Chapter 1
"COME ON, SARGE. YOU DON'T have to memorize that discharge, do you? It's OK," Eddie Chase said to the Marine at the gate. Twenty-two years old, he was anxious to get past the Marine to Brooklyn, USA. Freedomsville. Tall and lean in his Navy uniform, Eddie's eyes and hair were as black as an Indian's. His face was unmarked in spite of the fact that he had won the light-heavyweight title of the Fifth Fleet, "You waited four years for this, Swabbie. You can wait a few minutes more," the gyrene said. A big, mean-looking bastard, Eddie had seen him running prisoners down from the brig a few times.
"I can wait but think of all those beautiful dolls out there. Why make it rough on them?"
"You're sure in a hurry to get to those Eight Avenue tarts. Though maybe you're more interested in that Greenwich Village stuff?"
"Naw, I leave the fruit-picking to gyrenes," Eddie said, getting a little mad. He didn't mind a little ribbing, but this clown was just a little too nasty.
"You've got a fast lip, ain't you? I get a lot of punks like you up topside in the brig. You'd be surprised how quick they learn manners after I've had them a few days. You look like the kind that starts bawling. I get a kick out of that kind."
"That's the only way you can show what a hell of a rock you are, isn't it? Pushing around a bunch of guys who can't hit back?"
"I didn't get this fighting guys who couldn't hit back," the Marine said, jerking a thumb at the ribbons on his chest.
"Korea was ten years ago. What you done recently."
"How'd you like to try me?"
"You must think I'm as dumb as you. When I get out of this damn monkey suit I'll take you on, anytime. Now give me those papers or I'll get the O.D."
"OK, but let me tell you something. You ain't going to make it, Outside. I can tell. You're going to come running back to get on the old government titty after you've knocked around trying to get a damn civilian job. And when you do, Chase, Edward, Quartermaster third, sooner or later you're going to foul up and I'm going to get ahold of you. You think of that, swabbie," the gyrene said, handing him the papers.
"What the hell you two doing there? Clear that passage way, this isn't a bar room," the O.D., a lieutenant j.g., yelled from his desk.
"Just giving this civilian directions, Sir. He wants to know how to get to Greenwich Village," the Marine answered.
"Let him find out on his own, Outside," the j.g. called. "Aye, aye, sir. You heard the lieutenant. Take off." With only his eyes showing his anger, Eddie tossed a snappy salute at the flag, hoisted the sea-bag to his shoulder, walked out and down the stairs. Damned Regular! he thought. They're all like that, hating anybody who has enough guts to get out, making "civilian" sound like a dirty word. The hell with them!
Then he was on the bottom of the steps. He forgot about the Marine, put the sea-bag on the ground and said aloud, "Civilian, a God-damn Civilian!" He looked up across the street to the Navy Yard to where he could make out the towering buildings of Manhattan, huge and bright in the clear April sun. Civilian!
It meant no more siring some yo-yo just out of college who figured a gold stripe on his sleeve put him right up there with God Almighty. It meant not having to eat what somebody else decided he should eat, or sleeping where somebody else said he should, or living and working where someone else told him to, and the brig waiting if he ever even broke wind at the wrong time.
It meant money, real money, being able to tell any mother's son in the world to go to hell, moving anywhere you damn well felt like. It meant being free for the first time in four long, lousy years. Hell, he was free, really, for the first time in his life. Because he was just a high-school kid with the draft hanging over his head when he signed up four years before. Civilian meant poon tang.
Not sailor poon, not some tired, sleazy whore you picked up in a crummy bar, or some nervous, giggling, gum-chewing high-school kid who went with sailors because she didn't know better. But the real stuff, high breasted and dressed with class, who went wriggling her butt past you as if you weren't there.
Oh, those lovely, sweet-bodied babes, unapproachable as the moon who wouldn't even spit on you if you wore a uniform and who looked for a cop if you tried picking them up! Damn them! They'd look at him now, when he got some good civvies. Because he was the best kind of civilian there is.
The kind with money.
There was over a thousand bucks in his money belt, thanks to the crap game he'd gotten into two nights before along with his buddy, Chuck Huzak, whom he'd met in the BecSta. Church had steered him to the game and he was hot as hell. When Old Chuck got some liberty, he was going to treat him to a real blast. The government had given him a train ticket back to Stub-bin's Corner up in Vermont, but Eddie couldn't see going home. Not for awhile, not with a thousand bucks on him.
