The Leather Duke

Johnny gestured him to come around the pool and rose to meet him. “Get yourself a quick steam and a swim, Sam, while I have a rubdown,” he said, “then we’ll put on the feed bag.”

“One of those nice steaks that they cook so badly here, Johnny?” Sam asked.

Johnny chuckled. “We’ll force ourselves to eat them.” An attendant approached and Sam went off to the locker rooms. Johnny found an idle masseur and went into a cubicle with him, where he stretched out on a rubbing table.

The masseur covered him with a sheet, then peeling it back off one leg, rubbed olive oil on the limb. He gripped it in both hands and began to work on it. He had tremendously powerful fingers and seemed to find every tender muscle. While he worked, he talked.

“New member, sir, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Only a guest. Towner put me up.”

“Oh, Mr. Towner, the leather man. I give him a rub-down two-three times a week. Wonderful condition for a man his age. Keeps in good shape... Mmm, you got a kink in a muscle here.” He worked on it and Johnny had to gasp to keep from wincing in pain. The masseur chuckled. “You ought to watch yourself. Don’t exercise, don’t work.”

“Yeah,” said Johnny, “you may be right. By the way, just to test your powers of observation — what business would you say I was in?”

The masseur put down the leg, covered it and exposed the other one. “Stocks, Board of Trade. Maybe radio or advertising.”

“You wouldn’t take me for a laborer?”

“Ha! You? You wouldn’t be living at the club, if you was a laborer. Besides you don’t have the muscle for it.”

“I could be a laborer out of work.”

“No sir, you couldn’t. I know a gentleman when I see one.”

“You think I’m a gentleman?”

“Oh, sure. That’s one thing I know — gentlemen. I have worked at this club for nine years. I massage forty-fifty gentlemen a week. Never make a mistake about a gentleman.”

“Ever massage Freddie Wendland?”

“Two-three times a month.”

“And he’s no different than I am?”

“How you mean? He is younger man than you, but otherwise the same as you — a gentleman.”

Johnny grinned and wondered what Wendland would say to that. He relaxed under the probing hands of the masseur and a half hour later got up from the table, feeling five years younger.

Sam was still in the pool, enjoying himself, but he climbed out and both dressed and adjourned to the grill room. They ordered steaks and when they finished eating it was after seven.

Johnny signed the check with a flourish and they left the grill room.

“And now for our date,” Johnny said then.

“We got a date?”

“I have,” said Johnny.

“With a girl?”

“With what would I have a date? It’s the girl with the taffy-colored hair at the plant. Nancy Miller.”

Sam brightened. “Say, she’s all right. I passed a few words with her myself, this noon.” He cleared his throat. “I wonder if she’s got a friend.”

“Every girl’s got a friend, Sam.”

“C’n you call her and ask?”

“Mm, that might not be such a good idea. On the phone a girl can make excuses. We’ll surprise her and then she’ll have to come through with the friend.”

“Didn’t we do that in St. Louis once? The girl weighed two hundred pounds.”

“Yes, but she was affectionate, wasn’t she?”

“You ain’t kiddin’, Johnny, every pound of her was affectionate. I’m gonna hold out for a girl about Nancy’s size.”

They left the club and had the doorman get a cab for them. Climbing in, Johnny gave the driver Nancy Miller’s Armitage Avenue address.

The cabby made an illegal U turn and headed north up Michigan. Behind them a black Chevvie executed the same illegal U turn. Johnny saw the Chevvie in the rear vision mirror and swore. “You can’t trust anybody these days.”

Sam did not hear him. He was wrapped in heavy thought, pondering about his blind date.

Chapter Seventeen

The cab rolled up Michigan, got onto Lake Shore Drive and a few minutes later seemed to be lost in the winding drives of Lincoln Park, but the driver executed a series of complicated turns and suddenly swung into Armitage. A few minutes later he pulled up in front of a dingy three-story apartment house.

He got out and opened the door for Johnny and Sam. “Fella been followin’ us ever since we left the club,” he said.

“Nothing serious,” said Johnny. “Just a private eye.”

The cabby looked at the apartment house. “Wife trying to get evidence, eh?”

“Wait’ll you see the evidence I’ve got.” Johnny took a ten-dollar bill from his pocket. “This is your big night. We’re going to make the rounds of some hot spots.”

“Swell,” said the driver. “I know a couple of dillies if you run out of places.”

Johnny and Sam entered the foyer of the apartment house and found the mailboxes. A card under one read: Miller-Ballard, 3C.