He smiled and said, “Hi, buddy,” and then he noticed the .38 in his visitor’s hand.
The gun went to his temple, the visitor fired and Saunders joined his wife.
Lyn Parks had been with Broome long enough. He was a lousy bed partner, he smelled bad and his manners were nonexistent.
They were in the backstage dressing room at the Third Eye, and it was three o’clock in the morning. Broome had been trying desperately to get her to come across since after the band’s last set and his failure was getting him angry, despite the fact that he’d shot up with horse a few minutes before and should have been feeling quite good by now.
“Get your goddamn hands off me!” She shook her head in disgust with him, with herself. “You’re really a sickening bastard, Broome, and it’s pretty damn revolting to me to think I ever let you touch me.”
“Come on, babe, you ain’t no cherry...” He groped for her and she was sick of it. After seeing him shoot up with H — he’d never had the poor taste before to shoot up right in front of her — she was almost physically ill with the thought of her few months of close association with the man. She was ready to move on — life with Broome and these sick creeps was worse than life with her father, “One Thumb” Gordon, a gangster who pretended respectability. She hated phonies, like her father, and she hated Broome as well, for his brand of phoniness.
“You aren’t anything but a pusher, Broome,” she told him bitterly. “Flower power? Some of the kids in this town are on the level with their peace and love, but you... you’re a bum, a peddler, a cheap gangster worse than my father ever was.”
“Your father? Who’s your father?” Broome wasn’t having much luck with trying to speak, everything was coming out slurred.
It was disgusting to Lyn, this rolling around with a doped-up lowlife on a threadbare sofa in a back-stage people closet with dirty wooden floors and graffitied walls. Broome was no threat, he was already on the verge of incoherence, sliding into dreaminess. She started for the door.
Then heard the footsteps.
Somebody banged on the door.
Fear caught her by the throat and she instinctively ducked in the bathroom, where Broome had so often shot up, his works still on the sink.
She heard Broome mumble something out there, maybe a greeting. A few more words.
Then a gun-shot.
Kneeling tremblingly, she peered through the keyhole and saw a person she recognized pocket a revolver and turn and go. She waited three long minutes before opening the closet wide enough to see Broome, lying on his back like a broken doll, his freaky blond Orphan Annie curls splattered with blood and brains, skull split by a bullet.
She puked in the sink.
She wiped the tears from her eyes, found control of her retching stomach, wondered what to do...
Webb.
That was it, she had to find Webb.
He could do something about this.
At least he could take her away from it...
She ran.
George Franco was pissed, in several senses of the word.
He sat by the window and stared down the block at the extended sign of Chelsey Ford Sales, the building he’d seen Nolan enter several times during the day — the last time around midnight with a pretty girl, a girl George thought he recognized.
It was too late to be drinking, but George was. He sat in his red and white striped nightshirt like a colorful human beach ball and nursed a bottle of Haig and Haig.
That fucker Nolan. Who did he think he was, pushing George around? And why hadn’t Nolan called? One whole day gone since he and Nolan had made their pact, with Nolan saying he’d check in every now and then. Well, why the hell didn’t he?
George had decided he wanted a favor from Nolan — in return for keeping quiet about the thief’s presence in Chelsey. It was only fair... and it would be a favor that Nolan would get something out of in return...
George swigged the Scotch, looking out at the blank street, the naked benches by the courthouse cannons. He didn’t see anybody watching him; Nolan said he had three men taking turns watching George, only now George wasn’t so sure. The tower clock read three-fifteen, but George wasn’t tired. He was all worked up. And he was thirsty.
It had come to him tonight, how he could use Nolan to better his position. To make his brother Charlie reconsider his opinion of George; to have some responsibility again. To get rid of that smug bastard Elliot and have the last laugh...
If he could only remember that girl’s name! That girl who’d been with Nolan, it was her apartment they’d gone into!
He’d met her once in the drugstore below. She was a friendly little thing, she said she’d seen him and she guessed they were neighbors and how was he? But that was a long time ago, a year or so, and he couldn’t remember...
Vicki something.
More Scotch. It would help him remember, more Scotch...
Trask.
Vicki Trask.
He waddled to the phone book, a pregnant hippo in a nightshirt, and thumbed through the pages.
Sure it was late, and Nolan would be pissed, but that was just too bad. He couldn’t push a Franco! Why, George could have his brother and an army down from Chicago in a few hours, with just a snap of his fingers! He could erase Nolan, have him wiped out like a chalk drawing on a blackboard! It was that easy.
He dialed. Nolan would talk to him, he knew he would.
It rang a long while and a female voice answered. He asked to speak to Mr. Webb and she said just a minute.
He waited for Nolan to come to the phone. The female voice had been pleasant. Like his whore’s, Francie, only more sincere. He’d been mean to Francie today, edgy over the thing with Nolan, and she’d walked out mad. He’d called her twice and asked her to come back and let him try and make it up to her. She’d hung up both times, but he still hoped she’d show. Maybe could patch things up with dollars and Scotch.
Then Nolan was on the phone.
“Yes, I know it’s late, Mr. Nolan... sorry, Mr. Webb... but I have to talk with you... I can help you take Elliot down...”
There was a soft rap at the door.
George said, “Just a second, Nolan, I mean Webb... the door, I think my girl friend might be back, jus’ a second.”
George stumbled to the door, thinking to himself about how fine it would be to see his Francie at the moment, have a nice drink with her.
He opened the door and an orange-red blossom exploded in somebody’s hand and burst George’s head and he went down, a sinking barge.
Four
1
Nolan reached out in the darkness and stroked the sleeping girl’s breast. She stirred in her sleep, a smile playing on her lips. He ran his hand under the sheet and over her smooth body, over her thighs to the flat stomach, across the soft rises of breast, nipples now relaxed, the tightness of passion a memory.
Vicki Trask’s eyes opened slowly; then blinking, yawning, she said, “Are you still awake? It must be after two in the morning—”
Nolan flipped back the sheet. He took a gentle bite out of her stomach, nuzzling her. His lower lip cradled the dip of her navel, his upper lip tickled by the tiny hairs on her flesh.
“Salty,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“You taste salty.”
“I ought to,” she replied. “You worked me hard enough.”
“It’s good for you.” He moved up to her breasts and nibbled. The tips, remembering, grew taut again.
“Ouch! Take it easy!” Then she laughed and looped her arm around his neck.
He looked into her little girl face and said, “You were good, Vicki.”