Feeling the need to express his happiness, Eddie Chase, rich, young, healthy civilian, took off his blue flat hat and threw it high over the street where it ended up tumbling against the wall that surrounded the
Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Damn it, he thought, I might as well get rid of the rest of the fool outfit. He had the neckerchief off and was rolling it into a ball when his old buddy, the marine at the gate, came running down the steps.
"I was hoping you'd try and pull something like this, swabbie. I can see you need some instruction on wearing that uniform," the gyrene said, grinning. "Up yours, Mac. I'm a civilian now."
"Not while you're wearing that uniform, you ain't. Get that hat and haul your tail back inside."
"Anything you say, sargie," Eddie said, starting a straight right at his chin. The Marine brought up his hand to protect himself, leaving himself wide open for a jolting left-hook that caught him high on the cheek and knocked him back against a metal waste-paper basket. Eddie followed with a flurry of punches and both the Marine and the basket went down.
He was thinking of using his feet when the j.g. and a couple of other gyrenes came yelling down the steps. He was in luck, though; just then a taxi came down the street. Jumping in front of it, Eddie make it stop.
"Haul tail, cabbie," Eddie yelled, throwing his sea-bag into the back seat.
"I don't know, sailor. I don't want to get into any trouble," the cabbie protested.
"I ain't no sailor, I'm a civilian. Those guys are after me on their own. Move! It's worth ten to me!"
"You're on!" the driver said, meshing gears just as the j.g. came dashing down the last steps.
Thumbing his nose at the puffing officer, Eddie held this somewhat illegal salute while the cab quickly pulled away. Laughing, he fell back against the seat. That was the way he wanted to leave the Navy! His only regret was that he couldn't have clipped that damn officer. Well, maybe some other time.
"You're sure this is OK?" the cab-driver said, looking back nervously at Eddie.
"Hell, you want to see my discharge?"
"Well, OK. Where you heading, Sailor?"
"Say, didn't you hear me? I'm no sailor, I'm a civilian and don't you forget it."
"Sorry, it's that uniform, you know."
"Yeah, you're right. Tell you what, take me to a clothing store in Manhattan, some place on Fifth Avenue. I have to get some good duds."
Taking a stogie out of his inside pocket, Eddie fired up. He had started smoking cigars because he figured they made him look older and more salty, but now he really preferred them.
"Just out, eh?" The cabbie said as they went over Manhattan Bridge. "I was in myself, you know. Wish I'd stayed in, I'd be getting out in a couple of years. Cripes, that'd be something, wouldn't it? Retiring at thirty-eight."
"Yeah? You wouldn't think so if you were in. Why throw away your whole life just for a lousy pension?" Eddie demanded, irritated to hear anyone defend the Navy.
"Wait'll you've been out hunting work awhile before you say anything. Things are pretty tough now."
"Not for me. Listen, Cabbie, I'm going to make it, see. I'm going to make it big all the way, and I won't end up pushing no cab either," Eddie answered, angry at the cab-driver's lack of ambition. Hell, all you had to do was read any newspaper, look at the advertisements or watch the television program and you could see that everybody in the country was rolling in loot. Of course, guys like the cab-driver didn't have enough guts to reach out for it.
The driver lapsed into sullen silence as he drove along Fifth. Stopping at a men's clothing store at Thirty-fifth, he let Eddie out. Eddie gave him fifteen, hoisted his sea-bag to his shoulder and stood, bareheaded, in front of the store window.
The Ivy-League clothing depressed Eddie. It seemed to be as much a uniform as the one he was wearing now. There was a place a few doors away that had what he wanted and he went in. He came out an hour later wearing a pair of gray slacks, a flashy California style sport jacket and a sport shirt. The two suits he bought wouldn't be ready for a couple of days.
Taking a cab to a Railroad Express office, he shipped the sea-bag home. Then, bothered in spite of himself by the cab-driver's lack of enthusiasm over civilian life, he found a post office and sent home three hundred dollars in money orders. Relieved, he walked up Fifth towards Times Square, carrying his shaving gear and skivvies in a brown paper bag, feeling the five hundred left in his wallet aching to be spent.
