Jackpot (Nameless Dectective) Read Free Page B

a better chance of coming up winners. I sighed, I grumbled. And then I got out of bed and showered and dressed and went off to have maple syrup poured on my waffles. Figuratively speaking, I hoped.
    It was nine-fifteen by the time I walked into the Stanford Court, but that didn’t matter because Littlejohn was also fifteen minutes late. We ran into each other in the middle of the lobby.
    He was a short, round, middle-aged guy who wore flashy clothes made for somebody half his age and a couple of pounds of gold jewelry, most of it around his neck. This morning he had on lemon-yellow trousers, a ruffled pink shirt open at the throat, a paisley neck scarf, and a mod-type off-white jacket with tight sleeves that ended halfway up his forearms. All of the clothing was wrinkled and baggy, whether on purpose or not I had no idea. His hair was even bushier than I remembered it, and so black he might have dyed it with shoe polish. At his best he looked like one of the Three Stooges in a Mack Sennett two-reeler. Today he was not at his best. Today his eyes were blood-filled and sunken deep inside puffy hollows, his face had a swollen look, his appendages trembled, and he walked the way a man might if he were barefoot on a bed of hot coals. Hangover with a capital H.
    The Stanford Court is a very ritzy, conservative Nob Hill hotel, even more exclusive than the Mark Hopkins and the Fairmont nearby. Well-dressed citizens, most of them past fifty, stared warily at Littlejohn as if they thought he might suddenly become violent. They stared at me, too, when he threw one arm around my shoulders and used his other hand to squeeze mine like a grocery shopper squeezing a peach to see if it was ripe. He also breathed on me, which made it difficult for me not to throw up on him. He had a breath like a goat with pyorrhea.
    “Oh, baby,” he said in rueful tones, “I got a head big as a watermelon. Goddamn booze. Sometimes I think I should have kept on doing coke, never mind what happened to guys like Belushi. At least you don’t wake up with a head like the Goodyear blimp and a taste in your mouth like some dog took a dump on your tongue.”
    An aristocratic lady in furs heard that, gasped delicately, and then cut him up with a glare like a laser beam. He didn’t even know she existed. I tried offering her a small, apologetic smile, but she curled her lip at me. Guilt by association.
    “It was worth it, though, kid,” Littlejohn said. He had hold of my arm now—the way Kerry holds it when we’re walking together—and was steering me toward the restaurant. “I got a couple of sugar daddies lined up. Mucho bucks. Last night it was fast serves and hot volleys; now the ball’s in their court. But the linesman’s on our side and we’ll get the call, I feel it in my gut. You know what I mean?”
    “Sure,” I said. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
    The restaurant wasn’t crowded, but it took a few minutes for us to get a table. I think that was because there was a discreet discussion among the staff as to the advisability of seating somebody who looked like one of the Three Stooges with a hangover. Two different employees asked him if he was a guest of the hotel, as if they couldn’t believe the management had been so lax. When we finally did get a table, it was at the rear and well removed from any of the other patrons.
    A cherubic blond waitress appeared, looking as wary as the people out in the lobby. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Littlejohn; she may have thought she was hallucinating. At length she asked him, “Black coffee for you, sir?”
    He pulled a face. “Christ, no. Tell you what I want, sweetmeat. Three cinnamon buns, the frosted kind. Big ones. Six bananas, cut up in a bowl, no milk or cream. And a couple of bottles of Amstel lager.”
    She just looked at him. So did I. Pretty soon she said, tentatively, “Are you making some kind of joke?”
    “Do I look like I’m joking? I’m in pain,