It was twelve-thirty before he got up that afternoon and he wished he could have remained unconscious until half-past-eight when Honour Mercy would come back to the room. But finally he couldn’t sleep any longer and he got out of bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went to the bathroom to shave and shower and brush his teeth. He put on a worn flannel shirt and a pair of dungarees and went downstairs for breakfast.
Gil Gluck, who owned the Casterbridge Hotel, also owned a luncheonette around the corner where Richie Parsons had his breakfast each day. If there was one characteristic that distinguished the lunch counter from any other in Newport, it was the fact that Gil Gluck conducted no other sub rosa business there. There were no rooms behind the lunch counter where harlots entertained men, no rooms where men wore green eyeshades and dealt cards around tables, no rooms where bootleg moonshine was sold or white powder peddled. The Canarsie Grille, endowed the name of Gil Gluck’s beloved hometown and spelled “grille” because the sign-painter Gil Gluck had hired was an incurable romantic, dealt solely in such eminently respectable commodities as eggs, wheat cakes, coffee, hamburgers, home fries, coca-cola and the like.
The fact that the Canarsie Grille was plain and simple, a luncheonette, the fact that there was nothing at all illegal in Gil Gluck’s operations either in the luncheonette or in the hotel, was a source of tremendous consternation to the police force of Newport. Time and time again they had pulled surprise raids on first the hotel and then the Canarsie Grille; time and again they had found nothing more incriminating than a roach in a closet or a dirty spoon in a drawer.
Since the roach in the closet was a bewildered cockroach and not the butt of a marijuana cigarette, since no heroin had been cooked in the spoon, there was nothing the police could do. Gil Gluck paid the police nothing, and this bothered them. While metropolitan police, a far more sophisticated breed, would have found a way to squeeze money out of Gil Gluck, come hell or high water, no matter how honest he was, the Newport police cursed softly under their collective breath and let him alone. They also drank coffee there, since Gil was the only man in town who made a really good cup of coffee.
Richie Parsons drank coffee at the Canarsie Grille. He drank it with two spoonfuls of sugar and enough cream to kill the taste of Gil’s good coffee. This bothered Gil, who was justly proud of his coffee. But the fact that Richie always ordered wheat cakes, and licked his lips appreciatively after the first bite, endeared him to Gil.
The fact that Gil was a regular customer of Honour Mercy’s might not have endeared the little bald man to Richie, but it was a fact that Gil Gluck sagely refrained from mentioning to the boy.
Richie finished the last of the wheat cakes and poured the rest of the coffee down his throat. He put the cup back in the saucer, then raised it a few inches to indicate that he wanted another cup. Gil took his cup, rinsed it out in the sink and filled it with coffee. He brought it to Richie, who in turn polluted it with cream and sugar and sipped at it. It tasted good and he took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it to go with the coffee.
When the cop came in and sat down next to him, Richie was suddenly scared stiff.
The cop was a big man. Richie didn’t dare to look at him but he could see the cop’s face out of the corner of his eye. It was composed primarily of chin. Richie could also see the cop’s holster out of the corner of his eye, the black leather holster with the .38 police positive in it. The gun, to Richie at least, was composed primarily of bullets, bullets which could splatter Richie to hell.
Richie sat there on his stool, the cup of coffee frozen halfway between saucer and mouth, the cigarette clutched so tightly between his fingers that it was a wonder it didn’t snap in two. Richie sat there terrified, waiting for something to happen.
Gil Gluck came over and stood in front of the cop.
Gil Gluck said: “What’ll you have?”
“Coffee,” said the cop.
Gil brought the coffee. The cop, who liked coffee and who appreciated good coffee, drank the coffee black and without sugar. He smacked his lips over the coffee and Gil Gluck glowed.
“Nice day,” said the cop.
“If it don’t rain,” said Gil, who had absorbed the subtleties of Kentucky conversation.
“You sure ought to open up a game in that back room of yours,” said the cop, for perhaps the eightieth time. “Be a natural.”
Gil let it ride. “How’s business?”
The cop shrugged. “Usual.”
“Anybody get killed?”
The cop laughed, thinking that Gil sure had a sense of humor. “Usual,” he repeated. “Hold-up over on Grant Street but the jackass who stuck the place up ran out of the store and smack into a cop. He didn’t get ten yards out of the store before he had handcuffs on him.”
“What kind of store?”
“Liquor store,” said the cop. “Grobers package store. Up near Tenth Street on the downtown side. Know the place?”
“Sure.”
“Well, that’s all we had. Oh, there was a jailbreak down in Louisville and we got a few wanted posters on it. And an out-of-state air force base sent down a picture of a deserter they figure headed this way, but that’s just the ordinary stuff. Nothing much is happening in Newport.”
Richie Parsons went numb.
What Richie Parsons did not know, although any jackass ought to have been able to figure it out, was that the out-of-state air force base the cop was referring to was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Scott Air Force Base would hardly bother sending wanted notices as far as Newport. But to Richie Parsons, who had been born scared, any mention of a deserter was sufficient cause to crawl under the nearest rotting log and await Armageddon.
The deserter that the Wright-Patterson people were looking for was not at all similar to Richie Parsons. His name was Warren Michael Stults, he was twenty-three years old, six foot three and built like a Sherman tank. He was being searched for not only because he had gone over the hill but also because, as a prelude to desertion, he had kicked the hell out of his commanding officer. The commanding officer, bemoaning the loss of three front teeth and a goodly amount of self-respect, wanted to get hold of Warren Michael Stults as soon as possible.
But Richie Parsons did not know this angle.
And Richie Parsons was scared green.
He put money on the Formica top of the counter for his breakfast and edged out of the Canarsie Grille. The familiar skulk was back in his step and the familiar look of barely restrained terror was back on his face. The door stuck when he tried to open it and he almost fainted dead away on the spot. But he got through the door without attracting any attention and scurried around to the hotel.
The cop had noticed him, however. “What’s with him?” the cop wondered aloud after Richie was gone.
“Him?”
“The little guy,” the cop said. “The one who just scurried out of here with his tail between his legs.”
“Oh,” said Gil.
“He new around here?”
“He lives up at the hotel,” Gil said. “Been here about a month.”
“What’s he do for a living?”
“Lives with one of the whores,” Gil said.
“He pimp for her?”
“Must,” said Gil, who couldn’t imagine a man living with a whore and not pimping for her.
“Good for him,” the cop said. “At least he’s making an honest living. It’s guys like you who give this town a lousy reputation.”
Gil smiled — an infinitely patient smile — and filled the cop’s cup with more black coffee.
The hell of it was that he had read all of the books and magazines in the room.