Here Comes a Candle, page 3
Joe said, “Hell, yes, Mitch. And thanks.”
Mitch took out a thick wallet and managed to find two twenties among the bigger bills. He handed them over and said, “Okay, then, Joe. It’s a deal. I’ll tell you more about it later; got to run along now. Got a date to sink a floating crap game. Oh, and about the car. Here are the keys. Want you to take it out to my shack at Fox Point and leave it there.”
“Sure. Where’ll I put the keys?”
“There’s a friend of mine out there. Francy. Francine. I had to use the heap to come in, but I promised I’d get it back to her before evening. So there’s no rush, any time this afternoon.”
Mitch stood up and started for the door. Then he turned and was looking at Joe. Almost as though he was seeing him for the first time. He said, “Listen, Joe. No passes.”
For a second Joe didn’t even get him. He said, “Huh?” and then, “Hell, Mitch, what do you think I am?”
Mitch grinned. “A pretty good-looking kid. It just dawned on me. You might even make the grade. But don’t try.”
He turned back and went on out and Joe followed him. Mitch said, “Come on, Dixie,” to the man waiting at the bar and the two of them went on out.
Since there wasn’t any hurry, Joe sat back down to finish his beer. He felt swell now, after the things Mitch had told him. Even Mitch’s warning about the girl was, in a way, a compliment. Not that he’d touch any woman of Mitch’s with a hundred-foot pole, after all Mitch had done for him and all Mitch was doing.
Anyway, there were plenty of other women. Including—What was her name?—Ellie Dravich. Now, with forty bucks in his pocket, he was glad he’d dated her for tonight. Be handy as hell having a girl who roomed right in the same rooming house. And while she wasn’t any raving beauty, still—
Old Krasno had said something, it just came to him, and he hadn’t heard. He said, “Huh?”
“What’d he feed you, kid?”
He stared at Krasno, trying to figure out what the old guy was talking about. He said, “What do you mean?”
“Mitch. He’s a smooth talker, kid. I’m wondering if he leveled with you. I don’t think he did.”
He kept staring at Krasno, wondering what he was supposed to answer to that. Sure, Mitch had leveled with him, but Mitch had told him to keep it under his hat about the gambling house, the big-time. He couldn’t crack to Krasno about it unless he found out that Krasno knew already.
Hell of it was that he wanted to talk about it, and Krasno—if Krasno knew already—was the only person he could talk it over with. He asked, “What do you mean you don’t think he leveled?”
“Maybe I’m wrong, kid,” Krasno said, “but I don’t think you’d be here if he did.”
There wasn’t any answer in that. He still didn’t know what old Krazzy was driving at, except that it sounded like he wanted to talk about Mitch behind his back, and had a wrong idea somewhere.
Anyway he’d finished his beer and what was he waiting for? He got off the stool and went to the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “Looks like you were wrong then; I’m still around. Be seeing you.”
The direct sunshine outside was almost like a blow. It was three o’clock now, the hottest time of that particular day. Ninety-four was the official temperature, but it was hotter than that on Clybourn Street.
But before he got into the convertible, Joe walked once around it, admiring it. It was a beauty, in robin’s-egg blue. Someday he was going to have a car like that.
He started the engine and found he could hardly hear it turning over. Before he pulled out from the curb he looked for and found the gadget that controlled the top. He worked the gadget and let the top fold itself back.
He had a momentary inclination to head east by way of Wells Street, past the Dinner Gong; maybe the waitress he’d just dated would be looking out and see him drive by in a snazzy car. But that would be silly. Chance in a thousand she’d be looking out and see him, and if she did see him, he’d have to explain, when he showed up without it for their date, that it wasn’t his car. So he cut north to Kilbourn and over Kilbourn to the drive along the lake.
Despite the sun it was cool and pleasant whizzing along the lake drive in an open-top car. A cooling breeze was beginning to come in off Lake Michigan. And the car handled like a dream; he had to keep an eye on the speedometer so he wouldn’t go too fast and get a ticket. Fifty, in a car like that, seemed like twenty or thirty.
