“I get the point,” Larry said, casually.
“Okay, buy that dope from your friend, with your money, and throw it into the river. Got that? And don’t ever touch that racket again in this town.” He studied Larry, frowning slightly, his eyes as expressionless as cold little globes of glass. “You should be grateful the old days are gone,” he said. “Then you wouldn’t have got off with a little bed-time story about Legs Diamond. Keep that in mind. Come on, Gordon, we’re late.”
Lagana nodded to Stone and walked out the door.
When he was gone, when they heard the elevator whining in descent, Larry shrugged and made himself a drink. He glanced at Stone. “Well, what do you think of that?” he said.
“I think you’d better throw that dope in the river,” Stone said, rubbing his bald head. Suddenly, he felt in excellent spirits. “Damn, I’m hungry,” he said.
Chapter 10
Bannion drove in from Chester through a driving rain. He stopped inside the city line at a handbook and got Larry Smith’s home address from the bookie. At the first drugstore he looked up his number, tried it but got no answer.
That was fine.
He drove out to the Parkway Building, a huge but elegant apartment house that featured uniformed doormen and a discreetly lavish atmosphere for anyone who could afford its prices. Bannion parked across the street from its gleaming, canopied entrance. He lit a cigarette and settled down to wait. His trenchcoat was wet, and drops of water were forming and falling from the brim of his hat. He put the hat on the seat without taking his eyes from the revolving doors of Larry’s building.
Larry would have to show eventually.
Bannion smoked and watched in the rainy darkness...
Larry left Stone’s apartment at nine-thirty, bitter and disgusted. Max and Lagana thought they were big men because they’d been in the rackets in the twenties when (to hear them tell it) you got shot if you said boo to a mobster. It was all a lot of crap. They were kidding themselves, pounding their chests, treating him like a goddamn baby. Big men, real tough, he thought sneering. Bannion, a jerk of a cop, and Cranston, an old woman, had them shaking like a pair of nances.
Suddenly he remembered the way Lagana had looked at him, up and down with those funny, blank eyes. Well, what the hell was a look? He put a tough smile on his face. Probably the old man needed glasses. Nobody had eyes like that unless he was dead. That’s what the old man’s eyes were like, he thought. Like a stiff’s. There was a funny winter light in the back of them, the same thing you saw in a stiff’s eyes.
Larry shivered slightly, and got into his car, ignoring the doorman’s tip-twitching hand. What the hell was he thinking about the old man’s eyes for? They were just eyes, like everyone had. Period. But he couldn’t kid himself; he knew what was wrong when his thoughts skittered this way. He was afraid of dying, not the physical end of it, but what came afterwards. You went somewhere, up, down, out maybe, into space, and your body stayed behind, no use to anyone, cold and stiff. Larry had been raised a Catholic; he was afraid of dying because he’d left the church and knew he would be punished for it. But terrified as he was of this mysterious inevitable punishment, he was even more frightened by the conclusions of atheism. To go nowhere, to have it all end suddenly, forever, that was worse than anything else.
To hell with it, to hell with it, he thought, pounding the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. He pushed the ideas from his mind. Everything was going fine; tomorrow was wonderful, tomorrow was beautiful. He had been on his way home, but he changed his mind and drove to a flashy nightclub on Market Street. The hat check girl made a fuss over him, a couple of waiters hurrying through the velvet-walled foyer nodded to him and smiled, and Larry walked into the big dining and dancing-room in a much better humor. This was a nice joint, a nice relaxing joint, he thought. Here they knew who he was, they knew he was a big shot.
Larry had been working for Max Stone for six years. He was number four man in Philadelphia, young for the responsibility, but that didn’t prevent him from doing a good job. Larry was tough, smart, and completely without morals. He had come up through the ranks of a society that was founded on the fix; as a kid he’d delivered political handbills, driven voters to the polls, seen how the primary lists were padded with fictitious names, and how the pressure was put on individuals who registered against the administration. Larry was no starveling from the slums. He had a high school education and his family were fairly decent, responsible people. Larry went into the rackets by choice, as another young man might go in for the law, because he had learned that everything was rigged — the police, the courts, politics, elections, the whole damn city. It was rigged like a slot machine to clip the suckers and pay off the operator. So why be a sucker?
He had his own handbook when he was twenty-one and then he went to work for Stone, in charge of a string of books on the West side. He arranged the pay-off, had quite a bit to say about applicants who wanted to open joints, and he handled the wire-service and all other details of the organization. Larry was a new element in the rackets, a type hand-picked by Mike Lagana. He was no Sicilian illiterate, no gun-happy hoodlum; Lagana wanted quiet young men, neighborhood boys, who were smart and tough but kept out of trouble. Larry didn’t understand the higher strategy that had pushed him past a number of older men in the organization; he thought he was lucky, and he thanked the good old American way of things that rewarded industry and loyalty regardless of age, background or other irrelevant qualifications.
Larry ordered his dinner, oysters and a five-dollar steak, and settled back to enjoy the floor show. There was a girl in the line he hadn’t seen before, a tall brunette with a good body and a wise, provocative expression on her face. He signalled the captain of waiters and pointed out the girl. “After the show ask her if she’d like to have a drink with me,” he said, smiling.
The waiter smiled, too. “She’d like to, Mr. Smith.”
It was funny how things changed. Half an hour he’d been in the dumps, but now he was riding high. Later, grinning over a drink at the brunette, he said, “Baby, you’re just what I need. You saved my life tonight.”
The brunette patted his hand.
Bannion walked up and down the sidewalk before Larry’s building, a cigarette in the comer of his mouth. The rain had stopped and the early morning was cold and sharp. He glanced up at the big quiet apartment house, and rubbed a hand over his tired face. He wasn’t conscious of fatigue; all he knew was the need to find Larry Smith, to get his hands on that loose end and jerk everything else into the light. But he’d have to wait; Larry had undoubtedly found some diversion. Well, enjoy yourself, Larry, Bannion thought. Enjoy tonight because you won’t enjoy tomorrow.
Bannion had spent a bad five hours in the dark and rainy night, thinking of Kate. She had come back to him and he hugged the bitter loneliness she brought him because it was all he had left of her, all he had left in the world.
He flipped his cigarette into the street and walked over to his car, deciding to get something to drink before going back to the hotel. It had been some time since he’d eaten, but he wasn’t hungry-