Magic Man by Ron Base

Magic Man by Ron Base

Author:Ron Base
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty

My stomach was still on fire when I boarded the Wilshire Boulevard trolley car, but I didn’t care. I had nothing left to lose at this point and only Nell to gain. I made a fine sight in Coop’s white tie and tails, and drew many admiring glances as the trolley made its way east. However, the driver was unimpressed. He stopped me as I was about to step off. “Hey fella, you want a word of advice?”

“Why not?” I said.

“You dress like a gent, you should act like one. Stay off the streetcars.”

“I’m new in town,” I said. “I was told gentlemen rode the streetcars.”

“I been doing this for five years,” said the driver. “Ain’t seen a gentleman yet.”

“Then your luck’s changed tonight, hasn’t it?”

He looked me up and down before he said, “I don’t think so.”

Well, he might be right about that. You could dress up a fellow like me in swell clothes, without necessarily hiding the truth of him. Still, the right clothes could get you into the Ambassador Hotel tonight and so could clean fingernails and that was all that interested me.

Big flower beds adjoined the drive sweeping up to the hotel entrance, and even at night the flowers erupted with voluptuous color, like someone had painted them for the occasion. All sorts of shiny cars floated past as I walked toward the entrance, feeling a trifle foolish and a bit of a fake, the only gent in evening clothes in Los Angeles forced to enter the Ambassador Hotel on foot. The hotel was set back at a distance from the boulevard upon a vast parklike acreage of shrubs and trees. The main building boasted five hundred rooms, a theater, a ballroom, and a dining room that spread more than half an acre. The hotel also contained the town’s most famous nightclub, The Cocoanut Grove.

Georgie Raft waited in the dark-wood veneered lobby near the reception desk, his black hair slicked to a bright sheen. He paced the intricately patterned carpet beautifully turned out in a navy-blue dinner jacket, the knot of his tie done just so. Exactly three quarters of an inch of silk cuff showed off gleaming diamond cuff links. Oh, he was a picture was our Georgie. Not a handsome fellow by any stretch, what with that somber ratlike face, and those dead black eyes, but there was something about him. He was like a deep, dark pond whose bottom you could never quite see.

Raft looked uncharacteristically rattled when he saw me. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like a dead man.”

“Pretty close to it.”

Raft shook his head. “How are your nails?”

“You’re not checking my nails.”

“Don’t be such a baby. Let me have a look at them.”

I gave in and presented my hands like a good little fellow. He scowled. “Christ, what have you been doing?”

“Various characters had it in their mind to kill me today,” I said.

“You can’t afford a manicure?” Threats to my life seemed far less important in Georgie’s estimation.



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