It was a good eight miles or more from Mitch’s tavern on Clybourn to Mitch’s summer cottage on the lake at Fox Point, and coming back by bus it would seem at least that far. It was so nice driving the convertible that he seemed to get there in nothing flat.
He turned in the driveway off North Beach Drive that led back to Mitch’s place and parked the car alongside the neat four-room cottage of glazed yellow brick that Mitch called his shack and in which he spent part of his time during the summer months. A nice place, but not a patch on Mitch’s apartment on Prospect Avenue.
Joe got out of the car regretfully and took the keys around to the front of the house. No one answered his ring and after a few minutes he began to wonder what he could do with the keys if Francine—whoever Francine was—wasn’t there. He hated to take a chance on leaving them in the car, but he didn’t know where else to leave them where she’d be sure to find them.
Then it occurred to him that quite possibly she was down at the beach. Mitch’s property ran from the road back to the lake and was about a hundred and fifty feet wide, giving him a stretch of private beach at the lake end of it. It was a narrow strip along the bottom of a twenty-foot slope that ran down to the water, but part of it had the advantage of being private—a tiny cove that cut in from the lake and couldn’t be seen from the beach on either side outside the borders of the property.
He strolled around the house and back to the top of the rather steep slope that descended to the cove and the beach and looked down.
At first glimpse he thought that a girl in a white bathing suit was lying on her back, sunning herself, on a spread-out terry cloth robe of dark blue. And then—it took his eyes and his mind all of a tenth of a second to readjust themselves—he saw she wasn’t wearing a white bathing suit; she wore nothing at all. For a fraction of a second he’d been fooled by the contrast—a pleasing rather than a striking contrast—between the white untanned skin that would normally be covered by a bathing suit and the light golden tan of her legs and arms and shoulders. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
Joe Bailey caught his breath a little. But it must not have been audible, for she didn’t move. He knew that she couldn’t see him for one arm was thrown over her face to shield her eyes from the sun.
Slowly, carefully, he walked backward, his footsteps making no sound in the soft sandy soil, until he was well back from the edge of the slope. He wouldn’t want her to look up and catch him standing there staring—and then tell Mitch about it.
He wished now that Mitch had mentioned the rest of her name; it seemed rude to call out a woman’s first name when he’d never even met her, but there wasn’t any alternative. He called, “Francine!”
Her voice sounded as he would have thought it would sound—had he thought about it. “Yes, who is it? Stay back where you are.”
“Mitch sent me to bring the car and told me to give you the keys.”
“Oh. Just a minute, please. I’m coming up anyway.”
He waited where he was and in about two minutes she came up the slope and into his range of vision. She was carrying the blue terry cloth robe over one arm and for a breathtaking but frightening instant he thought she was naked. But this time it was a white bathing suit. It must have been lying beside the robe down there on the beach, but he hadn’t noticed it. You can’t blame him for that.
He went forward to meet her with the keys and, at the top of the slope, she took them and said, “Thanks.”
“Left the car by the house,” Joe said. “You can’t see it from here, but I left it there.” It sounded inane, even while he was saying it, but he had to say something, mostly to keep himself from staring at her. Even in a bathing suit, she was hard not to stare at. Her face, small and heart-shaped, was as beautiful as her body. Her hair was golden blonde, shoulder length, and softly wavy. She was small, only about five feet two, and her age could have been anything over eighteen, but not too many years over. Her eyes, surprisingly considering the lightness of her hair and complexion, were dark brown, almost black.
They were looking at Joe with what he thought, uncomfortably, was amusement. Then she looked down at something on the ground, looked up again at Joe, and laughed. A pleasant laugh, genuinely amused. Joe felt himself starting to redden a little, without knowing why, and then she looked down again. His eyes followed hers and he saw a neat unmistakable set of his own footprints leading up to the edge of the slope and then away from it, backwards.
He felt sudden heat in his face and neck and knew he was turning redder. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t guess you’d be—uh—
She managed to stop laughing. “At least you were a gentleman,” she said. “You backed away before you called out. You’re Joe?”
