Round the Clock at Volari's Read online

  "Okay," he said, not looking at her. He forced his eyes upward to rest on hers. "I've got no call being jealous. And I didn't want a fight. I've been having it tough, Judy."

  "I know." She spoke with a touch of tenderness.

  "So I flew off the handle. Imagining all kinds of crazy things. You and other guys. I'm a damn fool, Judy." She studied him levelly. "You want to see me tonight?"

  "Should we start all over again?" he asked.

  "Do you want to?"

  "Yes." He smiled faintly. "At least let's see each other a little bit. For old times' sake."

  "Okay, Jim. For old times' sake." She glanced over her shoulder. "I might be able to get out of here earlier than two if it stays as slack as this."

  "Good. I'll make us some sandwiches," Jim said. "You grab a taxi out front. Okay?"

  "Okay. See you."

  She turned and left. Jim smiled after her, his first real smile in ages. At least she didn't hate him. And she'd forgiven him just now for chewing at her that way.

  Across the room, Zena glanced at him and at the retreating Judy. She said to Gus, who was putting drinks on her tray, "Touching, isn't it?"

  "Burnt to a crisp," said Gus.

  "Who? Me? Listen, you, cheap-"

  "Never could figure out what was eating you, Zena," Gas said. "No matter who the guy is, you don't like it. And especially Jim Chase, a real good guy. You girls going steady, or something?"

  For a moment Gus thought he was going to get the tray over his head, drinks and all. Zena's green eyes seemed to give off electrical sparks. But finally she calmed herself.

  "Gus," she said, "in some ways I envy you; you're such a simple-minded character. It's either this or that with you, no in-betweens."

  "Yeah? So?" said Gus, trying to understand.

  Zena studied his tough young face for a moment, then shrugged, gave it up, and walked off with the tray, just as Gino came up to hurry her along.

  "Couldn't we maybe cut down the social activity a little?" Gino asked the bartender.

  The house phone rang at the bar and Gino answered it. "Yes, Al. Yes, he's here. Sure, sure. I'll tell him." Gino walked over to Jim's table. "That was Al on the phone. Somebody told him you were out here. Would you like to drop back and see him?"

  ***

  Al Patton's office in the back of Volari's was big, roomy and odd. It was set at an angle, against the back wall, and had no windows, just two ventilators high up that whirred monotonously. One comer of it was blocked off by a tall black and gold Chinese screen that had cost Al a small fortune. But why the screen? Did it mask a door? But why a door? The room already had three: one that led to the club proper, one that gave into the alley, and another one, always locked and bolted, that perhaps opened onto a storeroom or another office. Jim had never been able to figure out the reason for the huge, ceiling-high screen, that would not have been out of place in the lobby of the biggest hotel in town. Here, it dwarfed the room.

  Al, a big man, beginning to go bald, was hunched behind his desk in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette and sipping from a tall glass of lemonade.

  "Hot! God, what a night!"

  "Listen, Al," Jim began, "about that tab…"

  "What tab, for cryssake!" said Al, irritated. "You think I want to talk to you about a lousy tab?"

  "Well, I want to talk about it. It's over nine hundred dollars. Soon as I get straightened around I'm going to pay it, maybe a hundred at a time. I'm no dead beat."

  "Somebody accusing you?" said Al. "And don't stay away on account of a lousy tab. Hell, everybody's run out on us. Except for the tourists. We're getting them now. Jim-look. Funny thing. I was thinking about calling you, and here you turn up."

  "I didn't run out," said Jim, shifting uncomfortably. "I've been up to my neck trying to make a living."

  "Like all the rest you didn't save a cent, did you? Man, were we riding high! How could it have stopped all of a sudden like that? I still can't believe it. Go to bed one night on top of the world-get up the next morning, dead-out. It's sure took a lot out of old Tom. And I hear Jake has flipped in Florida-for the birds, now. Tom says we'll come back. What do you say?"

  "I say, not a chance."

  Al sighed and looked down at his lemonade; then he held up the glass. "Doctor's orders. High blood pressure. I'm used to having a glass in front of me all night long-so now it's lemonade. It's not as rough as you'd think."

  "I've slacked off," said Jim.

