Lust is a Woman, page 15
“All right, I’ll tell Tommy to come down. You don’t suppose Old Sourball will grab me off as your replacement, do you?” Townsend asked anxiously.
“No, I doubt it. And if he does you don’t have to work a double shift. You just got off, so in effect you’d be working three shifts in a row. So he can’t make you take my place.”
“If I see him I’ll dodge anyway.” Johnny pushed open the door, and Ralph heard his running feet in the corridor.
Most of the accumulation in Ralph’s locker was trash, and he dumped what he didn’t want into the empty metal barrel by the outside door. His swimming trunks, three pairs of stiff, dirty socks, a mildewed canvas shaving kit, four dirty T-shirts, and a large white bath towel, plainly marked ROTUNDA HOTEL in red block letters, were all he kept. He tied the small bundle together with the shirt-sleeves of the dirty white shirt.
Ralph sat down on the bench to smoke while he waited for Tommy. Two bald middle-aged bartenders entered the locker room from the back and began to change their clothes. Ralph examined their dour faces with the dawning realization that all of the bartenders he had ever known looked exactly like these two. Not that they were all bad, although most of them were, at that, but their expressions were all alike. All face, like character actors in the movies; expressive eyebrows, small chins, and large liquid eyes. Ralph pictured these two men later working behind the bar, changing their expression to match the mood of each customer at the busy half-price cocktail hour in the Rotunda Lounge. But right now, in repose, their characterless expressions oddly reminded Ralph of ex-Presidents born in Ohio.
“I took Mr. Reese for three-fifty last night,” the first bartender remarked tonelessly.
“Yeah. On change for a twenty or a fifty you can take Mr. Reese every time.” His companion pouted thoughtfully. “That’s what he deserves for drinking stingers.”
The two bartenders, in white stiffly-starched jackets, red bowties, and faded maroon trousers, pushed through the swinging doors and marched quietly into the corridor on rubber-soled feet. If I stayed in hotel work for twenty years, Ralph reflected, I’d look exactly like them some day. Bartenders on the five P.M. to three A.M. shift had the best-paying jobs in the hotel. Any hotel…
Deep in thought, Ralph didn’t hear his roommate enter the room. “How’d you make out, Ralph?” Tommy said, clapping Ralph on the shoulder.
Ralph picked up his bundle, looked soberly at his friend. “Let’s go out to my car where we can talk, Tom.”
“Okay, but not too long. I’ve got to get back to work.”
As soon as they were seated in the car, Ralph took out his billfold and counted $110.00 into Tommy’s hand. Tommy folded the money and put it into his trousers pocket, twisting sideways in the seat.
“Maria was a phoney, Tom. An amateur.” Ralph explained. “If she got into the racket she must have only started last night at McKay’s party. They probably got her drunk or something like that. I don’t know. And I don’t know why she picked on me, either. Practice, maybe. A bright idea that she could pick up a fast three hundred bucks without McKay finding out about it. Hell, I don’t know.”
“You didn’t go through with it, then?” Tommy asked softly.
“I intended to, but I couldn’t. Somehow, I kept seeing our old girl friend, Hazel, in that ratty shack. Maria doesn’t realize yet, Tommy, just what she’s letting herself in for. I tried to talk to her, but I couldn’t get through. She knows she’s wrong, but evidently the money looks so damned big to her she can’t think of anything else. I don’t know what to do, but I have to do something.”
“I thought I knew you pretty well, Ralph, but you’re acting without thinking. You quit your job without saying anything to me. Hell, I could have cashed a check for the whole three hundred just as easy as one-ten. You know that!”
“I know.” Ralph turned earnestly to his friend. “I’d have quit anyway, Tommy. Do you think I could’ve run that elevator every night, knowing what was going on? Every time I took a man to the ninth floor I’d have followed him to see if he went into 901. And if he did, I’d be half-crazy until he came out again!”
