Payback by Sam Stewart

Author:Sam Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504009256
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

17

The sign that blinked at Der Nachtlokal’s entrance was a man in the moon. He looked at you steadily and suddenly winked. The awning was gold and the doorman was costumed like an uber-lieutenant in the Prussian army, but he wasn’t any match for the bouncers in New York. No way, Mitchell thought. He let people in without a quarrel or a sneer.

Inside it had a kind of an old-fashioned glitz. Backlit walls made of deep blue plastic with an iridescent glow that was here and there dotted with the pinpoint spotlights of imitation stars. The music was soft and the deep blue carpet even softer than the lights. It might’ve been a strip, and it could’ve been a tease, but it wasn’t, Mitchell figured out quickly, any joint.

He handed his coat to a Chinese lady in a strapless arrangement at a blue-mirrored booth where a sign said MANTEL SCHEK, 85 SCHILLINGS, or about what it would take to send your coat to the cleaners. He told her, “No starch.” A girl in a bathing suit sauntered from the bar. She had a tray of cigarettes. She had Camels and Parliaments at ten bucks a box and a slow hot look that could have lit the whole tray.

The next thing that happened was a chubby maitre d’ with a tourist-eating smile. He came over to Mitchell with a quick hard bow, a little clicking of the heels. “Und zo,” he said tightly, “is ze chentleman alone?”

“Yep. Just me and my money,” Mitchell said.

The maitre d’ gave it thought. Mitchell said fast, “I’d like to see Eva Schoener.” He was stabbing in the dark. The man got a suddenly stonewall expression that informed him he was right.

“Is she expecting you?”

“No, not exactly,” Mitchell said. “I’m a friend of a friend. I’m Mack’s friend, tell her. He saw her last night.”

“And you vould be …?”

“A friend of a mutual friend. I’m Mack’s friend, tell her.”

The man made a face. “I vill see iff she’s aroundt. In ze meantime ze chentleman vould like to haff a front row table for ze show?”

“Maybe later,” Mitchell said “In the meantime, tell her she can find me in the bar.”

***

The Scotch in the bar went for twelve bucks a shot. Mitchell took his whisky to a sky-blue table in the corner of the barroom and lit a cigarette. The music that was coming through the lighted blue wall was “The One-Note Samba,” and he idly tapped out the rhythm on the table with a dark blue swizzle stick.

Eva was a blonde. A real deadpan beauty. Everything going and nothing going on. She had the blue-blue eyes and the ash-blond hair and the tough cool mouth and the body of a dream and the arrogance of a stoplight.

“Vell?” she said. “Vat?”

Mitchell took his time. He lifted his eyes very slowly from the table and appeared unimpressed. She had her hair in a knot, very stiff, very high. She was wearing an evening gown of dark blue sequins—a slit up the side and a neckline that took a kind of suicidal plunge.

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