Lover

Chapter Three

He hotfooted it over to Central Park West and crossed the street to get a cab heading uptown. The air was cooled now and he buttoned the leather jacket. A cab drew up and he hailed it. It pulled to the curb and he opened the door and slid into the back seat. “96th and Broadway,” he said.

The cab started up and Johnny studied the driver. He was a small round-shouldered man with sad eyes and a weak mouth. Johnny guessed that the crumb would have given ten years off his life for a piece of Mrs. David Nugent. And he’d just had the broad for nothing. Hell, he’d come out miles ahead.

He took out the billfold, admired the leather, and counted the money. It came to one hundred sixty-three dollars. That was the cash alone, he reminded himself. The watches and the ring would bring more, plus the table lighter and the charm bracelet. Say an absolute minimum of a hundred clear for the stuff — and Beans could do better than that, he was sure of it. That made better than two and a half yards, which wasn’t bad for a quick night’s work.

It wasn’t just the money, he thought. It was what he could do with it. He had the looks and the talent to make it in the Pretty Boy circuit. He’d needed the working capital and now he had that. There wouldn’t be any more scrounging around on Broadway for a quick broad who’d pay for dinner and cough up another five when he twisted her arm. He could be choosy now. He could take his time and come on strong for a heavy score.

He was no dope. There were things he had to learn. You couldn’t move where the big money was unless you knew how to act. You had to have manners and polish. You had to talk like a gentleman and act like one.

But those were things he could learn. You couldn’t learn looks and you couldn’t learn sex appeal. But if you had them to start with, plus a little gray matter upstairs, then you had it made. That guy Bernie — he hadn’t been born with any spoon in his mouth. He was just a Rivington Street punk who played it smooth and got lucky. If he could do it, so could Johnny Wells.

Look out, world — here comes Johnny!

The cab dropped him at 96th and Broadway. The meter read seventy cents; Johnny gave the cabby a buck and told him to keep the change. What the hell, he thought — he could afford the thirty cents.

He hurried up the flight of stairs to the pool hall, hoping the guys were still there. He saw Ricky at a table on the far side busy proving that a fool and his money are quickly parted, especially over a table of eight-ball. The mark had a Joe College look about him and Johnny guessed that he was hot stuff at the pool table in the Columbia student lounge. But that didn’t mean he could give any competition to a shark like Ricky.

He didn’t say hello to Ricky, since that wouldn’t have been too tactful while Ricky was fleecing the mark. It might tip things. Instead he nodded, and Rick flicked his head toward the back of the room. Johnny nodded in reply and headed for the back. Beans and Long Sam were playing rotation. Long Sam was working on the four ball. He had a one-cushion shot to play and he was lining it up carefully.

Beans gave him a nod. “We missed you,” he said. “Pull up a cue and sit down. This game won’t last long.”

“I got to talk to you.”

“To us or to me?”

“Just you. Nothing personal, Sam. It’s in Beans’s line of work is all.”

Long Sam nodded. Johnny and Beans headed for the men’s room. The pool room was a clean place; you didn’t flash hot merchandise there and expect the management to love you. The two of them went into one of the booths in the john and locked the door.

“You got something to fence?”

“You read me right. Not just something. A couple things.”

“Like what?”

Johnny took one watch and the charm bracelet out of his pocket. “Like this,” he said. He reached in again and came up with the table lighter. “And like this.” He tried another pocket and hauled out the other watch and the engagement ring. “And this.”

Beans whistled “You scored heavy.”

“That’s about it.”

“Where’d you get ’em?”

“Off a broad.”

“Nice.”

“Can you sell ’em?”

“Oh, no problem,” Beans said. “This is the kind of stuff Moe likes for me to bring in. It’s easy to turn over.”

“What’s it worth?”

Beans shook his head. “Hard to say.” he said. “What it’s worth and what it’ll bring is two different things. Moe’s an honest guy. I work with him regular and he pays fair because he knows me. But it’s still tough to say. These watches could be worth ten bucks or two hundred and I couldn’t tell you the difference.”

