Savage Lover [= Sinner Man]

16

It was Wednesday, around eight in the evening. We’d had a pair of big lobsters at a seafood joint and now we were back at the High Rise. I sat on the edge of the bed listening to the water running in the john. Anne was taking another shower. She took them on the average of three times a day. A clean-living girl.

I picked up the telephone and gave Tony’s number to the kid on the switchboard. I listened some more to Annie’s shower while the switchboard put the call through. Then Tony’s phone rang twice and he answered it

“Nat,” I said. “How’s the weather?”

“Rain. Nothing but rain, you lucky bastard.”

“You’re making me homesick.”

“Having fun, Nat?”

“You could call it that. At least it isn’t raining.”

A pause. “Nothing wrong, is there?”

“Just that it’s boring. Everybody shakes my hand and kisses my butt and points me toward the casino. They hurry to bring drinks to me. They step aside if I go near a crap table.”

“That’s because they love you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I may be back tomorrow.”

“Stay a week more,” he said. “Have fun while you can. This city is a dog.”

“At least it’s our dog,” I said.

Then there was some business talk. Nothing special — things were going smoothly. A troublesome detective had been shifted from Vice to Traffic Planning. Customs on the Peace Bridge had screwed up a minor heroin shipment. A fighter Tony liked was going for the light-heavy title and Tony had a few thou on him. I told him to get five hundred down for me, more to be sociable than anything else. That was that.

I put the phone back. The john door opened and Annie came out in a towel.

I said, “Get dressed.”

“Where do we go now?”

I shrugged. “Downstairs. Where else?”

“Again?”

“Again.”

“Oh, hell,” she said. “Look, you go. I’ll stay here and do some reading. Maybe I’ll go to sleep, I’m a little tired.”

“You slept all day, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh. But I’m so damned sick of the casino.”

“It’s not like we’re there all the time. We took that ride last night.”

“This whole stinking town is one big casino.”

I told her she was right. I told her maybe we wouldn’t stay in Vegas much longer, that the luxury and the leisure were beginning to get to me. And she told me, meekly enough to be subtly sarcastic, that I was the boss and we would do whatever I wanted. I said that what I wanted, for the time being, was for her to get dressed.

She got dressed.

The casino was beginning to fill up with idiots. Divorcees by the score were trying to nullify the laws of mathematics at the slot machines, dropping coins and yanking levers until they looked every bit as robotic as the machines that were taking their money. A collegiate type was explaining to an amateur whore why his system was sure-fire at the roulette wheel. A slender middle-aged man with a walrus mustache dealt blackjack and never smiled. I went to a teller’s cage and traded money for chips. I halved the stack that the girl gave me, slipped one pile to Annie and kept the other deck for myself.

She liked to play single numbers, one chip to a roll. The odds were thirty-seven to one and the house paid off at the rate of thirty-five to one. I stuck to switching back and forth between red and black. The percentage was the same — it’s always the same. That’s why any roulette system is as stupid as any other — but it generally took me longer to lose my money.

For a girl who didn’t want to play, Anne took enough of an interest in the game. I couldn’t manage to get excited by the wheel.

It got tougher when I realized somebody was watching me.

He had one of those faces that disappear in a two-man crowd. His hair was sandy and his eyebrows were sandy and his complexion was sandy. He was five-seven or five-eight, not too thin and not too fat, with the blandest features ever. He had an ordinary nose and an ordinary chin and an ordinary mouth. He was probably forty, give or take five years, and undoubtedly married. He had that defeated look.

He was playing a slot machine and looking at me. I caught him at it once and he turned away. I went back to the roulette wheel but went on watching him out of the corner of my eye. Pretty soon he was looking at me again with a thoughtful expression on his unmemorable face.

The hell of it was, he looked familiar — in a very vague sort of a way. He hardly had a face you placed the minute you saw it. But I had seen him somewhere before.

And now he was watching me.

A tail? No, that was ridiculous. Nobody would be nuts enough to tail me in the middle of the High Rise’s casino. Unless something was supposed to happen to me. Unless Tony had sent me to Vegas for a reason. To get hit, for example.

But why in hell would he do that? And why would it take so long?

I lit a cigarette and worried about these things. A waiter came by and I took a cold drink off his tray and worked on it. And then the sandy little man ended the confusion by coming over to me.

He said, “Uh — pardon me...”

I turned around and looked at him.

“I’m sorry as the devil,” he said. “But there’s something so familiar about you. I could swear we’ve met.”

An Eastern accent. It fitted the clothes, which looked like New York.

“You must mean somebody else,” I said.

“I don’t think so. I rarely if ever forget a face. You weren’t at Amherst, were you? I was class of thirty-nine.”