He nodded and fell in beside her as she started toward the house. She said, “Stan told me someone named Joe would bring the car back. Do you have a second name?”
He almost muffed the question because it had taken him a second to place who Stan was. Mitch’s name was, improbably, Stanislaus Mitchell, but as far as Joe could remember he’d never heard him called by his first name.
“Bailey,” he told her. “And what’s yours? I felt funny calling out Francine, when I didn’t even know you. But Mitch just mentioned that much of your name, so I didn’t have any choice.”
“Francine will do, Joe. Or better, Francy. Oh, not that the last name’s any secret; it’s Scott. Guess I haven’t any secrets from you now, have I, Joe?”
That was dangerous territory. He said, “Francine Scott—that’s a nice combination. Real?”
“The Francine is; my parents really named me that. They were French and my real last name was too fancy to use. Savigne. When I started dancing I thought nobody’d believe Francine Savigne was a real name, so I toned it down instead of fancying it up like most dancers have to do.”
Joe said, “I guess I like Scott better. In combination with Francine, anyway.” They were almost at the back door of the cottage. “Well, I’m glad to have met you.”
“Any hurry, Joe? Drop in and have a drink. I’m going to make a cool one for myself; it’s no more trouble to make two. How’d a Tom Collins go?”
“Well—” said Joe. But she was already going in and expecting him to follow. Which left him little choice if he didn’t want to be rude about it. And besides, if he could lead up to it properly, it might be an idea, a damn good idea, to ask her not to mention to Mitch how he’d first seen her. Obviously it had amused Francine rather than embarrassed her—and she’d recognized that it was no fault of his. But if she told it to Mitch as a good joke, maybe Mitch wouldn’t like it at all.
In the kitchen, she said, “Know how to make Toms?” You could do it while I put something on.”
“Afraid I can’t,” he admitted.
“All right. I’ll be back in a minute. You can break out a tray of ice cubes meanwhile. And squeeze the juice out of a lemon and put it in two tall glasses, half in each glass.”
She went into the next room, leaving the door open an inch or two. Joe went to the refrigerator and got a tray and a lemon and while he was at it—he did know that much about a Tom Collins—a bottle of soda. By the time he had the lemon squeezed into the glasses, Francine was back. She wore a white linen playsuit that covered very little more territory than the bathing suit had covered, and a pair of sandals. She’d run a comb through her blonde hair, making it even softer and wavier.
Arms akimbo, she watched what he was doing. “Fine,” she told him. “Might as well complete your education, Joe Bailey, by letting you do it. Now put a teaspoon of sugar in each glass and dissolve it in the lemon. Then two ice cubes in each, and a jigger of gin—a jigger plus, if you want to do a good job of it. Then stir each one while you’re pouring in the soda. And then you’ll know how to make a Tom Collins and you’re one step nearer being grown up. How old are you, Joe?”
He grinned at her over his shoulder and said, “I don’t know. My mother never told me.”
He was deciding that he liked Francine, even with her clothes on. Damn it, why did she have to be Mitch’s? Hell, not that a girl like her would give him a tumble. A kid like him with only forty bucks a week, if for no other reason. Take out a girl like Francine and you’d have to spend more than that in one evening, probably. But maybe in a few years, if he stuck with Mitch, he’d be making enough money to do things like that. After what Mitch had told him this afternoon—
As he finished making the drinks, Francine came over and picked one of them up for an experimental sip. “Good boy,” she said. “You bring that one and come on in the living room. I hate kitchens.”
He followed her into the front room and she curled up in a corner of the sofa, tucking her feet under her. Maybe he was expected to sit on the sofa too, but he didn’t take a chance on that. He took a chair facing her, instead, and tried to keep his eyes and his mind off her legs. They were very beautiful legs, with just the faintest golden down that made them, somehow, much more sensually appealing than if it hadn’t been there.
He asked, “What kind of dancing do you do? Chorus or—?”
