Free Live Free

And Now The News

The newsstand was so narrow it scarcely seemed a store at all. It squeezed between a snack bar and a dry cleaner’s as though someone ignorant of the ways of commerce had set out, given a trifle of waste space and a little money, to imitate an actual store. One felt that only very thin magazines, magazines filled entirely with pictures of thin, naked brunettes in the arms of hairy men, could be sold there, that only the thin papers (dated two months back) of little, one-horse towns and the thin, foreign-language weeklies of obscure Eastern European nationalities could ever be hung from the clips of its festoons of picture wire, hung beside the lavender and rose tip sheets for the horse races, the fly-spotted Gypsy Dream Keys for the numbers game. It smelled of coal smoke, printers ink, and mold.

Majewski sidled in, shoulders turned so he would not scrape the magazines from the walls, not overturn the thick stacks of the New York Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. “He in there?” he asked the old man who sat in the back of the store.

“Is who in there?”

“You know damn well who I mean. Barney. I want to see him.”

The old man shook his head. “He’s got somebody with him.”

The newsstand grew darker as it crept away from the street, illuminated at first with bare bulbs hanging from bare wires and then with nothing, so that the rearmost wall, where the old man sat tilted in his chair, seemed black as ink. A voice came from the blackness now, hearty but muffled. “Let him in. It’s okay.”

Resignedly, the old man moved his chair to one side. Majewski turned the knob and stepped through.

The room was no wider than the newsstand, but brightly lit. It held an old wooden desk with an old wooden swivel chair behind it, a single, hard-looking, straight-backed chair, a small safe, and two men.

The larger of these leaned against the wall. He had a round, ruddy, freckled face, and he wore a police uniform. The smaller sat behind the desk. His face was dark, and he had a darker mustache mixed of black and gray.

“Nothing to worry about,” the policeman said. “We’ve done our business, and I was just going. What’s your name, son?” He was no older than Majewski.

Majewski looked at the man behind the desk, who nodded. “Joe Majewski,” Majewski said.

“And you’re already a bellhop at the Consort.” The policeman looked at the red uniform cap Majewski wore with his overcoat and nodded approvingly. “You live around here, Joe?”

Majewski shook his head. The dark man behind the desk said, “I knew where he lives.”

“I bet you do. What do you need the money for, Joe? Pay off your bookie?”

“Make the payment on my TV. If I don’t give them something pretty soon, they’ll take back my set.”

“How about that. Well, at least it keeps you off the streets, huh?” The policeman straightened up and reached for the doorknob. “See you around, Barney.”

“So long, Evans.”

“What was that about?” Majewski asked as the door closed.

“What do you think it was about? I got to operate, don’t I? What the hell do you think I do with the interest you pay, send my dog to college? I got to pay off the precinct, I got to pay off the juice squad, I got to pay off my alderman. That was precinct. Don’t ask how much.”

“How much?”

“Don’t ask. One hell of a lot. If I didn’t have the magazines out front, I couldn’t make it. And that son of a bitch will cop Penthouse as sure as hell. How much do you want?”

“Seventy.”

“That all?”

Majewski nodded. “I get paid tomorrow, Barney, but I got to have it before I go to work today. You know I’m good for it.”

“Okay. Five for four until the end of next week. That’ll be eighty-eight. If you can’t make it, five for four at the end of the next week. That’ll be a hundred and ten. Don’t let it go no farther than that.”

Majewski nodded again.

The dark man took a thick billfold from his coat and gave him a fifty and a twenty, neither new. “I trust you, Joe,” he said. “Don’t let me down. I got so many collections going now it’s killing me.”

“See you next Saturday.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Majewski turned the knob and backed through the door, closing it after him. The old man still sat with his chair tilted, a limp, sweat-stained gray hat—an old man’s hat—pulled over his eyes. A short, brisk girl was peering and poking among the magazines. She glanced at Majewski, then looked again in what actors call a double take. “I know you!” she exclaimed.

“Well, lady, you’re one up on me,” he told her.

“Last night when I came into the Consort, you asked me if I was Miss Garth, or if I knew who she was. And I remembered the name because later I met Candy Garth, and she seemed to know Madame Serpentina. Why were you looking for her? For Miss Garth, I mean.”

“I don’t remember,” Majewski said. He made no effort to push past her.

The girl stared at him for a moment, then fumbled in her purse and produced a dollar.

Majewski allowed himself a slight grin. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s coming back to me.”

“Was it Madame Serpentina who told you to look for Miss Garth?”

“Huh uh. A guy.”

“A small man with glasses?”

Majewski shook his head. “I didn’t see him. He phoned down to the lobby. I was hoping for a tip out of it, because I knew it was her room and the lady’s a good tipper, but I haven’t seen her since. To tell the truth, I’ve been kind of ducking her because I owe her, but now I’m set to pay her, and I’ll remind her about finding the girl in the white coat for the guy up in her room.”

“You said Madame Serpentina was a good tipper. Will you tell me about that?”

“Boy, you want a whole lot for your buck, don’t you? Ten each for the three guys that carried up her bags.”

“Was the man with the thick glasses with her then?” the girl asked.

“No.” Majewski tried to edge by her. “There wasn’t nobody with her. I never seen this guy. Listen, lady, I’ve given you one hell of a lot more than a buck’s worth. I got to go.”

“Here.” She fumbled in her purse again. “Here’s another dollar, all right? She was alone when she checked in? Did she come in a cab, or do you know?”

“Huh uh.” Majewski paused and snapped his fingers. “Come to think of it, I did see the little guy with the glasses, maybe. See, when we’re not too busy we’re supposed to help the guests bring their stuff in from outside. Then we set it in the lobby while they register.”

The girl nodded.

“Anyway, I think I saw somebody like that—little guy, thick glasses, hat pulled down—talking to her. Then later I saw him in the lobby at registration. I don’t know if that was him on the phone.”

“Did you see him at the hotel after that?”

Majewski shook his head. “Of course, I ain’t been at work much. I work afternoons and evenings—I’m due in a couple hours.”

“How about the woman in the white raincoat? Or the man with the black mustache? I was talking to him in the lobby later. You must have seen us.”

“I never noticed him,” Majewski said. “I ain’t seen the fat lady again either.”

“Here’s my card.” The short girl pressed it into his hand. “Talk to the people you work with. If you find out where the man with the glasses and the woman in the white raincoat live, call me and let me know. Especially the man with the glasses. Or if you see him and can tell me where he is. I’ll pay ten dollars.” She hesitated. “Each. Ten dollars for each one.”

Majewski glanced at the card. “Okay, Miss Duck. But listen, I ought to level with you. You remember when you asked me about the little guy with the glasses a minute ago? And all of a sudden I remembered seein’ him on the sidewalk?”

Sandy Duck nodded.

“Well, the reason I remembered was I just saw him walk past outside.” He pointed beyond her toward the glass door at the front of the newsstand.

She rushed out, then stopped abruptly, looking up and down the street. More philosophically, Majewski followed her.