James Chase - What's Better Than Money

I didn’t care. I didn’t want to work anyway. I hung around the waterfront for a month doing nothing and drinking too much. At that time there were a lot of guys in reserved occupations with uneasy consciences because they hadn’t done any fighting, who were ready to buy drinks for guys in return for battle stories, but this didn’t last long. Pretty soon my money began to run out and I began to wonder what I was going to do for the next meal.

I had got into the habit of going every night to Rusty Mac-Gowan’s bar. It was a bar with a certain amount of character and it faced the bay where the gambling ships are moored. Rusty had got the place up to look like a ship’s cabin with port holes for windows and a lot of brasswork that drove Sam, the negro waiter, crazy to keep polished.

Rusty had been a top sergeant and he had fought the Japs. He knew what I had been up against, and he took an interest in me. He was a very good guy. He was tough and as hard as teak, but there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for me. When he heard I was out of a job, he said he was planning to buy a piano if he could find someone to play it, then he grinned at me.

He had come to the right man. The only thing I could do reasonably well was to play the piano. I told him to go ahead and buy the piano and he bought it.

I played the piano in his bar from eight o’clock in the evening to midnight for thirty bucks a week. It suited me all right. The money paid for my room, my cigarettes and my food. Rusty kept me in liquor.

Every so often he would ask me how much longer I was going to stay with him. He said with my education I should be doing something a lot better than thumping a piano night after night. I told him if it suited me, it was none of his business what I did. Every so often he would ask me again, and I would give him the same answer.

Well, that was the setup when Rima walked in out of the storm. That’s the background. I was twenty-three and no good to anyone. When she walked in, trouble for me walked in with her. I didn’t know it then, but I found out fast enough.

A little after ten o’clock the following morning, Mrs. Millard who ran the rooming-house where I lived, yelled up the stairs that I was wanted on the telephone.

I was trying to shave around the claw marks on my face which had puffed up in the night and now looked terrible. I cursed under my breath as I wiped off the soap.

I went down the three flights of stairs to the booth in the hall and picked up the receiver.

It was Sergeant Hammond.

‘We won’t be wanting you in court, Gordon,’ he said. ‘We’re not going ahead with the assault rap against Wilbur.’

I was surprised.

‘You’re not?’

‘No. That silver wig is certainly the kiss of death. She’s fingered him into a twenty year rap.’

‘What was that?’

‘A fact. We contacted the New York police. They welcomed the news that we had him like a mother finding her long lost child. They have enough on him to put him away for twenty years.’

I whistled.

‘That’s quite a stretch.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He paused. I could hear his heavy slow breathing over the line. ‘She wanted your address.’

‘She did? Well, it’s no secret. Did you give it to her?’

‘No, in spite of the fact she said she just wanted to thank you for saving her life. Take my tip, Gordon, keep out of her way. I have an idea she would be poison to any man.’

That annoyed me. I didn’t take any advice easily.

‘I’ll judge that,’ I said.

‘I expect you will. So long,’ and he hung up.

That evening, around nine o’clock, Rima came into the bar. She was wearing a black sweater and a grey skirt. The black sweater set off her silver hair pretty well.

The bar was crowded. Rusty was so busy he didn’t notice her come in.

She sat at a table right by my side. I was playing an étude by Chopin. No one was listening. I was playing to please myself.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How’s the arm?’

‘It’s all right.’ She opened her shabby little bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Thanks for the rescue act last night.’

‘Think nothing of it. I’ve always been a hero.’ I slid my hands off the keys and turned so I faced her.

‘I know I look terrible, but it won’t last long.’

She cocked her head on one side as she stared at me.

‘From the look of you, you seem to make a habit of getting your face into trouble.’

‘That’s a fact.’ I turned and began to pick out the melody of It Had To Be You. Remarks about my face embarrassed me. ‘I hear Wilbur is going away for twenty years.’

‘Good riddance!’ She wrinkled her nose, grimacing. ‘I hope I’ve lost him for good now. He stabbed two policemen in New York. He was lucky they didn’t die. He’s a great little stabber.’

‘He certainly must be.’

Sam, the waiter, came up and looked enquiringly at her.

‘You’d better order something,’ I said to her, ‘or you’ll get thrown out.’

‘Is that an invitation?’ she asked, lifting her eyebrows at me.

‘No. If you can’t buy your own drinks you shouldn’t come in here.’

She told Sam to bring her a coke.

‘While we are on the subject,’ I said to her, ‘I don’t reckon to have attachments. I can’t afford them.’

She stared at me blankly.

‘Well, you’re frank even if you are stingy.’

‘That’s the idea. Frank Stingy, that’s the name, baby.’

I began to play Body and Soul.

Since I had got that lump of shrapnel in my face, I had lost interest in women the way I had lost interest in work. There had been a time when I went for the girls the way most college boys go for them, but I couldn’t be bothered now. Those six months in the plastic surgery ward had drained everything out of me: I was a sexless zombie, and I liked it.

Suddenly I became aware that Rima was singing softly to my playing, and after five or six bars, I felt a creepy sensation crawl up my spine.

This was no ordinary voice. It was dead on pitch, slightly off-beat on the rhythm as it should be, and as clear as a silver bell. It was the clearness that got me after listening for so long to the husky torch singers who moan at you from the discs.

I played on and listened to her. She stopped abruptly when Sam came with the coke. When he had gone I swung around and stared at her.

‘Who taught you to sing like that?’

‘Sing? Why, nobody. Do you call that singing?’

‘Yes, I call it singing. What are you like with the throttle wide open?’

‘You mean loud?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

She hunched her shoulders.

‘I can be loud.’

‘Then go ahead and be loud. Body and Soul . As loud as you damn well like.’

She looked startled.

‘I’ll be thrown out.’

‘You go ahead and be loud. I’ll take care of it if it’s any good. If it isn’t, I don’t care if you are thrown out.’

I began to play.

I had told her to be loud, but what came out of her throat shook me. I expected it to be something, but not this volume of silver sound, with a knife edge that cut through the uproar around the bar like a razor slicing through silk.

The first three bars killed the uproar. Even the drunks stopped yammering. They turned to stare.

Rusty, his eyes popping, leaned across the bar, his ham-like hands knotted into fists.

She didn’t even have to stand up. Leaning back, and slightly swelling her deep chest, she let it come out of her as effortlessly as water out of a tap. The sound moved into the room and filled it. It hit everyone between the eyes: it snagged them the way a hook snags a fish. It was on pitch; it was swing; it was blues; it was magnificent!