“She isn’t worth it, Ralph. If I were in love with a woman and she tried to nick me for three hundred bucks the way Maria did you I’d kick her teeth in! Do you honestly love her after a trick like that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about her. She’s so damned dumb, Tommy! But every woman I’ve ever known was dumb, so I don’t hold that against her. I can’t analyze how I feel. I’m tired. I’ve been awake all night, and I’ve had a hell of a shock besides. When she called me at noon I had just gotten into bed. And after she called, I felt like an iron band had been taken off my chest. Then I couldn’t sleep. And now my whole body feels like a big chunk of ice buried under a ton of sawdust.”
Tommy bit his upper lip worriedly. “You shouldn’t be by yourself, Ralph, not in the mood you’re in,” he said seriously. “And if you start poking your nose into McKay’s affairs, you’ll wind up floating in Biscayne Bay minus your head. I mean it, Ralph!”
“I never saw a guy like McKay before.” Ralph shook his head disbelievingly. “He’s practiced lying so long he must believe his own lies. I believed him. He worked my brain up and down like a yoyo, and I accepted everything he said at face value.”
Tommy punched Ralph affectionately on the arm. “Okay, then, buddy. Keep out of McKay’s way. Go on home and stay there. When I come in tonight, we’ll go out and have a few beers and talk things out. You can get another job or we can go up to Orlando and make concrete bricks for your old man. If that doesn’t suit you, we can go to my place in Valdosta and play golf every day at the country club. We’ve got the rest of the summer, Ralph, and by the time school starts you’ll forget you ever met Maria.”
“You’re a damned good friend, Tommy,” Ralph said sincerely. “Go on back to work. And on your way, stop at the desk and look up Peggy Vittorni’s forwarding address for me. Call me at home. I’ll be waiting by the phone.”
“Now what are you going to do?” Tommy said without hiding his exasperation.
“I’m going to call New York. Miss Vittorni. Tell her what Maria’s getting into, and tell her to contact Maria’s family.”
“What good will that do? Maria’s a grown woman, Ralph—”
“If you don’t want to get me the address I’ll get it myself. How I feel about Maria isn’t the important thing anymore. I was the one who introduced her to McKay. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be home right now, and as you said, by the end of summer I’d have forgotten I ever met her.”
Tommy opened the door and got out, slammed it shut, and nodded. “Go ahead, Ralph. I’ll get the address and call within a half hour. But promise me you’ll stay in the room until I get in tonight.”
“Sure.” Ralph switched on the ignition, punched the starter, and the engine roared into life. As the door to the locker room closed behind Tommy Grant, the maître d’ hotel rushed out of the kitchen exit, looked up and down the alley searching anxiously for his Head Busboy. By the time the maître d’ returned to the dining room, Tommy would be busily slicing butter as though he had been there all the time.
Ralph shot out of the parking lot and turned into the swiftly-moving traffic stream of the highway.
To allow Peggy Vittorni plenty of time to get home from work, Ralph didn’t call New York until seven-thirty. He called from a pay booth, inside a neighborhood drugstore, three blocks away from his rooming house. The call went through immediately, and Ralph dropped the required change into the slot. To prepare for overtime, he had lined up five dollars in quarters, stacking them in sets of four on the narrow metal shelf.
“Is that you, Maria?” A high feminine voice crackled in his ear.
“No. This is Ralph Tone.”
“Who?”
“Ralph Tone. You might remember me. Night elevator man at the Rotunda Hotel.”
“Oh, yes. Let me speak to Maria, please.”
“Maria isn’t here. This is Peggy Vittorni, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be? Where is Maria? Has anything happened to her?” the voice asked anxiously.
“No,” Ralph said. “She’s fine. I only called to tell you that Maria’s mixed up in some trouble down here—”
“Trouble? What’s that again, please?”
“What I mean is…” Ralph took time out to wipe his perspiring face with his handkerchief. “Miss Vittorni?”
“Yes, I can hear you.”
“Maria’s gotten into some bad company, and I thought you ought to know about it. Gangsters.”
The voice snorted angrily, painfully, into Ralph’s ear. “What is this, Ralph? Some kind of gag?”
“No. I’m serious about this,” Ralph faltered. “She’s in serious trouble, and she’s getting in over her head. I thought that—”
“All right. You’ve had your fun, Ralph. Put Maria on the phone now,” the voice said icily.
