Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

Thumbing, he made his way to Missouri, thinking it’d be all right. But Bird told him kindly he couldn’t play, so he hustled and found work with the Benny Walters band, passing through K.C., their pianist coming down with shingles. But soon every musician and big-time booking agent was hearing how Maxie had taken off Bippy Brown’s left ear with a.22. Bippy had a mouth on him, but it was Maxie who got the gate, Benny bouncing him in a diner outside Chickasha. Maxie could’ve walked home.

He’d arrived at Pennsylvania Station with thirty-eight cents in his pocket, figuring if he was going to fail, he’d make it look like he failed at the top.

Big, big city, he thought, as he stepped into the sun, catching a breeze from the IND running below. Buzz buzz buzz, and he looked up at the Empire State, and then at the Western Union Telegraph building in the distance. Yeah, a real metropolis, he thought, as he spit through his teeth onto Eighth Avenue. They got a bank on every corner.

A merciless winter and he caught a cold, and she made him hot lemonade and brought a therapeutic lamp to his two-room flat.

By then, he was set at the Continental, and she thought he’d hung the moon.

He’d sleep until 11 and walk until supper, and sometimes she’d eat with him. He liked the steam-table dives, so she said she did too.

He was the first man she knew who didn’t babble about her red hair or the birthmark under her left breast. He hadn’t hit her, at least not yet, and somebody taught him to keep himself neat, and that was new too. She thought there might be more to him, even after the lanky Mexican woman from downstairs started dropping in, leading with sympathy when she’d asked for none.

At night, she’d go up to the Gaiety for a rye and ginger ale, killing time before he returned from Jersey, and pretty soon the stories, all with the ring of truth. Maxie lifted a gold-plated lighter from the bouncer at the Onyx, Maxie took a sap to the doorman at the Stuyvesant Casino, Maxie tore up a joint on the Bowery over a ten-cent pig’s feet-and-potato dish.

The black-eyed Mexican beauty said Maxie was itching to get himself killed.

“Honey,” Maria said, “this man hate himself. You can no love somebody who hate himself.”

She ran her fingers through Mitzi’s red hair, called her Margarita.

Slumped on the divan, Mitzi listened, listened, and she rested her head against Maria’s hip.

She’s right, she thought. Ain’t it always the way?

Maria kissed the top of her hair, traced her ear with her thumb.

Mitzi heard Maria singing through the floorboard. Always something sweet, proud, and tragic. Always in Spanish.

Soon, they were spending afternoons in Maxie’s bed, Maria toying with the tufts of hair below Mitzi’s baby paunch, Maria exploring; the two of them soaking through the sheets. Mitzi arching her back, tingling like her soul was being stroked, smiling as she wiped away warm tears, as she met soothing kisses from Maria’s salty lips.

Later, after barefoot Maria slipped away, Mitzi quickly washed her face, washed under her arms, brushed her teeth with his Ipana powder. She sprinkled Pinaud talc on the pillows and opened the windows wide.

The rubes under the George Washington Bridge didn’t know a damned thing about much, most of all music, so he gave them some Van Heusen Sinatra brought to life. The rest of the time he riffed on the chords to “I Got Rhythm” and the I-IV-V blues Jay McShann showed him, figuring that right there covered most modern jazz.

When they applauded, he saw chimps, the kind they teach to roller-skate, to wear a fez and smoke a cigar.

He let his mind drift when he played, and he was back in K.C. with all that dough, telling them how he made it at the Three Deuces, up at Small’s Paradise, stared down the shadow of the great Tatum, knocked Al Haig on his ass.

He’d already decided it was going to be one of those banks, all marble, cathedral ceilings, gold-leaf lettering on the windows, pens on chains.

Payday, early, before they came by to cash their checks, while the vault still swelled with dough. And a crowd on the street so the weary ex-cop drowsing amid all that marble and all that money don’t come out blazing.

Every day he walked until supper, and in time he scoured the city.

And he found it: the North River Savings Bank, a block west of Macy’s and Gimbel’s, maybe a thousand people working between the two. The bank had a piano in the lobby, some heeb with glasses murdering Richard Rodgers.

Maxie followed the little guy home.

A stretch of cord flung like he was roping a calf. Stomped him into shock, his wrists wrecked, elbows all but ground to dust.

He quit the Continental, calling from a booth in the bank’s lobby.

Maria was looking to borrow the iron, and she knew Maxie was gone, hearing his brood steps on the stairs.

She let herself in, and she found Mitzi hunched over the bed, angrily cramming clothes into a cardboard suitcase. Crying like she should’ve known better.

“Margarita?” Maria said, shutting the door. “ Mi amor, what?”

“No, no…”

Maria turned her, wrapped her arms around her, waited until she lifted her chin.

“What? What did he do?”

“He-oh Maria, he-”

A man at the bank, a vice president, a sucker for redheads, always was. Liked a good time, and didn’t mind laying out for quality. Winked at Maxie when he said he liked to come and go, and Maxie winked when he passed it on.

“A vice president…” Maria thought about it. “That son of a bitch.”

Mitzi whimpered.

Maria never liked him. A musician who didn’t have records and didn’t play the radio, not even to study, did not love music and did not have pride for his own gifts.

Going after the money: it’s what they did when they knew their talent fell short.

“You are nobody’s whore,” Maria said, as she kissed her tears.

Not for a good long while, Mitzi thought. Not since Maxie.

Maria nudged her toward the divan.

Mitzi, one, two, three steps and everything moving under red rayon.

“You go no place,” Maria began, kneeling now. “Here is you home.”

She murdered English, but she was damned smart and she saw it in Technicolor. Jazzman takes a gig in a bank, cozies up to a vice president, maybe the one with the key to the vault, the combination. Mr. Moneybags.

“This vice president. He is a married man?”

Mitzi wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I guess. Maxie says he’s got a pencil mustache.”

Maria looked into her hazel eyes, gave her nipple a playful twist. “It’s the woman’s curse. To fall for the stupid man.”

“Oh Maria,” she moaned, “ain’t I ever going to learn?”

“I tell you, chica . Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi leaned back, stared at the tin ceiling. She expected Maria’s hand on her thigh, thinking what a man might do, claiming his reward.

Instead, Maria stood, went for the bottle of rye in the kitchenette, the Hoffman’s ginger ale on the window sill.

Mitzi opened her eyes. “Maria…?”

“Margarita,” she said, “I tell you: Leave everything to me.”

He started showing up a half hour before the bank opened, and the tellers liked his serenade almost as much as his blue, blue eyes, and he brought black coffee for Puckett, knowing the ex-cop made him for the nasty bastard he’d become.

Puckett had to piss before he took a second sip.

“You holding out on me, Maxie?” asked the vice president, jaunty when he passed the Steinway. “Keeping that redhead for yourself?”

“Looking for twins, Mr. Minthorn,” he replied, toying with the waltz from “Carousel,” playing it in 4/4 time.