Джо Горес - Dead Man

“You think she’s in San Francisco?”

Dain slammed the door, walked away between the close-packed dusty cars. “Don’t screw it up, Maxton,” he said over his shoulder. “Wait for them to make their move. They will. Believe me.”

Night — soft, warm, moist, seductive — handcuffed New Orleans to the Vieux Carré’s blocked-off Bourbon Street like a kinky lover. Exotic underwear shops, crowded cheek by jowl with po’boy sandwich stands, displayed teddies and chemises and lace body stockings with open crotch panels for easy access. Traditional jazz poured out into the night from open doorways at the crowds of shirt-sleeve and summer-dress tourists.

Jimmy Zimmer strolled along a side street, stopped outside Carnal Knowledge where two strippers sprawled on straight chairs just outside the open doorway, loose meaty thighs spread wide to catch the cool outside breeze and the eye of passing males. He moved inside, stood near the stage, looking much seedier than he had in Chicago less than three weeks earlier. He seemed jumpy and determined, his eyes almost mean behind their horn-rims, his skin pale as if he spent all his time indoors.

Vangie’s face registered consternation when she saw Jimmy arrive. She was hand-cut crystal in a display of Coke bottles, her body moving to the music by its own volition. Rednecks shrieked obscenities at her, college boys made explicit suggestions, two black-leather lesbians moaned sexual dreams.

Through a gap in the fake plush curtains, Harry the Manager watched her as avidly as any john. He was a short man with a degenerate face; his bald pate, fringed with dandruff-flecked brown hair, gleamed with the urgent sweat of his thoughts.

When the music ended, Vangie came hurriedly through the curtain wearing only the required cache-sexe, her otherwise nude and magnificent body gleaming as if oiled. She had to corral Jimmy and send him hustling back to their room before her next show, and before he...

But Harry was right beside her, his short fat legs trotting to match her long muscular strides. “Baby, you’re terrific! In two weeks you’ve almost doubled the gross!”

“So double my salary, Harry.”

“Funny! Funny! Listen, baby, how about you be nice to me? I got friends. I can do you a lot of good in this town.”

She had just enough time between numbers to do it if... But Harry’s greedy fingers half cupped the ivory cone of one of her naked breasts as she tried to get through the dressing room door. She stepped back with a look of utter revulsion.

“Jesus, what a turd!” she said in a low, despairing voice.

Harry crowded her back against the door frame, grabbed her hand, pressed it against the bulging front of his pants.

“Feel it, baby! C’mon, feel it!”

She bent his little finger back, he squealed and let her go as she darted through the doorway and slammed the door an inch from his nose. She shot the bolt, yelled through the door.

“Go jerk off into a Handi-Wipe!”

Harry smashed the heel of his hand against the wall and turned away with a vicious, congested look. Inside, Vangie put her head down on her arms. Oh God, for just a little release from pressure! She raised her head and looked at her reflection in the mirror. The makeup lights made her look garish and cheap.

“They don’t lie,” she said aloud to her reflection.

She had $2 million in bearer bonds but still had to dance until four in the morning because it wouldn’t be safe to cash them in for another six months. Two million! Freedom. A way out. Worth whatever it took, worth doing damn near anything. The music reverberated through the walls and she stood up.

If only Jimmy didn’t bring the hunters down on them in the meantime.

Dain, backlit for a moment by the lights of a turning automobile, looked hulking and pitiless. It was ten o’clock and San Francisco’s financial district was zipped up for the night except for a few old-style restaurants like Schroeder’s down on Front Street. As he passed the Russ Building’s inset entrance, Moe Wexler fell in beside him to hand over a small flat packet a few inches in diameter.

“Great work, Moe. But why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

Moe’s eyes were constantly shifting, probing the empty street ahead and behind them. “When I went to check the apartment bug tonight, there was another one in place that wasn’t there before.” His roving eyes slid across Dain, were gone again. “Ah... what if we’re talking Maxton here?”

“I thought Maxton didn’t bother you any.”

“Yeah, well, that was talk, this is the real world, like.”

Moe peeled off into Sutter Street. Dain kept going down Montgomery to Market, his face thoughtful.

He sat on the edge of the bed in his loft, a yellow Walkman Sport beside his thigh, listening again to Moe’s tape. Shenzie listened also, head cocked to one side as if waiting at a mouse hole. The voice talked of the bonds with remarkable clarity.

“Nothing wrong with them, is there?” asked Farnsworth in a jocular voice. “Not forged? Counterfeit? Stolen?”

“Good God no!” Zimmer’s voice was high-pitched and full of fear. A voice that looked over its shoulder as it talked.

“Then take them to our Chicago office and—”

“I’m out of town.”

Farnsworth’s voice said, “Out of town where?”

“N... I can’t tell you that.”

Dain hit the stop button.

“Hear it, Shenzie? Hear the ‘N’ he didn’t quite swallow?”

Dain punched EJECT to pop out the cassette. Shenzie reached out a sudden delicate paw and struck the Walkman three times, very quick light blows, then whirled and ran to the far corner of the bed where he crouched, glaring balefully. Dain ignored the histrionics.

“Just what I told you, cat. Hiding in her life, not his.” He tapped the cassette thoughtfully against his open palm. “But just who put the other bug on Farnsworth’s apartment phone?”

Shenzie said meow, then relaxed his baleful stance to wash himself with a delicate pink tongue. Dain picked up the phone. “You’re gonna visit Randy for a few days, cat. He volunteered.”

In the Vieux Carré, Vangie and Zimmer walked away from the far sad dying sounds of Bourbon Street. It was four in the morning. Around them were darkened windows, rumbling garbage trucks, early delivery vans; ahead, a darkened movie theater marquee with light spilling out across the sidewalk beyond it.

“Jimmy, I thought we’d agreed you’d stay off the street until I could get together another traveling stake for us.”

“I’m taking care of the traveling stake,” boasted Jimmy.

Since the bond theft, their original sexual relationship had developed an almost mother/son dimension. Vangie grabbed his arm and hurried him toward the light laid across the sidewalk beyond the darkened theater.

“I don’t want to hear this — but I’ve got to hear it.”

They passed under the sagging marquee. Half its unlit bulbs were broken. It advertised a triple bill: Caught fromBehind, Stiff Lunch, Nympho Queens in Bondage. Beyond was the DELTA HOTEL — DAY — Week — Month — Maid Service, with rooms on the upper floors above the theater.

In the rear of the lobby a sallow-faced clerk dozed behind the check-in desk. A huge slow floor fan was trying to stir around the heat and perhaps shove some of it out the open door. Two shirt-sleeved white men and three black men seeking some illusory coolness not to be found in their rooms sat there despite the hour, wide-kneed and slack. Vangie half dragged Zimmer back toward the elevator. Their eyes followed her across the lobby as most men’s eyes would always follow Vangie.