John D. MacDonald
Dead to the World
I can probably explain why I got so upset about Howler Browne’s troubles if I tell you that in our case it was a little different than the usual relationship between the owner of a road house and the gent who plays his piano. After I was out of the Army a year and still not getting anywhere, he took me on out of hunger, and also because twice while we were both working for Uncle Sugar, I pulled details for him so he could sweeten up a dish he had located in Naples.
He hadn’t talked much about this club he owns, the Quin Pines, and after he met me on the street in Rochester and I told him my troubles and he took me on and drove me out there, I was agreeably surprised to see a long low building about two hundred feet back from the highway, with five enormous pines along the front of it. It looks like class and a high cover charge. It is. It pulls the landed gentry out of their estates and loads them up with the best food and liquor in the East. And the Howler makes a fine thing out of it.
I guess he got the name of the Howler because of the way he flaps his arms and screams at the ceiling when things don’t go just right. He’s a big guy, with a fast-growing tummy, a red face and crisp curling black hair... the kind of a guy who can wear a homburg and look like the Honorable Senator from West Overshoe, North Dakota. But he has a large heart of twenty carat which probably wouldn’t wear well on a politician’s sleeve.
I’m Wentley D. C. Morse, the first name and the initials having suffered a contraction to plain Bud. I seem to appeal to the babes with frustrated maternal instincts, probably because I have a nice fresh round face and a well-washed look. I’m not above taking advantage of such inclinations.
I know that when the Howler took me on, he expected me to be a floperoo, a citizen he could stick up at the piano at times when the band happened to be tired. He offered me a room, food and thirty bucks a week. I snapped at it so quick I nearly bit his hand. I’ve been slapping a piano around ever since I’ve been able to climb up onto the stool. I have my own style, whatever that is, and a long string of startling failures at auditions. I have about twenty-nine varieties of rolling bass in my left hand. I like to mess around with improvised discords with the right. I can play the normal corn, just like any other boy with two hands, but I like my own way and sticking to it had kept me in bread crusts until I ran into the Howler.
I did about an hour the first night. I got some surprised expressions from the dowager clique and saw one old party choke on his celery when I stuck some concert counterpoint into the middle of Gershwin. When some kids tried to dance to me, I switched the beat on them until they stumbled off the floor, throwing ocular stilettos over their shoulders. I don’t like being danced to. Somehow, it seems silly.
It was nice clean work, but I didn’t have much chance to talk to the Howler. After a week, I began to build up a discriminating clientele. The Howler stopped and listened to the banging of hands after a long number and ordered me a blue spot. In two weeks I was set and beginning to get some small mentions in the trade papers. Then I began to notice things. The first thing I noticed was that the Howler’s cheeks, instead of being nice and round and pink, began to hang like a couple of laundry bags on Tuesday morning. Once I walked out into the kitchen and heard him screaming. He was also flapping his arms. The kitchen help stood around with wide eyes, waiting for him to burst. I stood by to enjoy it.
“Why, oh why,” he hollered, “did I ever get into this business? Am I nuts? Am I soft in the head?”
While he was gathering breath for another burst, I interrupted. “S’matter, Howler? Somebody get a buck shot in the caviar?”
He spun around and said: “Oh! Hello, Bad.” He walked out of the kitchen. I shrugged at the pastry chef. He shrugged at the dishwasher, who grinned and shrugged at me. I went back out through the place and up to my room.
The next night, we had the fight. It didn’t last long, but it hurt business. The cocktail lounge is to the right as you come in the front entrance. The dining room and dance floor is to the left. The joint was packed, as it usually is around eleven. The Howler wasn’t around. I was due to play during intermission, so I was in the cocktail lounge waiting for the end of the set.
Two citizens in dark suits started arguing with each other at one end of the bar. One was tall and one was short, but they both had the same greased black hair and the same disgusting neckties. Before anybody could move, the big one backed the little one over to the door and across the hall. At the entrance to the dining room he wound up and pasted the little guy. It was a punch and a half. The little one went slamming back into a group of tables occupied by the cash customers. He knocked over two. One of them had four full dinners on it — half eaten. The big one left in a hurry before we could stop him. The little one got up and felt of his chin. He clawed the cabbage salad out of his ruffled locks and departed. He refused to leave his name. Then about forty very stuffy citizens departed with cold looks. I was watching the new hatcheck girl give them their stuff when the Howler came up to me and asked me the trouble.
“Couple of citizens had fisticuffs. A big one fisticuffed a little one right into two lobster dinners, a steak and an order of roast beef. These people figure you’re running an abandoned institution, so they’re shoving off.”
He spun me around and his face was red. “You dope! Why didn’t you hold them?”
“Me? I play the piano. Besides, the big one left in a hurry. And what could you hold the little one for? For standing in front of a big fist?”
He walked off, but I could tell from his back that he was as mad as he could get. I hurried in and started slapping the piano around. I probably didn’t play too well, as I was wondering why I had been jumped. After my half hour was over, I dug up the Howler. He was upstairs. He was still mad.
I walked up to him and said: “Am I a friend, or just another employee of. the Great Browne?”
That jolted him. He grabbed my arm and said: “O.K., so you’re a friend. Why?”
“Come on.” I didn’t say another word until I had led him downstairs and out into the parking lot. I picked a crate that looked comfortable. We climbed into the front seat and I waited until we both had cigarettes going before I continued.
“Look, my boy. I know something is eating on you. You don’t act right and you don’t look right. Now what is it?”
He waited a while and I could tell that he was wondering whether to tell me. Finally he sighed and sank down into the seat. “Shake-down, Bud. The curse of this business. You get going good and then some smart monkeys figure you got dough to give away just to stay out of trouble.”
“How much?”
“A thousand a month.”
“Are you paying?”
“Not yet. That’s why the little scrap tonight. Just a warning. If I keep holding out, we get a free-for-all and then there’s no more customers. Maybe the cops close me up. The county boys are tough.”
“Can you afford it?”
“Maybe. It’ll be O.K. for now while the boom’s on, but come a slump and I dig into the bank to make payments. You see, I can’t deduct the payoff as a business expense. I don’t get any receipt. It has to come out of my end after taxes.”
“Have you talked to the cops?”
“What’s the use? The new group has hit all the joints for miles around. Some of them went to the cops — no help. We got no data on them. They’re slick. That’s why I wanted one or both of those guys who brawled. Thought I might squeeze something out of them.”
“How did they contact you?”
“Phone. Very slick voice. Polite. Told me I needed assurance that my club would run smoothly. Told me he wanted a thousand in tens, twenties and fifties put in a brown envelope on the first of each month. Then I give it to my daughter Sue and send her walking up the road with it to the state highway in the middle of the afternoon. She’s just turned eight. He says that if there’s any trouble, they give Sue a face she won’t want to grow up with.”