The Club served snack suppers and coffee, soft drinks and sandwiches, ice cream and alcohol. On the whole it was a pretty horrible — and very popular — place.
The piano moaned away while Nick stood just inside the doorway and looked around. His face was at its most repulsive and his skulking manner at its most obnoxious. Any right-thinking bouncer would have thrown him out at once. But the only guy who seemed to qualify as a bouncer eyed him without undue curiosity. There was neither major-domo nor hostess to show him to a table, and the male cashier made it clear that it wasn’t his job to play escort to the suckers. The seedy waiters steadfastly ignored him.
Nick found a small table for himself, one near the door that gave him a fair view down the length of the room. It was a two-seater, pushed against the wall and far enough away from the nearest table to let a couple talk in peace if they wanted privacy.
But most of the couples weren’t talking very much. Most of them weren’t even couples. There were fewer women than men at the tables, and they were scarcely bargains at any price. Only one or two of them looked like anything other than leftovers. It was not so much their features that repelled as their thick, poorly applied make-up, and the tangled untidiness of their hair and clothes. At least half of the people wore dark glasses even in the poor light of the unclubby club. Not many of them seemed to be drinking very much. One man was singing and shouting to himself over a cup of coffee and several others seemed to be sipping the same stuff, only more quietly. Of course it was pretty early for the action to begin, but this lot didn’t seem to be craving action. One group was talking and gesturing animatedly, but the others just sat around and twitched.
Christ Almighty, Nick thought, trying to grab a waiter. If Abe Jefferson had a place like this under his nose in Abimako he’d close it up in three seconds flat or else he’d have his own man sitting in on it. Which led to the thought that maybe the Dakar chief did, too.
The waiters continued to ignore him but somehow Nick began to feel noticed. Someone was definitely taking a good long look at him from the half-open service door in the back. He pulled a switch-knife out of his pocket and gave them something to look at. The blade clicked open so crisply that a man two tables over jumped and cringed away. Nick picked intently at his fingernails. It was not one of his favorite habits, but it gave him a chance to show off some minor hardware.
At last a reedy waiter in flowing off-white favored him with a glance.
“Scotch,” Nick snarled.
The waiter curled his lip. “Brandy and gin.”
“Thanks for the suggestion, but I said Scotch.”
“Only brandy and gin.”
“All right, for Chrissake. Brandy and gin.”
The waiter gave him the look that waiters specialize in and stalked off to the small bar opposite the piano. He came back with two shot glasses. One of brandy, one of gin.
“Shall I mix it?” he said insolently.
“I’ll mix it,” Nick growled. “And tell the manager I want to see him. Business.”
The waiter raised one eyebrow. “I’ll find out if it’s convenient. What kind of business?”
Nick’s eyes narrowed and his mouth became a thin, hard line.
“I’ll tell him myself. Just get him.” The malevolence in his face and the ice in his voice were not wasted. The man turned abruptly and walked to the door in the rear.
The gin was awful but the brandy was surprisingly smooth. Nick drank them both, swallowing the gin like medicine but lingering over the brandy. He pretended not to see the waiter stopping to exchange confidences with the bouncer, and looked pointedly at the radium dial of his watch. The bouncer — a bruiser in a bulging American suit — nodded and went in to deliver the message himself.
Nick was reaching into his pocket for the pack of Moroccan cigarettes he’d bought earlier in the day when the inner door opened wide and closed firmly. Nick concentrated on lighting up, forcing himself not to swing his head and stare and wondering how surprised it was politic for him to be.
The floor shook near him.
He let himself look up.
An immensity of female flesh wallowed to a stop beside his table. It was dressed in a vast and shapeless black thing that had to be a dress because it wasn’t anything else, and it was one bulging roll of fat after another from the improbable ankles to the melon cheeks. Little piggy eyes peered at him from between the folds of face-fat, and huge earrings descended from the pendulous ear lobes. There were white, grandma ruffles at the sausage neck and lacy frills at the hem of the black sack. The incredibly dainty fingers of both chubby hands were dripping with rings. The small round mouth opened and a sound emerged from hiding.
“I am the manager,” it mooed. “What is your business with me?”
Nick pushed back his chair but did not rise. He reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a card case.
“You’re the manager? I didn’t expect... uh... a woman. My card.”
The moo turned into a bray of laughter. The great body shook and heaved like a mountain in an earthquake.
“That’s not all you didn’t expect, is it, meanface? What’s this card?” She snatched at it with her bejeweled fingers and went on chuckling hugely. A scene from Coney Island flashed into Nick’s mind, of the huge and madly laughing female who used to sit in her vast chair outside one of the amusement tunnels, rocking back and forth and exhorting customers to come in and thrill to the wild fun of the crazy mirrors and the rocketing cars and the things that popped up screaming from the cobwebby darkness. She had been carried off one day, still laughing, by the men in white coats and she had died in an insane asylum.
“A. Sigismondi!” she read out incredulously. “That’s not your name, is it? It’s not anybody’s name!”
“Maybe it isn’t,” Nick admitted. “But I use it. Is there some place we can talk in private?”
“Novelties and Specialties,” she read. “Casablanca.”
“For God’s sake,” Nick murmured. “Not so loud. I didn’t come here to talk to the whole damn room — just you.”
Her small eyes stared into his face. “We’ll talk here.”
“I don’t like it,” Nick said flatly. “Maybe I better talk directly to the owner.”
“You don’t have to like it,” she said, just as flatly. “And I am the owner. What are these specialties of yours? And why tell me about them?”
“I heard about your place, in Casablanca,” he said softly. “And my contacts tell me that you might be interested in what I have to offer. That is to say, they referred me to the Hop Club, but not to you by name. They are discreet. I hope that you are, too. Now perhaps you will let me talk to you without an audience.”
She peered down at him, her eyes bright and penetrating.
“The Big One sent you?” she murmured.
He stared back at her, trying to look treacherous and reproving at the same time. “I know nothing of the Big One,” he said, wishing that he did. “My business is my own. Except, of course, for my... associates in other countries.”
“Ah, other countries.” She flicked out a chair as though it had been made of matchsticks and scrunched down upon it. Her body and the chair groaned simultaneously. “You have samples of your novelties with you? They must be small enough to be hidden by my body!” She laughed hugely. “If we are going to talk, we must call each other something. I am Madame Sophia. Sophia, like Sophia Loren!” Her body rippled with enjoyment. “But how can I call you Sigismondi? It is impossible!”