by Steve Fisher
And he’d refused to see her.
“Where is she?”
“Waiting in the lobby.”
“All right, send her in. I’m just in the mood for it. I told her to stay away, but she apparently doesn’t want to. So I’ll fix her wagon good.”
“She’ll be stopped at the door.”
Joe exploded. “So tell the guard it’s all right to let her come in.”
“Okay, Joe.”
Clarence Henry left, and Joe picked up the phony ten dollar chip and looked at it. He was still examining it when the door opened and Sunny poked her head in. Then she moved toward him quickly.
“Joe, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded!”
“Mean what?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you!”
“Nobody hurts me.”
“Why are you so nasty?”
“I’m not nasty, Wop.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. And even in his agitated state, the tears got him. Facing her, seeing her, was confusing the contempt he felt.
“You need to talk to someone,” she was saying, “everybody does, even kings and presidents. Talk in a way that you don’t talk to other people.”
He wanted to laugh; she was pitching pretty good. But he didn’t even smile. “You want to be the one I talk to?”
“I don’t know if I do, Joe. I can’t cope with some of the things you expect. Not as fast as you’d want me to. But don’t shut me out of your life.”
“Why not, Wop? I have no room for you.”
“Make room, Animal!”
“You call me that again and I’ll knock you down.”
“Go ahead, Animal!”
He slapped her hard, and she fell back from the blow, then dropped to her knees, sobbing. He stared at her, unable to believe that he had done this. Then he hurried over and picked her up and held her against him while she cried.
“I’m sorry, Sunny.”
She pulled away from him, started for the door. He caught her in two strides, swung her around. She looked up, her lip quivering.
“I told you I’m sorry! Don’t make me get down on my knees and beg to you!”
“Let go of me!”
He jerked her into his arms, lifted her chin, and kissed her full on the lips. She struggled, pressing him back; and then the struggling stopped, and she was holding on to him for a moment. When the long kiss was over, she turned away and sat down on his white-leather divan. He followed, drawing her to her feet, and kissed her again, her neck this time, her ears, her hair, holding her very close to him. Then he held her out, his hands shaking, and said: “There’s big things going on in the casino tonight. I’ve a lot to do. I’ll see you later.”
She looked at him, calmer now. “All right. Tomorrow. But don’t think because we kissed like this—I mean, just don’t think anything.”
“I won’t think anything.” He said it almost gently.
This time she kissed him. Tenderly, lightly, yet with ardor. Then she left.
Five
Three men work on the roped-off house side of a dice table; the box man and two dealers. Directly opposite them, the stickman rakes in the dice after each roll. Players stand at the side and both ends of the rectangular table and the dice must be thrown against the farthest backboard. The green felt cloth the dice roll over is marked with white lines: first, the “pass line”—where you place your chips if you are going to bet on yourself or whoever is throwing; adjacent is the “no come line”: should you be opposed to the shooter. Among other betting possibilities plainly marked are boxes where you can place an even money bet on either six or eight during a long series of rolls; and squares showing the “field” numbers: a, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 and 12—for side bets on a single roll.
It was after 2 A.M. Mai Davis had taken Kiki out on the town, and they were now in the Sahara; but the crowded gambling pit was exactly the same as the pit at Rainbow’s End; the noises were the same, the dice chant was identical. The bar (at which they were seated) was several feet longer, but just the same except for the faces of the bartenders.
Mai ordered highballs, then told Kiki: “Maybe I’ll do some drinking tonight.”
“Got the blues, haven’t you, Mai?”
“Do I give that impression?”
“You’ve been moody as hell. But why? You’ve got a beautiful Cad outside—”
“And a beautiful cat in here,” he said, looking over at her. Her face was scrubbed clean now, and the only makeup she wore was orange lipstick.
“—and a heap of talent,” she went on. “And a name for yourself. So what else is there?”
It struck him odd that he didn’t know how to answer.
“I mean it,” she insisted. “Once you’re a success, what else is there?”