“I’m very serious about this!” Ralph said loudly. “Just listen a minute. Maria is mixed up with a very bad element in Miami, and I called you because you’re supposed to be her friend. If you are Maria’s friend, contact her folks and have them persuade her to come home.”
“Is that all? Can’t you give me any details?”
“I can, yes. But not over the telephone. I only want to impress on you that I’m serious and mean what I say.”
“I can tell you’re serious all right.”
“Will you contact her folks then?”
“Right away. Now put Maria on, please.”
“She isn’t here. I’m calling from a drugstore. Can’t you get it through your thick skull that—” There was a click followed by a steady humming tone, and Ralph didn’t complete his sentence. He punched open the folding door, scraped the five piles of quarters into his hand, and wiped his face again with his damp handkerchief. The drugstore was air-conditioned, and to cool off more he sat down at the fountain and ordered a large soda.
What an idiot Peggy is, he though disgustedly. By the time he finished his soft drink he was in a more reasonable frame of mind. Suppose the conditions had been reversed? Suppose Peggy Vittorni had called him from New York and informed him that his buddy, Tommy Grant, was mixed up with gangsters? Would he have taken the call seriously? Maybe. Maybe not. But then, he knew that Tommy wasn’t the type to get mixed up with gangsters.
Ralph laughed suddenly.
Miss Vittorni “knew” that Maria wasn’t the type to get mixed up with gangsters, either. If he had told Miss Vittorni in the beginning that Maria was a practicing prostitute, the call wouldn’t have lasted as long as it had.
He ordered another soda.
If Maria was to be saved from herself, he would have to do it. How, he didn’t know, but somehow. Seven or eight years ago, Hazel had probably started out like Maria was doing now, and he couldn’t let that happen. The memory of Hazel’s bloated face, her lumpy hips, and the light in her eyes when she had snatched the bottle of scotch from his hands, popped vividly into his mind.
Ralph dropped a quarter and a dime on the marble counter and left the drugstore.
FIFTEEN
BY seven forty-five, Maria was dressed and ready, waiting in the downstairs lobby for McKay’s bodyguard to pick her up. Her pale ivory face was serene and beautiful. In her white silk gown, sitting patiently in a rose-colored chair, she had a regal bearing, the confident poise of the attractive woman who is well aware of her good looks and does not have to be reassured.
If Maria felt any inner tension she did not show it in her outward demeanor. The tear-ravaged face of the afternoon had been repaired; and the aftereffects of the scotch she had consumed during the scene with Ralph had been eliminated in a long, lingering, well-scented bath. The persistent queasiness in her stomach, caused by fear and thoughts of her own inadequacy concerning what would happen when she retired to a bedroom with an unknown “guest,” had been partially allayed by eating a thick sirloin steak in her room. A young woman like Maria Dugan, with a full stomach and a purse containing several hundred dollars, could not allow herself to dwell on the unpleasant aspects of the evening ahead. Why not, Maria thought, a beatific smile lighting her features, think instead of all the wonderful things the money will buy?
“Hi, honey!” Helen said. “Ready?”
“Oh, it’s you!” Maria got up immediately. Helen wore a stark, black sheath of silk, so simply designed that any determined woman shopper could buy one exactly like it for eight hundred dollars. Her fine blonde hair was piled high on her head, lacquered expertly into place, and two unevenly shaped pieces of jade dangled from her pierced ears. On the third finger, left hand, Helen wore another piece of mottled jade the size and approximate shape of a squashed ping pong ball, set into a wide band of filigreed silver. A black beaded bag looped down from the crook of her left elbow on a long silken cord.
“How beautiful you look, Helen!” Maria exclaimed.
“You look mighty sweet yourself,” Helen replied warmly.
Arm in arm, the two young women swept through the lobby, out of the door, and joined Tarzan in the front seat of the yellow Cadillac convertible. Maria dropped back, allowing Helen the dubious privilege of sitting by the unshaven, seedy bodyguard. Tarzan wheeled into the traffic stream, and pointed the car for the Everglades Estates.
“It’s just you and me tonight, Maria,” Helen said. “Only two guests.”
“I’m glad it’s you that’s with me,” Maria whispered.