“This one says seventeen jewels.”

“Don’t mean a thing, Johnny. You know what those jewels are?”

“Diamonds, aren’t they?”

“Industrial diamonds.” Beans said “Worth eleven cents a piece. It can have twenty-one jewels and still be junk. It depends on the movement and the casing. And what you can get from Moe depends on how easy an item it is for him. One time I brought him a necklace he told me straight out was worth maybe four hundred retail. And he told me he couldn’t give me more than thirty bucks for it. Something like that is tough to re-sell. He has to ship it to a guy across the country so it won’t be identified by insurance guys.”

“This stuff is safe,” Johnny said. “The broad won’t squeal. She wouldn’t report me.”

“Maybe not. But if she’s insured you can bet she’ll report the theft. She’ll say it got burglared or something, but she’ll report it.”

“Maybe.”

“So I don’t know what I can get, Johnny.”

“To hell with it,” he said, shrugging. “You can sell it? You can turn it over tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Take it now,” Johnny said. “I’ll meet you up here tomorrow night. I got things to do.”

Beans stuffed the loot into his pockets. “I’ll get what I can,” he said. “You don’t want to hang for a game or two?”

“No,” Johnny said. “No, I can’t. I got to move.”

His own room was just as he had left it. He kicked the door shut and propped a two-by-four under the knob so that it wouldn’t open. In a dump like that he wasn’t taking any chances. Anybody saw he had better than a hundred bucks and he might be in for a rough time.

He didn’t want a rough time. The two-by-four had stood him in good stead in the past; he used it as a lock whenever he had a broad up to the room. Now he had money, and that was more important than a broad. He sat down heavily on the bed and took the wallet from his pocket.

He counted the money four times.

A hundred and sixty-two goddam bucks. A beautiful hundred and beautiful sixty-two beautiful bucks.

It was more money than he’d ever had at one time in his life. It was a huge roll — and at the same time it wasn’t enough to get going on until he got the extra dough from Beans. A suit alone would run him close to a yard all by itself. Shoes were fifteen or twenty, shirts five or six bucks apiece, socks a buck a pair. And he’d need an extra pair of pants and a sport jacket, plus a decent suitcase to keep his clothes in. You couldn’t check into a hotel with a paper sack under your arm.

Then there was the hotel. If he was going to come on strong he wasn’t going to live in a craphole. He’d need a hotel, and it would have to be at least average and probably better than that. That would cost money.

But if Beans brought back anywhere from a C-note on up, then he could swing it. And as soon as the front was set up he wouldn’t have to worry about money. It would come in as fast as he needed it.

He smiled.

They’d pay, he thought. The goddamned broads would pay through the nose, just the way Fancy Pants Nugent had paid. They’d get what they paid for — he’d teach them what sex was all about and make them feel like a million dollars.

But they would pay for it.

He sat around planning until well past midnight. Then he stashed the alligator wallet between his mattress and the spring, pulled off his clothes and crawled into bed. He was tired now. The Nugent dame had been fun and the money was nice, but he was exhausted. She had really known how to wiggle that cute little rear of hers. She was choice stuff.

He smiled happily, remembering how it had been with her, how he had made her beg for it. They were going to do worse than beg, he thought. All the rich bitches with itches, they’d beg and more. They would come crawling to him, crawling on their hands and knees and crying like babies.

The picture pleased him.

He slept easily and well. He dreamed about money and women and power.

It was a few minutes past noon when he awoke. He didn’t know this, though. He had no idea what time it was, and he realized that he was going to have to get a watch as soon as he could afford one. It was a shame Nugent’s widow hadn’t kept his watch as a souvenir. He would have kept it and worn it himself.

He got out of bed and his skin felt dirty. It wasn’t surprising. He’d worked up a good sweat in the rack with the Nugent broad and he hadn’t taken a shower since then. He wrapped himself up in a towel, grabbed a small chunk of dirty yellow soap and headed for the bathroom down the hall.

