The Peddler (5 page)

Sharkey raised his voice and yelled, “Ginny! Hey, Ginny!”

She came in and Sharkey told her to mix a couple drinks for him and the kid.

Ginny said, “And one for me. Well, Mr. Romero, you a pimp yet?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sharkey said. “You and your goddamn mouth.”

She laughed and went out, returning in a couple minutes with the drinks. She sat down while Sharkey talked to Tony and guzzled his highball. “Tell you what, Romero. You’re so all-fired dyin’ to work, I’m gonna let you work a little. You go around with Leo tonight. He’s going to some of the houses; you go along. I ain’t going to pay you nothing for anything. Leo, he’ll have a few things for you to do. You do what he says.”

“Glad to, Mr. Sharkey. And I appreciate the chance to start in. Anything at all’s fine with me.”

Sharkey finished his drink and turned to Ginny. “Mix me another—put some pep in it this time.” Then he said to Tony, “You work out O.K., you’ll go on a little salary. Well, that’s all. I got to get to work.”

Tony stood up. He figured Sharkey had to get to work on a bottle. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Sharkey,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

Sharkey nodded. Tony went out. Ginny was mixing a drink at the bar. He walked over to her, reached up and squeezed her waist with his hand. “Thanks, sweetheart,” he said softly. “I’m practically in business.”

She smiled. “I’ll give you a ring.”

Tony grinned at her, didn’t say anything, and left. Going down in the elevator he kept grinning to himself. It looked like he had that foot in the door. Now to start getting all the dope he could dig up on Frank Alterie.

Frank Alterie was a pretty tough character but when he and Tony had their beefs Tony handled himself well enough. Tony, of course, didn’t know just how things were going to work out when he left Sharkey after that first talk and went back to his hotel, but he had plenty of confidence, and the conviction, even then that he was on his way. He phoned Leo and arranged to meet him at seven o’clock that night for a drink in the St. Francis, then they got into Leo’s new Oldsmobile sedan and headed for the first stop.

Leo turned north on Van Ness and grinned at Tony. “Man,” he said, “the first time I seen you up at Sharkey’s, I never thought you’d be goin’ around with me. What all did Shark say, anyhow?”

“Not much. Said you’d show me around, maybe have some things for me to do. Where we goin’ now?”

“Big spot on Pacific. Got thirty ten-dollar girls there. See, Tony, I got forty spots; I pick up at eight of them a night, and two days I take off, don’t do nothin’.”

“You must handle plenty cash, Leo.”

“Yeah. That’s one reason I split up the houses for five nights. Wouldn’t want it all on me at once. Too many guys around here might feel like jumpin’ me for it.”

Tony thought about that, frowning. He hadn’t considered this angle much before. “How much you think you’ll wind up with tonight?” he asked.

Leo pulled a folded paper from his inside coat pocket and handed it to Tony. It listed eight locations and the amount to be picked up from each. After the address of the firstihouse they were to visit was a figure: 124.

“What’s this, Leo? What’s that one-two-four?”

“Twelve thousand, four hundred. We pick up half that at the first house; there’s amounts for the rest, too. See, Tony, them figures come through Sharkey—he gets the info from all the spots. They keep records naturally, so Shark knows how much us guys pick up as the organization’s cut.”

“You get that much dough from this one place?”

“Sure, sixty-two-hundred, that’s our fifty-percent off the top. Figure it out. There’s thirty ten-dollar girls there; that’s half the gross through a whole week, through last night. Pretty good week, too.”

Tony added the rest of the figures in his head, rapidly. “My God,” he said. “You mean we’ll wind up with over twenty-four thousand dollars tonight?”

“Twenty-four thousand, three-hundred clams.”

“What if some guy tries to beat you for it?”

“They got good sense, they won’t try. All the guys in town know we’re under Shark—and Angelo. And we got the right cops, too.” Leo hesitated. “But in case some guy thinks it’s a soft touch, we got these.” He reached under his coat and then tossed something into Tony’s lap.

Tony grabbed it, picked it up gingerly. It was a heavy .45 automatic and for a moment his throat closed up as he thought of what might happen if some guy jumped them for the dough. Then he swallowed and shrugged. Hell, this was part of it, and he’d never kidded himself that it wasn’t. With that much money around a guy had to be able to take care of it.