Marveling at the abundance of first-class quail to be seen, Eddie took his time. There were all kinds of women striding along the glistening pavement: tall, short, slender and bulging like a bag filled with cantaloupes. Some were apparently models: long, slim, made-up creatures with arrogant, aloof eyes, hurrying quickly towards their next appointment, heels clicking like castanets and hard little buttocks twitching from side to side with each step.
Even the working girls, the secretaries, receptionists, clerks and typists were eye-catching, though they too had the city's look of don't-come-close-to-me in their eyes. Occasionally women of breath-taking beauty would pass by like beings of another planet in simple, clear-cut outfits that shrieked money. In any other city in the country all traffic would halt as they came by, smooth thighs shielding their precious treasures, breasts boldly jutting out against expensive dresses while their eyes, expressionless as a statue's, surveyed the shop windows.
Poon tang! Eddie was in the Poon capital of the world.
Lost in a sea of swirling skirts, adrift in a river of sleekly and expensively-groomed female flesh, he walked further up-town than he meant, ending at Sherman Plaza. By this time it was necessary for him to sit on one of the park benches as his admiration of the passing parade had become conspicuous.
Breaking out a Bering Plaza, he lit the fine cigar and watched a photographer take pictures of a high-cheek-boned brunette model. What a street! Why, he'd seen the actor John London standing on the corner at Fifty-seventh and he was the only one who bothered looking at him. But the broads, that was the amazing thing. He thought he had seen good-looking stuff in Times Square the few times he'd had liberty in New York. But these babes made them look sick.
This was the Street, that was for sure. If you made it here, you were on the top. It was like another world, closed to outsiders. But Eddie would crack it, he would make them notice him. At least, he would make one of those high-breasted, sweet-smelling women know who and what Eddie Chase was!
What were those wild-looking women? Rich bitches? Show people? Hundred dollar call girls? Watching one walk by, Eddie imagined the sidewalk shimmering with heated lust where she walked over it. Her hair was platinum blonde and her hips undulated as if she were forcing herself slowly against a breast-high current.
Rising, he started walking after her, but she flagged down a cab and got into it before he could catch up to her. He thought of going back to the safety of the bench but decided what the hell, why be ashamed of it?
So, itchy as hell, (he hadn't had a girl for nearly two weeks) Eddie walked down Fifth Avenue, saluting the passing beauties with his aching desire but still un-noticed by any of them. Although a queer did wink at him at Fifty-second.
That killed it and he turned west to the area he was most familiar with, Times Square. It was dingy and cheap-looking after Fifth, but he had to find a place to sleep where they wouldn't be too nosy about bringing in women.
The desk clerk at the Hotel Cross looked at him and his brown paper bag without enthusiasm, unbent enough to give him a room with bath for a week. It wasn't a great room but it did have a double bed, and that was what Eddie wanted. Slipping the bellboy a buck, he threw the bag on the bed and went downstairs.
Outside he hesitated, then headed for Trader Sorn's. He didn't want to Spend his first day as a civilian in a sailor's bar but after that stroll up Fifth, he needed a woman and fast. Besides, some of the hustlers there weren't too bad.
Trader Sorn's was a small, dimly-lit bar in the west Forties. Eddie stepped down and went through the door, stopping to let his eyes get used to the light. At four o'clock of a Thursday afternoon the place was empty, except for two women who turned to watch as he joined them at the bar.
One was a bleached blonde in her thirties, somewhat battered but still serviceable and fairly firmed up. The other was a brunette, Italian-looking and heavier, about the same age but dressed better. They sat looking at him like two cows waiting in the judges stand while he made his choice.
Deciding on the brunette, Eddie sat next to her. She had a little-not much, but a little-of the quality of the women he'd been watching on Fifth Avenue. The blonde turned back to her drink and newspaper. "What are you drinking?" Eddie asked. "Martini," she answered, hoping that would show him that she was a high class whore and not one of those ten-dollar tricks that gulped down straight booze. Sailor on leave, she decided, looking at his close-cut hair. Young, too. She regretted that, preferring older men. These young bucks expected too damn much for their money.
"Give these two ladies a drink and me a Jack Daniel's on the rocks," Eddie told the bartender, laying a ten on the bar.
"Sure thing, Sailor," Sornstein, who sometimes worked behind the bar, answered. He remembered Eddie vaguely from a few weeks before.
"No more, Buddy. Got out today," Eddie answered, gratified that someone in the city knew him.
