Sheldon Lord - Savage Lover [= Sinner Man]

We reached the heights together. For a slice of time everything dissolved and the world went away. Then I rolled free of her and we lay on our backs in the darkness and listened to our ragged breathing.

“I get up at noon,” she said a little later. Her voice was flat, spent, empty. “Be gone before I wake up, Nat.”

I stayed at her side until I was sure she was sleeping. Then I dressed in the darkness and went back to the Malmsly.

Thursday night at the Round Seven. The fourth night of an easy, lazy job. The middle of the second week in Buffalo.

It was raining outside and the rain made the crowd lighter than usual. Only four of fifteen stools were filled and all three of the wooden tables were empty. A man in faded Levi’s and a loose flannel shirt sat tossing off shots of bar rye and chasing them with short beers. A pair of skinny kids, soldiers home on leave, sat drinking draft beer and boasting about women. An old drunk worked his way slowly but surely through a bottle of Corby’s.

There was no television set and no juke. The last owner had left a small radio behind the bar. I turned it to the one station in town that hadn’t been taken over by adolescents and soft music played. I polished glasses.

The man in faded Levi’s chased his final shot with his final short beer, stood up and left. The soldiers stopped lying about women and went out looking for some. The old drunk ordered another shot. I pushed his money back at him and made it on the house. He smiled and swallowed rye.

A sweatless, painless job. So far Round Seven was nothing but a tax loss for Ruby Enterprises. No packages had come, no messages had been given or received. There was a small steel safe in the bar’s back room but for the time being it stayed empty. I wondered what would be put in it later on.

The drunk asked for another rye. I poured it and let him pay for this one. I tossed the dough in the cashbox without ringing it up. That was where the second half of my two hundred a week came from, money that never went through the bar’s books in the first place.

Soft. The right people said hello to me at the right times. The cops let me alone whether they liked me or not — I was local, I fitted, I belonged. My name was Nathaniel Crowley — that was the way I signed my checks and that was the name on the Bartenders’ Union card in my wallet. A friend of Baron’s had arranged the card.

A newscast came on the radio and I switched to another station. I caught the tail end of a commercial, a station break, some friendly words from a friendly disc jockey. I poured another shot for the drunk and wondered when he would fall off his stool. The disc jockey stopped talking and played a record. The door opened and Tony Quince came in.

He walked to the far end of the bar and parked himself on a stool. I took my time getting to him. I stopped on the way to pour out a glass of the sour red wine he liked. I gave it to him and he smiled at me.

“Working hard?” he asked.

“Not too hard.”

“Nobody should work too hard. Life is too short. You play poker?”

“Sometimes.”

“There are a few fellows having a game tonight. Soft action, just stud and draw for table stakes. Small table stakes most of the time. You drop fifty and you’re the big loser. I thought maybe you’d like to play.”

“Who’s in?”

“Berman and Bippy and Moscato and Weiss. You know them?”

I knew Berman from an evening at Cassino’s. I didn’t know the others.

“I quit at three,” I said.

“We start at three-thirty. Fair enough?”

I told him it was fine.

“You got a car yet?”

“I get one the middle of next week,” I said. “It’s on order.” It was a Lincoln convertible that someone had stolen from a doctor in Santa Monica. It was costing me about half the book price and they were shipping it into town Tuesday or Wednesday unless they hit a snag.

“I’ll pick you up then. Three o’clock?”

“I can grab a hack.”

He shook his head. “No trouble for me,” Quince said. “It’s on my way, stopping here. And we can talk on the way. You and me, we have things to talk about. Maybe.”

I told him three was fine. He took his time with the sour wine and I let him alone from there on. A fellow came in with a girl who looked like somebody else’s wife. I gave them rye and ginger ale and they took the drinks to a table. The next time I looked their way the guy had his hand up the girl’s skirt.

The girl was squirming around in her seat, her eyes glazed over with passion. Her mouth dropped open and she looked as though she wanted somebody to put something in it. The guy kissed her mouth and kept his hand busy. She locked her plump thighs around his hand and rocked back and forth, moaning softly. I wished they would get the hell out and go to a motel. Round Seven wasn’t licensed for a floor show.

Tony Quince finished his wine and left without saying goodbye. The old drunk left too. He said goodbye and walked out on wobbly legs. A few more people drifted in and out. The guy with somebody else’s wife stopped playing little games and took her home to one bed or another. It got to be three o’clock and I closed up for the night.

Quince drove up just a few minutes after I finished locking the front door of the bar. He leaned across to open the car’s door and I got in next to him. His car was a Cadillac, an old one, made before they ruined everything with tail fins. I closed the door and he drove.

“Berman lives in the suburbs,” he said. “But first we talk.”

“We can go to my place.”

“You still at the Malmsly?”

I shook my head. “The Stennett.”

The Stennett was a fine old residential hotel. I had three rooms and a bath. The hotel service was fine and the rent was not too steep.

The Stennett had everything I needed, including my little chambermaid from the Malmsly. She had switched jobs when she had found out I was moving — the pay was as good at the Stennett, the work no harder, and she knew I was good for a fifty-dollar bill each time we fell into bed. I was seeing Annie now and then but I didn’t see what difference that made. I still had a thing for women in uniform, and breasty Brenda filled out the black-and-white Stennett uniform nicely. And when she got out of it she knew just what I wanted her to do and just how to do it...

Quince said, “Let’s stick to the car. I don’t have too much to say.”

That was fine with me.

“I’m not going anywhere special,” Quince said. “The car goes by itself. Just driving, so we can talk.”

“Sure.”

“You met Lou,” he said after a pause. “The guy who handed you the job at Round Seven. I mean Lou Baron.”

“I met him.”

He nodded, as much to himself as to me. “I set that up,” he said. “You meeting him, I mean. I told Anne she should hang around Cassino’s until you showed and then call Lou and set up a party. I told Lou what I knew about you and that he ought to tie you in with what’s happening. I arranged things, you might say.”

“Thanks.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Don’t thank me — just listen. You know anything about me? Or about Baron?”

“Not much. I guess he runs things. I don’t know what you do.”

He turned the Caddy onto a side street heading back toward Main. It was easy to see that he and the car knew each other. His hands moved lazily and the car did everything he wanted it to do.

“Yeah,” he said, “Lou runs things. You could put it that way.”

“And you?”

“This and that.”

I didn’t say anything. I took out my cigarettes and offered the pack to him. He shook his head and I lit one for myself.

“I got a few things going,” he said. “A horse room downtown, a few phones, a few people to answer them.”