Helen patted Maria’s knee in reply. There were several questions Maria would have liked to ask her companion, but Tarzan’s forbidding presence in the driver’s seat inhibited her. Listening to the radio, the trio rode without further conversation to McKay’s home in the Everglades Estates.
As soon as they entered the living room, McKay drew Maria aside, while Tarzan and Helen accompanied Sanchez into the kitchen for coffee. Following her employer down the hallway, Maria entered a small study as McKay directed.
“Sit down, Maria,” McKay said pleasantly, pulling a chair up close to his neat desk. “I had you come out early tonight because of some paperwork you must sign.”
Maria sat down, looking puzzledly at McKay as he seated himself in a swivel hair behind the desk.
“Paperwork?” she asked.
“Yes, the usual administrative claptrap.” McKay opened a legal-sized Manila folder, passed printed forms and a pen to Maria. “Sign on the lines I’ve marked with a little X. The first one is your Workman’s Compensation Act form, and the small one is for withholding tax; and here is the Social Security folder. Have you got your Social Security card with you?”
“I think so,” Maria replied. She opened her purse, and finally found her card in a small leather case. “Here it is.” She passed the card to McKay and he copied the number into a thick, leather-covered notebook. Maria signed her name on the forms in the required spaces and returned the pen to McKay.
“I agreed to work for you,” Maria said, wetting her lips, “but all these forms have me confused. I mean, what am I supposed—”
“Hostess. You’re listed as hostess. Nothing else. And your salary is seventy-five dollars a week. Everything else is clear and above board, my dear. I wanted to explain a few simple procedures, as I said, but don’t be alarmed. The law is the law, you know. For instance, open a bank account, but don’t deposit more than seventy-five dollars a week. Rent a safe-deposit box, and hide the rest of your money in it. Looks mighty suspicious for a woman to deposit more than she earns. And spend from your bank account once in awhile. You’re supposed to be living on your salary.”
“In a two hundred and fifty a week apartment?” Maria raised arched eyebrows.
“Technically, I pay for your room, Maria. On the books, I provide your living quarters, but you actually pay me personally in cash from your earnings.”
“I see. When can I move to a cheaper place?”
“When I say so, my dear,” McKay smiled pleasantly. “In the off season it isn’t easy to rent efficiencies, and I don’t like to have them standing empty. The loss of revenue is very depressing. When the season starts, and if business is good, you can either move or pay the higher seasonal rates. What’s the matter, Maria? Don’t you like your new quarters?”
“That isn’t the idea, Mr. McKay. I wasn’t complaining, but the rent is so expensive, I don’t see how I’m going to save anything.”
“It’s a little early to talk about hoarding money, isn’t it? Now, how did the matinee affair go with Mr. Tone?”
“Well…” Maria blushed twisted the handbag in her lap. “Not so good, Mr. McKay!” she blurted.
“I’m surprised, really surprised. I seldom guess wrong on a client. Couldn’t he raise the money?” McKay clasped his hands behind his head, looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Three o’clock was too late. One o’clock would have been better, I believe. Give him more time to raise the money. What do you think?”
“He had the money all right, Mr. McKay… but afterwards, he took it back .…” She looked down at the white toes of her shoes. “He said I wasn’t worth three hundred dollars,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry about it, my dear, because I know you are. If Ralph welched on the deal, it’s my fault. I considered the possibility, but I misjudged him. I thought Ralph was a high-minded young man.” McKay sighed, shook his head sorrowfully. “This is a lesson to us both. You can never take anybody for granted in this business. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. McKay.”
“Don’t be. The collection of fees is my province, and I’ll take care of it. Now let’s join the others.”
Under a wealth of candlelight, a small, intimate table for five had been set up in the living room. Resting on spidery tripods, two silver buckets containing shaved ice and bottles of champagne flanked both sides of the table. The table had been set for a late evening supper, and the food had been attractively arranged by the meticulous houseboy. There was a huge, steaming silver bowl containing a smooth and tasty Welsh rarebit; a large white platter of toast points with the crusts removed; a lazy susan circular tray in the middle of the table with assorted relishes, and five individual crystal bowls brimming with fresh fruit salad, topped with great globs of whipped cream.
