The Lure by Felice Picano Page B

predicted, Noel was good for business.
    “You going to the Window Wall tonight?” Rick asked. “Jimmy DiNadio just called from there. He said the place is hot as hell.”
    “You going?” Noel asked.
    “When I’m done.”
    Noel knew he wasn’t: he was going home and going to sleep. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    He took his gear downstairs to the office. The office door was shut, and Noel had to put everything under one arm, balance it there, to pull open the heavy door.
    Hell! The light was off.
    He reached over, feeling along the chipped plaster wall to find the switch, grabbed it, and blinked in the sudden light.
    Two heads turned toward him in surprise: Buddy Vega, his T-shirt halfway up his chest, his jeans at his feet, bent forward over a naked man Noel didn’t recognize right off, who was lying on the office desk as though it were the most comfortable mattress.
    “Do you mind!” Vega snapped.
    Noel almost dropped what he was carrying.
    “The light, sweetheart. The light!” Vega commanded, nodding toward the wall switch and not missing a stroke of his hips.
    “Leave it on,” the other man said in a thick Hispanic accent. Now Noel did recognize him—Miguel.
    “Shut the door, will you?” Buddy said. “Give me five more minutes.”
    Noel felt rooted to the spot at what he was seeing being done so nonchalantly—and by Buddy Vega of all people. But he finally closed the door and turned to go upstairs. Ascending, he bumped into Bob Seltzer, another bartender, who was headed downstairs.
    “It’s occupied,” Noel said, blocking his way. He was still unnerved, aware he was perspiring suddenly.
    “How occupied?” Seltzer asked, going around Noel and down a step.
    “Vega’s in there.”
    “So what?”
    “He’s with someone,” Noel tried to explain without having to say it outright.
    “Balling?” Seltzer asked, amused at Noel’s obvious discomfort. When Noel nodded yes, Seltzer asked, “You got a case for Buddy?”
    It took Noel half a minute to figure out what he meant.
    “Me? You’ve got to be kidding?”
    “You sure act like you do,” Seltzer said, edging downstairs. “I’m going to take a good look. I’ve always been a voyeur.”
    As upset by Bob’s suggestion as he was by the incident, Noel fled upstairs.
    Below him, he heard Seltzer open the office door and after a long minute say, “Oh, excuse me!” in exaggerated apology, followed by Vega’s insults.
    Only a few customers were left upstairs. One, dozing off at the Wurlitzer, was being tapped hard on the shoulder by Killer Max. Max, Noel knew, was dying to eighty-six someone tonight and had probably found his victim. Chaffee was on the wall phone, doubtless talking to Jimmy DiNadio again; he cupped his hand over the receiver when he saw Noel.
    “I thought you were closing out?”
    “I was. Vega’s screwing someone down there.”
    “Again? Well, close out here,” he said, making a space on the counter. He returned to his intense, whispered conversation with Jimmy. Noel knew they were lovers and on the rocks these days. Rick was doing what sounded like a lot of explaining and apologizing.
    “We’re closed, gentlemen,” Max shouted, holding the door open and shoving Sleeping Beauty onto the sidewalk. He turned around to see if any stragglers were left, then seeing none, locked the door. “Christ, what a pile of losers tonight,” he said, coming up to the bar where Bob had joined Noel closing out his register. “They look like rejects from a geriatrics ward at Bellevue.”
    Bob was counting out loud now, pointedly ignoring Max.
    “How about a date tonight?” Max asked Bob. “I got some new chains.”
    “Forget it, Quasimodo,” Bob said. “You’re about twice as old and ten times as ugly as anyone I’ll go on a date with. Go bother Noel.”
    Bob Seltzer had a live-in lover of five years and usually two or three smaller love affairs going on all at once, Noel knew. And a second job, in a bank. Where did he get the time