  "Maybe it's a good idea. We used to wonder where you were putting it, used to wait for you to fall, but nothing ever seemed to happen. You could really belt it, Jim."

  "Yeah," said Jim. It was hard for him to remember how things had been. The hectic days and nights; the hysterical atmosphere of success and power all about him. His wild, egotistical affair with Judy. What had he been thinking about? Why had it never occurred to him then that he had responsibilities to Alma and the two boys, responsibilities that should have come first? Maybe it was just that they'd all gone a little crazy. And now… chaos.

  "I wanted to talk to you about Tom," said Al. "We've been hearing some bad rumors. About the Grand Jury. Somebody is finking, we hear. Tom might be subpoenaed-and that could get mighty rough. You hear anything?"

  "No," said Jim.

  "Jake's gone. The Mayor's in Southern Cal. Commissioner Ridgely's in Toronto. Tom… well, he might be holding the sack."

  "Why doesn't he get out?"

  Al wagged his head impatiently. "He won't. I can't figure what it is with him exactly. Tom's a funny guy. He won't admit he's licked. He figures as long as he hangs around near town, he's got a chance to get back on top. I guess Tom kinda thinks he owns the town."

  "He may have to get out."

  "You think so? You think they'll put him away?"

  "The cleanup isn't over," Jim said. "They're still uncovering things. If they can sink Tom, they will."

  "You worried for yourself?"

  Jim shrugged. "I'll make out. I'm just small fry. I didn't do anything worth indicting me for. They've busted me in other ways. At least I'm still a member of the bar."

  "Yeah. You get around. Hall of Justice, all over the place. Do some checking. Find out how Tom stands. You lawyers, you've all got tipsters. See what you can find out. Put you on the payroll."

  "No," said Jim. "Ill do what I can. Glad to."

  Al smiled faintly. "Yeah. You'd say that, all right. Jake always had your number. 'There's a gentleman,' he'd say. Tom felt that way, too. We were sure glad to have you aboard with your name and all. Gave tone to the operation."

  Jim winced. They had used him, used his name. He didn't like to be reminded of it.

  "If you don't want to go on the payroll, let me write off that tab. You do what you can. Okay?"

  "It's too much," said Jim.

  "Nothing's too much for a guy who can be trusted. Okay? A deal? Shake?"

  They shook hands. Jim accepted a cigarette. They lit up.

  "How's it with you and doll-face?" Al asked. "I been wondering. Still see her?"

  "Now and then. I've got competition."

  "So I been hearing. But she's still hot on you, Jim. Why, hell, when it first started that poor girl couldn't hardly do her work for thinking about you. And Jake was mad as hell. You know that?"

  The D.A. annoyed. Why? "How come, Al?"

  "Jake was soft for her. I mean it. He took her out, bought her goodies, drooled over her. Oh, I heard all about it. Then one day blooey! Jim Chase moves in and it's bye-bye Jake!"

  Jim stared at Al, surprised. "You mean… Jake… the JXA…"

  "Yeah," said Al. "So he's sixty. What difference does that make? Jake had floozies just as young as Judy all over the place. But you grabbed her. He didn't know what to say, you being important to us. So he growled around for a few days, that was all."

  "He never said a word to me about it," Jim said. He felt a jealous tingle at the thought of that old man pawing Judy. But he shrugged it away. It was tough enough as it
was, without getting hot under the collar about things Judy had done before their affair had started.

  "Course he didn't say anything," said Al. "That old geezer was full of pride. Too much pride."

  They sat looking off into space, Al remembering how it had been in the old days with Tom and Jake and the Mayor in power and Volari's roaring, while Jim, surprised by Al's revelation, sat wondering how many other things had been happening all around him during that hectic era without his knowing anything about them.

  ***

  Across town, on an upper floor of the Hotel Regent, four men were staring tensely at each other.

  The room was registered in the name of Allen Mond, of New York. Mond puffed nervously at a cigarette and said, "I can't wait past Friday. We've got to get in there tomorrow night. That safe's loaded."

  "You know what I think about that safe," said a thin, middle-aged man in the comer of the room. "It can't be busted."