He opened the door without knocking, mainly because it never occurred to him that somebody might be inside. As far as he knew, nobody else in the stinking building ever got washed.

He opened the door and saw a flash of pink flesh. Then the pink flesh squealed and disappeared behind the shower curtain. The curtain was plastic and he could see a silhouette through it.

The silhouette was pleasantly female.

“Who is it?”

He recognized the voice. It was the girl who lived down the hall. Her first name was Linda and her last name was something unpronouncably Polish. She lived with her mother, a fat old slob who washed other people’s floors and drank cheap wine.

He saw the bottles piled outside the door every morning. But he’d never paid any attention to Linda before. She was fourteen or so, which made her a little too young for Johnny to be interested in her.

Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. What he had seen of her had been pleasantly pink. And the silhouette gave him a nice view of breasts that jutted out sharply from her young body.

Maybe—

“Johnny Wells,” he said. “Sorry I charged in on you. You should have locked the door.”

“The bolt broke.”

He looked at it and saw that she was right.

“I’ll be through in a minute or so,” she said. “Then you can have the bathroom.”

“Fine,” he said.

“You can go now. I’ll be done soon.”

“Fine,” he repeated. But he made no move to go and she didn’t say anything.

What would the best move be? He smiled. He could take off all his clothes and step into the shower with her. That would scare the daylights out of her, but it ought to work. She’d be scared first, and then he’d grab her and give her a hug and she’d get excited, and from there it would be easy.

And fun. He could kill two birds with one stone. First they could soap each other up and have some fun in the process, and then he could turn off the shower and fill the tub with water and take her in it. It was supposed to be a kick in a bathtub.

Suddenly he was ashamed of himself. For Christ’s sake, the broad was all of fourteen years old! What the hell was the matter with him?

Noiselessly he stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door. He padded back down the hall to his own room and waited there until he heard her open the door.

“All ready,” she called.

He wrapped himself up in his towel again, picked up the soap and opened the door. He passed her in the hallway. She was wrapped up in a towel of her own but she had a different problem. He only had to cover himself from the waist down. Her towel was the same size as his and it had more ground to cover. He saw the tops of her breasts and he saw her legs clear to her thighs.

“It’s all yours,” she said cheerfully. “Have a nice shower, Johnny.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

He got under the shower and let the hot water lash at him. Hell, he thought, she was only a kid. But the trouble was that she just plain wasn’t put together like a kid. Kids didn’t have boobs like she did. Kids didn’t have legs like that.

Maybe he should have tossed her a pass. Something easy, though, so he wouldn’t scare her if she wasn’t having any. It might have been worth a try.

But fourteen, for God’s sake!

He said to hell with it and finished his shower.

The day was a drag. He bought himself a breakfast of waffles and bacon at the luncheonette on the corner and washed the food down with a large glass of milk. He wandered around for an hour or so but there was nothing he wanted to do and nobody he felt like running into. He didn’t even have eyes to shoot pool. He was marking time, waiting for Beans to come back from his fence with money for him.

Until then there was nothing to do. He couldn’t start moving without the money, couldn’t even plan until he knew how much bread he would have to get started on. He shot the rest of the afternoon at a movie. There was a double feature playing at a movie house on Broadway between 88th and 89th and he hadn’t seen either picture, so he went.

One was a cops-and-robbers thing called The Mercenaries, and the screen credits said it was based on a book that had won the Edgar, whatever the hell that meant. The other was A Sound of Distant Drums and it was about a group of young actors and actresses trying to get ahead in Hollywood. It bored him stiff. He sat through both pictures waiting for them to end, munching popcorn and smoking cigarettes in direct violation of fire department rules and regulations. Finally the pictures were over and he left the theater and wandered back toward 96th Street.