It jarred Tony a little, though, to realize Leo was carrying a gun. He liked Leo. Tony had arranged to “bump into” Leo in the beginning for no other reason than to use him if he could; now he was starting to like the guy’s company simply because he was pleasant to be around. But Tony had never realized the pleasant little guy packed a heater.

“Hey, Leo,” he asked. “You ever have to use this thing?”

“I got jumped once. Single guy. I got out with the cash, though.” He didn’t say any more about it, but Tony saw him unconsciously reach up to the right edge of his jaw and stroke it a moment, then put his hand back on the steering wheel. Tony had noticed a small red scar there when he’d first met Leo, but he’d never mentioned it. He didn’t now. If Leo wanted to talk about it, he would.

Tony rested his head against the seat behind him thinking that tonight he was getting a different picture of the business than he’d got from Maria. He asked casually, “Any of the other guys ever get jumped?”

“Just Alterie once. Some guy sapped him and got about thirty thou. Part was in checks—there’s always some checks.”

“Guy get away with it?”

“Yeah.” Leo pulled over to the curb and said, “First stop, Tony. Come on.”

They got out and walked up to the house. It was an old, two-story place set back about forty feet off Pacific, looking seventy or eighty years old. It looked respectable enough, Tony thought. The place was dark, as if somebody inside were sleeping. They walked up the steps to the door and Leo rang. A Negro maid opened the door and smiled when she saw who it was.

“Come on in, Mr. Leo. Ethel’s waitin’ for you.”

They went inside, into a long hall stretching ahead of them to the rear of the house. As they passed an open door on their left Tony looked through it into a large, well-furnished room in which two or three men were sitting. A woman dressed only in a gray satin housecoat sat on a couch beside a young man, her hand resting on his knee. Tony got a glimpse of a couple other women in the room before he went on down the hall and into a small room on their right.

There were a couch and three chairs in the room, plus a dresser laden with cosmetics and perfumes. The room smelled sweet, almost sickening. Ethel, the landlady of the house, was a small woman who appeared almost fifty. Obviously she was the “madame” and not one of the girls. She had been sitting at the dressing table, peering into the mirror as she put black pencil on her brows, but she turned and got up as Leo and Tony came in.

“Leo, darling,” she said, coming forward with her hand extended. “Still love me, dearie?”

“Sure,” Leo grinned. He introduced Tony and Ethel and they shook hands. She had a strong grip, like a man’s.

Ethel took a white envelope from the dresser and handed it to Leo. He sat down on the couch and pulled out a thick wad of bills and checks, then began counting the money, writing a few figures on the back of the envelope.

Tony watched him, a feverish feeling growing inside him as he stared at the money. Six-thousand, two-hundred dollars, he was thinking; the figure tumbled over and over in his mind. And that just half the dough from this one house. He thought hungrily about the huge, steady flow of dollars. In his mind grew an obscene image of a great fleshy whore lying on a bed, a constant stream of dollars spurting from her: dollar bills, ten-dollar bills, hundred- and thousand-dollar bills, filling the room, smothering her, flowing out of the doors and windows, a cascade, a flood, of money rushing day and night from the woman’s thighs.

“O.K.,” said Leo. He casually stuffed the money into the envelope, sealed it, and thrust it into his inside coat pocket. “Thanks, Ethel. See you next week. I’m going to show Tony around a little.”

“Fine, Leo. Make yourselves right at home.”

Leo grinned. “Don’t worry.”

They went out. Leo put his hand on Tony’s shoulder and steered him toward the front of the house. “You know the setup,” he said. “We passed the parlor when we come through. There’s where the guys go when they come in. Any girls that ain’t busy go in and the guy takes his pick— unless he asks for a certain dame. We got thirty rooms in this place so all the girls can work at once if it gets that jammed up.”

Tony said, “How come you don’t just send all that cabbage to the bank every day? Aren’t you worried luggin’ it all around?”

Leo grinned. “Bank? This don’t go in no bank account, pal. I even bum this slip I got when I finish tonight.”

They went into the parlor. It looked very much like the large living room of an ordinary home. There were three big couches, some easy chairs, a table against the wall with some wilting chrysanthemums in it. It looked a bit dismal to Tony. There were four women in the room, scantily clad, and two men. As they entered one of the men went out through another door with a woman.

Tony and Leo sat on a couch and Tony said, “Seems like you could fix this place up some, Leo. You know, make it sharper, more sexy. Hell, that’s what the guys come here for.”

Leo said, “Don’t worry, they’ll come anyway. No need to spend dough makin’ the place fancy.” He grinned and tapped his coat over the fat envelope.

