Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly (30 page)

“Why do we take it, what he dishes out?”

“Well, for one thing, bucking Sol is not healthy. And me, I
got
to take it. I’m not what I was. I don’t get calls anymore. To help on a job, I mean. I got to play along. You, of course you’re different.”

“In what way?”

“I figure you for a chiseler.”

“What do you mean by that, Lefty?”

“That’s all.”

“Sounds like there might be more.”

“Not unless you ask for it.”

“… O.K.—shoot.”

“A chiseler, he’s not crooked and he’s not straight. He’s just in between.”

“Maybe he’s just smart.”

“I don’t say he’s not. I should say I don’t. He takes it where he can get it, he’s willing to live and let live, he don’t want any trouble. If he can only hold it, what he’s got, he’ll die rich, and of a regular disease, with a doctor’s certificate, ‘stead of a coroner’s. Still, he’ll never be a big operator.”

“Why not?”

“A big operator, he runs it, or he don’t operate.”

Lefty then gave a disquisition on the use of force: so long as Sol didn’t mind trouble and Ben did, Sol would run it. It was diplomatically phrased, but Ben looked sulky, and Lefty added: “Listen, no hard feelings about it. Because maybe you’re the one that
is
smart. You’re putting it by all the time, or I
hope
you got that little savings account tucked away somewhere. You’re young, and when Sol gets it you can always get a job.”

“What do you mean, when Sol gets it?”

“Oh, he’ll get it.”

“You mean this Swede Jansen that’s running for Mayor.”

“He hasn’t got a chance.”

“He’s got Sol worried.”

“You mean Mayor Maddux has.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, Sol’s the main beneficiary of this, our present administration, isn’t he? The boys had to figure some way to make him kick in. So Maddux told him who’s back of the Swede.”

“You mean Delany?”

“I mean our polo-playing, whiskey-drinking, white-tie-wearing, evil young man named Bill Delany, that gets by for a gentleman jockey but he’s really a hoodlum bookie, and Sol has
to cut him in whether he wants to or not, because he’s got the Chicago connections. And for that reason, Solly hates him so hard that all Maddux has to do is wink him in and he’s there, even if he’s not. Delany, he’s got no more to do with the Swede than you have, but he could have. It could be the Swede that’s going to knock Solly off. It could be anybody. For big enough dough, plenty guys don’t mind trouble. One of them sees his disconnect button and leans on it, that’s all.”

“And then?”

“You’re sitting pretty and I’m not.”

“But
till
then, I’m his English setter.”

“His—what did you say, Ben?”

“It’s a dog, Lefty, and you ought to get next to them. They’re white, with gray spots. They don’t bark, they don’t chase, and they don’t fight. And when they point a bird, you can be sure it’s a bird and not a skunk. In other words—me. Up at that meeting tonight.”

“I didn’t say so, Ben.”

“A fine pair, we are.”

“Well, when you come right down to it, nobody isn’t so hot. Not really they’re not. But if they’re buddies, they can generally figure an angle. Me, I got one right away. Say what you will, we’re prettier than Solly is.”

“That’s not saying much.”

“It’s practically not saying nothing at all. Still and all, I get a satisfaction out of it that I don’t look like Solly looks.”

“If it helps, then O.K.”

“Two beers, Ben, and they’re on you.”

The bookmaking establishments to which Ben was assigned ran wide open in downtown office buildings, but with a two-hour time differential on account of Western tracks, there was nothing he could do about them until seven o’clock. Leaving Lefty, he went to the Lake City RKO to kill time. The theatre was named for the city, which had 220,000 inhabitants, a Chamber of Commerce, an airport, a war boom, and a Middle Western accent. The feature was a pleasant little item with Ginger Rogers
in it, but the picture at which Ben laughed loudest and applauded most included Abbott and Costello. When he came out it was nearly six, and he walked around to his hotel. It was called the Lucas, and had $l-$1.50-$2 on the marquee. His room, for which he paid $8 a week, was on the second floor, but he didn’t bother with the elevator. He bounded up the stairs with absentminded ease, first stopping at the desk to see if there had been any calls. His room was small, and had a single bed in it, a night table, a reading lamp, two straight chairs, a small armchair, and two water colors of nasturtiums. He paid not the least attention to it. He pitched his hat on the bed, stripped off his coat and shirt, and entered the shower. There, at the hand basin, he washed his face, ears, and neck, great muscles leaping out of his arms as he did so. Then he dried himself with a face towel, putting it back on the rack in its original creases. Then he combed his hair, tucking his forelock into place lovingly, with little brush strokes of the comb, and taking more time about it than the rite seemed to warrant.

