The Night Mayor by Kim Newman

people?’
    ‘Yeah. You’re a night person, like me. I can tell. There were two Irish boys in here earlier, in uniform, back from the war.’ She tried hard to remember, and I realised she was a touch drunk. ‘Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. Imagine, two friends with the same name. They had the look you do, the night-person look. I asked them about the war, and they said it was okay, but you could see in their eyes they didn’t mean it. Lots of day people go to the war and come back night people. Like this kid who used to come here – I think I was married to him once – Dick Powell. He started as a day person, and was in all these big spectacular musical shows they used to put on. They don’t do them any more. You know the kind, with thousands of girls dressed as bananas; now, they just put thousands of bananas on one girl. Dick was the dayest person you ever saw, shining hair, big smile, dimples, high tenor voice. Well, the war came, and Dick turned into a night person, got a job as a private cop or a night editor or something. Now he shaves every other evening, carries a gun and doesn’t sing no more. Me, I’ve been a night person longer than I can remember.’
    ‘How do you get to be a day person?’
    ‘You don’t. It only works the other way round. You know, like you only grow older. You have to live with it.’ She smiled, slyly this time, and leaned forwards. Her dress shifted a little, exposing an inch or two of cleavage. ‘There are ways night people have a better time, Richard. There are compensations.’
    Her eyelashes fluttered, and she stubbed out her cigarette on my empty plate. ‘I live two blocks from here, in a walk-up,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’
    I looked up at the clock. It was half past two. I looked down at Gloria. She raised one delicately plucked eyebrow. We understood each other. In her walk-up, there would be a bed. Just now, that was the best way to get to me. Money, threats, drugs: they wouldn’t work. A bed, now, that was irresistible. For eight hours’ sleep, I’d knock off God and hang the frame on Jesus.
    ‘Can I walk you home?’
    ‘Would you?’ She tossed her head, for the benefit of the hamburger chef. ‘I’d be honoured. You don’t often get to meet a
gentleman
these nights. Not with the war.’
    The chef mashed a lump of raw gristle on his stove, and kept it down until it was half charcoal. ‘Good night, Glory,’ he said, flipping the thing over and blacking the other side. She sniffed the air and ignored him.
    She took my arm, fingers digging through several layers of clothing, as if reaching for the bone. As we walked towards the doors, she rested her head on my shoulder.
    The doors opened and three men came in. Gloria stepped back behind me, recognising them. The youngest, a dead-eyed thug with prematurely white hair, gave a shark smile. ‘Hello, Gloria, going so soon?’
    ‘Lee… I thought you was playing poker tonight.’
    I heard a tremble in her voice, and again had that impending-violence feeling. I recognised these three too. I had seen pictures. White hair was Lee Marvin, twenty-eight arrests, no convictions. He was high up in the syndicate, which tied him in to Truro Daine. The other two were small fish, Jack Elam and Neville Brand, but they could have argued over first and second place in an Ugly Contest. I gathered my presence was breaking up a beautiful picture of Lee and Gloria. Not exactly a wedding photograph, but close.
    I had seen enough pain and blood for one night. I saw Thelma clearing the counter of anything breakable. By the door, Frank McHugh comically gulped down the last of his coffee and hurried back to his rig, leaving half a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs on the table. Jack Elam shut the doors behind him and turned the OPEN sign round to CLOSED.
    ‘Please, boys,’ said the chef, ‘I don’t want no troubles.’
    ‘No trouble at all, Kelly.’ Marvin grinned.
    I made fists in my pockets. He had some poundage on me, and he