If Death Ever Slept

At one point I took advantage of something he had said. That reminds me,” I told him, “of a remark I overheard today. What do you think of a man who makes a pass at his son’s wife?”

He was dealing. His hand stopped for an instant and then flipped me a card. “Who made the remark?”

“I’d rather not say. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I happened to hear it.”

“Any names mentioned?”

“Certainly.”

He picked up his hand. “Your name’s Alfred?”

“Alan.”

“I forget names. People’s. Not horses’. I’ll tell you, Alan. For what I think about my brother-in-law’s attitude on money and his wife’s brother, come to me anytime. Beyond that I’m no authority. Anyone who thinks he ought to be shot, they can shoot him. No flowers. Not from me. Your play.”

That didn’t tell me much. When, at six o’clock, I said I had to wash and change for a date with Lois, and he totaled the score, fast and accurate, he turned it around for me to check. “At the moment,” he said, “I haven’t got ninety-two cents, but you can make it ninety-two dollars. More. Peach Fuzz in the fifth at Jamaica Thursday will be eight to one. With sixty dollars I could put forty on his nose. Three hundred and twenty, and half to you. And ninety-two cents.”

I told him it sounded very attractive and I’d let him know tomorrow. Since Jarrell had said to let him have fifty or a hundred I could have dished it out then and there, but if I did he probably wouldn’t be around tomorrow, and there was an off chance that I would want him for something. He took it like a gentleman, no shoving.

When, that morning on the terrace, I had proposed dinner and dance to Lois, I had mentioned the Flamingo Club, but the experience at Rusterman’s with Trella had shown me it wouldn’t be advisable. So I asked her if she would mind making it Colonna’s in the Village, where there was a good band and no one knew me, at least not by name, and we weren’t apt to run into any of my friends. For a second she did mind, but then decided it would be fun to try one she had never been to.