“No, solo. But night club, not stage. I’ve never been on the stage.” Her face was suddenly serious. “Not very good at it, I’m afraid, or—or I guess I wouldn’t be here.”
That was dangerous territory, too; there wasn’t much you could answer, safely, to something like that. He took a sip of his drink, rather wishing it was straight shot instead of a long drink, so he could down it quickly and make an excuse to get back.
Her face had done a quick change again; now she was smiling at him impishly. “What’s the matter, Joe? You act like you were sitting on a thumbtack. Afraid of me?”
He laughed, and wondered if the laugh rang quite true. “No. Should I be?”
“Afraid of Stan—Mitch?” The quick change again; her face was serious, and the question had been serious.
It jolted him a little. Oh, it was easy to answer and, in a way he was glad she’d asked it; it gave him a chance to say, “I work for Mitch, Francy. Not only that, but I like him. I wouldn’t cross him for a million bucks.”
But the jolt had been there, in the question. He was afraid of Mitch. Implicit in the question had been a picture of Mitch angry at him, taking a poke at him. And Mitch was six feet tall and weighed at least two hundred, all of it as hard as nails, against Joe’s moderately built five feet nine. Not only that, but Mitch had been in the ring for a while, way back when, maybe ten years ago. He was well over thirty now, but he still had the strength of a bull. Joe had seen him work on a guy once, a guy who wanted to get tough about a beef that he had a payoff coming on a ticket he’d obviously doctored up himself. Mitch had slapped him silly, just using the palms of his hands so as not to mark the guy, and then had picked him up bodily and carried him twenty feet to the door and tossed him out. And now Joe remembered the look on Mitch’s face as Mitch had done it.
No, it had never occurred to him before that he could be afraid of Mitch—because he was loyal to Mitch and a situation where Mitch would want to do anything to him hadn’t seemed possible.
But this was different. Mitch had warned him about Francine—and now, on top of the bad luck of his having discovered Francine raw, to her considerable amusement, here he was sitting drinking with her, alone in Mitch’s house. And the whole situation was like walking on eggs, because it would be as dangerous to rush out as to stay. If he was too obvious about being in a hurry to get away, she might, out of pique, say something to Mitch that would give him entirely the wrong idea. Women sometimes did things like that just for the hell of it.
Worse, her question and his answer had made it completely impossible for him, now, to lead up to telling her to be careful what she said to Mitch. He couldn’t say now, “Yeah, I am afraid of Mitch. Please don’t tell him, as a joke, about how I happened to come across you.” To say that now would make a complete sap out of him; it would seem like crawling.
Her glass was at her lips now and she was looking at him across the top of it. She said, seriously (or mock-seriously?), “All right, Joe, I won’t worry you any more. Relax and take your time finishing your drink and—How are you going to get back to town? Phone for a cab?”
The first part of what she’d said made him feel as transparent as a window. He averted his mind from it and concentrated on the last. He said, “No, I’ll go back by bus.” He started to add that he was in no hurry—to make it seem natural that he wouldn’t take a cab—and then stopped in time.
She said, “I’ll drive you over to the bus stop, then. Whenever you’re ready.”
He said, “Thanks,” and then managed to keep the conversation, and his eyes and his thoughts, in safe places until he’d taken decent time to finish the drink.
He turned down an offer, not too pressing a one, of another drink, and then she drove him in the convertible to the nearest bus stop on Lake Drive; it would have been a fairish walk otherwise, as there is no bus line on Beach Drive. She pulled in near the stop but far enough back to take advantage of the shade of a big tree, as the top of the convertible was still open. Joe stretched to look back and saw that a bus was coming, several blocks away.
He looked at Francine, her hair now badly windblown by the drive in the open car, but somehow even prettier than when it had been neatly combed. The impish look was back in her eyes again.
She said, “I like you, Joe. Going to kiss me good-bye?”
She saw his hesitation and laughed a little. “If you don’t,” she said, “I’ll tell Stan that you did.”
Worried as he was, even Joe saw the humor in that and he laughed a little, too. He said, “In that case—”
