Chapter 7
TRASK CROSSED THE CLUB AND WALKED up to Arnold's office. Irving was standing by the door. He had washed the butter from his face and changed his shirt. He didn't, however, look appreciably less greasy.
"You're late," he said. He said it first, and then he glanced at his cheap wrist watch.
Trask shrugged. He started to go in but Irving shook his head and stepped in front of the door.
"The boss is busy," he said. "Wait in the club. He said to have a drink on the house. He'll come out when he finishes what he's doing."
Trask smiled. Psychology, he thought. Arnold was trying to make him think that the package wasn't important. Well, that was nice because he was going to be hard put to keep that image up when Trask told him that there was no package. Trask went back into the club and took a table near the stage without waiting for the waiter to take him over.
A show was just starting. The waiter came over to the table. He looked at Trask's cheap and wrinkled suit.
"What would you like?" he asked.
Trask looked at his cheap and wrinkled white coat.
"Champagne," he said.
The waiter blinked.
"It's on Arnold."
"I see," the waiter said. He glanced at Irving. Irving did not know what Trask had ordered and he nodded. The waiter went away. Trask looked at the stage. Sonny Rise had just bounced out with a big phony smile and big floppy breasts. She wiggled and squirmed to the center of the stage. She looked out at the audience as the waiter came over to Trask's table with the champagne in a tin bucket of ice and Sonny Rise gave Trask a particularly big grin. She thought that he must be a rich man from out of town doing some slumming, and she never passed up a chance to supplement her income. Max Arnold was not known for his generosity with strippers.
The waiter opened the bottle. A few other customers looked surprised to see a sober man drinking champagne alone at a table. A bored hustler with an elderly man wondered if she could pull a switch. A bored wife with a drunk husband thought that perhaps, if her husband got a bit drunker....
Pop went the cork.
Flop went Sonny Rise's breasts.
She pointed them toward Trask and snapped her chest forward.
The drummer picked up a beat.
Trask took a sip. It was hideous champagne, but Trask had never fancied himself a connoiseur of champagne and he didn't mind. He had another sip.
Then Max Arnold came out of his office and came over to the table. He smiled at everyone along the way. Clara followed behind him and smiled at everyone too.
"Oh, champagne," she said.
"Champagne?" Max said.
Trask shrugged. He said, "Irving ordered it."
"Oh?" Max said. He glared at Irving, who was busy looking at Sonny Rise. "Well, it doesn't matter," Max said. He sat down and Clara was left standing. She was looking at Sonny and beginning to twitch.
"Let's have the package," Max said.
"There was no package."
Arnold smiled. He blinked. Trask looked at him and sipped some champagne.
"Is this a joke?" Max asked.
"Sure," Trask said. "It was very funny looking through the bushes. I laughed and laughed. I thought that maybe it hadn't arrived yet so I waited. That's why I'm a little late. But was it a test to see if I could follow instructions or was it something else?"
"You mean there really was no package?"
"You know that."
"No. There should have been."
"Sure," Trask said. He looked over Arnold's shoulder at the stage.
Sonny Rise was dancing in the middle of the stage. Her dance was a Tijuana two-step. She had on an Indian costume with a very short, fringed skirt and a sleeveless jacket that showed plenty of bare midriff and fastened in front with a leather thong. Her breasts bulged beneath the little top and swelled together forming deep cleavage in the open space between the two sides of the jacket. She wore a great many strings of beads around her neck and bangles on her wrists and ankles. She had a red sequin headband with a single gold-painted feather sticking up behind her head. Her feet were bare and her toenails painted with irridescent gold nail polish.
The band was playing a jazzed up arrangement of "One Little. Two Little, Three Little Indians" and Sonny was going through her routine, an Indian dance with lots of hopping to make her breasts bounce and lots of hip swinging. She let out a few blood-curdling whoops of the sort that Indians are supposed to make.
Then the drums started banging like war drums and Sonny started thumping the floor with her big bare feet and shaking her hips so that the little skirt swung up and showed the sequined panties underneath. She put her hands under her breasts and held them up while she bounced and made them jiggle in time to the music. She swung her head like an angry bull and her hair swished back and forth over her face.
She pulled the string that held the top together and it fell away exposing her large, brown-tipped breasts. Then the band started playing the blues with the trumpet player screeching on the high notes.
She undid the fastening on the little skirt and it dropped off. The red sequined panties fell as she slid the side zippers down simultaneously. She threw her hands up like a prize fighter who has been declared the winner and began rolling her hips in a bump and grind that made the stage quiver and threaten to collapse.