It was time for dinner almost, but he wasn’t particularly hungry. He thought maybe he’d go down to Times Square for an hour or so and bum around down there. But he decided not to. He wanted to be around whenever Beans made the scene. He had no idea how much dough was coming to him and he was dying to find out. He wondered whether Beans would clip ten or twenty bucks off the top for himself. It was possible, and he would never find out one way or the other. But it was worth it if he did. Beans would get more than Johnny could have, even if he’d been able to find a fence willing to take a chance on him.

He checked the pool hall on the off-chance that Beans was there early. He wasn’t. A guy named Phil talked Johnny into a game and they played for time — the loser picked up the tab for the games. Johnny got lucky and ran a string of six balls one time and eight the next, and from there it was easy. His eye held up and Phil wound up paying for both of them.

He left the pool hall, grabbed dinner at the luncheonette. He ate three rare hamburgers and drank a malted. His eating habits would have to change when he hit the big time, he told himself. He’d have to learn how to act in a restaurant. Not the way he’d played it last night, for example. If he was a slob, a broad might give him a fling once to see how he was in the hay. But she wouldn’t want him around on a steady basis.

Hell, it was just common sense. He’d work it out. He might not be able to read a menu in French, but he’d get by. It just took a little brains, that was all.

When he got back to the pool hall Beans was there.

“Outside,” Beans said. “I get nervous in the john. I’ll tell you all about it.”

They went outside.

They took a back booth at the candy store around the corner where the proprietor knew enough to bring them their cokes and leave them alone. Beans took a sip of his coke, lit a cigarette and smiled.

“It could have been worse,” he said.

“How much?”

“I told you — it could have been worse.”

“Yeah, but how much?”

Beans blew out smoke. “The watch was the big thing,” he said. “The one with the suede strap, not the other one. The good one, it was an Omega.”

“So?”

“Moe says it’s the best watch going. A very good mechanism. Not only that but they’re common. I mean, it’s not like there was only one of them in the city. He can sell it easy.”

“For how much?”

“How much can Moe get? I didn’t ask. Retail is around three hundred. That’s new, of course. This is like second-hand.”

“How much did he give me?”

Beans smiled. “Ninety. That’s just for the one watch. It was the big item. The table lighter, it’s a Ronson and all but it isn’t worth that much. Not gold just silver. The bracelet did pretty good and the engagement ring was good, diamonds like that always are. The total comes to three-ten.”

“Three hundred and ten bucks?”

Beans nodded.

Johnny covered his excitement by swigging the coke. The money he had in cash plus the $310 from the stuff gave him close to five big bills.

He was rich.

It was that simple. With dough like that he could buy more clothes than he needed and take a room in a damn good hotel. There wouldn’t be any more skimping, any of the hand-to-mouth routine.

Not now.

Now he was set. The money, even if he blew it in a fancier front, would last a good long while. And by the time it was gone he would have plenty coming in.

He was set.

“$310,” he said reverently. “That’s nice, Beans. You did good.”

“That’s what he gave me.”

“How much do I owe you?”

Beans looked blank. “It was a favor.”

“A favor is one thing. This is more.”

“I just ran an errand.”

“You got bread coming. A fence coulda given me thirty bucks for the watch and I wouldn’ta known the difference. How much do you want?”

Beans looked away. “I already took,” he said. “I’m a rat, Johnny.”

“How much did you take?”

“Twenty. You want it back you can have it. I’m sorry, Johnny. It’s just—”

“You got ten more coming, man. Take it off the top and pass me the three yards.”

“You mean it?”

“Course I mean it. C’mon — give me the three bills. That’s plenty.”

Beans made movements under the table. He separated a ten-spot from a roll and passed the roll under the table to Johnny. Johnny took it, shoved it into a pocket.

“Nobody knows about this,” he said.

“I’m clam, Johnny. You’re cutting loose, aren’t you?”

“Somebody say so?”

Beans shook his head. “Just a guess. The way you been acting, I don’t know. Leaving the city?”

“Just the neighborhood.”

“What’s the bit?”

Briefly Johnny told him what he had planned. Beans listened in silence. He seemed to understand. He, too, was a professional in his chosen field of endeavor.

