Sinner Man Read online

  “These belong to you now. You didn’t get very much for your money, but they’re yours.” She spread her legs and stroked herself. “So is this. Aren’t you going to use it?”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Crowley.”

  “Dammit—”

  “Anything I can do to arouse you? Any new position you’d like to try? We can do it standing on our heads in a closet if you want, Mr. Crowley. Just say the word.”

  I slapped her. I hadn’t meant to hit her that hard and she rubbed the side of her face.

  “I’m sorry, Annie.”

  “Why? You’ve got the right.”

  “Annie…”

  She turned from me. “I gather you don’t want me in bed tonight. And that you’re not too taken with my company. I’d like to get dressed and go downstairs and feed a slot machine.”

  “There’s one here.”

  “I know. I’d like to get dressed and go downstairs and feed a slot machine. Is that all right with you?”

  “Whatever you want,” I said.

  “And may I have fifty dollars to gamble with, Mr. Crowley?”

  I gave her a hundred.

  That was the third night. She went downstairs and I stayed where I was and drank myself to sleep. That was the third night, and it was a bad one.

  Then there was the fourth night.

  It started with her having too much to drink. She had been doing a lot of drinking since we got off the plane but the fourth night was heavier than usual. She was lapping up gin and tonic as though somebody were passing the Volstead Act all over again. We were downstairs in the casino and I was having a good run with the dice. I made a lot of passes—six, I think, which is a long string—and then sevened out on an easy point. I walked away from the table and took a drink away from her.

  “Enough,” I said.

  “Never enough. You a cop?”

  “No. Let’s go upstairs, Annie.”

  “Want my drink.”

  I took her arm and she pouted at me. “Goddamned gangster. Steal a drink from a girl. You bum, Nat.”

  I got her into the elevator. She had a few more choice words on the way up but the kid who ran the elevator was used to it. He managed not to hear a thing. We left the elevator and I took her to our suite, opened a door and led her inside. “C’mon,” I said. “You’re going to bed.” She shook my hand away and took a step backward. Her blue eyes were glassy now. Her lipstick was mostly gone.

  “I just don’t get it,” she said.

  “Don’t get what?”

  “There has to be a line somewhere. You get to a point where you know about things, you understand things, you have this—this awareness. Of what’s going on. But then you wind up tolerating everything. You put up with things the squares couldn’t stomach. You play around with crooks just to prove how hip you are. And you sleep with a rotten mindless killer—”

  I slapped her, hard.

  She stepped back. Her hand went to her face where I had hit her. The eyes were wide now and the glassy look was gone. She was sober, or close to it.

  “You hit me again, Nat.”

  I didn’t answer that one.

  “I suppose I had it coming,” she said. “I’m supposed to be part of the luggage, right? Something decorative. Something to carry around, something to leave in the bedroom. Not something to talk to or to be decent to. I didn’t stay in my place, Nat, and I had it coming.”

  “Annie…”

  Her next words came in a low whisper. “I’ll make you sorry, Nat. I’m a person, goddamn it. I don’t have to get stepped on.”

  I reached for her. Instead of catching her I caught her hand with my face. Something snapped.

  “You damned—”

  “I’m a whore, Nat. Nothing more, nothing less. You made me your whore and that’s just what I am.”

  “Then strip!”

  Her eyes flashed. “You want your money’s worth?”

  “I want my money’s worth.”

  “Money for the airlines,” she said. “Money for food and money for the hotel. Money to gamble away. Money for clothes and money for gin and gin and gin. I hope you get your money’s worth, Nat.”

  She was wearing a black evening gown, simple and attractive. I watched her grip the gown at the top, in front, and rip. The dress was silk and it tore like children shrieking. It ripped all the way down. She stepped out of it and left it on the floor.

  There was a bra, which went next. Then a pair of sheer panties. And then she stood in front of me quite naked and quite ridiculous in high-heeled black shoes.

  She kicked off the shoes. She kicked hard and they sailed across the room, past me. One of them bounced off a wall. I looked at her again. She very deliberately drew the sheet and covers off the bed, then stretched out upon her back. Her eyes were still furious.

  “Come on,” she taunted. “You’re paying for it.”

  I got my clothes off and went to her.

  It was like that earlier time—all the anger, along with something that verged on hatred. I felt this wild need to possess, this strong urge to dominate. As for her, at first she played the cold machine, the automaton, the hired servant. Then something happened as I worked myself inside her. Something like war and again like murder. Not like love, not at all.

  She made the small noises that an animal might make in a steel trap. She screamed once, and once she spoke my name—Crowley’s name—with loathing.

  But that doesn’t mean she didn’t respond physically in spite of herself. Her head rolled from side to side. Her body arched in such a way that she became a target I couldn’t possibly miss. I became a sort of automatic revolver whose barrel kept sliding back and forth.

  Her breathing was a rasp. Her thighs clenched. For me the sensation was something like being in a cushioned vise. Anne was hoarse and I was hoarse—from calling out gutter names to one another. And at last there was the explosion: the trigger pulled, the chambers emptied.