"Yeah? Hell, that calls for a drink on the house," Sornstein said, thinking of the mustering-out pay Eddie must be carrying. If he could get the kid started, most of it could end up in the till.
"Hey, that's damn good of you. Let me pay for the ladies, though." Sure.
They all drank to his new status. Even though he knew it didn't mean anything, Eddie liked the idea.
It made him seem part of the city.
"So you just got out, huh? How long you been in?" the brunette said, taking little ladylike sips of her drink.
"Four long years. By the way, my name is Eddie."
"Hello, Eddie. I'm Maria. Gee, four years. That's a long time. What do you figure on doing now?"
"I figure on raising a little hell for awhile before I head for home. I don't know what I'll do after that."
"Well, you came to the right place to celebrate. You got to say that about the town."
"How'd you like to help me celebrate?"
"I guess I wouldn't mind."
"How much?"
"Twenty-five. Make it forty for the whole night."
Eddie knew she wasn't worth the price but still. . . . Hell, he was going to celebrate, wasn't he? like the guys said, let it all hang out. Besides, he hated bargaining. It would sound like he was cheap or something if he did.
"OK, Maria. That's higher than I thought but you look like you're worth it," he leered, putting his hand on her plump knee.
"I sure am, Eddie. Don't worry, you'll get your money's worth," she smiled. She hadn't gotten forty from an all-nighter in a couple of years now, not for a single. Coming out with forty was smart, it didn't sound nowhere as high as fifty. If she could get him pretty well soused, he wouldn't be good for more than one trick and she would be able to get a good night's rest for Friday, her busy night.
"Say, let's take off now. I got me a hotel room already."
"We better go to a place I know, Eddie. There won't be any trouble there."
"Don't worry about this place, nobody'll bother us. Come on, drink up."
"What's your rush? You're not a sailor anymore, remember? You got all night. After all, Sorn did buy you a drink," she said, disappointed at his refusal to go to the hotel where she got a kick-back.
"Yeah, OK. Another drink'll be all right. Hell, let's have another round for everybody."
When Sornstein brought back the change, he shortchanged him a dollar. Eddie didn't notice. Catching Maria's wink, the bar-owner poured a small beer for himself and leaned on the bar opposite the ex-sailor, determined not to let this pigeon escape.
"Guess you've knocked around a lot in the last couple of years, Eddie."
Naturally, Eddie had to give a run-down of the ports he'd hit and the ships he'd served on. Naturally, they had to have another drink before he finished. Naturally, in such pleasant, friendly company where everybody listened with relish to the various amusing and interesting things that had happened to him in his young life, Eddie felt himself obligated to show that was a generous as well as a courageous and intelligent young man. Naturally.
When he finally broke free of the bar, pulling Maria by one arm, it was several hours later. He was fairly well loaded and he realized, vaguely, that he had spent a little more money than he'd planned. Nearly fifty dollars more, he found out the next morning.
Now, with his arm around Maria's hefty waist, he walked on unsteady feet towards his hotel. Maria sure could hold her liquor. He felt a little ashamed of himself, being out-drunk by a woman. But after all, while coca-cola mixed with water might look something like a very poorly made Martini, it's nowhere near as alcoholic as the real thing.
Maria, good old Maria, was very eager to take him to the hotel. The cash register she used as a brain was working rapidly as she steered her well-polluted customer towards the eventual bed. The sap was carrying over four long ones! It had been some time since she'd had the opportunity to make a good score. It shouldn't be too hard, she thought. All she'd have to do would be to have him buy a pint; after a few more shots of ninety proof she could take his eye-balls away from him, let alone his wallet.
Alas, the best-laid plans of mice and chippies . . .
Though pretty well stoned, Eddie had learned a little in the four years he'd spent in the Navy. As they entered the hotel he staggered to the desk and asked for an envelope. When the clerk disdainfully gave him one, he carefully placed four hundred dollar bills in it, sealed it, signed his name on the front and told the clerk to put it into the safe.
"Very well, sir, but about the lady . . . " the clerk began, pointing to Maria's crest-fallen face.
Silencing the clerk's prepared statement about female guests in rooms with a wrinkled ten (what the hell, it was only paper) Eddie went leering towards Maria. She, good-hearted tart that she was, managed a sickly smile and suggested that they bring up a bottle. This would surely make him pass out, thus giving her a free night, anyway.