Clara watched, involuntarily squirming in much the same way as Sonny Rise. Half the customers watched the stage and the other half watched Clara.
"You wouldn't be lying, Trask?" Arnold said.
"Maybe you really did think there would be something in those bushes," Trask said. "Yeah, maybe so."
"But there was nothing?"
"That's what I said."
Arnold nodded. He looked down at the table. He didn't even notice how much Clara was squirming.
"All right, I'll believe you," he said.
"You'll have to," Trask said.
"I don't have to do anything," Arnold snapped.
Trask looked amused and sipped the bad champagne and thought that this man could not be such a big operator to get so bothered by a mere ten thousand dollars. It was a lot of money to Trask but that was no reason why he should let it get out of perspective. It shouldn't be so much to Arnold. Trask wondered why the money had been left, and by whom. It looked like blackmail, he thought. He intended to find out.
"But I will believe you," Arnold said.
"That girl isn't so hot," Clara said.
Sonny twirled her breasts and her hair, rotated her hips and bounced her buttocks. Her G-string glittered and winked in the light. It was nearing the end of her act and she was supposed to ride a wooden hobby horse painted to look like an Indian pony. She bounced over to the curtain, reached in behind and pulled out a horr on little wheels that was about shoulder height on her.
She patted the horse and pulled it around after her for a few bars of "Pony Boy," then started doing a little shaking and wiggling for the horse's benefit. Then she held out her breasts while the horse regarded her with painted coquetry. She held her breasts up to the horse's mouth, then gave it a big resounding slap and fastened on a burlap feedbag right over its eyes.
"Ha, ha," laughed the drunken husband.
"Am I still working for you then?" Trask asked.
"All right. Yeah. You can go .now. Stop around tomorrow afternoon."
Trask poured the last of the champagne and downed it. He hadn't offered any to Arnold or Clara. When got up to leave, Sonny Rise, the bored wife and the bored hustler all looked disappointed.
Arnold called Irving over. "Follow him," he said.
Irving nodded. He went out the side door and saw Trask passing the alley. He followed silently with one hand in his side pocket and his collar up.
"Come into the office, Moose," Arnold said.
Moose followed him to the office. Clara stayed where she was. She was wondering whether Max would be angry if she took her clothes off. The show was over and Sonny Rise went galloping off the stage on the wooden horse. There was sparse applause. The drunken husband clapped loudest and longest and his wife looked at the other men in the place and wished that her husband would have a few more drinks and pass out so that she could get picked up by someone else. Not that she was particularly promiscuous. She was just bored.
"You think maybe he kept the dough?" Moose asked.
"I don't think so. Nobody could be that cool about it. I think Trask played square. Her husband probably didn't leave the money."
"He said he would when I called."
"That's the trouble with you, Moose, you're too trusting," Max told him. "Anyway, Irving is following Trask. Now I want you to take the car and go out to the cabin. I'm going to give them one more chance to pay up and I want a note from the girl to help convince him."
Moose nodded. Max explained just what he wanted done and Moose thought it all out.
"Suppose this don't do no good?" he asked. Max was lighting a cigar. He puffed and squinted through the smoke.
"We really going to let her have it?"
"I don't know
"If you decide to, let me, hey?" "We'll see."
"We still treating her soft?"
"No. No, I don't think so. I think that the note may be more convincing if you rough her up a little first. I don't think she takes the situation seriously enough."
"I know what to do, boss."
"I'm sure you do," Arnold said.
Moose went out the side door and around to the garage. He got the big black sedan out. He was feeling quite happy with his assignment. He couldn't understand why they should have to have a hands-off policy with a nice-looking woman. He couldn't understand that at all. He was almost glad that the money had not been paid.
Meanwhile, Trask had made a turn after leaving the club, and when Irving rounded the corner a few seconds later the big man was not in sight. Irving frowned. He knew that Arnold would be mad if he bungled this. He began to hurry down the street, thinking that Trask must have turned at the next corner.
He passed a doorway when an arm reached out and grabbed his collar, dragging him back into the dark as though he were a rag doll. He was pulled into a hall and then slammed face first into the wall. His nose flattened and the old plaster cracked. He tried to get his gun out but another hand grabbed his wrist and then he was pulled back and rammed forward again. This time a piece of plaster came down. He felt the gun yanked out of his hand and he thought that he was going to be shot. But he was just rammed into the wall again. He couldn't even turn to see who it was that had him so helplessly. A knee stuck into his back and he was bent back from the waist. He was bent way back. He thought that his spine was going to snap. Two big hands were clamped on his neck and drew him far back. And then they released him and his head shot forward as though catapulted from a sling and bashed into the wall so hard that the wall dented. Irving slid down to the floor. He was unconscious.
