Джо Горес - Dead Man

Noreen, in pasties and spangles, was doing an exaggerated and prolonged grind in front of the dressing room mirror. She added an exaggerated bump! to the grind that made everything jiggle, and winked at her own overmascaraed eyes in the mirror.

“So why ain’t you rich, kiddo?”

A mile away in the porn palace next to the Delta Hotel, a couple of dozen male patrons of three races — white, black, Asian — sparsely studded the theater like chocolate chips on a store-bought cookie. Management didn’t mind the nearly empty theater; it was only a money-washing operation anyway.

Zimmer, absorbing the raw sex and grunts and four-letter exhortations from the screen, fondling his own half-hard-on furtively like everyone else, jerked his hand away abruptly. Why was he here with these freaks and weirdos who couldn’t afford a VCR, when he had something like Vangie waiting in his bed?

She wasn’t waiting in his bed, that was the answer. She was out shaking it in a Vieux Carré sleaze joint, or maybe right now fucking the guy who was after them to rob Jimmy Zimmer of the bonds. For her own good, he’d force Vangie to give him the locker key, he’d control their destiny...

Zimmer emerged into the polyglot, swarming street crowd, no tourists, all local. When he turned in at the Delta Hotel, a bulky man sauntered in ahead of him. A bodybuilder, mirror athlete, all muscle and no guts, deep tan and a great shock of almost straw-yellow hair.

Another bulky man, equally large but with black hair cut Marine Corps short, turned away from the check-in desk to meet the blond man in front of the elevator. They shook hands noisily as Zimmer reached around them to punch the button. Cream puffs — these hulking overinflated guys were all fag for each other.

“Hey, man, what about this nightlife, huh?” black-hair asked blond as the elevator door opened.

“Yeah! Thompson’s got the broads up at the room already!”

The three men got on. Zimmer, closest to the panel of floor buttons, pushed 6 just as the blond man said, “Hey, punch six for us, will you, buddy? Thanks.”

Zimmer turned right, toward his room. The two big guys paused, debating which way their room was. They ended up following Zimmer down the corridor.

Heavy applause, rebel yells followed the distant music. Down the corridor from the backstage area came the approaching click of high heels; Vangie came in wearing only an exhausted expression, spangles, and sweat. She sprawled in one of the straight-backed chairs with her arms hanging limply at her sides. Through the half-open door came Harry’s voice from backstage.

“Noreen, get out here! You’re on next!”

“Her master’s voice,” said Noreen, but she made no move whatsoever to get out of her chair in front of the makeup mirror.

Nicky and Trask were coming up the hall behind him with their loose drunken conventioneer laughs when Zimmer opened his door. Trask shoved him hard between the shoulder blades. Jimmy ran across the room, arms flailing, to smash into the dresser. Nicky shut the door as Trask pulled a blackjack from his pocket. Zimmer turned to protest, but Trask waved the sap in front of his startled eyes.

“Make a sound I splinter your nose.”

Zimmer pressed himself back against the dresser, terribly pale, his terror-filled eyes darting from one hulk to the other. Nicky was at the phone, dialing 9 for an outside line. When he had it, he dialed a local seven-digit number.

“Six forty-seven,” he said into the phone, and hung up.

“ Noreen! Get your fucking ass out here! “

Noreen went languidly to the door. She caught the frames on either side of it to do a high kick out into the hall. She stuck her head back in.

“I almost forgot, kid,” she said over her shoulder, “couple creeps laid two C-notes on shithead earlier — both looked like that Arny Schwartzynigger guy, y’know? Had a picture that from fifteen feet away in bad light looked like you.”

She was gone, leaving Vangie gasping like a netted fish.

“Noreen! Wait...” Noreen was still gone. “But... but he can’t... we can’t...”

She ran almost blindly at the door, slamming it shut and bolting it. Panting, she reached down the front of her cache-sexe and took out a flat old-fashioned tin aspirin box. She dropped it into her purse as she crossed on wobbly legs to the pay phone beside the door. She dropped her quarter into the slot and began tapping out a number, leaving the receiver hang on the end of its silvery flex so she could be pulling on her street clothes with the other hand. She was almost crying.

“He... he promised me, tomorrow afternoon... it isn’t fair...”

Zimmer’s eyes darted toward the door at the discreet knock. His face looked flayed down to the bone. Maxton came in wearing an elegant summer-weight suit and open-throat raw-silk sport shirt. He looked a question at Nicky, who shook his head. Trask came out of the bathroom. Like Nicky, he wore thin surgical gloves. He also shook his head.

“Indeed.” Maxton dragged a straight chair in front of the door, sat down in it backward so he faced the room with his arms on the back, said to Zimmer, “James, take off your clothes.”

“ No! ” cried Zimmer in a terrified voice.

The phone rang. Zimmer jerked galvanically toward it. Maxton shook his head and said soothingly, “Just to make sure you aren’t hiding some significant other in your shorts, James.”

The phone kept on ringing, but it was now much too late for anything outside this room to affect events inside it. Zimmer began to unbutton his shirt with leaden fingers.

Vangie was buttoning her last button with one hand while slamming the receiver back on the hook with the other. She grabbed her purse from the dressing table, her high heels clattered down the hallway on her way to the alley door.

Maxton was out of his chair, leaning against the inside of the door with his arms folded on his chest, staring at Zimmer nude and shivering in the middle of the floor. Zimmer had thin arms and a sunken chest with a single scraggly tuft of brown hair growing over the breastbone. Nicky dropped the last of Zimmer’s clothes on the floor.

“Nothing significant, Mr. Maxton.” He snapped Zimmer’s flaccid organ with a finger, chuckled, “Especially not in his shorts.”

“So she does have the bonds. Dain was right.” Maxton spoke almost to himself. He turned an icy eye on Zimmer. “James? Talk to me.”

“A key,” said Zimmer eagerly. “Vangie has it. It was all her idea to take the bonds, Mr. Maxton. I... I didn’t think until... until it was too late...” Maxton was silent. Zimmer cried, “Dain! Dain knows she has the key!”

Maxton’s voice was a whip. “You spoke with Dain?”

“Vangie did.”

“Key to what?”

“To a locker. At the bus depot.”

Maxton was silent, then smiled and nodded. “Yes. I see. Thank you, James. You’ve been a great help.”

“Can... can I get dressed now, Mr. Maxton?”

Maxton gestured to his men. “Goodbye, James,” he said.

He turned away as Nicky and Trask began crowding Jimmy back toward the open bathroom door like driving a steer into the slaughterhouse chute. He clung to the door frame with despairing strength; their big athletes’ hands tore his soft deskman’s hands free like wet blotting paper. They shut the bathroom door behind them. Maxton could hear the muffled sound of water being run into the tub as he departed the hotel room.

Vangie came through the open street door at almost a run, slowed abruptly to a walk, trying to look casual and not making it. As she put out a finger to press the elevator button, it started down from the sixth floor. She ducked into the doorway of the emergency stairwell beside the elevator. Nicky and Trask left the elevator glancing around the lobby, seeing nothing of interest, strutting toward the street. Trask was telling Nicky a dirty joke, and they were guffawing.