Readily assenting, he gave her ten and told her to bring it up to the room, feeling pretty certain she'd show up again. On the way up in the elevator he burst into a rendition of Barnacle Bill. The Negro who operated the elevator looked pained, so Eddie slipped him a five. The operator smiled so widely at this that Eddie let loose with a stirring effort at Old Black Joe in gratitude.
Finding his room with only a slight amount of trouble he entered, switched on the light and sat on the bed, a rich civilian in New York waiting to get laid. Just how rich, he wondered. Emptying his wallet on the bed, he counted the scattered bills three times and arrived at three different totals, ranging from thirty-nine to forty-eight dollars. (The correct total was forty-three.)
"The hell with it," he muttered, sweeping the money to the floor.
Why think of crass money at a time like this? Soon Maria would be coming, Maria of the swollen lips, of the heavy-hanging, double handful breasts and easy-spreading thighs. Good old Maria! He'd better get ready so they wouldn't waste any time.
When Maria pushed open the door, she had hopes Eddie would be passed out and she would get a free night. These hopes were dashed when she saw him standing next to the bed on unsteady feet. Maybe his legs weren't firm, but, he was naked and she could see that she would have to earn her money.
From all appearances, it might be a very long night indeed.
"Hi, Eddie. Looks like you're about ready. Hey, ready Eddie, that's what I'll call you."
"Come here, Maria. Lemme get all those clothes off you and see what those big breasts look like."
"The booze cost me ten. Feel like a drink first?"
"Hell, does it look like it's liquor I want? Old Readyeddie here's hunting for a place to roost."
"OK, OK," Maria said, putting the bottle on the nightstand.
Pulling her to him, he breathed in the aroma of mingled sweat, grime and cheap perfume that rose from her shoulder. Her breasts were like big sponges and her buttocks like soft, half-filled balloons when he grabbed them through her dress. He surprised her by kissing her on the lips, his tongue running along the ridge where teeth met gums. Locked in his embrace, she ran her hands around his smooth, hard body while he pressed against her hips with growing urgency.
"Ready, Honey?" she asked.
"That's a stupid question if I've ever heard one."
"How would you like it? Eskimo style? French Style? Greek style? Around the Great Horn? Seventy?"
"Well, I dunno, I thought we'd just play, you know?"
"OK, Eddie. I have to go to the John first."
"Naw, I got one."
"OK. Here, let me do it," she said, averting her face from his whiskey-laden breath and pulling down the zipper that freed her dark colored dress. It came off her like the outer husk of an ear of corn, leaving her in well-stuffed panties, bra and stockings. Kicking off her shoes, she carefully shook the wrinkles out of her working dress and walked to the closet with it.
Flesh hung heavy on her big-boned frame at thighs, hips, belly and breasts, but she carried it well. Walking behind her, he ran his hand down her broad back, stopping at the catch to her black bra and releasing it. The two large breasts immediately dropped forward as the bra fell to the carpet at her feet.
The brown-nubbed masses of pasty-white flesh were warm and soft in his kneading fingers as he held them from behind her back and nibbled at her pliant neck where it was joined to her shoulders. Her skin was moist and salty in his mouth. Wriggling her hips against his belly, she giggled at his tickling lips.
Hooking her thumbs into the band of her panties, she slid them down to her knees and clamped her large buttocks to his straining lust like a vise made of sponge-rubber. Sweat broke out over his hot skin as they moved about the center of the room in awkward little circles.
Stepping back, he turned her around. His fingers thrust between the swollen thighs to her rough-haired belly, he bent his head to take her right breast between his teeth. Breathing harder, she pulled his head closer against her.
"Now, Eddie? Now?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Walking her backwards to the bed, he lowered her on it and, running his hands along her warm upper thighs, rolled the black stockings down and off her heavy legs. She looked up at him with dark, troubled eyes, arms limp at her sides, nipples pointing to different sides of the room.
God, he's a good looking man, she thought.
Until then, she hadn't really looked at him. He was a mark, a customer and that was all. No chippie with any sense gets emotionally involved in what she's doing. Maria had always made it a point to imagine she was a hundred miles away someplace, while whoever was with her was heaving and straining. You simply let your body go through the motions while you made suitable comments; at the right moment you moved a certain bunch of muscles, and it was over.
That's why she always went with older men if she could. They knew what they were buying and knew that was all they were getting. But the young bucks insisted on straining for something else, trying to dominate you and make you really mean it.
