Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘I just is plain up,’ remarked Smitty, and looked around him.

It was an hour before daylight and there were a dozen people left in the armoury, which was built to hold two thousand. Six of them were dancing, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at them. It had been going on nine days. There was no one watching them any more. The last of the paid admissions had gone home hours ago, even the drunks and the Park Avenue stay-outs. All the big snow-white arc lights hanging from the rafters had been put out, except one in the middle, to save expenses. Pasternack wasn’t in this for his health. The one remaining light, spitting and sizzling way up overhead, and sending down violet and white rays that you could see with the naked eye, made everything look ghostly, unreal. A phonograph fitted with an amplifier was grinding away at one end of the big hall, tearing a dance-tune to pieces, giving it the beating of its life. Each time the needle got to the end of the record it was swept back to the beginning by a sort of stencil fitted over the turntable.

Six scarecrows, three men and three girls, clung ludicrously together in pairs out in the middle of the floor. They were not dancing and they were not walking, they were tottering by now, barely moving enough to keep from standing still. Each of the men bore a number on his back. 3, 8, and 14 the numbers were. They were the ‘lucky’ couples who had outlasted all the others, the scores who had started with them at the bang of a gun a week and two days ago. There wasn’t a coat or vest left among the three men — or a necktie. Two of them had replaced their shoes with carpet-slippers to ease their aching feet. The third had on a pair of canvas sneakers.

One of the girls had a wet handkerchief plastered across her forehead. Another had changed into a chorus-girl’s practice outfit — shorts and a blouse. The third was a slip of a thing, a mere child, her head hanging limply down over her partner’s shoulder, her eyes glazed with exhaustion.

Smitty watched her for a moment. There wasn’t a curve in her whole body. If there was anyone here under age, it was she. She must be Toodles McGuire, killing herself for a plated loving-cup, a line in the newspapers, a contract to dance in some cheap honky-tonk, and a thousand dollars that she wasn’t going to get anyway — according to the chief. He was probably right, reflected Smitty. There wasn’t a thousand dollars in the whole set-up, much less three prizes on a sliding scale. Pasternack would probably pocket whatever profits there were and blow, letting the fame-struck suckers whistle. Corner-lizards and dance-hall belles like these couldn’t even scrape together enough to bring suit. Now was as good a time as any to stop the lousy racket.

Smitty sauntered over to the bleachers where four of the remaining six the armoury housed just then were seated and sprawled in various attitudes. He looked them over. One was an aged crone who acted as matron to the female participants during the brief five-minute rest-periods that came every half-hour. She had come out of her retirement for the time being, a towel of dubious cleanliness slung over her arm, and was absorbed in the working-out of a crossword puzzle, mumbling to herself all the while. She had climbed halfway up the reviewing stand to secure privacy for her occupation.

Two or three rows below her lounged a greasy-looking counterman from some one-arm lunchroom, guarding a tray that held a covered tin pail of steaming coffee and a stack of wax-paper cups. One of the rest-periods was evidently approaching and he was ready to cash in on it.

The third spectator was a girl in a dance dress, her face twisted with pain. Judging by her unkempt appearance and the scornful bitter look in her eyes as she watched the remaining dancers, she had only just recently disqualified herself. She had one stockingless foot up before her and was rubbing the swollen instep with alcohol and cursing softly under her breath.

The fourth and last of the onlookers (the fifth being the man at the door) was too busy with his arithmetic even to look up when Smitty parked before him. He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore blue elastic armbands and a green celluloid eye-shade. A soggy-looking stogie protruded from his mouth. A watch, a megaphone, a whistle, and a blank-cartridge pistol lay beside him on the bench. He appeared to be computing the day’s receipts in a pocket notebook, making them up out of his head as he went along. ‘Get out of my light,’ he remarked ungraciously as Smitty’s shadow fell athwart him.

‘You Pasternack?’ Smitty wanted to know, not moving an inch.

‘Naw, he’s in his office taking a nap.’

‘Well, get him out here, I’ve got news for him.’

‘He don’t wanna hear it,’ said the pleasant party on the bench.

Smitty turned over his lapel, then let it curl back again. ‘Oh, the lor,’ commented the auditor, and two tens left the day’s receipts and were left high and dry in Smitty’s right hand. ‘Buy yourself a drop of schnapps,’ he said without even looking up. ‘Stop in and ask for me tomorrow when there’s more in the kitty—’

Smitty plucked the nearest armband, stretched it out until it would have gone around a piano, then let it snap back again. The business manager let out a yip. Smitty’s palm with the two sawbucks came up flat against his face, clamped itself there by the chin and bridge of the nose, and executed a rotary motion, grinding them in. ‘Wrong guy,’ he said and followed the financial wizard into the sanctum where Pasternack lay in repose, mouth fixed to catch flies.

‘Joe,’ said the humbled side-kick, spitting out pieces of ten-dollar-bill, ‘the lor.’

Pasternack got vertical as though he worked by a spring. ‘Where’s your warrant?’ he said before his eyes were even open. ‘Quick, get me my mouth on the phone, Moe!’

‘You go out there and blow your whistle,’ said Smitty, ‘and call the bally off — or do I have to throw this place out in the street?’ He turned suddenly, tripped over something unseen, and went staggering halfway across the room. The telephone went flying out of Moe’s hand at one end and the sound-box came ripping off the baseboard of the wall at the other. ‘ Tch, tch, excuse it please,’ apologised Smitty insincerely. ‘Just when you needed it most, too!’

He turned back to the one called Moe and sent him headlong out into the auditorium with a hearty shove at the back of the neck. ‘Now do like I told you,’ he said, ‘while we’re waiting for the telephone repairman to get here. And when their dogs have cooled, send them all in here to me. That goes for the black guy and the washroom dame, too.’ He motioned towards the desk. ‘Get out your little tin box, Pasternack. How much you got on hand to pay these people?’

It wasn’t in a tin box but in a briefcase. ‘Close the door,’ said Pasternack in an insinuating voice. ‘There’s plenty here, and plenty more will be coming in. How big a cut will square you? Write your own ticket.’

Smitty sighed wearily. ‘Do I have to knock your front teeth down the back of your throat before I can convince you I’m one of these old-fashioned guys that likes to work for my money?’

Outside a gun boomed hollowly and the squawking of the phonograph stopped. Moe could be heard making an announcement through the megaphone. ‘You can’t get away with this!’ stormed Pasternack. ‘Where’s your warrant?’

‘Where’s your licence,’ countered Smitty, ‘if you’re going to get technical? C’mon, don’t waste any more time, you’re keeping me up! Get the dough ready for the pay-off.’ He stepped to the door and called out into the auditorium: ‘Everybody in here. Get your things and line up.’ Two of the three couples separated slowly like sleepwalkers and began to trudge painfully over towards him, walking zig-zag as though their metabolism was all shot.