No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker

deal and some broad keeps calling. Her old man is in the slammer and she wants him bailed out.”
    Angie sashayed ahead of us while Abe and the young man discussed the woman and bail. I watched Angie’s butt wiggle against her stretch pants until she disappeared into the club. When the young man left us I said, “I thought you couldn’t write bonds.”
    â€œI can’t, but I do the work when someone asks and shoot ’em to Clyde Brooks. He gives me a kickback. I’ll pick up a hundred or so on this one—for a couple of phone calls.”
    Rock and roll music coming from the interior suddenly stopped. When we reached the main room I saw the four-man band consulting over sheet music on a tiny stage cantilevered from one wall. Angie was climbing a short ladder to join them. The room was murky, chairs turned on tables. It was larger than it looked from outside. Two bars served the place. Tiny tables were raised on a dais at the front. Most of the floor had tables so close they almost touched each other. A miniscule dance floor was at the rear. The stage was ten feet high. The arrangement cunningly packed the maximum number of customers into the least space.
    The young man joined us again. His name was Manny. He was manager and chief bartender.
    â€œHave a drink while I make those calls,” Abe said to me, gesturing to Manny to fix it. Abe went back into the short corridor to his office.
    â€œAbe must love you,” Manny said, placing a triple shot of gin and ice on the bar. “He’d rather give teeth than free drinks.”
    â€œI’ve known him for a long time,” I said.
    With unabashed curiosity Manny studied my outmoded clothes, the short haircut of another era. He wanted to ask questions, but years of conditioning in prison made me withdraw from his curiosity. Suddenly the band’s twanging throb erupted and ended the necessity of conversation. Pulsing sound drowned out thought, much less talk. Angie was a dancer, prancing and gyrating in steps I later learned were frug, watusi, swim, and boogaloo. Whatever they were called, they were erotic. The gin was loosening me.
    Abe returned and led me into the office, a cubbyhole holding a scarred desk, a chair and an ancient box safe that could be peeled open in thirty minutes, the kind that had made legends of safe-crackers four decades before.
    Abe’s girth seemed to spill over the desk as he flopped behind it. His fingers spasmodically squeezed a pencil and he perspired. He always perspired.
    â€œThey kept you a long time,” he said. “What happened?”
    â€œNo juice with the parole board.”
    Abe’s mouth worked in sympathy, but his eyes were calculating. “Got anything going for you yet?”
    â€œI’m getting used to crossing streets again without getting run over.”
    â€œI’ll bet it’s a bitch adjusting.” He paused, gathered himself. “You said you know Bulldog. What about Stan Bergman?”
    â€œHe’s a friend of mine. What about him?”
    â€œHe’s in jail waiting for trial on a robbery. I want you to go with me to visit him.”
    â€œJust visit him?”
    â€œWell, there’s more to it than that. Let me tell you the whole story. It’s got to do with Stan, Bulldog, and Bulldog’s kid brother.” After vehemently denying that he’d finked on Lionel and Bulldog (but he could understand why they made the mistake), he told of how he’d been the middle man in peddling some hot diamonds—but he’d been unable to get the right price after they’d been delivered. Newspaper publicity was heating up the score and everybody was tense. Tempers got short. Bulldog wanted the diamonds back, but Abe had given them to a diamond wholesaler who was in New York. The two thieves had given him an “or else” deadline of twenty-four hours. That evening they were arrested with half the loot. They claimed Abe had sent