No, a smart girl stayed with guys in their mid-thirties and older, guys past the stage of believing in crap like love and what a terrific thing sex was. Guys who knew the score and didn't make a big deal out of it.
Not guys like this crazy young sap Eddie with his beautiful body and movie-star looks, standing over her like a black-maned stallion ready to mount, his black eyes grinning and his . . .
The weight of him pressed her down, his hard-muscled body rubbing against her and awakening something she thought she had lost years ago. Her body was searching for him eagerly, finding him. There, he was rampaging like a bull breaking through a fence, and she was clutching him to her, moaning and talking and meaning it.
Pressing his way into her moist warm woman's body, the sweaty smell of her thick in his nostrils, her soft, white body heaving and alive beneath him, he held her tight while something great and huge grew in his belly.
"Oh, God, Eddie! Oh, oh!"
She was meeting and matching his ardent desire; and he wasn't taking a Times Square hustler in a cheap hotel, he was reaching for all women, all the women he had seen that day, secure and inviolate in their unknowing ignorance of him. He was making them know him, making them all know that Eddie Chase was alive and loose in the world, ready to open their sealed thighs. "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!"
The bed was bouncing like a trampoline, the sheets damp from the rank sweat of their coupling bodies, she squirmed under him like a frantically twisting gaffed fish while his lungs worked like bellows, making the wind come blasting out of his mouth in choking gasps.
"Oh, oh, oh," she moaned as her body ran away from her. Shuddering, she let herself go and felt him strain against her, muscles rigid and shaking. Then she began to relax.
But he didn't stop.
With redoubled force, he went at her like a berserk pile-driver, charging her with new life. Her torrid thighs opened wide, she hit his calves with her heels, urging him on.
"More, more," she moaned.
Her nails digging into his back, cradled in her working thighs, with demoniac strength he rammed into her yielding softness, sending her to a pinnacle of sensation she'd never known before, farther and farther until it broke and again she quivered lax and empty beneath him.
Soft, bubbling sounds broke through her lips as he continued his ferocious onslaught. Making her respond again to his unslaked lust, this time he carried her with him. Together they met in one last rigid embrace, every muscle knotted and hard then suddenly loosening, slack and finished.
No sound in the room except their deep breathing, he lay on his side, covering her sloping breasts with his arm, head resting on her chest just beneath her up-turned chin. Through half-closed eyes she looked up at the ceiling, a trickle of salvia running down to her chin from the corner of her smeared lips.
Raising himself, he looked down at her common, vulgar face, blotched with ruined make-up.
A whore, a Times Square hustler. That's all she was and that's all he'd had. Still he had shown her, part of the city, who and what he was.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Eddie Chase. I'm Eddie Chase, you hear? I'm the man who's going to take this town."
She didn't argue the point with him.
Getting up, he found the bottle and poured himself a stiff jolt. Though he could feel the whiskey he had drunk, his mind was cold sober. Hitching herself to the side of the bed she sat there, breasts hanging towards her bulging belly and reached for the bottle. Handing it to her, he watched her take a swallow.
"You're one hell of a man, Eddie Chase. I've never met one like you before," she said when she finished the drink.
"Yeah, I know."
"No, I mean it. You're something, I ain't kidding."
"Neither am I.'
Sitting on the chair, he sipped his drink and watched her, his black eyes without expression. "That was really something, Eddie. That was real boss," she said, smiling nervously at him. He didn't return the smile.
"Not bad, considering."
"Yeah, with all that booze in you, Jeez, most guys couldn't have done a thing."
"I didn't mean that. I meant, considering what I had to work with tonight."
"You didn't have to say that, Eddie," she said after a little pause.
"No, I didn't."
"Well, I guess I'll go to the John now," she said in a hurt voice.
"Take this with you," he said, pointing. "What? Oh, that. OK, Eddie."
He sat, working on his drink and listened to her run water in the small bathroom. When she came out, she walked, heavy-legged, to the radio and turned it on. It was tuned to WPAT and an instrumental arrangement of Kern's All the Things You Are was playing.
"If that was the only one you had, don't worry. I got myself fixed up."
"You didn't have to bother, I've had it for the night. I figure on hitting the sack now."
"Well, maybe I'd better leave it on just in case you change your mind later."
