He let his bags drop to the floor. His left foot kicked back slightly and contacted the door and he slammed it shut. His eyes moved across the cabin. It wasn’t as spacious as the apartment he’d leased month-to-month in the overpriced foreigners’ ghetto a few blocks from the Vatican, but it was furnished better.
Abe Cross lit a cigarette and walked toward the window, reminding himself consciously that it was a porthole and to think of it as that. It faced the dockside and he saw virtually no movement as he looked out. But at this time of the morning he hadn’t expected any. After all the years in the Navy, he still felt very little at home aboard a ship. In the SEALs, he had spent most of his time running, swimming, lifting weights and shooting, then teaching the men under him how to do the same.
The Empress Britannia was owned by the same company that owned the hotel. The Empress Britannia’s lounge pianist, it had been explained to him by the hotel manager, had a personal problem.
“Drinking?”
“Yes. I suppose it doesn’t matter to tell you.”
“It’s an easy problem to get when you spend your nights in a bar from sundown until closing.”
“I’ve seen you drink maybe twice, Mr. Cross.” She had smiled, pushing a lock of blonde hair up from her forehead with the back of her left hand, the nails bright pink and immaculately manicured.
“I’m a secret drinker.” He’d grinned.
“No you’re not.”
“Let’s say I had the problem once and some friends helped me out of it.”
“You’re lucky you can still drink. I mean, if you don’t mind my saying that?”
“I agree. So, what’s my unfortunate fellow pianist’s dilemma have to do with me?” He’d lit a cigarette. He kept himself to less than a pack a day these days.
“I’ve been watching you.” She smiled and her cheeks flushed a little. “I mean, that sounds, well … anyway. You’re good. Very good. You could be playing concert halls instead of lounges.”
“I like the people in lounges better.” He’d smiled.
“The Empress Britannia sails tomorrow evening on the tide.”
“Better than under it, I guess.”
“Look. I’m trying to offer you something.”
“All right. You want me to take over for the guy who has the problem. ”
“Right. The Empress is continuing on to New York, then through Panama to California and up to Alaska and across to Japan. It should be quite a voyage. First class all the way. I can offer you five hundred more a month, and of course all of your expenses will be paid, so except for cigarettes and incidentals, you’d make out quite well.” And she had laughed. “And with your eye for the ladies, those last words of mine you could take literally. Lots of pretty girls with nothing but money to spend on a handsome lounge pianist.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Do you want to do it? You’d have to get on board right this evening. Or morning, I should say. You’d have rehearsals starting at noon.”
“Rehearsals?”
“You’d also accompany Doris Knight.”
“Any relation to Doris Day?”
She’d laughed, her eyes sparkling. “No. It’s a stage name. Kind of silly, I suppose. But she’s a good singer, I’m told. Does a lot of forties and fifties songs already in your repertoire.”
“The arrangements would be different.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.
“Nice cabin. The whole lot. The company needs you,” she told him. “You’d make big points with the management. Maybe enough to get you out from behind that piano if that’s what you’re after.”
“I don’t know what I’m after. I’ll do it on one other conditions.”
“What’s that?”
“What are you doing after closing tonight?”
“Mr. Cross!” And then she had smiled again. “Nothing. What do you have in mind?”
He’d explained that to her at some length afterward, which had been part of the reason he’d gotten in so late. It was five in the morning now and he looked at his watch. His now erstwhile employer had let him off early from the piano bar to help him get packed. Or, he reflected, stubbing out his cigarette, that was one way of putting it, however crudely.
In seven hours, a rehearsal with a singer he’d never heard with arrangements he’d never played, and this Doris Knight would probably resent him anyway, taking over for her cashiered accompanist.
Cross shrugged out of his windbreaker and started to undress, trying to remember in which bag he’d packed his alarm clock. He could cop six hours if he was quick.