Chapter 8
The job was a natural. Every Thursday night, starting at ten, between six and eight men rented a small suite at some first-class Broadway hotel and played table stakes poker. It was not a huge game but it was not a small game either. You needed three hundred dollars to sit down, and you generally didn't get into the game with less than double that.
There is no more obvious scene for a stickup than a gambling game. It is one place where you are sure to find money instead of credit because credit among players is strictly lousy. And there is no worry about the law, because people who play cards for high stakes do not go tattling to the cops. They settle their srores on their own or write off their losses as part of the game.
But a floating game is not that easy to hit for two other reasons. By definition, it is a game which is held in a different spot every time, and only players and insiders can find out where it will be. The fact that there was a big-money game a week ago in Room 604 of the Astor does nothing for a holdup artist, because if he goes to Room 604 of the Astor a week later he will probably find a pair of honeymooners or a cigar salesman from Win-netka, while the game itself is going on at Room 428 at the Warwick.
That's one rub. The other is just as heavy. A floating game, with decent money going in it, is protected a little more strongly than a meeting of the Parkersburg Virginia Junior League Sewing Circle. There will always be at least one gun at a game, and probably two or three. There will be one man who does nothing much but watch the door. If you don't know the secret word, you don't get past this man, and if you try to push yourself in you will wind up with nothing pushed in but your own face, which is an unhappy thought at best.
Now, on a Thursday night, Jan Lawler and Lee Fallon intended to hit a floating poker game for anywhere from two to four thousand dollars.
Well, they had a method.
First of all, Jan knew about the game. Her former partner had played in it regularly, and had lost in it regularly; a good confidence man is rarely a good gambler when the game is running straight and narrow, and this one always ran that way. Jan knew the game and some of the players, and they did not know her, and this was right away an edge.
Another part of the edge came from the fact that Jan knew where the game was going to be held. This was a very big edge all by itself, and they had it because of her former partner. A newsie on West 48th Street served as the contact man. If you went to him and asked the right question he gave you the name of the hotel, and if you called the hotel and asked for Mr. Brougham they would tell you that he was in room such-and-such. You couldn't get the Brougham name from the newsie, but it was a standing name. The idea was this-the newsie could not tip anyone past the hotel itself, and anyone who found this out from him had to find out the Mr. Brougham bit from one of the approved players or hangers-on.
But Jan knew both parts of the story. Her partner had never planned on knocking the game over; it was not his type of touch and besides, he was a type who would rather play in the game than rob it. But he had told her about the Mr. Brougham bit and he had pointed out the newsie and had mentioned the passwords, and now he was in Dannemora and she was on her own.
A girl had to look out for her own interests. Her own interests had been the confidence route, but that was temporarily shot in its pure form. Fate had teamed her with a stick-up artist and she could only carry the ball over the logical route.
At eight o'clock, Fallon went to a newsstand on the corner of Eighth Avenue and West 48th Street and asked for a Thursday copy of the Morning Telegraph. This might have been a logical request twelve hours earlier, but the Telegraph is a racing sheet and that morning's paper was not exactly a hot item by nightfall. The newsie nodded and looked up at him and asked him why he wanted the paper, and Fallon said he wanted to line the bottom of his birdcage. The newsie nodded again and said he didn't have a copy left, but that Joey Ruskin might.
This meant that the game was at the Ruskin, a hotel on Eighth Avenue and 43rd. It was a complex way to do things, straight out of a Herbert Philbrick hunk of crud, very cloak-and-dagger and fundamentally foolish. But it had its points. If anyone overheard the conversation, they would simply think Fallon was some kind of a nut and that the newsie was getting rid of him painlessly. And if some actual clown did happen to ask for an outdated Telegraph, he would be dispensed with easily, without being told that there was a card game floating at the Ruskin.