  "You keep on telling me that, Nick," Mond snapped. "And I keep telling you we'll manage it somehow or other. I figure there's a hundred grand in that safe."

  "More," said a languid young man on the couch. "Two hundred grand rock bottom."

  "You see?" Mond demanded, addressing himself to Nick."Shep thinks there's two hundred G's-and you sit here bitching because it's a tough safe! That's why we took you on-because you could do the job."

  "I ain't no goddam miracle worker," Nick said tiredly. "Listen, Mond," the fourth man said. "We don't need to mess around none with the safe."

  Mond turned. He didn't like the look of contempt on the man's face. "How do we get the dough then, Carl?"

  "Just barge in and stick old Patton up. He'll open the safe for us, sure as anything. And then we beat it. Fifty grand apiece-"

  "Yeah," Shep put in. "That's the way, Mond."

  Mond faced them. He hesitated. He didn't like strong-arm tactics, and he didn't like the men he had picked for the job. But if the safe was really as tough as Nick claimed, and couldn't be cracked-

  "You got any bright ideas, Mond?" Carl asked lazily. Shep said, "Maybe he thinks we oughta all shoot ourselves full of junk and walk in there and carry the safe out. Like a bunch of freakin' supermen."

  "Shut up!" Mond said, quivering with anger. He crossed the room and grabbed Shep's collar. "I'm off the stuff, you crud. I don't want you mentioning junk to me!"

  "Let go of me, Mond," Shep said evenly.

  "Promise you won't joke like that!"

  "Let go or I'll kick your teeth in," Shep said.

  There was a moment of silence in the room. Then Mond slowly released the crumpled cloth. He looked around at three stony faces. He had to re-establish his authority with these characters fast.

  He said thinly, "Just remember who's the boss here. And keep your wisecracks to yourself. I'm not on junk now and I'm not going back. Clear?"

  "Okay, Mond," Shep grumbled. "You been too touchy today. You need a drink, maybe."

  Mond scowled. It was tying him up in knots, kicking the habit this way. He was jumpy, flying off the handle too easily, and these tough guys were needling him.

  He couldn't waste any more time on this caper. He didn't like this town. He wanted to clear out.

  "Okay," Mond said decisively. "Carl's idea is a good one. Tomorrow night the three of you go in there and pull the knockover." He tried to stop his fingers from trembling. "I'll be up at the cottage with Zena."

  "What about the kid from Volari's?" Carl asked.

  "He'll be around to feed us the tips," Mond said. He hoped everything was back under control. Tempers had been flying too goddam much tonight. "We'll make out," he said soothingly. "Don't worry about a thing. Tomorrow night-fifty grand apiece!"

  ***

  Judy stepped under the shower, feeling the needlepoints of hot water stabbing at her full high breasts, her flat belly. The water brought a glow to her firm young body, and she turned her face upward, enjoying the sensual satisfaction of the spray.

  But even so, it failed to lift her gloom. She had been to bed with Jim, and they had gone through the motions and he had done this and that, touched her here and kissed her there, aroused her in all the old ways, and yet somehow there had been no real communion of bodies or of spirits. They had been like two strangers going meaninglessly through the rhythms of the love act.

  It hadn't been that way in the past. But their affair wasn't what it once had been. In fact, it had got so lately that it was hardly anything at all, merely a habit of long standing-but even that was better than nothing.

  She let the water cascade down. It relaxed her, after the tense and unfulfilled lovemaking. Her thoughts, obscured by her emotions-her dreads and her worries, her fears for the future, her regrets about the past-became vague to her, so unclear that she shrugged them off and then forgot them entirely.

  Jim was in the kitchen, wearing pajamas and a dressing-gown, and making coffee, when Judy came in from the bathroom, fully dressed. Jim looked at her in surprise.

  "What's the matter with that kimono I bought you in Chinatown? You make me feel naked."

  "It's late, Jim," said Judy. "Nearly four o'clock. It'll be light in a half-hour or so."

  "Well," said Jim, "sit down and eat your sandwich. Here comes the coffee."