“Luck,” he said finally. “Drop around when you get the chance. I don’t know how long I’ll be in town, though. It may get hot for me soon. Nobody caught me yet but people have been adding things up. The cops’ll hear the rumble. They won’t catch me in the act. They’ll wait and jump on me when I’ve got a roomful of stolen stuff. I want to leave before the roof falls in.”

“Luck.”

Beans left the candy store. Johnny stayed where he was, ordered another coke and sipped at it. No more Beans, he thought. No more cokes. No more candy stores and no more pool halls.

Instead he’d hang out in bars and eat in posh restaurants and go to Broadway shows. There was no questions about it — it would be a switch But it would also be a change for the better, and there was no question about that either.

He laughed suddenly. He was only seventeen. Maybe the bartenders in the 59th Street bars wouldn’t serve him. That would be a hell of a thing.

He laughed again.

Then he finished his coke, paid for it, and left the candy store. He bolted his door again with the two-by-four and counted out all his money. It came to $450 and change. He was beginning to get nervous — he’d never had a roll like that before, had never even thought about that kind of bread. But he wasn’t going to kick. Nobody would take the money. And in another day or two he’d be holed out in a decent hotel where you didn’t have to worry about getting your money stolen.

He hid the money in the room, finding four different hiding places and dividing the money into four bundles. Then he took a subway down to Times Square and wandered around, trying his skill at a shooting gallery, grabbing a hot dog at Grant’s, downing a beer in a bar on Eighth Avenue. He killed time until he was tired, then grabbed a cab back to his room and sacked out.

He woke up early. Then he stuffed his wallet with his money and went out. He skipped breakfast and took a subway down to Times Square again. He got out of the subway and kept heading downtown on Broadway. If he remembered right, there were a string of fancy men’s shops from 38th Street down to Herald Square. He was right. He walked past two shops, checking the windows and getting an idea of what the styles were. Then he walked into the third he came to.

It was called Brinsley’s and it was expensive. The salesman who greeted him took a good look at Johnny, starting with the dark hair cut in a d.a. and moving past the jacket to the jeans and cheap shoes. His disapproval was evident.

Johnny didn’t get mad. He’d expected this. You looked like a slob and you got treated like a slob. The only way to play it was truthful — or as close to the truth as possible.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m sorry about my clothes. I’m not as cheap as I look.”

The salesman’s jaw fell.

“I came into some money recently.” Johnny said, trying to say it the way Clark Gable might have said it in a movie. “I’d like to invest in a decent wardrobe. Top to bottom. I need shoes and shirts and a suit and slacks and a jacket. I even need belts and ties and underwear. Think you can help me?”

It was the right approach. The salesman was overjoyed. He spent eight hours a day five days a week selling clothes to men who could afford them and who always bought the wrong thing. Now a good-looking young man — one who could really wear clothes — was telling the salesman to pick out a wardrobe for him. The man could not have been happier.

“Let’s see,” the man said. “Where should we start?”

“Any place. Everything I’ve got is going to go in the ashcan. So you can sell me the store if you want.”

“Mind a personal question?”

“Go on.”

“How much can you afford to spend?”

Johnny calculated rapidly. “Two-fifty is tops,” he said. “Two hundred would be better, but I’ll go two-fifty.”

And they took it from there. The salesman determined Johnny’s suit size and showed him half-a-dozen suits, any of which would have been fine for him.

“All values,” he said. “You could spend the whole two-fifty on a suit if you wanted to. No point in it. These run from ninety to a hundred and they’d be hard to beat at any price. They’ll look well and they’ll hold up.”

“And the style?”

“It’s right,” the salesman said. “On any of them. You want to look a few years older without making it obvious, don’t you?”

Johnny hesitated, then nodded.

“Then take the dark gray sharkskin. You should dress conservatively. It makes sense for you anyway. You’re good-looking. You don’t need to have flash in your clothes. The quieter you dress, the more you stand out.”

Johnny nodded. It made sense to him, and he was glad he’d levelled with the man.

