Savage Lover [= Sinner Man]

6

It took me three blocks to get lost. The street signs were invisible in the darkness but they wouldn’t have meant much to me if I had seen them. I did figure we were heading west, but my knowledge of Buffalo’s geography didn’t take in the lower west side, which is where we went.

There was a river in that direction but we stopped before we got to it. We turned down a very old and very narrow street and pulled up in front of a sprawling brick house with a sad old elm in front. Mustache cut the motor. His twin got out of the car and motioned me to follow. I followed.

One of them poked the doorbell and we waited for something to happen. I glanced at the house and at the houses on either side of it. Baron’s house was better than his neighborhood. The other houses needed painting and their lawns could have used a haircut.

A servant noiselessly opened the door. He looked at us and stepped back. Small eyes looked at us, eyes set close together in a broad forehead.

“We got Crowley,” Mustache said. “Mr. Baron around?”

The servant pointed down a hallway. We stepped past him and he closed the big door behind us. We walked down the hallway, Mustache in front, me in the middle, and the other hood behind. The meat-in-a-sandwich gambit was giving me a complex.

The house was even better inside than out. The neighborhood was an old one and the house had aged along with it but, on the inside, carpets ran wall-to-wall and good mahogany furniture filled space nicely. There was a living room at the end of the hallway and we walked into it. The man in the big armchair looked at us without interest. He put his cigar in a big brass ashtray and waited.

“Mr. Baron,” Mustache said, “this is Crowley.”

The statement was unnecessary. I was very obviously Crowley, just as the mountainous man with black hair and heavy eyebrows could only be Baron. I looked at him and felt uneasy. He looked back, his eyes hard and sharp. He seemed incredibly powerful in a more than physical sense.

He didn’t stand and we didn’t sit. Baron picked up his cigar again and put it in his mouth. He chewed it and puffed on it and put it back in the big ashtray. When he spoke he didn’t exactly talk. He rumbled.

“Your name is Nathaniel Crowley,” he said. “You hit town Monday night. You’re staying at the Malmsly. You got some letters, bought some clothes, went to some movies. You hang at Cassino’s and act like you belong. A Canuck gets in your hair and you push his face in. The cops work you back and forth and you don’t give an inch.”

He stopped. Maybe I was supposed to be impressed. I wasn’t. He knew all the things I wanted him to know, nothing more, nothing that he had had to sweat to find out.

“You don’t pack a gun,” he went on. “Not on you, not in your room. You give Miami for an address. Miami doesn’t know you’re alive. Neither does New York, neither does Vegas, neither does Chi. Or Los Angeles or Frisco. Nobody knows you.”

He was a hell of a lot harder than my pair of cops. I didn’t have a cute answer for him. Nothing but respectful silence.

“We made you at first for a gun. A trigger. But it doesn’t add that way. You make too much noise, you set up too loud a front. You wander around and get yourself known. We thought somebody sent you to do a job on somebody but if they did you’re the dumbest trigger ever. It doesn’t add.”

I didn’t say anything. I was still standing and he was still sitting down. I wondered when he was going to offer me a seat.

“A floating hotster looking to put down roots. Heavy stuff looking for a home. Who in hell are you, Crowley?”

“You just told me.”

“What did I leave out?”

“My mother’s maiden name,” I said, “and the amount of lint in my navel.”

He looked bored. “Johnny,” he said softly, “take him.”

Johnny was Mustache’s twin and he took me. I had less than a second to tense my stomach muscles before he planted his right hand in my gut. It wasn’t enough time. I sagged in the middle and folded up just in time to catch his left with my face.

I had no time to think, just to react. I hit the floor and bounced back up with my face hanging out. Johnny tried to hang a right on it.

And missed. It was my turn now and I didn’t miss. I put everything into a punch that landed a good four inches below his navel, which is as good a spot as any. He wasn’t expecting it. He held on to himself with both hands and left his face wide open, I belted him and he hit the floor.

He started to get up and I had a foot back. I was just about ready to kick his teeth all the way down his throat when Baron’s big voice stopped me.

“Stop it, Crowley.”

I stopped long enough to look at him. He had a gun in his hand but he wasn’t even pointing it at me. His smile was huge.

“Sit down,” he said. “Relax, I got a job for you, one you should like. Steady work, easy work, and the pay is two bills a week. Sit down and we’ll talk about it.”

“This bar,” Baron said. “On the west side. Name is Round Seven. Ever hear of it?”

I shook my head. I was sitting in a chair near his, drinking rye and soda and smoking a cigarette. Johnny and Mustache sat together on a couch across the room.

“No reason you should of,” Baron went on. “Just a bar — no music, no floor show, no hustlers. It was a fight mob bar. That’s where the name comes from. Now there’s just three or four fights a year so there’s no fight mob. The bar has a neighborhood trade. A guy comes in for a quick beer, that kind of bit. Right now it’s closed.”

I took a final drag on my cigarette. I blew out smoke and then leaned over to stub out the cigarette in an ashtray. I relaxed in my seat and sipped my drink.

