Nightwork by Irwin Shaw Page B

give you a piece of advice, brother, about that particular working man. Don’t leave your wallet where he can spot it. Or even your false teeth.” He took a few envelopes out of his pocket, shuffled through them, gave me one and put the rest back in his pocket. “Thirty-six hundred bucks,” the bookie said. “Count it.”
    I put the envelope away. “No need,” I said. “You look like an honest man.”
    “Yeah.” The bookie sipped at his milk.
    “Can I buy you a drink?”
    “I can only stand so much milk,” the bookie said. He belched.
    “You’re in the wrong business for a man with a bad stomach,” I said.
    “You can say that again. You want to bet on the hockey game tonight?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not really a gambling man. So long, pal.”
    The bookie didn’t say anything.
    I went over to the bar and had a Scotch and soda, then went out into the lobby. Morris, the bellboy, was standing near the front desk. “I hear you hit it big,” he said.
    “Not so big,” I said airily. “Still, it wasn’t a bad day’s work. Did you take my tip?”
    “No,” the bellboy said. He was a man who lied for the sheer pleasure of lying. “I was too busy on the floors.”
    “That’s too bad,” I said. “Better luck next time.”
    I had a steak for dinner in the hotel dining room, and another cigar with the coffee and brandy and then went up to my room, undressed, and got into bed. I slept without dreaming for twelve hours and woke up with the sun streaming into the room. I hadn’t slept that well since I was a small boy.

5
    I N THE MORNING I PACKED my bags and carried them myself to the elevator. I didn’t want to have any more conversations with Morris, the bellboy. I checked out, paying with some of the money I had won on the second race at Hialeah. Under the hotel canopy I looked around carefully. There was nobody as far as I could see who was waiting for me or who might follow me. I got into a cab and drove to the bus terminal where I could board a bus to Washington. Nobody would dream of looking in a bus terminal for a man who had just stolen a hundred thousand dollars.
    I tried the Hotel Mayflower first. As long as I was in Washington I thought I might as well take the best of what the city had to offer. But the hotel was full, the man at the desk told me. He gave me the impression that in this center of power one had to be elected to a room by a large constituency, or at least appointed by the President. I resolved to buy a new overcoat. Still, he was polite enough to suggest a hotel about a mile away. It usually had rooms, he said. He said it the way he might of said of an acquaintance that he usually wore soiled shirts.
    He turned out to be right. The building was new, all chrome and bright paint and looked like a motel on any highway in America, but there were vacancies. I registered under my own name. In this city, I felt, I didn’t have to go to extreme lengths to remain anonymous. Remembering what I had heard about crime in the streets of the capital, I prudently put my wallet in the hotel’s vault, keeping out only a hundred dollars for the day’s expenses. Avoid the chambers of the mighty. Danger lurks at their doorsteps. The Saturday night special lays down the final law.
    The last time I had been in Washington had been when I’d flown a charter of Republicans down from Vermont for the inaugural of Richard Nixon in 1969. There had been a lot of drinking among the Republicans on the plane, and I had spent a good part of the flight arguing with a drunken Vermont State Senator who had been a B-17 pilot during World War Two and who wanted to be allowed to fly the plane after we crossed Philadelphia. I hadn’t gone to the Inaugural or to the ball for which the Republicans had found me a ticket. At that time I considered myself a Democrat. I didn’t know what I considered myself now.
    I had spent the day of the Inaugural at Arlington. It seemed a fitting way to celebrate