Trask stepped on his head three or four times just to make sure that he was unconscious, and then he left. Irving didn't move for a long time.
Trask put the gun in his side pocket and doubled back toward The Golden Parrot. He went down the driveway beside the place and across to the garage. The garage was not locked. He went in arid got in the car. He got in the back seat and not a moment too soon because he had just closed the door when Moose came in. Trask dropped to the floor and waited. He had figured that one of the boys would be paying a call on someone. He kept very quiet on the floor and Moose drove out of town.
The only thing worse than the drinks served at The Golden Parrot was the food and the only thing worse than the food was the cook. The cook was hideous, uglier than Moose. He was big, too, but it was all fat. He was round as a barrel and had seven chins and not much hair. But he was a rather classic cook because he wore white aprons and a tall white chef's hat. He loved food and he loved his job. He hated his wife, who was almost as hideous as he was, but he was in love with Sonny Rise.
Now, Sonny was not particular. Whenever the cook had seven dollars she was willing. It was easier than having to take a fool home and the cook never lasted too long. Sonny had to pass the kitchen on the way from the stage to her dressing room. She walked by now with the wooden horse, wearing the beads and G-string and bracelets and the cook signaled to her.
Sonny shrugged and went In the kitchen.
Food was everywhere on uncovered plates and flies were all over the food. It reflected the cook's personality.
But seven dollars was seven dollars.
"Hi, Cook," she said.
She had never known his name.
"Hi, Sonny," he said. "I got seven dollars."
"You want to come down to the dressing room?"
"I like the kitchen better," he said. He didn't like to leave his food unattended but for flies.
"Whatever you like, just give me the money."
The cook gave her seven very crumpled dollar bills. She took them and then realized that she had no place to put them in her scant clothing. She pondered for a moment and then put them in the wooden horse's feedbag.
The cook took his apron off.
Sonny pulled her G-string off. She didn't bother about the beads and bangles.
The cook thought that Sonny was even better than the huge pot of stew that was boiling in the corner on the ancient gas stove. That was quite a compliment, because the cook was a man who truly loved his food. He especially loved stew, into which he dumped everything stewable and some things unstewable and most of what was left on the diner's plates when they came back to the kitchen. He saved on food bills in this manner and made a little extra money because Arnold let him do the shopping as well as the cooking. He made the extra money with which to buy Sonny's time this way, without having his hideous wife know that he was spending any. He made quite a bit, actually, because the food in The Golden Parrot was so bad that more than half of what was served invariably came back. Arnold may have known about this, but he paid his employees so little that he could hardly complain about it. And, besides, Arnold was a man who admired enterprise.
The cook closed the kitchen door and pulled the bolt. This wasn't really necessary because no one ever came into the kitchen anyway. The waiter left the plates by the door. This was the cook's territory.
Sonny didn't know what to do with the G-string. She looked around but there was no place without food where she could put it. She shrugged and tossed it away to land where it would.
It landed in the stew.
They didn't notice.
It floated for a moment, turning over like the hunks of meat and assorted matter. The pot looked like bubbling lava. Strange objects rose, turned, and sank. Grease jumped out and fell back. The pot hissed and steamed. Even the flies would not approach.
The G-string swam for a while and began to stew and then it sank slowly down into the depths of the pot.
The cook took his pants off.
"Want to get on the table?" he asked.
"Not on your life," Sonny said.
The cook looked disappointed. He would have liked that amidst the plates and platters. That would combine the best of both possible worlds, both of his first loves, food and Sonny Rise.
"If you want that in the kitchen, it will have to be standing up," she said.
"All right," he said sadly.
He started to advance toward her. She was still holding the wooden horse. It gave her an idea.
She took the feedbag and clapped it over the cook's head. He giggled. He liked the idea of wearing a feedbag. He wished that there really were food in it. instead of his seven dollars. One of the bills slid out along the back of his neck and floated along the room. The air was so dense and heavy in the kitchen that the bill did not fall until it had floated to the wall. Sonny didn't notice this, she was too anxious to get it over with. She had another strip to do in half an hour. She had to strip as long as there were customers. It was a hard and thankless job but it was the only job that she had. Sonny was well past her better days, and they had never been too good. Once she had imagined that she might get to Paris and star at The Moulin Rouge, but it had only been a dream, not really a hope. She had never had much hope. She survived. That was all that she could ask for, and that was hard enough. There was no room for hope in her life, beyond hoping that the cook would hurry nb or that she might go home with a customer when the club closed.