“Two pairs of slacks,” the man said. “Light and dark gray flannel. They’ll go with the suit jacket or with the sport coat. And the best coat would be a blue blazer, I think. It’s always appropriate, and if you stick with one jacket you can afford a good one. One fine jacket is better than two cheaper ones.”

That’s what Johnny had figured.

“And a black alligator belt,” the salesman said. “Fifteen dollars and worth it. It sets a tone.”

They went on and on. Underwear, two pairs of shoes, a dozen shirts.

“How about ties?”

The salesman took a breath. “Don’t say I said so,” he said, “but you’re out of your mind if you buy ties here.”

Johnny’s eyebrows went up.

“Ours start at two-fifty,” the man said. “Go to a tie store. Pick out nice quiet regimental stripes and don’t pay more than a dollar a tie at the most. There’s not a man alive who can tell the difference between a dollar tie and a ten-dollar tie.”

“Really?”

Really. And they all go in the wastebasket the minute you soil them, so the cheaper they are, the better they are. In anything else quality matters. You get what you pay for. Not ties.”

They went on. The man told him that the alterations would be taken care of right away that he could pick up the clothes tomorrow. That was fine.

The salesman took out pencil and paper and carefully added a long column of figures. “That comes to $219.88 with the tax,” he said. “You want to leave a deposit and pay the rest tomorrow when you pick the clothes up?”

“I’ll pay it now.”

“Cash or check?”

“Cash.” He paid the bill and got a receipt from the salesman. Then he turned to go.

“Mr. Wells?”

Johnny turned.

“Mind a word of advice?”

“Go ahead.”

“Get your hair cut.”

Johnny grinned hugely linking the man very much. “I intend to,” he said.

A barber used a lawnmower on his hair. When he was finished Johnny barely recognized himself. The long black hair was still black but it was no longer long. Instead he had an Ivy League cut that could have stepped right off Madison Avenue.

“You wanted it that way,” the barber said.

“It’s fine,” Johnny told him. He tipped the barber a quarter and left.

He treated himself to a steak dinner that night, staying downtown and catching a double feature at a Times Square movie house. He didn’t really want to see a movie, much less two movies, but he wanted less to hang around the neighborhood much with his hair short. People would talk. It wouldn’t be good at all.

After the movie he had a glass of milk and a toasted English muffin at Bickford’s. Then he grabbed a cab and went home. It was time to go to bed and he was tired.

On the way upstairs he wondered whether the landlord had gotten around to locking him out yet. He hoped not. Tomorrow he’d pick up his clothes and see about a room at a good hotel. He might as well spend the last night in the old dump, if only for old times sake.

The door was happily unlocked and he went inside, shoving his wallet between the mattress and the springs again. There was no real reason to bolt the door with the two-by-four and he didn’t bother. He stretched out on the bed and let his mind make plans.

Big plans.

The salesman had been a tremendous help. He’d have gone nuts trying to pick out a wardrobe all on his own. He’d have bought all the wrong things, and he’d have wound up with junk or else have paid too much money for his clothes. This way he had all the basic essentials and they’d fit into his budget. When he got his hands on more extra cash he could always round out his wardrobe at Brinsley’s. A few more jackets and some extra shirts and slacks wouldn’t hurt. And another pair of good shoes might come in handy. But for now he was set.

Next came the hotel. He wasn’t sure where he’d stay, but he could always worry about that in the morning. Now it was time to get some sleep. He could use it. Unless he was far off the track, the next week or so was going to be a busy one.

He got undressed, piling his clothes in a tangled heap in the corner. He’d wear them downtown tomorrow, then get rid of them for good. He got under the sheet and closed his eyes.

He was almost asleep when the door opened. His eyes fell open at once and he whirled around, ready to put up a fight to save his money.

“My God in heaven,” a voice said. “You got your hair cut! You look a hundred per cent different!”

He stared. It was Linda, the fourteen-year-old. And she was wearing the same towel he’d seen her in that morning.

And nothing else.