Half an hour later Fallon walked into the Ruskin and went up to the front desk. It was a huge old hotel, built in the days when the west side of New York's best side and Eighth Avenue was something more glorious than Tramp Row. The ceilings were high and the trim was elaborate in a sort of Edwardian way. Fallon asked the feeble old desk clerk for the number of Mr. Brougham's room, and the clerk said that there was a Mr. Claude Brougham registered in Room 1219. Fallon thanked him and turned on his heel and left the hotel.
It was all ready to roll now. In a drug store phone booth across the Avenue, Fallon smoked a cigarette and dropped a dime in the slot and called Jan at the hotel. He told her the hotel and the room and hung up. The drug store had a lunch counter. He went to it and had a chicken salad sandwich on toast and a Coke.
Jan got there just as he was draining the Coke. She slid onto the stool beside him and took a cigarette from his pack. He gave her a light right away. She was the sort of woman who more or less compelled a man to be a gentleman, and he was learning quickly. The class which she radiated, her occupation not withstanding couldn't help throwing off a few sparks. He was far more mannerly with her than he had ever been with anyone in his entire life.
A shame she had to be a dyke. Un-likely, too-she was not dressed for the part, not at all, and she was not built for the part, and she did not act the part. Maybe there was something to the fact that this girl, the only woman he had ever found himself respecting, was a Lesbian. Maybe it showed something about his standing attitude for women in general, and maybe, if you looked at it deeply enough, it said something about his need to rape them and maim them and kill them.
And stab their eyes out.
But he didn't think about this now. This was a job, a real job, with a lot of profit on the line and a lot of risk sitting there beside it. With liquor dealers he had never had reason to be afraid, but the men in the room across the street had guns and knew how to use them, and they would shoot him the second they knew what he was up to. Unless he shot them first.
Jan said: "We're almost set."
"Uh-huh."
"You've got it all memorized? You know just how it works?"
"Hell, we've been through it ten times a day. If I don't know it now I'll never know it."
"That's not what I asked you, whether or not you would ever know it. I asked if you did, now. Do you?"
"Yes, for hell's sake."
"I didn't mean to snap," she said.
"Forget it."
"Well," she said. She flicked ashes from her cigarette, set it in an ash tray, put her hand to her face. "How do I look?"
"You know the answer."
"Tell me anyway."
"All right. You look perfect."
"Enough so you want to love me?"
"No, I know better. Otherwise, yes."
She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "I won't say I'm calm," she said. "Before, in the con stuff, there was no real danger, except that you could be arrested. If a mark tipped you never had to worry about fireworks. And more: the end of the game was always sweet and neat with the mark holding a paper sack and not looking into it until we were in the next parish. The violence is more direct, I'm sure. But I'm also nervous."
"You've got a right to be," he said.
"Buy usboth another Coke." He did this. "I'm going up after this Coke, Lee. I'll expect you in an hour and a half. If anything turns foul, forget it, call it off. I'd rather get off clear than take too long a chance."
"Nothing's turning foul," he told her.
"I hope so," she said. She drank her Coke in four quick gulps and put the glass down and left. He didn't watch her go. He sipped his own Coke and finished the cigarette she had left behind. There were lipstick marks on its tip but this did not bother him.
It was her ball now and she had to carry it. Her job was to get in the room so that he would not be coming in cold, and so that the thing could go on schedule. Her part was tough-she had to go to the room, knock, and ask for a man named Irving. They would tell her that Irving wasn't there, since as far as she knew Irving did not exist. She would give them a story about having to meet Irving there, and he was supposed to be there, and could she please come in out of the rain because he was supposed to be there for her, and so on.
A man could not get away with it but a woman could, especially if she looked like Jan. They wouldn't be expecting any trouble from her, and they would have the desire to be nice to a pretty girl that is well nigh universal among males, gamblers unexcepted. And they would also have the feeling that maybe, if they let her come in, this Irving would fail to show up-and that they would wind up in the rack with her.
Right now it was up to her. He finished his Coke and waited while the time went by.
