The Guilty Are Afraid

“Is there any other type: the ones the boss gives away?”

“Look, Joe, cut it out, will you?” His face was beginning to grow shiny with sweat. “I’d lose my job if you were found in here. Take your goddamn matches and beat it.”

“Any chance of looking in some of the offices?” I asked. “I’d spring another fifty if I could.”

I could see he was rapidly losing his nerve by now.

“You’re nuts! Come on, get the hell out of here!”

Then the door behind the bar, the one Bennauer had told me led to the offices, opened, and a fat man wearing a white coat on which was a badge bearing a beautifully embroidered bunch of grapes to tell me he was the wine waiter came into the bar.

He was a Latin type with thick, heavily oiled hair and a Charlie Chan moustache. His small black eyes moved from Bennauer to me and the muscles of his face, under their covering of fat, tightened.

Bennauer didn’t entirely lose his head. He said, “Here’s Mr. Gomez now. You’ve got no business to barge in here without an appointment.” He turned to Gomez. “This guy wants to talk to you.”

I gave the fat Latin a servile smile.

“Could you spare me a moment of your time, Mr. Gomez? I’m O’Connor: Californian Wine Co.”

As Gomez moved over to me, I produced the trade card and laid it on the bar. He picked it up with fat fingers and studied it: his face was as expressionless as a hole in a wall. I could smell the pomade with which he had soaked his hair: it wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell. Having read the card, he turned it on its edge and began to tap with it on the counter while he looked me over.

“I have no account with your people,” he said.

“That’s something we want to put right, Mr. Gomez. We have several lines that would interest you. I’ve brought a bottle of our very special brandy for you to try.”

His black eyes moved to Bennauer.

“How did he get in here?” he asked.

Bennauer had got his second wind by now. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I was here and he just walked in and asked for you.”

“I came up in the goods elevator. The guy on the door downstairs told me to come up,” I said. “Did I do wrong?”

“I don’t see any salesman without an appointment.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gomez. Maybe you could give me a date for tomorrow.” I put the parcel on the counter. “If you could look at this in the meantime, we might be able to talk business tomorrow.”

“We’ll talk business now,” a voice said behind me.

Both Gomez and Bennauer became as rigid as marble statues. Okay, I admit my heart did a back flip. I looked over my shoulder.

A dark man in a faultless tuxedo, a white camellia in his buttonhole, stood about twenty feet from me. He had the face of an eagle, narrow with a big, sharp nose, a thin mouth and black restless eyes. He was thin and tall; the South American type that women rave about and men watch uneasily when they are raving.

I was pretty certain this was Cordez. These other two wouldn’t be behaving as if they were in the presence of a real hot shot unless he was.

The tall man moved up to the bar, held out a brown, thin hand for the card Gomez was holding. Gomez gave it to him. He stared at it, then with no change of expression he bent it in two and flicked it behind the bar.

“That . . .” he said, and pointed to the brown paper parcel on the counter.

Gomez hurriedly stripped the wrapping off the bottle and laid the bottle on the counter so Cortez could read the label.

He read it, then he turned sleepy black eyes on me.

“I said no to this a month ago,” he said. “Don’t you know what ‘no’ means?”

“Why, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m new to this territory. I didn’t know someone had shown it to you before.”

“Well, you know now. Get out of this club and stay out!”

“Why, sure. I’m sorry.” I made out I was pretty confused. “Maybe if I leave the bottle . . . it’s pretty good brandy. We could supply it on very favourable terms.”

“Get out!”

I stepped away from the bar, turned and started across the vast acreage of black glass. I hadn’t taken six steps when I became aware that three men in tuxedos had appeared. They stood in a semicircle, blocking the way out.

Two of them I had never seen before. They were big, beefy Latin-Americans. Their faces were hard and expressionless. The third man, standing between them, a snarling grin on his broken face, made me feel suddenly a little weak at the knees.

It was Hertz.

III

For a long moment Hertz and I stared at each other. His tongue came out and went over his thick lips, the way a snake flicks out its tongue before it strikes.

“Hello, peeper,” he said softly. “Remember me?”

I remembered him all right.

I hadn’t reckoned on being bounced by Hertz. I had been prepared to be roughed up a little and shot out on my tail on the hard, cold sidewalk, but having Hertz in it as well hadn’t come into my calculations.

I did some rapid thinking. I moved sideways so I could see Cordez while at the same time I could watch Hertz.

Cordez said, in his flat, bored voice, “What is this?”

“The creep’s name is Brandon,” Hertz said. “He’s a shamus. He’s that punk Sheppey’s sidekick.”