“I never went there.”

“Odd,” he said. “I never forget a face.”

He was more than a little stoned. He had a glass of something pale in one hand and periodically took a sip from it. Anne had turned from the roulette wheel and was helping me keep an eye on the little man. I finished my drink and gave the glass to a waiter.

“Perhaps the service,” the little man said. “Navy?”

I shook my head. “I’ve done a little television work,” I said. “Maybe you saw me on television.”

He thought it over.

“It happens all the time,” I went on. “You’d be surprised. People think I’m a long-lost friend just from seeing me on a television show.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Although—”

“That’s what it must be.”

“I’ll remember,” he said. “I’ll remember, by God. I never forget a face.”

He smiled, then apologized for having bothered me. He turned to walk away. He was carrying a pretty heavy load but he carried it neatly. He didn’t stagger at all, didn’t even wobble.

I left Anne at the roulette wheel. I crossed the floor, found a guard who knew me by sight. He gave me a large hello.

“The little guy,” I said, nodding. “See him?”

“What about him?”

“That’s what I want to know,” I said. I folded a bill and passed it to him. “I want his name, who he is, where he’s staying. Everything you can find out. Got it?”

“Sure,” he said. “He some kind of a shill?”

“No.”

“A chiseler? We get all kinds here. Want me to keep him out from now on, Mr. Crowley?”

“Just find out who he is,” I said. “And let me know.”

He said sure a few more times and went away. I wandered back to the roulette wheel. While I was gone black had come up three times straight, and nobody had bothered to push my chips off. I had a healthy stack riding. I let it ride.

“What was that all about, Nat?” Anne asked. She seemed just idly curious.

“Nothing,” I said.

“An old friend?”

“A nobody. A bug.”

“So why pay attention to him?”

Black came up. The croupier doubled my chips. I let them ride.

“No reason,” I said. “To hell with him. You want another drink?”

“Not just yet.”

I dug out fresh cigarettes. She took one and I used the lighter, the one Tony had given me. I looked from the lighter to the watch, the one Lou Baron had given me.

The wheel went around again. Red came up and the house raked in my chips.

We were in our room. It was later, a lot later, and I was just about ready to sack out for the night. There was a knock on the door, the discreet sort of knock that means the knocker is a hotel employee. I opened the door.

It was the guard. He said, “That guy, Mr. Crowley.”

“Go on.”

“His name is Albert Durkinsen. He’s staying at the Marquis with his wife. He’s in on a pleasure trip, pays with traveler’s checks, tips a steady fifteen percent. He sounds as straight as a good cue.”

“What’s he do?”

“Buyer for a department store. I didn’t get the name of the store.”

I told him it didn’t matter. And I asked the question to which I already knew the answer. I asked where this Albert Durkinsen lived with his wife and his department store.

“In Connecticut. In a town called—”

“Never mind,” I interrupted, “I know the town.”

Durkinsen never forgot a face. He must have seen mine twice a day in the papers and he never forgot a face. I wondered where he would be when he sobered up. He’d either place the face or not remember running into me at all. Maybe he would run around screaming about a wife-murderer at large in the peaceful state of Nevada. Maybe...

So we were on a plane leaving the following afternoon. We didn’t run. I got up in the morning, yawned, stretched, yawned again, then rolled over and nudged Annie. ‘This town stinks,” I said. “I’m bored stiff.”

So was she.

“Let’s leave it,” I said. “I’m sick of slot machines, I’m sick of roulette wheels, I’m sick of tourists. I’m even sick of hotels where they fall on their faces to serve you. It’s a pain in the neck.”

“Breakfast first,” she said. “Then we’ll pack.”

We had scotch and eggs for breakfast, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Then we packed. I called the desk and told them to reserve the nearest jet to Buffalo. I called Dan Gordon, went downstairs to see him and told him I had to run and that he ran the best damned hotel in the world. He laughed like a baboon, pounded my arm, and told me to give Tony his love. I told him I’d kiss Tony for him. Gordon had an even bigger laugh over that one. When we got downstairs I signed my tab. They had a Caddy waiting for us and we made our plane with time to spare.

The flight back was a fast one, a good one. We took a cab in from the airport. I told Annie to pick up her stuff from her old apartment in the morning and let the cabby take us both to the Stennett.

“You live here,” I said “With me.”

“That’s the rule?”

“Your landlord threw you out,” I said. “You might as well take advantage of my hospitality.”

She didn’t argue. From the Stennett I called Tony. He sounded glad to hear from me.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “You really couldn’t stay away.”

I said, “It was fun. But I figured you’d go nuts without me.”