moved toward her slowly and smiled with a shake of his head. “It’s not that way at all, honey. I’m not ducking the pay-off, it’s just that I don’t like hats.” This time the bill between his fingers was a five. She appeared not to notice it as she took all of him in. Her eyes began to glow and the tailored quality vanished from her smile. She leaned a little forward so the counter pushed lush breasts up even more revealingly inside the georgette blouse and assured him, “On you, no hat looks O.K. to me.”
She had long, smooth fingers with nails lacquered ruby red. The tips were warm and they pulsed against his hand as they took the bill. Wayne leaned one elbow on the counter and studied the interior decorations of the thin blouse with appreciation. He asked, “Anybody around?” scarcely moving his lips and keeping his eyes hooded.
She wriggled a trifle and moved closer, bathing him in body warmth and perfume. “Don’t you like what you’ve seen this far?”
He said, “I’ve seen worse in my time.” He lifted his gaze slowly, catching the smooth line of her throat, the pouting mouth that was close to his with the wet tip of tongue just inside, the brown eyes that opened a little wider as he met them and glowed with open invitation.
She said, “I’m off in a couple of hours.”
He said, “I’ll keep that in mind.” He trailed the tips of his fingers across her bare forearm, let his smile widen into a grin, and turned inside.
The Gingham Gardens was typical of this block on Fifty-second. Long and narrow and dark. Red gingham paper on the walls. Blue gingham cloths on the tiny round tables. Accent on sweet simplicity to make the corn-and-cotton-belt boys feel at home. Sweet simplicity fronting for every sort of loathsome vice in the big town.
The back bar was lighted at this lull before the cocktail hour, and down at the other end of the room a bucket lamp threw a yellow glow where the hot-piano man was fingering some arrangements.
Wayne turned in to the deserted bar and the beefy bartender came alive. “What’s yours, Mac?”
Wayne knew that bar rye was what you got in a joint like this no matter what you ordered, so he didn’t mince matters.
“Bar rye and soda.”
It came in a heavy glass thimble that nicked him ninety cents. Wayne carefully gathered up the dime left from his bill and pocketed it, smiling gently at the glowering look this action earned from the bartender. He dribbled the drops of whisky over ice cubes in his highball glass and asked casually, “Anybody around?”
The bartender rested a chunky forearm on the bar and shook his bullet head slowly. “Only a cheapskate dropping in from the street now and then.”
Wayne didn’t say anything. He carefully poured soda in his glass, swished it negligently for a moment, then threw the contents of the glass in the man’s beefy face.
The man ducked and sputtered, swiping at his face with a bar rag and stooping to reach beneath the bar.
Morgan Wayne didn’t alter his casual posture. He said, “I wouldn’t,” and something in his voice jerked the man to a halt before he came erect.
Their eyes locked across the bar and the chill blue of Wayne’s drilled into the veined milkiness of the other’s. “I asked,” Wayne reminded him, “if anybody was around.”
“Trouble, Pete?”
The voice came from behind Wayne’s right shoulder. He turned casually. A man had emerged from the sick dimness of the rear. He wasn’t big like the barman. He didn’t even look tough. But in the half-light from behind the bar he exuded menace. Maybe it was his eyes.
His hair was slick and black. A slight figure and a boyish face. All but the eyes. They weren’t boyish. They weren’t anything you could describe. Holes for him to see through. Mirroring nothing. No imagination, no feelings. Nothing.
He stood hard on the heels of two-toned Oxfords, hands thrust deep in the slanting pockets of a tan sports jacket. He could be holding a pocket gun. At any rate, Wayne caught the bulge of a shoulder rig that the carefully tailored jacket had been built to hide.
“Bastard got nasty and trun his glass at me,” the bartender sputtered. “You want I should—”
“Shut up, Pete.” The man’s voice was like his eyes: flat and devoid of expression, yet somehow imbued with the reptilian menace of a Gila monster. He didn’t look at the bartender as he spoke. He asked Wayne:
“Why?”
Wayne shrugged. He was leaning sideways with one elbow on the bar. He said, “Tell your boss Morgan Wayne is here.”
“Will that make him clap his hands?”
“Try it, Sutra. Or should I call you Willie?”
“Where’d you get my name?”
“Saw you on TV. Don’t you know you’re famous, Willie, since your testimony in front of Kefauver? About how you think the drug traffic stinks and no decent crook should sell the stuff to kids.”
The trace of a smirk appeared on Willie Sutra’s face. “No kiddin’? I done that good, huh?”
Wayne sighed. He said, “Nuts to this.” He looked over Willie’s head to the end of the long room, where a girl was now standing in the pool of light over the piano. She was looking at Wayne, humming softly while the piano player soft-keyed. She was tall and slender and impossibly lovely, and at thirty feet her gaze had an impact that hit a man in the midriff. Her eyes held Wayne’s and she kept on humming softly. He straightened slowly and moved away from the bar in her direction.
Willie Sutra was in his way. Willie didn’t move. He spoke in a voice so soft it was barely audible. “The other way is out.”
Wayne paused, wrenching his gaze away from the girl with an effort to look down consideringly at the little man. “I don’t think the boss would like seeing the floor all messy with blood.” His tone was almost as soft as Willie’s. “Your blood.”
He started forward and this time Willie stepped aside.
Wayne paid no more attention to him. He was headed for the girl standing in the soft pool of light beside the piano. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her when he got there, but he knew she was in it somehow. The key to the whole situation was here. If she had it, she would give it to him. He knew that with certainty as he moved slowly toward her.
It happens that way sometimes. You look at a girl and she looks at you and you both know how it is, how it has to be. How it’s going to be if you both have to tear down a dozen stone walls to make it so.
It was more than just desire. Hell, you could desire a sexy twerp like the hat-check girl. Call it lust if you like. That’s a good four-letter word. No matter what name you give it, Wayne knew he had been clubbed.
Maybe because she seemed so out of character here. You wouldn’t think a girl in a cellar joint could look demure, but this one did. You looked at her once across thirty feet of dimness and you thought of everything the hat-check girl made you think of. But you also thought of home and mother. Climbing rosebushes and a white cottage with lighted windows.
Her