One hour later, he left the drug store and crossed the street and cased out the lobby. If there was a lookout downstairs-and there shouldn't be-then Fallon couldn't see him. A different man was on the desk. Fallon passed him quickly and went to the elevator and rode it to the fourteenth floor. The game was on the twelfth, which was one flight down, there being no thirteenth floor in most New York buildings. He got off at fourteen to keep the elevator operator from guessing where he was going, and then he walked down the hallway and smoked two cigarettes and killed a little time before walking down a flight of stairs to twelve.
He was nervous but he wasn't sweating. He knew now that Jan's part of it had gone off without a hitch. If there had been any trouble she would have come back to the drug store and that would have been the ball game. She hadn't, and this meant she was in the room, laying doggo. Now, if her timing was right, a bellhop would be on his way soon.
Fallon found Room 1219, stood a little way away from it. They did not have anybody posted in the hallway. This only stood to reason; card games are illegal, and while it is reasonably safe to hold one in a hotel, it is distinctly unsafe to call undue attention to the game, and a guard would do that if he stood around unnecessarily in the hall. Fallon waited, not even smoking now, just trying to look casual. The elevator stopped and a kid got off with a tray. Fallon stepped forward very easily and talked to the kid in a low and slow voice.
He said: "That for twelve-nineteen, kid?"
The boy said it was.
"Lemme take it in," he said. "Save you the trouble. What's the gaff?"
It came to eight dollars, a couple of sandwiches and some soda. Fallon gave the kid a ten and told him to keep the change. The kid got the message that he was supposed to get-that something was going on inside the room that he wasn't supposed to see. He got the message and he also got the tip and he went back into the hallway and rang for the elevator. Fallon waited until the elevator came and the kid got on it and the door closed behind him.
Then he walked down the hall and stowed the stupid tray on an empty chair. Jan called down for the food right on cue; they would be expecting a caller now, and he would be it. He eased the .38 from his pocket and fitted it with the silencer he had picked up for it, screwing the silencer firmly in place. He walked back to the door of 1219 and listened, gun in hand. There were card game noises, men's voices, ice cubes clinking in glasses, money rustling. Fallon koocked on the door and said: "Room Service."
Someone pulled a chair back. Someone said: "What is this, Room Service? Who had something sent up?"
"It's food and that. For Alice here, and I got a sandwich coming, and some more mix, I ordered some."
Someone else said: "Phil, get the door, huh?"
Footsteps came closer. Fallon curled his index finger round the gun's trigger. Phil, a swarthy man with very little hair on his head, opened the door partway. Fallon shot him in the face and pushed him out of the way and dosed the door behind him and the roomful of men went crazy.
One guy went for a gun. Jan kicked his hand hard, and Fallon shot him through the chest. Another man started to rush Fallon and caught a bullet in the throat. The rest of them put their hands in the air.
Fallon covered them. Jan scooped the money from the table, went through the pockets of the three dead men, then got the wallets of the men who were staring down the muzzle of Fallon's gun. One of them carried his big bills in a money belt but he had already mentioned this at the table and Jan knew about it. She made him take off the belt and got four crisp fifties from it.
There were five men left and only three bullets in his gun. But Jan gave him the gun that one of the dead men had been going for. He wrapped a pillow around it to kill the noise and he shot three of them in the head while Jan killed the other two with his gun. There was a radio going and the sounds did not carry.
He wiped off the dead man's gun and threw it aside, jammed his own gun back in his pocket. He took Jan's hand and they left the room and locked the door behind them. He walked up a flight and she walked down a flight. She caught the first elevator. He waited and caught it the second time around. He took a cab back to the King William and found her already there, in his room, with money spread out all over his bed and two drinks poured, Jack Daniels, straight, no water and no ice. He picked up a glass and touched her glass with it and they drank off the whiskey.
From the time he knocked on the door and said Room Service to the time they left the building, less than eight minutes had elapsed.
Slowly, softly, Jan said: "Forty-three hundred dollars."
He nodded. That was what it was. They had counted it twice, and he had not held out a dime and was sure she had not either. It was forty-three hundred dollars, which was higher than their top estimate. A bundle, neat and easy and beautiful.
