Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/100

98 a pocket concealed in the bosom of her dress, Anita would take a silver Mexican dollar. Her body would arch away from his, then toward him as, with the deftness of a prestidigitator, the silver dollar would find its way into Ken's boot.

More than once, during a single week, she gave him as much as a hundred dollars.

Frank and Jack's was shut tight on one night each year. On Good Friday the shutters were up; not even a meal was served. Frank drove North to Los Angeles on this holy day for his annual visit to his mother. Jack, his Mexican partner, went south to Mazatlan.

On Easter Saturday morning those who worked in Frank and Jack's, cooks and waiters, croupiers and shills, bartenders, house girls and negress maids, lay late in bed. When they rose, in mid-afternoon, they were still heavy with sleep. Some of them drank brandy straight as an eyeopener; others, emerging from the misty haze of their weariness, thought of other years, other Easter seasons, love and home.

Anita was sullen that Saturday night, torpid, dull. The long evening dragged slowly on. At two o'clock Pete D'Arresto, the manager, chased out the few stragglers. Ken thankfully hurried across the street to the sweet bed that was his in the Casa Verde, the little hotel in which he lived.

On Sunday he rose early. The moist April morning was heavy with tropic heat. A shimmering sun beat down on Tia Juana's unpaved streets. Frank and Jack's was closed tight. The Club was not yet open. The long barrooms and