Then he stepped into the room and had a look at his shirt. He frowned when he saw the collar, and dropped it into a laundry basket that stood in a closet. Then he selected another one from a shelf at the top of the closet. He put it on, chose a necktie to go with it, and when both had been patted into place, shoved the tail of his shirt into his trousers, and tightened his belt. His motions were precise, his person clean. And yet there was something of small dimension about everything he did. In this tiny room, with his boyish face, his neat little piles of rather well-bought possessions, it was hard to realize that he weighed at least 200 pounds.

The freshening completed, he went outside, walked down the street to the Savoy Grill, went inside and had dinner. He then walked to the Columbus, got a small satchel from the cashier, and visited the first of the bookmaking establishments. It was on the first floor of the Coolidge Building, past the elevators, and was full of men. They were in jovial mood, for two favorites had won, and they were there to cash tickets. With the big blackboard on one side of the room, the permanent column
captions lettered thereon, and the businesslike atmosphere, the place suggested a stockbroker’s office in Wall Street. Ben didn’t attempt a thorough audit. He accepted an adding machine tote, crammed money and stub-books into his satchel, and went on to the next place. By a quarter to eight he had completed his rounds and left the satchel at the Columbus, first pasting a sticker over the clasp to seal it. Then he walked back to his hotel, passed through the lobby to an areaway behind, and entered a shed where cars were stored. His was a small coupe, maroon in color, with white tires and a high polish. He got in, checked the gas against an entry in a little red book that he took from his pocket, and drove off.

Municipal campaigns, as a rule, are held in the spring, with the election falling in May and the winner taking office July 1. So it happened that at John Dewey High School Auditorium it was a warmish night, with the crowd attending in spring dresses and straw hats. It was not, however, a very big crowd. Possibly five hundred people were there, half filling the auditorium; Lefty, apparently, had judged correctly the strength of the Jansen following. They were quiet, folksy people, and although Ben looked a little out of place among them, they smiled at him in friendly fashion as he came up the steps to the hall, and made way to let him in. He took a seat near the door, and began a systematic scrutiny of every face he could see. When the candidates arrived he joined the applause, and when the speaking began he frowned hard, concentrating on what was being said.

What was being said, alas, was a little slack. The offenses of Mr. Caspar, abetted by the Maddux machine, were the general topic, but nobody seemed to know quite what they were, and everybody left the indictment to somebody else. When Mr. Jansen spoke he was a grievous disappointment. He was a stocky, pink-faced, good-looking man with a little red moustache, but he had a thick accent, and did little but tell how Caspar had moved in on his milk truck drivers, “und den I make oop my mindt I move in on Caspar.” The meeting was a flop until the
chairman introduced a girl, quite as an afterthought, while people were crowding to the doors, and she started to talk.

She was a very good-looking girl, in spite of the school-teacherish way she spoke. She was perhaps twenty-five, with a trim little figure and solemn black eyes. She wore a dress of dark blue silk, which combined pleasantly with her wavy black hair, and she punctuated her remarks by tapping with a pencil on the table. Her point was that elections are not won with indignation, or talk, or registrations in the voters’ books. They are won by ballots in the ballot box, and therefore she wanted everybody to stop at the table in the hallway, and fill out a slip with name, address, and phone number, and check what they would contribute on election day: time, car, or money, or all three. It was the first thing all night that had a resolute, professional sound to it, and once or twice it drew crackling applause. Ben got out his little red book, found the date, May 7, and wrote her name: June Lyons.