  They sat at a cramped, little breakfast nook in a corner of the kitchen. Judy could never understand why Jim lived where he did: in a rundown old residential section, two miles from anyplace, on the second floor of an old stone mansion that had been crudely broken up into a four-family apartment house. The woodwork was dark, the floors creaked, there was no air conditioning, no television, no anything. A fleabag. It just didn't go with what she knew about Jim, or thought she knew.

  Long ago she'd stopped trying to find out why Jim lived in such a place. At first she'd asked, and Jim would laugh and say mat he was just a Bohemian at heart, or that he liked to pig it, or that it was cheap, which it was not. Judy happened to know that rents in this part of town were very high. It puzzled her.

  What she did not know, being a relative newcomer to the big town, was that Jim had played all over this neighborhood as a boy. That his grandfather's house, long ago converted into an office building, was only one block away, and that Jim's closest friends, the Ambroses, had lived directly across the street.

  How could Judy know that Jim was, in a sense, communing with the past? As he walked along the street, of an evening he'd suddenly remember the jam he and Hugh Ambrose had gotten into one Halloween, or he'd remember how his grandmother used to drive her Packard erratically round the comer, causing people to jump back on the curb.

  Judy noticed his preoccupation. "You make a nice sandwich, sir," she said. "And the coffee's not bad either."

  "If I was a Greek I'd open a restaurant," said Jim, trying to be funny. But it was labored, and Judy glanced at him curiously, wondering how it was that they never seemed easy together any more. Only in bed was there any closeness now, and even there… well… But the trouble was that Jim had spoiled her for other men. He was a gentleman, quiet, undemanding, with none of the thickheadedness, none of the rough edges she'd been used to before she'd met him. Zena thought she was a fool, wasting her time with a man in his middle forties who was so obviously on his way out. But then Zena thought that everything Judy did was foolish. While in Judy's opinion Zena was the fool. Such men! Loud-mouthed vulgar braggarts.

  And that new one! Mr. Mond, with the wary, still face and the closely-clipped black hair. Where had Zena found him-with his Alfa-Romeo and his tight-lipped talk? Except for a certain arrogance in his manner and his expensive clothes, you'd take him for a small-time actor… or… what? Salesman for a big chemical firm-and loaded, Zena said.

  The phone rang in the living-room. Jim rose and went to answer it. Judy sat listening to his voice. "Yeah. Who? Oh, Zena. Yes, she's here. Judy!"

  Judy picked up the phone.

  "Sure I know what time it is," Judy was saying. "Now, look, Zena. All right, all right. But I wish you wouldn't
do this. Do I call and bother you? Of course you're bothering me!"

  Judy hung the phone up in silence.

  "Come on," said Jim, wearily. "Finish your sandwich." They sat down in the breakfast nook again. "Why do you put up with that?" asked Jim.

  "I've told you a dozen times," said Judy. "Besides, she can't really help it. You've never seen anybody so nervous. She can hardly stand to be alone for five minutes. When she comes home and I'm not there she panics."

  "My God, she's not a child. Look, Judy, you can only stretch gratitude so far." He finished the last of his coffee and stood up. "Take your time. I'll get dressed and drive you home."

  "I wish you didn't always think you had to do this, Jim. Just call me a cab."

  "No."

  As she finished her sandwich, she heard him moving about in the bedroom, changing his clothes. It had always been like this with Jim. She'd never met a man like him before. So considerate. Pity things couldn't have worked out differently, she thought.

  2. FRIDAY

  The phone woke Jim. Groaning, he rolled over and looked at his wrist watch on the night-table: ten minutes of eleven. He got out of bed and staggered into the living-room, yawning and stretching, to answer the phone.

  It was Gert. "Well," she said, "nobody works but me.

  Mrs. Packard called at nine and said she was making Mr. Packard stay in bed till noon. So I wait and wait.-and I'm flooded with calls and there's nobody here to…"

  "How many calls?"

  "Two," said Gert, with a laugh.

  "I'll be down as soon as I can get there. What were the calls?"

  "A Mr. Willey. I made an appointment for two. Wants to see Mr. Packard. A client, I think… I hope. The other call was from the D.A.'s office. Something about the Lampson Case. Nothing important."

  "Okay, Gert. See you."

  Jim took a shower, then made himself some coffee and stood at one of the big front windows, drinking it.