“Maybe so,” Tony said, but he was thinking he’d make some changes if he were the boss.

The two unattached women walked toward them. One of them, a tall black-haired woman with thin, arched eyebrows and a full mouth said, “Hi, Leo. You miss me?”

“Sure, sweetheart, you know it.” He pulled her down on his lap.

The other, a plump redhead, sat down by Tony and said, “You workin’ with Leo, honey?”

“Yeah, in a way.”

She smiled and rubbed his thigh with her hand. “Want to have a little fun?”

Tony looked at Leo, who was squeezing the other woman, apparently in no hurry to leave. He heard the redhead and said to Tony, “Relax, pal. We got plenty time to hit the other places. Might as well enjoy the work, huh?” He laughed.

Tony shrugged. In a few minutes Leo got up and said, “Might as well kill a half hour, pal. I’m gonna be busy for that long.” He looked from Tony to the redhead and grinned. “Won’t cost him nothin’, will it, Lou?”

” ‘Course not, Leo. You know better’n that.”

“Go ahead, Leo,” Tony said. “I’ll wait here for you.”

“You kiddin’? Don’t cost you nothin’, Tony.”

“I’ll wait.”

Leo shook his head, frowning, then he and the brunette went out of the room.

The redhead said, “What’s the matter with you? Or is something wrong with me?”

“Nothing wrong with you, honey. I just don’t mix business with pleasure.” He grinned. “And it would be a pleasure.”

The answer mollified her a little, but she said, “You don’t know what you’re missin’, Tony.” She paused. “Tony what?”

“Romero.”

“You gonna be comin’ round with Leo much?”

“Probably. I’ll be seein’ you.”

“You do that.” The doorbell rang and three men came in. The redhead looked up, then said to Tony, “Well, honey, mama’s got to get back to work. See you later.”

“Sure.”

Tony sat in the parlor for almost half an hour, waiting for Leo, and the time passed quickly as he watched the stream of men come in, and noted the way the girls operated. He hadn’t been in a whorehouse for almost two years, and he’d forgotten how brusque and businesslike the whores had been in their advances.

As he watched, a new arrival came in and sat down; one of the women sat beside him and ran her hand boldly up his tliigh. It was a little too much like a set routine. Hell, everybody knew what the guys and gals were here for, but there wasn’t any reason why it couldn’t be handled with a little class. A little dough spent in the right places could turn this into one hell of a nice spot, too. The girls were all good-looking, a few of them actually beautiful, with full, soft bodies and striking faces. Tony watched the routine, and waited, with his mind busy.

When Leo came back he said, “You mean to teU me you been sittin’ there since I left?”

“Yeah. Have a good time?”

Leo smacked his lips and rubbed his palms together. “Man, did I! What’s the matter, you queer or something?”

Tony laughed. “Hell no. But I’m afraid I’m gonna be a disappointment to you, pal. I don’t mean to mess with none of these women. I—” he paused for a moment, not wanting to get on the wrong side of Leo by saying he figured a guy was a sucker for messing with the whores he bossed; and that the fact that he was boss was just about the same as paying them the ten clams. The girls could hardly object, even if you made them sick, and Tony simply didn’t care for sex on a platter.

Leo said, “You afraid of gettin’ a dose?”

“No, that’s not it exactly. Partly, maybe. But—I got me a girl takes good care of me, Leo. Maria Casino. She’s out in your Fillmore spot.”

“Oh, yeah. That sweet little chick.” He shrugged. “Well, it’s your business, kid. Sure nice stuff in here, though. Come on, then, let’s go.”

A little after two in the morning, Tony was talking to Maria in her apartment. She’d mixed a couple drinks for them and he’d just finished telling her about going around with Leo.

She frowned slightly. “Tony, I wish you’d stay out of it. What you want in this lousy racket for?”

“What’s lousy about it? There’s big dough in it, honey. And I mean to get me some of it. A lot of it.”

“Tony … I do pretty good, you know it. I make enough for both of us. I wouldn’t mind—”

He interrupted her. “Baby, I don’t want no peanuts. I want the big dough. You got any idea how much is in this racket? Must be at least ten, twenty million a year.”

“I know, but Sharkey and Angelo get the most. You can’t get nothin’ except what they give you. And, honey, I don’t like the guys in the racket. They’re all sort of shmy guys. I don’t want you to get like them. I like you just like you are, Tony.”