Cornell Woolrich - Nightwebs (A Collection of Stories)

There was a concerted scramble for the stray cigarettes left behind, and the half-emptied bottles of wine, and even the unfinished portions of food (to be jealously wrapped and taken home to their families) on the part of the female detachment, almost before the door had closed behind their recent hosts. But the hosts seemed to take it all for granted, paid no attention. The squealing and heated imprecations carried all the way down the hall to where they stood grouped, waiting for the wirework lift to come up for them.

Jones and his escort stood very close together, a little to the rear. The others were in front of them.

“What time do you open?” Freshman asked.

“We don’t go on till eleven. A tango band warms it up for us until then. Nothing much doing any earlier. They eat late here in Spain, you know.”

They trooped into the shaky lift. Jones and Freshman stood with their feet touching, toe to toe and heel to heel, the left against the right. Freshman had his hand back somewhere, to the rear of him.

They emerged onto the crowded Plaza de Catalunya, with lights spotted all over it, like a huge pinball machine with the glass left off it. They hollered and they cat-called, and Henderson even blew a couple of wild notes on his instrument, and then they finally got a cab. Something that looked as though it had been through the Civil War. The Spanish one. And probably had.

They all piled into it together, stepping on each other’s feet, and drove down the Rambla to its lower end.

Where it narrowed, a vivid scarlet neon-sign flashed on and off against the night sky, proclaiming: Club New York , and underneath in slightly smaller but no less fiery lettering: El Hot Jazz, Orquestra Americana, Maxwell Jones, Rey de los Saxofonos , each on a separate line.

“Billing,” commented Freshman, as it suddenly turned the inside of the cab brick-red when they got near. “That’s what tipped you off to me,” he said to Jones after the others had cleared out ahead of them. “I was just passing through here. I wasn’t even stopping over. I already had my plane ticket to Madrid in my pocket when that thing hit me in the eye through the cab window.”

“I knew it was risky,” Jones admitted, regarding it hypnotically. He gave a deep sigh. “But it was worth it.”

Freshman looked at him curiously. “Does it do what they say to you, to see your own name up in lights like that? I’m just a dick, I wouldn’t know.”

“It does what they say to you. That’s your pay-check. That’s your bread and butter and wine.”

They went in, cased instruments in hand. Single file except at the end, then Jones and Freshman side by side, elbow to elbow. The only difference being their strides; counterpoint, and not in step, otherwise, it would have been almost a lateral lock-step.

A long-drawn, shuddering sigh of ecstasy went up all over the room.

“Oooooh, Maxi.”

“You’re doing all right for yourself,” Freshman remarked. “No wonder you wanted one last night. Funny world.”

“Ain’t it, though? On one side of the water, a bum. On the other side, a king. Same man.”

They went into the dressing-room and sat around smoking. It wasn’t meant for seven, but they all got in somehow. The ones who couldn’t find anything to sit on, sat on what they had already, spreading handkerchiefs or newspaper-sheets between them and the floor.

Freshman stood up against the door, its seam running down his spine. He and Jones had broken contact for the first time since leaving the hotel-bedroom, but there was only one door.

Nobody asked Freshman anything further. They already seemed to take him for granted by this time. Just one more moocher who had attached himself to the outfit’s leader; only this time a transatlantic one. Maybe cashing in on some past favor, back home in the lean days.

A knock hit Freshman in the kidneys, and a voice said through him, with a curiously ventriloquist-like effect: ” Listo para el senor Maxi.”

They filed out. Again Jones and Freshman were last, again they were side by side.

“How are you going to fix this?” the detective asked.

“You want to stay in the wings? I’ll be in full view of you there.”

“But the rest of the room won’t.”

“You want to come right up onto the stand with us? Sit in the back line in an empty chair?”

“No, thanks. I don’t play anything,” Freshman said drily. “Push a table right up against it, front and center. I’ll be sitting right under you while you lead. And when you knock off, no wings, you come and sit with me.”

Then he added: “I never take it out of my pocket, you know. I shoot right through it.”

He showed him two small darned patches, where there had been round holes made in the weave. About like moth-holes, but not made by moths.

“I believe you,” Jones said wryly, “without that.”

They passed the tango band going off, and looks without any lost love in them were exchanged by the rival musicians.

They filed up a short flight of slatted steps, and came out onto the stand and in full view of the night club. The pinkish light bothered Freshman’s eyes for a second or two, until he got them gauged to it. Chairs were scraped around and put in place, and stands shifted over to match them. The tango band sat in different format.

Jones was bending down over the rim talking to the headwaiter. Somebody applauded, and he broke off to bow an acknowledgement, then went ahead. The headwaiter nodded, glanced at Freshman, shrugged. He went off.

Two waiters came over carrying a spindly table between them. They shoved it up against the pit of the bandstand. It was isolated; there was nothing but dancing-space all around it. It got the full benefit of the copper-colored spot sighted at the dance floor and stand. Then they dragged over a couple of chairs.

“There you are,” Jones said. “That what you wanted?”

Freshman didn’t answer. He vaulted down over the low edge of the stand, right where he was, instead of going down the ladder at the side and coming around front again.

He sat down on one of the two chairs. That way he was looking straight forward at the band. And its leader. That way the glare was behind him, and in their faces. That way the dancers were behind him, wouldn’t distract him by their constant movement.

He could feel people looking at him from all sides for a minute or two, but it soon wore off. They must have thought he was some particularly close friend of Jones, to demand and get such special privileges.

A waiter tried to put a cloth down, but Freshman wouldn’t let him.

“Leave it plain,” he said gruffly. “Cloths can be jerked off and then thrown over you, tangling you up.”

The waiter tried to put down a glass ashtray, and he wouldn’t let him do that either. After an ashtray gets full, its contents can be suddenly thrown in your eyes, blinding you.

“Does the senor want anything at all?” the waiter demanded affrontedly.

“Just keep back and give me lots of room,” Freshman said. “I want to watch the music.” That was the right word, too; he wanted to see, not hear.

They had spread themselves all around now and were in their places. They were making noises like crickets; squeaky, metallic crickets.

Jones tapped his stick twice, spread his arms.

“Number Fifteen on the books,” he said.

A rocket-bomb went off and people were dancing all around on three sides of Freshman. He went ahead looking steadily at Jones. There wasn’t much to see, from the back like that.

Jones must have had an expensive barber. The back of his neck, where the hair tapered off, was a beautiful job. None of these straight lines running across. His coat rippled a little across his back, with the play of his shoulders, which kept time to the beat. One leg kept jittering up and down, too. That was about all there was to see.