  There were no words when it was over. I rolled away from her, exhausted, maybe a little afraid. My eyes closed by themselves. I listened to her ragged breathing. My back hurt, now, where she had scratched me with her nails. Before I had not even noticed the pain.

  I thought I heard her crying quietly, sobbing. And then I didn’t hear anything.

  I slept soundly and completely. I hardly dreamed at all.

  16

  It was Wednesday, around eight in the evening. We’d had a pair of big lobsters at a seafood joint and now we were back at the High Rise. I sat on the edge of the bed listening to the water running in the john. Anne was taking another shower. She took them on the average of three times a day. A clean-living girl.

  I picked up the telephone and gave Tony’s number to the kid on the switchboard. I listened some more to Annie’s shower while the switchboard put the call through. Then Tony’s phone rang twice and he answered it

  “Nat,” I said. “How’s the weather?”

  “Rain. Nothing but rain, you lucky bastard.”

  “You’re making me homesick.”

  “Having fun, Nat?”

  “You could call it that. At least it isn’t raining.”

  A pause. “Nothing wrong, is there?”

  “Just that it’s boring. Everybody shakes my hand and kisses my butt and points me toward the casino. They hurry to bring drinks to me. They step aside if I go near a crap table.”

  “That’s because they love you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I may be back tomorrow.”

  “Stay a week more,” he said. “Have fun while you can. This city is a dog.”

  “At least it’s our dog,” I said.

  Then there was some business talk. Nothing special—things were going smoothly. A troublesome detective had been shifted from Vice to Traffic Planning. Customs on the Peace Bridge had screwed up a minor heroin shipment. A fighter Tony liked was going for the light-heavy title and Tony had a few thou on him. I told him to get five hundred down for m
e, more to be sociable than anything else. That was that.

  I put the phone back. The john door opened and Annie came out in a towel.

  I said, “Get dressed.”

  “Where do we go now?”

  I shrugged. “Downstairs. Where else?”

  “Again?”

  “Again.”

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “Look, you go. I’ll stay here and do some reading. Maybe I’ll go to sleep, I’m a little tired.”

  “You slept all day, didn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh. But I’m so damned sick of the casino.”

  “It’s not like we’re there all the time. We took that ride last night.”

  “This whole stinking town is one big casino.”

  I told her she was right. I told her maybe we wouldn’t stay in Vegas much longer, that the luxury and the leisure were beginning to get to me. And she told me, meekly enough to be subtly sarcastic, that I was the boss and we would do whatever I wanted. I said that what I wanted, for the time being, was for her to get dressed.

  She got dressed.

  The casino was beginning to fill up with idiots. Divorcees by the score were trying to nullify the laws of mathematics at the slot machines, dropping coins and yanking levers until they looked every bit as robotic as the machines that were taking their money. A collegiate type was explaining to an amateur whore why his system was sure-fire at the roulette wheel. A slender middle-aged man with a walrus mustache dealt blackjack and never smiled. I went to a teller’s cage and traded money for chips. I halved the stack that the girl gave me, slipped one pile to Annie and kept the other deck for myself.

  She liked to play single numbers, one chip to a roll. The odds were thirty-seven to one and the house paid off at the rate of thirty-five to one. I stuck to switching back and forth between red and black. The percentage was the same—it’s always the same. That’s why any roulette system is as stupid as any other—but it generally took me longer to lose my money.

  For a girl who didn’t want to play, Anne took enough of an interest in the game. I couldn’t manage to get excited by the wheel.

  It got tougher when I realized somebody was watching me.

  * * *

  He had one of those faces that disappear in a two-man crowd. His hair was sandy and his eyebrows were sandy and his complexion was sandy. He was five-seven or five-eight, not too thin and not too fat, with the blandest features ever. He had an ordinary nose and an ordinary chin and an ordinary mouth. He was probably forty, give or take five years, and undoubtedly married. He had that defeated look.

  He was playing a slot machine and looking at me. I caught him at it once and he turned away. I went back to the roulette wheel but went on watching him out of the corner of my eye. Pretty soon he was looking at me again with a thoughtful expression on his unmemorable face.

  The hell of it was, he looked familiar—in a very vague sort of a way. He hardly had a face you placed the minute you saw it. But I had seen him somewhere before.

  And now he was watching me.

  A tail? No, that was ridiculous. Nobody would be nuts enough to tail me in the middle of the High Rise’s casino. Unless something was supposed to happen to me. Unless Tony had sent me to Vegas for a reason. To get hit, for example.

  But why in hell would he do that? And why would it take so long?

  I lit a cigarette and worried about these things. A waiter came by and I took a cold drink off his tray and worked on it. And then the sandy little man ended the confusion by coming over to me.

  He said, “Uh—pardon me…”

  I turned around and looked at him.

  “I’m sorry as the devil,” he said. “But there’s something so familiar about you. I could swear we’ve met.”

  An Eastern accent. It fitted the clothes, which looked like New York.

  “You must mean somebody else,” I said.

  “I don’t think so. I rarely if ever forget a face. You weren’t at Amherst, were you? I was class of thirty-nine.”

  “I never went there.”

  “Odd,” he said. “I never forget a face.”