"You were terrific," she said. "You never sweated and you never froze. I'll swear you worked like a clock, Lee. Like a mechanical man, like a machine."
"You were perfect yourself."
"It wasn't hard. I had to stand still for a little mauling, but that's part of the game. They didn't want to push it too far because they figured that Irving might show and I might make a fuss about it."
"Well, if I was Irving, then Irving made one hell of a fuss. I didn't figure on running out of bullets."
"I didn't know you were going to kill everybody."
"Kill one and you might as well kill them all. Did you ever use a gun before, Jan?"
"No."
"Ever kill anyone?"
"No, of course not."
"You got used to the idea pretty quick. Like ice, that cool. You just took the gun from me and shot them both in the face, like nothing at all."
"It's hard to miss when you're that close. And it made it nice and neat, all of them dead like that. And I took enough of their mauling, Lee, to make me happy enough to see their faces shot away. Oh, this went well, my partner. This went like a well-made clock or a well-made bomb. I'm in love with you, dear."
"What kind of love is that?"
"Friend-love, unless you turn into a woman, I'm afraid. We ought to celebrate. Forty-three yards. We ought to celebrate."
"How?"
She put a cigarette between her lips and let him fight it. "Oh, damn it," she said. "I have a way I like to celebrate, but it would mean splitting up for the evening, which is rather a shame, because this has been a togetherness venture and it would be nice to keep it that way. Of course I mean a physical celebration, and of course that means with another Lesbian, Lee."
He grinned at her. "Then we work the same way," he said. "I always need it after a job."
"Yes. Baldy."
"How do you get it? A girl you know?"
"No, I free-lance." She lowered her eyes and looked at the tip of her cigarette. "There are places. Bars, clubs. If I go there I'll get picked up, and some pretty little girl-dyke will take me back to her shabby little room, and we'll get our clothes off and play games."
He had an idea, a pretty idea. Carefully he said: "How do you feel about those pick-ups?"
"How do you mean?"
"It's not love or anything, is it?"
She laughed almost lewdly. "Love? It's something physical and that's all it is. They aren't even friends, Lee. Sometimes I actually hate them. No, I don't give them friendship rings or exchange mash notes with them. I love them and leave them and forget them, just like that."
"Because I was thinking-"
"What?"
"Well, that maybe we could stick together tonight after all"
"How?"
"Like you could pick up your girl," he said, "and have her, and then when you're done I'll have her. Like AC-DC, sort of. We switch off on the same little frail."
She was smiling at him. "Togetherness," she said.
"Something like that."
"Cute. But my little playmate won't go for the idea. Some of them think it's love, Lee, even if I don't. They wouldn't want to trade me off for somebody else just like that. And even if they would, it wouldn't be for a man. They wouldn't do it with a man for all the tea in Mexico. They don't go that way any more than I do."
"So?"
"So they wouldn't do it."
"Sure they would," he said. "I figure I'm stronger than they are, Jan."
"You mean-"
"You figure it."
He watched her while she figured it. He sucked on a cigarette and blew out a huge cloud of smoke. She was a good-looking broad, he thought, and with any luck she would pick up a good-looking dyke, and she would have the dyke and then it would be his turn, and he would force her and his rage and fury and hunger would explode with a vengeance, and-
"I see," she said.
"Yeah?"
"That's how you get your kicks. Taking it when they don't want to give it, and maybe messing people up a little. Am I close?"
"More than close."
She looked into his eyes. "Oh, yes," she said slowly. "You've done some bad things, haven't you?"
"It shows?"
"It never did before, or it did and I didn't see it, but now I see it. It's there, yes. Am I right?"
"I've killed a lot of people, Jan."
"Some newspaper stories. Was that you?"
"Part of the time."
She didn't say anything, just stood there digesting the information. He wondered what she though of him now. Her opinion was important; somehow it seemed to be the only important element now. Finally he asked her what she felt toward him.
"It's none of my business how another person gets thrills, Lee. Just so I'm not hurt."
"You never will be."
