The urgency put a frown on my face and the nine mil in my hand. But by the time I was on my feet, the sunlight peeking through the Venetian blinds said it was morning. I went over where the ruckus was, put the gun behind my back in one hand, and edged the door open a ways with the other.
Steve looked sweaty and upset, in desperate need of a shave, his dull blue eyes wide; he was in his houndstooth sport coat, brown trousers and bare feet. “Oh, good, you’re awake. I just don’t wanna leave my things unattended.”
He apparently meant the footlocker and suitcase, though he’d never admitted they were full of money.
“Okay,” I said. “You want me to watch ’em while you, uh... what?”
“Come see me when you’re dressed,” Steve said hurriedly, and was gone.
Everything’s a crisis with this guy, I thought, except things that should be.
I’d just closed the door when I heard Sandy’s voice and for a moment thought I was imagining it. Or worse, that I’d relented in the night and let her back in. Then I realized it was coming from outside, and went over and peered between blinds at the drive curving around past the small rear parking lot bordered by pin oaks.
Nobody.
But I could still hear her. In my pajamas, leaving the gun behind, I exited the room as barefoot as Steve had been, the door ajar, and stepped out onto the white metal landing at the top of the exterior stairs; it was crisp and chilly outside.
Sandy was on the far end of the landing in her purple dressing gown, leaning over the rail and yelling at a young colored maid poised by a housekeeping cart.
“What do you mean,” my unlikely Juliet was indignantly asking, “you can’t bring us some breakfast? We’ll pay for the privilege!”
The maid, in a green and white uniform, looked up and said, “We ain’t allowed to do that, lady. And I ain’t asking the manager a question when I know the answer, because he’s not in a good mood mornings. Actually, he ain’t in a good mood, period.”
And the maid and her cart rumbled on.
Sandy hadn’t noticed me, so I spoke. “Good morning.”
She gave me barely a glance. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Why, aren’t you available?”
That got a throaty laugh out of her. “Well, breakfast isn’t. I’m not hungry, but Steve’s having a cow.”
“That’ll save him buying you a Guernsey.”
She laughed again, just something short from her belly. Now she looked at me — surprisingly pretty, make-up free, though the hardness of her life lingered. “You always this funny in the morning?”
“Keep trying. Maybe you’ll find out.”
She grinned and gave me a middle finger. We were finally getting along.
“I’ll handle Steve,” I told her, as she slid past me into the hall and we slipped into our respective quarters.
Bathed and shaved and back in the Richard Bennett with the holstered nine mil accouterment, I knocked at the 49-A door and Sandy answered, back in her big blonde wig and in a pink knit sweater and black pencil skirt and low black heels. She rolled her eyes at me. Beyond, Steve was pacing like an expectant father.
I stepped past her. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m gonna talk to that fucking manager,” he said, still pacing. “Johnny told them, when we checked in, we were to get the first-class treatment.”
“First-class treatment in this kind of place,” I said, “does not include breakfast. They don’t have a restaurant, much less room service.”
“I’m gonna let that manager know who he’s dealing with.”
Sandy took my arm, sending her words back and forth between me and Steve. “I know the manager. Jack Carr. He’s tight with Buster Wortman and an ex-con himself. Not a good idea getting his attention.”
Wortman was known as the rackets boss of East St. Louis, Illinois.
She gave me a little nod toward the footlocker and suitcase against the wall. The likes of Carr and Wortman would just love to know about those... if they didn’t already.
I said, “I’ll go out and get us some breakfast.”
Steve froze but his expression melted. “Would you, Nate? That’d be mighty white of you.”
“Anything else you need?”
He put his hand on top of his head like an ice pack. “Aspirin.”
So I would play delivery boy. I only hoped this errand wasn’t meant to get rid of me just long enough for Steve and his money to move on without me. If Sandy had told him about the nine millimeter on my nightstand, he might think I wasn’t here for the advertised purpose. Which I wasn’t.
Of course, that would require Sandy telling Steve she’d been in my room, which would not thrill him, since he was the one paying for the pleasure of her company; and anyway, I was representing the Chicago Outfit, wasn’t I? Why wouldn’t I travel heavy?
I returned in forty minutes or so with three fried-egg sandwiches and paper cups of coffee from a diner up the road and Bayer aspirin from a Katz Drug. When Steve sat on the edge of the bed, to eat his sandwich, setting his coffee on the bedside stand, I picked up his hat to make room for myself, tossing it onto a chair.
“Don’t you know it’s unlucky,” I said, “to leave your hat on the bed?”
Through a mouthful of white bread and fried egg, Steve said, “Do I look like some superstitious chump?”
Well, he didn’t look superstitious. A glimpse at the fedora’s sweatband had revealed “CAH” and “LEVINE HAT COMPANY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.” Not being a chump myself, I knew at once Steve Strand’s initials were not CAH.
Nobody had much to say. Sandy turned on the TV while she ate and a sickeningly folksy Arthur Godfrey kept us company by way of a bunch of blather and Julius LaRosa singing “Eh, Cumpari!” When “Strike It Rich” came on, it was a relief.
Meanwhile, Steve prowled and paced, pausing on occasion to peek through the Venetian blinds at the rear parking lot. Finally I stepped up next to him. “Checking for cops?”
“No, no — insurance investigators, maybe.”
About a quarter after eleven, Johnny Hagan arrived, wearing the same working man’s clothes as last night but minus his ACE CAP. He had a tan leather two-suit bag over one arm, a matching briefcase in one hand, and a brown-paper-bagged bottle in the other. Still barefoot, Steve strode over, annoyed.
“Where the hell have you been?” he blurted. “We been sitting around all morning with our thumbs up our asses!”
The big good-looking cabbie cowered, as if this pudgy punk was a threat; of course Steve did have a gun in his sport coat pocket.
“I’m sorry, pal,” Hagan said. “That was some laundry list of errands you gave me. I got that luggage you wanted. Hey, and I rented you a swell ride — a ’52 Plymouth sedan, two-tone green.” He held out a handful of pills. “Plus I got you Bennies off a bellboy.”
“Gimme!” Steve said. He snatched the pills from the cabbie’s palm and stuffed them in a pocket. At least he didn’t just toss them down his throat like Vitamin Flintheart in the funnies.
Hagan shook the paper bag off the bottle — I.W. Harper again — and handed it toward Steve, who grinned like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Johnny, I won’t soon forget you!”
Then Steve was passing around drinking glasses in which he’d poured several fingers of amber liquid, like the pacing father’s baby had finally been delivered. Crossing her nice long legs, Sandy replaced me in the seat of honor next to Steve on the edge of the Beautyrest while Johnny and I found chairs.
“Stick by me a few days,” Steve said to the cabbie, between generous gulps, “and see me through this rough patch, you can be damn sure I’ll take care of you.”