  He was more than a little stoned. He had a glass of something pale in one hand and periodically took a sip from it. Anne had turned from the roulette wheel and was helping me keep an eye on the little man. I finished my drink and gave the glass to a waiter.

  “Perhaps the service,” the little man said. “Navy?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve done a little television work,” I said. “Maybe you saw me on television.”

  He thought it over.

  “It happens all the time,” I went on. “You’d be surprised. People think I’m a long-lost friend just from seeing me on a television show.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Although—”

  “That’s what it must be.”

  “I’ll remember,” he said. “I’ll remember, by God. I never forget a face.”

  He smiled, then apologized for having bothered me. He turned to walk away. He was carrying a pretty heavy load but he carried it neatly. He didn’t stagger at all, didn’t even wobble.

  I left Anne at the roulette wheel. I crossed the floor, found a guard who knew me by sight. He gave me a large hello.

  “The little guy,” I said, nodding. “See him?”

  “What about him?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” I said. I folded a bill and passed it to him. “I want his name, who he is, where he’s staying. Everything you can find out. Got it?”

  “Sure,” he said. “He some kind of a shill?”

  “No.”

  “A chiseler? We get all kinds here. Want me to keep him out from now on, Mr. Crowley?”

  “Just find out who he is,” I said. “And let me know.”

  He said sure a few more times and went away. I wandered back to the roulette wheel. While I was gone black had come up three times straight, and nobody had bothered to push my chips off. I had a healthy stack riding. I let it ride.

  “What was that all about, Nat?” Anne asked. She seemed just idly curious.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “An old friend?”

  “A nobody. A bug.”

  “So why pay attention to him?”

  Black came up. The croupier doubled my chips. I let them ride.

  “No reason,” I said. “To hell with him. You want another drink?”

  “Not just yet.”

  I dug out fresh cigarettes. She took one and I used the lighter, the one Tony had given me. I looked from the lighter to the watch, the one Lou Baron had given me.

  The wheel went around again. Red came up and the house raked in my chips.

  * * *

  We were in our room. It was later, a lot later, and I was just about ready to sack out for the night. There was a knock on the door, the discreet sort of knock that means the knocker is a hotel employee. I opened the door.

  It was the guard. He said, “That guy, Mr. Crowley.”

  “Go on.”

  “His name is Albert Durkinsen. He’s staying at the Marquis with his wife. He’s in on a pleasure trip, pays with traveler’s checks, tips a steady fifteen percent. He sounds as straight as a good cue.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Buyer for a department store. I didn’t get the name of the store.”

  I told him it didn’t matter. And I asked the question to which I already knew the answer. I asked where this Albert Durkinsen lived with his wife and his department store.

  “In Connecticut. In a town called—”

  “Never mind,” I interrupted, “I know the town.”

  * * *

  Durkinsen never forgot a face. He must have seen mine twice a day in the papers and he never forgot a face. I wondered where he would be when he sobered up. He’d either place the face or not remember running into me at all. Maybe he would run around screaming about a wife-murderer at large in the peaceful state of Nevada. Maybe…

  So we were on a plane leaving the following afternoon. We d
idn’t run. I got up in the morning, yawned, stretched, yawned again, then rolled over and nudged Annie. ‘This town stinks,” I said. “I’m bored stiff.”

  So was she.

  “Let’s leave it,” I said. “I’m sick of slot machines, I’m sick of roulette wheels, I’m sick of tourists. I’m even sick of hotels where they fall on their faces to serve you. It’s a pain in the neck.”

  “Breakfast first,” she said. “Then we’ll pack.”

  We had scotch and eggs for breakfast, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Then we packed. I called the desk and told them to reserve the nearest jet to Buffalo. I called Dan Gordon, went downstairs to see him and told him I had to run and that he ran the best damned hotel in the world. He laughed like a baboon, pounded my arm, and told me to give Tony his love. I told him I’d kiss Tony for him. Gordon had an even bigger laugh over that one. When we got downstairs I signed my tab. They had a Caddy waiting for us and we made our plane with time to spare.

  The flight back was a fast one, a good one. We took a cab in from the airport. I told Annie to pick up her stuff from her old apartment in the morning and let the cabby take us both to the Stennett.

  “You live here,” I said “With me.”

  “That’s the rule?”

  “Your landlord threw you out,” I said. “You might as well take advantage of my hospitality.”

  She didn’t argue. From the Stennett I called Tony. He sounded glad to hear from me.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “You really couldn’t stay away.”

  I said, “It was fun. But I figured you’d go nuts without me.”

  17

  October was a lazy month. The days got a little shorter. The trees dropped their leaves and the police dropped the lid on a few of our numbers locations on William Street. That was the closest October got to being hectic. We got word of the raid just four hours ahead of time and we had to work fast. The boys minding the stores scouted around for some neighborhood loafers who could use a hundred fast dollars for thirty days’ work. Then our boys went home and the loafers waited for the cops behind the counters. The police came on schedule and arrested the patsies—and the next day we had business as usual. The newspapers were happy, the townsfolk were assured they had a functioning police force and nobody got hurt.