“Round Seven,” Baron said. “It changed hands. For five years the place slips downhill, loses a little dough every year. So some people in Cleveland buy it. A corporation. It’s got this big tax loss behind it and the corporation stands to make a profit on the bar even if it loses money. You understand?”

I nodded.

“So it’s a tax loss,” he said. “It’s other things. Sometimes it’s handy to own a nice quiet place where nothing much happens. A quiet neighborhood bar with a quiet neighborhood trade. Very small, very quiet. You understand why something along those lines might be handy?”

“A front.”

The big head moved in a nod. “A front. Or a drop. Or whatever you want to call it. Say two or three guys need a place where they can talk, a place nobody nosy knows about. Or say somebody has a warm package and wants a cool place to park it for a while. Or say anything. This bar is two things. A tax loss and a handy place. But you understand all that.”

I watched him take another cigar from the cedarwood humidor on the table next to him. It was wrapped in a cellophane wrapper and he unwrapped it carefully and methodically. He crumpled the cellophane and dropped it into the copper wastebasket beside his chair. I thought he was going to bite off the end of the cigar and spit it into the wastebasket. He didn’t. He took a tiny gold knife from his jacket pocket and cut the end of the cigar. He put the knife away and lit the cigar with a wooden match.

“You ever tend bar, Crowley?”

“No.”

“Nothing to it. The Polacks who go to Seven don’t ask for anything fancy. A shot, a beer. Most you have to do is toss the shot into the beer for the lazy ones. No tricky cocktails, no food to serve, nothing to mess with. You’re open six nights a week, Monday through Saturday, open at seven and close at three. The pay is two bills a week, a little over ten grand a year. Think you can handle it, Crowley?”

I look at him. “You’re handing me the job?”

“If you want it.”

“Why?”

His smile was a lazy one now. “Let’s see,” he said. “Say there’s this hotster from nowhere who hits town with his eyes open. A heavy type but none of the heavyweights know him. Too big to ignore. Big enough so he has to be on the right side or not around at all.” I finished my drink.

“This hotster,” he said. “He can’t just hang in the middle of the air. The town is nice and neat, no trouble and no heartache. The right people take care of each other and the road is smooth and soft. What you got to do is take this hotster and find out what he wants. Then you hand it to him and you’re friends. So you’re this hotster, Crowley. I’m guessing all you want is the inside track and two bills a week for a soft touch. I’m guessing you know the game and you play the right rules. Did I guess right?”

I wondered what would happen if I said no. I didn’t want to find out.

“You guessed right.”

“I usually do. So you’ll be a part of us and we’ll have a piece of you. If you save your money we can throw nice things at you. You got five grand you can spare right now?”

I didn’t.

“Too bad,” Baron said. “There’s this con mob out of Denver that needs fast money. They’ve got a rag ready to go and they ran out of capital. They’re small time but the payoff is pretty. Five grand now buys twenty when the con goes through. If it goes through. The risk is there but the odds are nice.”

He took the cigar from his mouth and studied the tip of it. He looked at me again. “Round Seven is closed now,” he said. “I think it opens up on Monday. That all right with you?”

“Sure.”

“Fine. You meet Johnny at Cassino’s around dinnertime Monday. He’ll have the keys and run you over there. Sooner or later you’ll want a car, right?”

I nodded.

“You’ll get a good price when you’re ready to buy. We take care of our own.” He smiled again. “This time you get a chauffeur. Johnny runs you over there Monday. He’ll fill you in on the details. There’s nothing to do but open and close, take the money and make the drinks. Deliveries are all arranged for. It’s no worry of yours.”

I nodded again.

“All you have to do is nothing, Crowley. A check comes once a week in the mail. The check is from Ruby Enterprises. That’s the corporation that owns Round Seven. The check is a hundred a week. You steal the other hundred from the till.”

I must have looked puzzled. “Two reasons,” he said. “One, it saves you money. The yard a week you steal is tax-free. Two, it looks better in the books. If Ruby pays a guy two bills a week to tend bar in a losing business somebody might wonder. This way it’s just another hundred lost.”

“I get it.”

“I thought you would, Crowley. That’s all there is. You do your job and no more. If there’s something special for you to do you’ll hear about it. Don’t ever call me and don’t ever come here unless I ask for you. Monday, dinnertime, Cassino’s, you meet Johnny. Goodbye, Crowley.”

Johnny and Mustache dropped me off at my hotel. This time the heavy stuff was over. I sat up front with Mustache while Johnny spread himself all over the back seat. They even talked to me.

Mustache’s name turned out to be Leon Spiro. Johnny turned out to be Johnny Carr. I told Johnny I was sorry I hit him and he told me he was sorry he hit me. We were practically necking by the time they let me out of the car. I watched them drive away. I stood on the corner and smoked a cigarette. A cab came by and I hailed it. He stopped for me and I got into the back seat.

I told him to take me to Noomie’s.

“That’s a pretty rough neighborhood, Bud. Sure you want to go there?”

I told him to just drive. I made my voice hard and flat and there must have been something in it that made him crane his neck around to look at me. I don’t know what he saw in my face but it was enough.

He turned around and drove in chilly silence through dark streets. He didn’t talk any more.