Like slitty green eyes.
Like this had to be a Rose.
Oh no,I dug inside,oh no!
“Hey, flack-artist!” Eddie Brioni stood up as I approached. “Got a little lady here says she wants to meet you.” I walked up to the table, her eyes locked with mine, and stared down at her. God, was she gorgeous. It made my belly muscles tight just to see her. The Tiger had put the make to her proper, she had this great body, and her face was all shadows and green, slim eyes.
Brioni was still bubbling. “And this is Miss Pardo. Miss Rose Pardo.” He introduced us again, like it hadn’t taken the first time, and said he’d move out because we probably had but lots to talk about. Brioni’s a nice guy, even when he isn’t overcharging, but sometimes I’d like to flatten him.
I sat down, making sure the creases were right in my Continentals. She was sizing me. I was big and I knew it; now there were two of us who knew it
“What can I do for you, Miss Pardo,” I asked.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said slowly. Her voice was butter on a stack of hot-cakes. It rated five stars in Down Beat . It was the seventh wonder of the Western world. I dug. It was easy to see a guy like the Tiger blasting his beret over a twist like this. What but sweet type of music we could have made together, but I dug a memory of what she’d done to the Tiger, and I knew this kid was a green bottle with a death’s-head on it.
“Oh?” I played it cool.
“Yes.” I had never heard it like that before. Made my feet feel funny … and other parts of me, too. “I hear you handle Derry Maylor.”
She didn’t waste any time.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“The Stem,” she answered, waving a slim hand out toward the darkening street. “Some of your clients told me I might find you here. I’ve been waiting.”
I knew what Lindbergh felt like with all of Paris waiting. It must have been the same. She breathed, and the bodice of her sheath did tricks. I yelled to Eddie for a cup of espresso. I had to do something.
“So. You’ve been waiting. Something I can do for you?”
She nodded, and the dim lights played over her auburn hair. Bloody wasn’t the proper word. Try ruby. Not that either. Something, but not that.
“I want to see Derry again.”
I gave her a look that would have made a cigar-store Indian join a union for protection, and fed her a flinty, “No!”
She leaned across the little chess table, and what her breasts did as they scrunched against the black and red squares made me feel checkmated. “I’ve got to see him, don’t you understand?”
“No!”
“I love him.”
“No!”
“I want to set things right with him.”
“No!” Eddie brought my coffee.
So I took her to see the Tiger, naturally.
So I’m a weak character. It was those goddam green eyes.
I hadn’t realized it, but The Hedonist Union had become a very hip spot. It was mostly Derry Maylor, of course, and not my public relations work, but Frank Sullivan wasn’t sure which it was, so he had kept us both on, and Derry was pulling down three Cs a week now. The Union was drawing big crowds every night, and Sullivan was thinking of adding another dining room, if he could purchase the wrought iron goods shop on the other side.
I hadn’t realized how big it had gotten, but apparently Rose Pardohad . She moved in against Derry like a blotter to a puddle of ink. And she soaked him up in the same way; I got to call it a spade, the chick had coolth. Almost more coolth than anyone I’d ever seen. She wound that guy around her painted fingers like he was saltwater taffy. But he liked it, and that was what counted.
I didn’t say anything, even when he set her up in a pad in my building. She spent most of her time around our joint, cooking for us, and not doing much of anything; when they wanted to ball I either checked out or they went up to her apartment. It seemed like a sweet little set-up, and as long as she didn’t try to hurt the kid, it was okay with me.
So I sounded like a big brother, so what? So sue me.
The night it all came down, Chicken Little, was like any night. Derry was at the Union, and I was alone trying to figure a new angle for The Girl with the Educated Crotch now that she was out of the cooler on that holding rap. I’d told Lulu a hundred times to stay off the junk or I wouldn’t handle her any more, but she was hooked, and once a hophead always a hophead, no matter how good they peel.
The doorbell rang and I got up to answer it.
Rose stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of jeans and one of Derry’s white button-down shirts, tied in a bow at her bare midriff. I stepped back and she came through. It made me feel like I had a case of dandruff all over. She was something, even in jeans; especially in jeans. I could see every muscle on her.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. She had stopped right in the middle of the room, with the lights behind her, giving her a halo of sorts.
“So talk.”
“I want a job singing at the Union.”
She didn’t beat around it any. I had an idea in the back of my weak brain that it had been something like that all along, but this was the first she’d said about it.
“So go apply. Frank Sullivan does the hiring.”
“He’s married,” the way she said it made it sound dirty.
“Last I heard, that ain’t no crime.”
“I can’t get to him. And I’m not that good to make it on talent alone.”
I was rocked; I’d heard about chicks who laid it on the line, but this broad was just too much. She didn’t even seem to mind facing the truth that she didn’t have the wherewith to make it on her own.
“So you came to me. I’m supposed to get you in.”
“Sullivan’ll listen to you. He always does. He’s a grateful slob.”
This kid was sweet but deadly. Like a box of poisoned chocolates. My eyes must have been wide.
“So why should I do it for you? Far as I’m concerned you can rot.”
“Because if you don’t, flak-man, I break your Tiger. I break him inside like a cheap dish, like I did the last time. Only the last time I suckered myself; I know better now. I’ll do it right this time.”
“You know something, girl,” I asked her.
“What?”
“You stink!”
She chuckled then, deep in her throat, like a cat that knows it’s got a special deal and has ten lives, not just nine. “I can be nice, too, flack-man.” She started to undo the knot at her belly.
“Hold it, sister,” I said. “Nothing you’ve got can make me change my mind.”
She got it undone, saying, “I always like to pay a man for his labors.”
“I’m not going to do it.”
“You want to see Derry a stumblebum again, mugging lushes in the Village for doughnut dough?”
“You bitch you. Lousy stinking …”
“Listen, mister,” and her tone dripped blood, “I know what crap is. I was born lying in it and it’s been in my smelling ever since. I’ve got very little to trade on besides my shape and my voice. My voice isn’t so hot, but my backside is! You have to lie down with a lot of old dogs in this life to get what you want. I’ve been lying down for a long time now, mister, and I’m weary. I’m just weary enough to ruin your little piano player for good. I tagged onto him once as a meal ticket and got straight-armed by a bastard when I thought I was on the way up.”
“But it isn’t gonna happen this time.”
Now what happened next is my fault, I know it.
There was such red-hot hatred in her voice, she became the most appealing witch I’d ever dug. And she’d been unbuttoning that white shirt all along, it was open and you know she wasn’t wearing a bra.
I don’t even remember grabbing her, but the next thing I had her mouth and she was plastered against me and we went over onto the sofa. The slammer went bam against the wall and there was the Tiger standing in the doorway.