baron said. “This is a good thing. You aren’t going to turn it down and throw it back in my face, are you?”

I had taken the soft touch at Round Seven, the watch with its inscription, the car at a price. I had taken the good clothes and the good apartment and the good money. This was part of the package.

I said, “Who’s the contract?”

“Nobody,” he said. “A nobody named Fell, Dante Fell. A collector who started holding out. Who did this too often. Who never learned.”

I stood up. “Where’s the ticket and the gun?”

Now he was smiling. “Johnny,” he said, “give Nat the ticket and the gun. The gun is an automatic, Nat. You familiar with an automatic?”

I nodded. Johnny gave me a gun and a round-trip airline ticket to Philadelphia. I put the ticket in my wallet and the gun in my pocket.

“The reservation’s in the name of Albert Miller. You’ll be back here in plenty of time for opening up at the saloon tomorrow night. There won’t be any follow-up from Philly. If there is, you were with a dozen guys who were with you every minute of the time. So there’s no trouble.”

I nodded. I picked up my glass, finished the drink. I put it down on a table and Porky took it away to the kitchen.

“You aren’t angry, Nat. Are you?”

“Why should I be angry?”

“About the job. You still don’t want it?”

I managed to shrug. “It’s a job,” I said. “And the price is nice.”

I could have gone back to the Stennett. I could have stopped at a bar and had another drink to take some of the high-wire tension out of my system. I could have picked up a convenient whore for the same purpose.

I did something else.

I drove to the nearest drugstore and shut myself up in the phone booth. Then I put in a call to Tony Quince.