Trimmer Waltz idled casually up to the table, leaned a hand down on it. He poked his big-veined nose at Pete Anglich. There was a soft, flat grin on his face.
«Hi, Pete. Haven’t seen you around since they buried McKinley. How’s tricks?»
«Not bad, not good,» Pete Anglich said huskily. «I been on a drunk.»
Trimmer Waltz broadened his smile, turned it on the girl. She looked at him quickly, looked away, picking at the tablecloth.
Waltz’s voice was soft, cooing. «Know the little lady before — or just pick her out of the line-up?»
Pete Anglich shrugged, looked bored. «Just wanted somebody to share a drink with, Trimmer. Sent her a note. Okey?»
«Sure. Perfect.» Waltz picked one of the glasses up, sniffed at it. He shook his head sadly. «Wish we could serve better stuff. At four bits a throw it can’t be done. How about tipping a few out of a right bottle, back in my den?»
«Both of us?» Pete Anglich asked gently.
«Both of you is right. In about five minutes. I got to circulate a little first.»
He pinched the girl’s cheek, went on, with a loose swing of his tailored shoulders.
The girl said slowly, thickly, hopelessly, «So Pete’s your name. You must want to die young, Pete. Mine’s Token Ware. Silly name, isn’t it?»
«I like it,» Pete Anglich said softly.
The girl stared at a point below the white scar on Pete Anglich’s throat. Her eyes slowly filled with tears.
Trimmer Waltz drifted among the tables, speaking to a customer here and there. He edged over to the far wall, came along it to the band shell, stood there ranging the house with his eyes until he was looking directly at Pete Anglich. He jerked his head, stepped back through a pair of thick curtains.
Pete Anglich pushed his chair back and stood up. «Let’s go,» he said.
Token Ware crushed a cigarette out in a glass tray with jerky fingers, finished the drink in her glass, stood up. They went back between the tables, along the edge of the dance floor, over to the side of the band shell.
The curtains opened on to a dim hallway with doors on both sides. A shabby red carpet masked the floor. The walls were chipped, the doors cracked.
«The one at the end on the left,» Token Ware whispered.
They came to it. Pete Anglich knocked. Trimmer Waltz’s voice called out to come in. Pete Anglich stood a moment looking at the door, then turned his head and looked at the girl with his eyes hard and narrow. He pushed the door open, gestured at her. They went in.
The room was not very light. A small oblong reading lamp on the desk shed glow on polished wood, but less on the shabby red carpet, and the long heavy red drapes across the outer wall. The air was close, with a thick, sweetish smell of liquor.
Trimmer Waltz sat behind the desk with his hands touching a tray that contained a cut-glass decanter, some gold-veined glasses, an ice bucket and a siphon of charged water.
He smiled, rubbed one side of his big nose.
«Park yourselves, folks. Liqueur Scotch at six-ninety a fifth. That’s what it costs me — wholesale.»
Pete Anglich shut the door, looked slowly around the room, at the floor-length window drapes, at the unlighted ceiling light. He unbuttoned the top button of his coat with a slow, easy movement.
«Hot in here,» he said softly. «Any windows behind those drapes?»
The girl sat in a round chair on the opposite side of the desk from Waltz. He smiled at her very gently.
«Good idea,» Waltz said. «Open one up, will you?»
Pete Anglich went past the end of the desk, toward the curtains. As he got beyond Waltz, his hand went up under his coat and touched the butt of his gun. He moved softly toward the red drapes. The tips of wide, square-toed black shoes just barely showed under the curtains, in the shadow between the curtains and the wall.
Pete Anglich reached the curtains, put his left hand out and jerked them open.
The shoes on the floor against the wall were empty. Waltz laughed dryly behind Pete Anglich. Then a thick, cold voice said: «Put ’em high, boy.»
The girl made a strangled sound, not quite a scream. Pete Anglich dropped his hands and turned slowly and looked. The Negro was enormous in stature, gorilla-like, and wore a baggy checked suit that made him even more enormous. He had come soundlessly on shoeless feet out of a closet door, and his right hand almost covered a huge black gun.
Trimmer Waltz held a gun too, a Savage. The two men stared quietly at Pete Anglich. Pete Anglich put his hands up in the air, his eyes blank, his small mouth set hard.
The Negro in the checked suit came toward him in long, loose strides, pressed the gun against his chest, then reached under his coat. His hand came out with Pete Anglich’s gun. He dropped it behind him on the floor. He shifted his own gun casually and hit Pete Anglich on the side of the jaw with the flat of it.
Pete Anglich staggered and the salt taste of blood came under his tongue. He blinked, said thickly: «I’ll remember you a long time, big boy.»
The Negro grinned. «Not so long, pal. Not so long.»
He hit Pete Anglich again with the gun, then suddenly he jammed it into a side pocket and his two big hands shot out, clamped themselves on Pete Anglich’s throat.
«When they’s tough I likes to squeeze ’em,» he said almost softly.
Thumbs that felt as big and hard as doorknobs pressed into the arteries on Pete Anglich’s neck. The face before him and above him grew enormous, an enormous shadowy face with a wide grin in the middle of it. It waved in lessening light, an unreal, a fantastic face.
Pete Anglich hit the face, with puny blows, the blows of a toy balloon. His fists didn’t feel anything as they hit the face. The big man twisted him around and put a knee into his back, and bent him down over the knee.
There was no sound for a while except the thunder of blood threshing in Pete Anglich’s head. Then, far away, he seemed to hear a girl scream thinly. From still farther away the voice of Trimmer Waltz muttered: «Easy now, Rufe. Easy.»
A vast blackness shot with hot red filled Pete Anglich’s world. The darkness grew silent. Nothing moved in it now, not even blood.
The Negro lowered Pete Anglich’s limp body to the floor, stepped back and rubbed his hands together.
«Yeah, I likes to squeeze ’em,» he said.
FIVE
The Negro in the checked suit sat on the side of the daybed and picked languidly at a five-stringed banjo. His large face was solemn and peaceful, a little sad. He plucked the banjo strings slowly, with his bare fingers, his head on one side, a crumpled cigarette-end sticking barely past his lips at one corner of his mouth.
Low down in his throat he was making a kind of droning sound. He was singing.
A cheap electric clock on the mantel said 11:35. It was a small living room with bright, overstuffed furniture, a red floor lamp with a cluster of French dolls at its base, a gay carpet with large diamond shapes in it, two curtained windows with a mirror between them.
A door at the back was ajar. A door near it opening into the hall was shut.
Pete Anglich lay on his back on the floor, with his mouth open and his arms outflung. His breath was a thick snore. His eyes were shut, and his face in the reddish glow of the lamp looked flushed and feverish.
The Negro put the banjo down out of his immense hands, stood up and yawned and stretched. He walked across the room and looked at a calendar over the mantel.
«This ain’t August,» he said disgustedly.
He tore a leaf from the calendar, rolled it into a ball and threw it at Pete Anglich’s face. It hit the unconscious man’s cheek. He didn’t stir. The Negro spit the cigarette-end into his palm, held his palm out flat, and flicked a fingernail at it, sent it sailing in the same direction as the paper ball.