Shakedown Read Online Free PDF Page B

pause. “What are you doing?”
    “Sitting in front of the telephone. Why?”
    “I’m bored. It’s such a beautiful clear night. I’d like to look at the ocean.”
    “Where’s Willi?”
    “Was that a crack?”
    “No. I wondered.”
    “She went to a concert in Santa Monica, a string quintette. Do you like string quintettes?”
    “I never heard one. I guess not. Did you plan on my company to look at the moon over the water?”
    “I was kind of hinting. I thought we could have a few drinks, too, at a place I know.”
    “Gabby’s,” I guessed. “I’ve seen you there.”
    “Mmm-hmm. And I’ve seen you there. Is it a date?”
    “I’ll pay the tab,” I said, “but we’ll take your car. I’m trying to develop expensive tastes.”
    I was waiting in front when she got there. She slid over and gestured for me to get in behind the wheel. Some heap that was, a hundred and eighty horse. Once we got beyond Beverly Hills, the traffic was light. I turned on the radio and lighted a cigarette, and just loafed along.
    “Papa buy you this?” I asked her.
    “No.”
    “Willi?”
    “Don’t be nasty. I was making eighteen hundred a week there for a while, Joe Puma.”
    “Four years ago.”
    Silence for a few minutes. Then as we left Brentwood she said, “You know you’re attractive to women, don’t you?”
    “I’ve been told I am. Why? Do I attract you?”
    “Too much. From the first time I saw you. Is it your size? I’ve seen handsomer men, dozens of them. I’ve been proposed to by handsomer men.”
    “When you get your cut of that Clifford money, I’ll propose to you, too.”
    “You dog. We could have fun though, Joe. If you were more—oh, sentimental—we could have a lot of fun.”
    She had to make it romantic. Despite her background, her history and her full-bodied lust, she had to bury it in star dust. Like all women, she hated to face a fact.
    I said, “Guys who scramble for a living aren’t inclined to be romantic or sentimental. Maybe if this pitch goes through, I can afford it. Your dad figures we could take the girl for a quarter of a million. That seems impossible to me.”
    “He’s taken tougher marks for more.”
    “He should be rich then.”
    “None of them ever are. He gambles for one thing, and he gambles with people who make a business of it, the big money boys. Easy come, easy go.”
    “Do you think he and Deutscher will double-cross us?”
    “They might try. Of course, we can’t be sure why Dad went right from that dinner with you to Deutscher’s place. One thing you do have to remember, Dad’s first thought is himself. He’s always the number one boy in his own mind.”
    “And he’ll be handling the money.”
    “We’ll give that some thought when the time comes. Let’s not think of money tonight.”
    Her perfume came to me as she slid closer in the seat. She put a hand on my knee. The radio gave with Goodman. Big moon in a clear sky; all the ingredients for romance were there. But I was thinking of a quarter of a million dollars.
    Gabby’s is on a pier south of Malibu and it gets a lot of the middle-caste studio trade: starlets and fading stars, assistant producers and writers.
    It seemed like everybody there knew Jean. We wound up at a big table in one corner with nobody I knew and only one face I recognized. The face belonged to a guy named Moose Jelko. He’d been a fair club fighter, and now he was a heavy in B pictures and a professional bar brawler.
    The talk went around me, names I didn’t know in pictures I’d never heard of, gossip and laughs and the smell of expensive perfume through it all. I hit the bottle.
    Then, around eleven o’clock, Jean went into the other room to dance with some gent, and Moose slid over into the chair she’d been occupying. He was about half drunk, and I was a little beyond that.
    He said, “Hear you’ve been bothering a friend of mine.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “Phil Sloan.”
    “Don’t know him.”
    “Little Phil. Runs a