"How come? Why don't you want me that way? Because I'm a dyke?"
"No. The girl tonight'll be a dyke and I want her that way without I've seen her, even. And she won't look as good as you no matter how choice she is."
"Thank you. Why, then?"
"Because I love you." He said the words without even meaning to. They just came out by themselves. "What kind of love, Lee?"
"Friend-love," he said. "That's the only kind that works. The others are just part of a big con. You better get back to your room and change your clothes and I'll change, and we'll salt the money away for now, and then we'll go down to the Village and see what kind of stuff we can find. Let's move, partner."
The name of the bar was The Lollypop. The name, as Jan had explained on the way downtown, was a suitable one. Lollypop was another word for sucker, and they made up a good part of the clientele-because they paid a buck and a quarter for watered-down drinks, and because of what they did in private. Either way, it was applicable.
The Lollypop wasn't much. It was in a basement on Cornelia Street, a dimly lighted place with a low ceiling and smoky air. Fallon didn't follow her inside. It would have been a bad move, she explained. There were only girls in the place. No men. Once in awhile a truckdriver type would wander in and try to make trouble, but when that happened a couple of the tougher bull dykes generally beat the hell out of the guy and left him half-dead in an alley. If you were a man, it was a good move to stay outside of The Lollypop.
There was a phony beatnik coffee shop across the street and he waited there, picking a table from which he could keep an eye on the entrance of the Lesbian bar. A waitress with long hair and no breasts asked him what he would like. He figured coffee would be safe enough and ordered that.
"What kind of coffee?" she wanted to know.
"Black," he said.
"You want American coffee, then?"
"They don't grow it here," he said, helpfully. "Just Brazil, and also Colombia, which is supposed to be good but it's more expensive, the beans or something. Just old Brazil coffee is fine, kid."
"You just want a cup of plain coffee," she said .
"I think you better make it a glass of milk," he said. "Cow milk, from cows."
She brought him a glass of milk, a fairly good-sized glass, and she told him it cost forty cents. You could buy a quart for a quarter, he thought, and you could drink it in the privacy of your room instead of in a ratty trap like this place. But he wasn't going to argue with her over a gouge of forty cents for a glass of stupid milk, which she probably cut with water anyway, judging by the rest of the place. He had just earned half of forty-three hundred dollars in a few minutes and he would not think of pitching a witch for forty cents. He gave her a dollar and told her to keep the change, to show he was a good sport about it, and she gave him a dirty look and went away. He decided that she was a cruddy little pig.
His milk was a little sour so he didn't drink very much of it. He smoked a cigarette and watched the entrance to The Lollypop, waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
He didn't have the fun with him this time, or the knife either. He had only his hands but that would be enough or more than enough. He didn't have the gun and he didn't have the knife, but he was going to have the dyke as soon as Jan got through with her. And maybe Jan would stick around and watch. He wouldn't mind an audience, and he had the feeling she might like the show.
He had a feeling about Jan, all right. Birds of a feather were supposed to flock together, according to what they said, and he had an idea about Jan's feather and what kind of a bird she was. She had surprised him at the Hotel Ruskin that night. Not by being cool, not by doing her part well, because he had expected that much of her and would not have thrown in with her otherwise. But when she killed the two men with the gun-well, that had surprised him. She didn't figure then to be a killer. She said she had never killed before, and he believed her. But she had taken to killing like a duckling to a pond.
And he had a feeling.
Unless he was off his guess, she worked a little like him. Maybe she had never known it before. Maybe it had taken the shooting and the tension to bring it out, just as it had taken the rape of that girl Sally in Ohio to bring out the beast in Lee Fallon. But it was out now. Unless he was very wrong, she had damn well enjoyed shooting those two guys, had gotten a kick out of it, a kick that was at least partially physical.
Which could make them one hell of a team, all right.
Not too much point in worrying about it now, though. For the time being, all he had to do was handle the problem at hand, which with any luck would be a choice little girl from The Lollypop. He kept his eyes on the entrance, smoking and watching. People came in and people went out-all girls, though with some of them you had to look a second or third time to make sure. But Jan didn't show and he waited, anxious to get the ball rolling.
