The crowd began to quiet down. The members of Al Omega’s orchestra had slipped away from their places and the relief band had started a fast Cuban rhythm. The dance floor slowly began to fill.
To Malone all the dancers seemed to be giants. He shuddered again.
“Tell that waiter to bring me a drink before a noted lawyer drops dead in the world-famous Casino,” he said. “And when we go back to talk to this guy, put him behind a screen. I’ve got a phobia about midgets.” He lit a fresh cigar and said, “At least, I’ve got a phobia about that midget.”
Jake signaled to the waiter, and said, “He’s a mean, hateful little cuss. But the customers are insane about him, and in this corner tavern the customers are always right. Anyway, until we get the decorations paid for.”
“All right,” Malone said. “I’ll try to love him for your sweet sake.”
He took a quick glance at Jake. The lean, pleasantly homely face under the shock of red hair was pale with fatigue and lined with worry. He reminded himself that this meant a lot to Jake, more than just the successful re-opening of a night club. If the Casino should go down the river, it meant back to the press agent grind again: dance bands, fan dancers, mind-reading acts; hotel rooms in Dayton and Lansing and Milwaukee and Keokuk; getting along with radio singers and theater managers and cowboy yodelers and city editors, stretched clear from hell to breakfast and back again. It wasn’t what Jake had wanted for Helene.
“Remember the girl who wanted to be married to a man who owned a jewelry store?” Helene asked happily, lighting a cigarette. “Well, imagine being married to a man who owns a saloon.”
Malone sighed almost imperceptibly, and looked over the cash customers. What he saw promised well for the future of the remodeled Casino. It had been designed to draw the crowd, and the crowd was there. But not only the crowd. There was a dancer from the visiting ballet, dropped in to catch the late show. There was a table of slightly aging North Shore socialites. There was Betty Royal, a bright-eyed youngster with shining hair, surrounded by her usual football team of admirers, and there was half the cast of a Loop hit show.
There was Lou Goldsmith, the slot-machine king, a tall, barrel-stomached, unhappy-looking man, with his restless glittering young wife, who had, surprisingly, stayed on in the Casino chorus after her marriage. As Malone watched them, the couple rose from their floor-side table, waved cordially at Jake and Helene, and moved toward the door leading backstage, Lou a step or two in the rear, protest showing in the very set of his bulky shoulders. Malone wondered if there was anything to the stories about Lou Goldsmith’s wife and Al Omega, the orchestra leader.
There was Frank Ferris, the city hall reporter, squiring a dowdy little woman with glasses. There was the handsome, distinguished-looking business man whose presence was the accolade to any night club. There was a table of radio people.
Yes, Malone decided, the Casino was over its first hurdle. He smiled cheerfully around the room, then abruptly stiffened to sharp attention.
At a secluded table in a shadowed corner there was an immense, grinning man in a tuxedo that was—Malone blinked and squinted once or twice before he was sure—a deep, jungle green. His pink face was scrubbed, powdered, and beaming, in one plump hand he held a rose-quartz cigarette holder in which burned (Malone remembered) a slim, perfumed, and probably tinted cigarette. The men who hovered behind him, out of range of the floor lights, were black, immovable shadows. Malone sensed that every one of them had a tense hand in his right-hand coat pocket.
The little lawyer felt a chill flow over him, as though ice had suddenly been rubbed against his bones. He reached for his glass, coughed into it, dropped his cigar and caught it halfway down his vest, and said, “I never saw Max Hook in a night club before.”
There was a little, almost uneasy silence before Helene said lightly, “After all, Malone, even a gambling czar has to have a little relaxation.”
“Besides,” Jake said, “he probably wanted to drop in and see what kind of decorations his money had paid for.”
Ramon Arriba’s Cuban Band suddenly let loose a blast of impassioned music that drowned out all speech and almost all thought. It was a good three minutes later before Malone could say, between cold lips, “You didn’t borrow the money for the remodeling from Max Hook! Because if you did, he—”
Jake said fast, “Listen, Malone, this is no time to talk business.” His gray eyes signaled, “Shut up!” and he added, “Relax and enjoy yourself.”
Malone caught the signal, nodded, sipped his drink, and relit his cigar.
A couple of lively youngsters from Northwestern had started a conga chain. The Goldsmiths were back at their table, apparently quarreling. Frank Ferris was writing down the cigarette girl’s name. Max Hook had clasped one of his rosy, puffy hands over the wrist of one of his weasel-eyed young bodyguards.
“Hold your breath,” Helene said, without moving her lips. “Here comes Ruth Rawlson.”
Malone immediately forgot the Casino, the rumba band, Jake and Helene, and even Max Hook. He knew now what it would feel like to have an electric eel lie alongside of his spine.
Ruth Rawlson. Had it been 1921 or 1922? Malone wasn’t sure. He only knew that he’d gone to the Follies three nights out of five during their stay in Chicago. Maybe it had been 1926. Oh Lord no, not later than 1924. Who the hell cared about the date, anyway. There had been that tall, slim, devastating girl with the lush, reddish-gold hair rippling to her waist, the face, the throat, the shoulders, the—Malone closed his eyes. For just that moment he was in his twenties again.
He heard a faint murmur of voices saying something about wanting a drink, and ordering one, and then Helene was kicking him under the table as she said, “Miss Rawlson—Mr. Malone.”
“How delightful!” said the deep, throaty voice of Ruth Rawlson.
Malone braced a hand against the table edge and opened his eyes.
They’d always said Ruth Rawlson had good bones. Sculptors, indeed, had raved about them. But you could really appreciate them now. In fact, with a reasonably searching eye, Malone realized, you could probably identify every one of them.
She had been tall, graceful, swan-like. Now she was only tall, and thin as a haddock-bone. There was a streak of face powder down the front of her shabby and remodeled black satin evening dress. Her face, that had been the most pictured face of the decade, was still beautiful, in a haggard, picturesque way, like a famous ruin, Malone thought. The red-gold hair was gray now, and, at the moment, more than a little disheveled. And she was staggering like a camel on ice-skates.
Malone said, “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” and meant every word of it.
Ruth Rawlson turned an engaging smile on him and breathed, “You charming man!” She pushed an empty glass toward Jake and said, “How stupid of me! I didn’t mean to drink it that fast!” Beamed at Helene and said, “My dear, how exquisite you look.” Turned back to Jake to whisper, “When the waiter comes around again—” And then informed them all, in a torrid murmur, that she’d turned down a Broadway offer over a little matter of price.
Jake obligingly hailed the waiter. Ruth Rawlson downed a drink, delicately pressed the drops off her chin with a corner of the tablecloth, rose to her feet by taking a firm grip on the edge of the table, flashed her still dazzling smile impartially at them all, and careened off toward the door leading to the dressing rooms.
“Isn’t she wonderful!” Helene breathed. “She’s lived for years on cheap whiskey and vitamin pills!”
Malone remembered a poem he’d learned in grade school about Titania vanishing into the heart of a flower, and said crossly, “She probably drinks to forget something.”
“Sure,” Jake said, lighting a cigarette, “her future.” He blew out the match and added,