"There ain't going to be any later. I got what I want. You can take off now."
"But you said it was going to be an all-nighter."
"I changed my mind. Wouldn't worry about the money, you can have anything you can pick up off the floor."
She looked at him bitterly for a second then, getting on her hands and knees, breasts and belly pulled down to the carpet by gravity, she started gathering up the scattered bills.
"There's only forty-two dollars here. You said forty for the trick and I bought the booze. You owe me five-"
"Sue me, damn it. Take your dough, get dressed and fuck out of here. You're doing damn good and you know it."
"But, I-"
Irritated, he hit her with his open hand, just hard enough to let her know he wasn't kidding. Maria was used to getting hit; or, to put it better, she wasn't surprised when one of her customers belted her. Generally, though, it was some jerk barely able to make it who tried the rough stuff. What the hell was he mad about, she had given him a good ride for his money, hadn't she? Sullenly, she put the handful of money on the table and dressed.
"Take it easy, Maria," he said, not looking at her when she left, sorry about slapping her.
"Yeah. Goodby, Eddie."
Going to the bed, he pulled off the sheets and lay down, watching the walls tilt like the bulkheads of a sea-borne DD. He lapsed into a troubled, restless sleep that lasted until dingy, greyish city light came through the window the next morning.
The hangover wasn't too bad. He had a big headache and his stomach didn't feel too good, but breakfast and some Bromo should be able to fix that up. It was the thought of his dwindling bank-roll that really bothered him.
Jeez, he had thrown away about a full hundred just to get drunk and nail a twenty-buck-tops hustler. That nonsense would have to stop; otherwise he'd be broke in a week. It was one thing to spend cash like that when he was in the Navy, but he didn't have Uncle Sam to feed him now. Of course he still was loaded, but he'd have to play it cool until he got the hang of being a civilian.
He'd have to talk to Chuck Huzak about it when he saw him. Chuck was a savvy guy. About thirty, Chuck had stayed out for a few years after his first hitch to go to college on the GI Bill. He didn't graduate but he was an intelligent guy and should be able to give Eddie some pointers.
After showering he dressed, noticing a dollar bill on the floor when he put on his shoes. Maria must have missed it. Breakfast money. She hadn't been too bad, pretty good in fact; but he'd have been better off if he'd tried to pick up something younger up in Yorkville.
After eating in Bickford's he bought a few shirts and took them up to his room. Chuck wouldn't be at O'Leary's until six, which gave him the whole afternoon to kill. The first thing he wanted to do was call at Trader Sorn's. Sornstein had hustled him and he didn't like the idea of being hustled.
It would be a hell of a way to start out his new life.
There was a different bartender on duty but Sorn-stein was sitting in one of the back booths going over some books. Eddie slid into the seat opposite him.
"Hi, Kid, how you feeling?" Sornstein asked.
"Not too bad."
"That's good. You sure tied one on last night. Look, I'm busy right now. Have a drink on me at the bar and I'll join you later."
"Counting your money, eh? How's business?"
"Not too good. That stock market is beginning to hurt the saloon trade."
"That's too bad. You did all right on me last night, though, didn't you? I figure I must have left about fifty here."
"Yeah, you were sure enjoying yourself. What the hell, you earned it after putting in four years."
"I'm not too happy now."
"You trying to say something?" Sornstein asked, his face growing hard.
"You hustled me, last night, and I don't go for the idea."
"What? Why you cheap punk, what are you bitching about? Nobody was twisting your arm to stay here. Don't start crying to me. What do you think I'm going to do? Give you back your money?"
"That'd be nice."
"Butt out, punk. Get out of here or I'll sic the bartender on you. He loves knocking jerks like you around."
"OK, I just wanted you to know how I felt," Eddie said, getting up.
He was half up on his feet when he suddenly put both hands on the table's edge and shoved. The other edge caught Sornstein in his paunch and he bent over, the wind knocked out of him. Catching him at the back of his head with both hands, Eddie cracked his face to the table top, slid out of the booth and was out of the door by the time the bartender knew what was happening. Turning, he saw Sornstein lift his bloody face up and start yelling. Eddie hot-footed it out and lost himself in the crowd.
Grinning, he thought that civilian life wasn't starting out too badly. Out just one day, he'd gotten into two fights, had himself a woman and spent a few hundred bucks.
Yes, being a civilian wasn't bad at all.