"Come here," she said.
She took the cook's hand and led him to the wall. She got her back against the wall and pulled him to her. The rough plaster tickled her buttocks. She stood with her legs set and held the cook close. He giggled. It was a strange sound, coming from his stomach and muffled within the feedbag. It blended with the sound of the bubbling stew.
Sonny brought him against her. She stood on tiptoes. Her calves bulged with the strain. She pushed herself forward and the cook's body dropped a little.
He placed his pudgy hands on the wall, palms open, on either side of her head. His hands were greasy and filthy from tasting handfuls of the stew to make sure that it was good. He pulled his head back. He crouched a little more and she raised a little higher so that she was supported.
Then, holding him steady, she slowly moved.
The cook grunted with pleasure.
Sonny grunted with effort.
She worked against him, pushing off the wall with her buttocks. It wasn't nearly so bad with the feedbag over his head, she thought. That had been a marvelous idea.
"Hurry," she said, as though it were passion that was demanding speed.
He hurried. He moved and grunted. Sonny looked over his shoulder vacantly and moved mechanically, the same way that she danced.
He moved faster. He was driving with real force now and she found that he was supporting her against the wall. She locked her feet behind him and held him around the shoulders. It was easier that way. She didn't have to work at all. It was even easier than riding the wooden Indian pony around the stage. And the cook was starting to snort like a pony now, or rather a horse at the plow. His fingers spread on the wall, he stood flatfooted.
Vaguely, she hoped that the plaster would not leave marks along her back. But it didn't much matter. "Come on," she urged. He responded. "Oh, I like that," she lied.
The cook put all his heart and soul to his efforts. He even, for the moment, felt no hunger for food although his efforts should have helped his appetite. He leaned back from the waist. Sonny panted and moaned with a bit of deception, and kept looking calmly over his shoulder. She was looking at the stove. The stew was starting to bubble up. It boiled and frothed at the rim of the big pot like the ocean lashing at a rocky coastline. It splattered grease into the air.
The cook moved.
The pot boiled.
Meat and vegetables and grease and G-string turned over and bubbled up. The fire splattered. The heat increased. The cook gurgled in the feedbag.
And the pot boiled over.
The cook collapsed against the wall, spent. His feedbag head bumped the wall sharply, but he was too spent to care.
Sonny squirmed out from between cook and wall.
"Boy, that was swell," he said.
Sonny took the feedbag off and took her money out. She didn't notice that one bill was missing. She smiled at the cook and picked up the wooden horse.
"I got to hurry now," she said.
"I'll see you next shopping day."
She managed a smile and left.
The cook ran over to the stove and turned the fire down and shook his head sadly when he saw that some of his stew had boiled out and had been wasted. But he was too satisfied and satiated to really worry.
He ate a big handful to rebuild his energy.
Sonny came out and did another show and looked at the customers sadly. She saw no one with whom to go home and was thankful that the cook had had seven dollars. A few customers had left and a few more had come in The bored wife and the drunken husband were still there. He had become too drunk to be able to walk out, and Max Arnold never cut a man off when he had had enough, as long as he paid.
And the wife was too bored to want to go home even though she saw no prospects in The Golden Parrot.
Presently, the husband said that he was hungry. The wife didn't care. The waiter came over to take the order and the man was so drunk that the waiter could not understand what it was that he wanted.
"Humphf," said the man.
"Stew?" asked the waiter.
"Aargh," said the husband.
"Two stews," said the waiter.
"Not stew," mumbled the man.
"And a bottle of wine," said the waiter.
The service, at least, was very rapid. The waiter brought two plates of stew within minutes. The bored wife poked at hers in a bored manner. The husband's head was starting to droop. It drooped into his stew and-he cradled the dish to him and went to sleep. He snored. Every time he snored a little stew sprayed from the plate.
The wife found the stew all but inedible.
But, through boredom, she kept poking about and trying a little piece of this and that. Some she managed to swallow and some she had to spit out. Some she spat out on her husband but he didn't know this. And eventually she found something that tasted a little better than the rest and she separated it and tried to identify it but failed. It was hard to cut but it tasted all right. It looked like a G-string, actually, but she knew that this was quite impossible.