When Mr. Jansen came out of the school and entered his car, Ben was parked a few feet behind him, his lights out, his motor running. When Mr. Jansen started up, Ben started up, and seemed oddly expert at the job of following. On brightly lighted streets he cut his lights, and when he had to snap them on, fell back some distance, so the car ahead was not likely to notice him. Finally, when Mr. Jansen turned into the drive of a pretentious house in the swank Lakeside suburb, he parked nearby, and looked the place over, not missing the three Scandinavian birches growing in a cluster on the lawn. When another car drove up he watched Mr. Conley, the chairman; Mr. Bleeker, the candidate for city attorney; Mrs. Bleeker and Miss Lyons get out and enter the house, then got out his little red book, and under May 7 again, copied down the number of the car. He sat a long time, waiting for other cars to appear. When the four visitors came out, he followed their car again, noting the addresses as Mr. and Mrs. Bleeker dropped their passengers off. It was around two o’clock when he tucked his little red
book away and drove to Ike’s Place, a small honky-tonk about four miles from town.

The place was fairly full and fairly noisy, with the crash of pinball shattering the beat of juke music. In the murk at one end of the bar a couple was dancing. Waiters in gray jackets with brass buttons hurried about, serving drinks; they were addressed by name, mostly, and treated the customers as old friends. When Ben came in he waved at Caspar, who was sitting at a table with Lefty, Bugs Lenhardt, another guard named Goose Groner, and two girls. Then he sat down at the bar, ordered a drink, and scanned a paper devoting its front page to the Castleton robbery, which had gone even worse than Lefty had expected. The four wild kids had got $22,000 but killed a cashier doing it.

Presently Groner was beside Ben, mumbling that Caspar wanted to see him. The girls moved over so Ben could sit down, but Caspar didn’t invite him. Instead he demanded savagely to know where he had been. Ben, evidently deciding that an offense was the only defense against a stupid inquiry, stuck out his chin and said: “Me? I been working. I been carrying out orders, some kind of hop dreams that were thought up by a jerk named Solly Caspar—no relation, I hope. I been tailing a Swede all over town, and copying down the car numbers of his friends, and making a sap out of myself—wasn’t that a way to spend a spring night! And for what? Because they been taking this lug, this fathead named Caspar, for a ride the whole town is laughing at.”

“Ride? What ride?”

“Come on, get wise to yourself. The ride Maddux is taking you for. Filling you up with that hooey about Delany—”

“Oh, so you think it’s hooey?”

“Listen, I’ve seen this Swede’s friends, and they wouldn’t know Delany if they met him on the street. It’s a gyp and you fell for it, that’s all.”

Ben got this off with quite a show of truculence, and it left Caspar blinking, and would probably have settled the argument if he hadn’t slightly overplayed it. He took up the previous
question, which was where he had been all night, reminding Caspar it had been clearly stipulated that he was not to report until tomorrow; and when Caspar weakly tapped his watch and said it
was
tomorrow, he said that as far as he was concerned it was not tomorrow until the sun came up. At this one of the girls, who had been eyeing Ben’s curls with more than casual interest, let out an appreciative laugh. Caspar’s eyes flickered. Lefty jumped up and began telling him a story, a meaningless thing about a couple of Irishmen that went into a hotel. Groner began whispering to him, patting his back and leaning close to his ear. The girl, frightened, poked him with her finger, and said hey, quit scaring her to death.

This went on for five minutes, and the place froze like a cinematic stop-camera shot. Ike, the proprietor, caught the eye of the bartender, who stood with a shaker in his hand, checking the position of the waiters. These came to a stop in the aisles, and stood staring at Caspar. He began to pant, and when Groner touched his arm, shook it as though something had stung him. Then, his seizure passing, he screamed: “O.K., you took the car number! Why don’t you pass it over? What you waiting for?”

Ben, who had turned green, stared at him. He stared a long time, his eyes becoming small, cold, and hard. Then he took out his little red book, copied a number on the back of a beer mat, and rolled it to Caspar. Before returning the book to his pocket he creased the page with his thumbnail. But this page was not captioned May 7.

It was captioned April 29.

C H A P T E R