And then she came out, her hand holding the hand of another girl. And he gaped.
He hadn't figured on a raving beauty. He had hoped that she wouldn't pick an especially mannish dyke, but he didn't figure on something that would make his eyes bug out. And this one did.
She was a blonde, an ash blonde, and she had the face and figure to carry off the hair color. Her complexion was clear and clean and very light. She was quite tall and very slender, but her breasts, while small, were very much in evidence under the peasant blouse she wore. She didn't look any more like the typical Lesbian stereotype than Jan did. She looked like a Hollywood starlet who was being groomed for the big time, and if appearances were the deciding factor, then she would make it.
Fallon let out his breath. They were walking down Cornelia Street now and he did not want to lose them. He pushed his abandoned glass of souring milk to one side, got to his feet, slipped out the door. He paused on the stoop to light a cigarette, then began walking quickly after them, staying on the opposite side of the street and hanging back about half a block.
His eyes were glued to the ash blonde's behind. Her buttocks were sharply outlined against the fabric of the skin-tight slacks she wore. Round, choice. This one looked to be very good, he told himself. This was a good one.
They walked west one block, then turned and headed north for three blocks. Fallon didn't catch the name of the street but it didn't really matter. They would be going to the broad's apartment, and Jan would find some way to leave the door open for him, and he would slip inside while they were having a go at each other, and as soon as Jan was done it would be his turn. He was sweating now, sweating easily, and he finished his cigarette and looked at it and threw the butt into the gutter.
The blonde's building turned out to be a decaying brownstone. A sign in front proclaimed that the building would be torn down in two months. Fallon could see why. He closed in on them, slipped into the building a few seconds after they entered it. He listened to their footsteps on the stairway. They walked together up three flights of stairs, and every other board creaked on that ancient stairway.
A mess of a building, an old hulk waiting for the wrecker's hammer. The halls stank of garbage and old waste and the plaster was flaking from the walls. Fallon climbed three flights of stairs and stood in the corridor, waited another few seconds and listened for sounds from behind one of the four closed doors. That let him know which apartment belonged to the blonde.
He waited. They were in the front room now, so he had to wait for a while until they got on to bigger and better things. He had a hunch that it wouldn't take them long. The blonde might be in the mood for conversation, but he knew Jan, and she was in the mood for loving and nothing else but. He would give them five minutes; by then they would be sure to be in the rack, As it turned out, he didn't have to wait the five minutes. After half of that time had passed, he heard them hurrying from one room to another. Jan was making sexy sounds and the blonde was doing the same. He waited another few seconds and tried the door of the apartment.
It opened to his touch. Jan, clever as a bug, had stuck the flap of a paper matchbook over the latch before closing the door. It kept the little what'sit of the lock from slipping into place, so that the door looked locked but wasn't. Fallon stepped inside and closed the door after him, letting it lock this time. He took a breath and looked around the room.
The girl might be a neat dresser but she lived like a pig. There was crud all over the place; old slices of bread going moldy on the floor, unwashed dishes on tables, a general aura of filth and decay. The room had a smell to it, too, and for a moment he did not recognize it. Then it came to him. The room smelled of love.
And sounds of female passion were drifting in from the bedroom in the rear. Fallon took off his shoes; he didn't want to make any noise, not that they were likely to hear anyway. He padded noiselessly across the cluttered floor, trying not to step on any of the litter. He walked through a hallway toward the bedroom door. It was not quite closed. It was an inch open. He put his eyes to the opening and couldn't see anything. He could hear things, though, and what he could hear was getting to him.
He stepped back into the living room and took off all his clothes. That would give the little blonde dyke a real belt, he thought. She would finish loving Jan, and she would open her eyes and look wearily around, and she would see a naked man ready to leap on her. That ought to choke her up a little bit, he thought.
He walked back to the door, breathing heavily, already very much excited.
Noiselessly, he opened the door all the way.