“A few little things,” he said. “Odds and ends.”
She was a nice enough kid, but totally stage-struck, and he had her catalogued: the girl who will do anything for a career. No amount of talking, reason or logic can sway her. He’d seen her many times, with many faces, but the basic material was always the same. She was the bright, eager chick with a blind, fanatical faith in herself; and she was determined that nothing, not even love, would ever stand in her way. She was on a crusade, waging a war for fame. If you realized that she would never make it, and tried to tell her so for her own good, she refused to believe it. Either it was sour grapes because she wouldn’t give in; or if she had, you were trying to get rid of her. Besides, it was pretty obvious you were no judge of talent. New York and Hollywood is full of her, she is everywhere you turn, and when you have reached the ripe age of thirty-six, you have learned it is useless to try to warn her of the pitfalls. Because nothing can daunt her—nothing except time, years of batting her pretty head against too many disappointments, and her firm white fanny against too many mattresses.
“How long you been in Vegas, Mai?”
“Only a few weeks this time.”
“I know that,” she said, “but I mean—”
“Oh,” he thought a moment. “My God, it’s ten years! I’ve been coming back once or twice a year for ten years now.”
Thinking about that only made him sadder, and he was sorry she had asked, because now he clearly remembered his first engagement here. It was exactly ten years ago. He had played a straight six weeks in a joint on the edge of town while waiting for a Nevada divorce from Nancy, and never saw her again after that; neither she nor little Mai, who was only a year and a half old then; Nancy had married a cattleman and moved to some remote hamlet in Montana. She’d been his first real love, and back in the days before he married her, when he was twenty-two (My God, was I ever that young?), it hadn’t seemed to matter that she didn’t dig his music too much. He was going to knock the world on its ear singlehanded while she stood by and watched. That was the year, the first year of their marriage, that he was so broke he had to take a job playing piano in a whorehouse in San Francisco to earn both of them enough to eat. Nancy couldn’t understand it and said, “You can drive a taxi, can’t you?” She couldn’t see why a house of ill-fame needed piano music anyway. “What does it add?” And another thing she couldn’t understand was how he could say any of those girls in there were nice. (“Well, basically nice, honey. Some of them are just kids, sixteen, seventeen.”) He’d gotten an education there, and never once went to bed with any of them, though Nancy didn’t believe that; and sometimes, thinking back, he’d decided he’d been crazy turning down all those free offers. But you grow’ up and one of the things you learn is to appreciate that which you have missed.
Kiki was saying; “I sure wish I knew what’s bothering you.”
“Life,” he said. “Is that an answer?”
“What are you going to do—get mystic on me?”
He shrugged and tried asking himself what it was that was depressing him tonight. Then he thought: maybe it’s the disappointment over that recording session in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. At the time, it’d meant everything to him: whether
he progressed with his music and his career and maybe even ultimate stardom in his field, or whether he stood still. Though he wasn’t exactly standing still. Two years ago, Vegas had paid him five hundred a week; today he was working for four—he was going down. An album of records of his own songs, if it caught on at all, could skyrocket him to a thousand a week or more and push him on his way. Harry Muller had been sure this was it. Mai was playing at a bistro on La Cienega and on the eve of his departure for Las Vegas, Harry had taped the whole thing right there, crowd noises and all, applause, chatter and waiters rattling dishes and drinks. “A twelve-inch LP, both sides,” Harry said. “All Mai Davis. People can sit home and drink and listen to it without paying the amusement tax. I’m flying it to New York, and I’ll have it sold to Victor, Decca, Columbia or somebody inside of ten days.”
Now it was twenty-five, maybe thirty days; after two weeks, Mai had deliberately put it out of his mind, planning to let himself be surprised when Ham’ called him at Rainbow’s End with the good news. But there had been no call, and his subconscious had been acutely, painfully aware of that. Yes, that was enough to depress him. The fact that Harry couldn’t sell the session. The fact that at the age of thirty-six he had not only stopped progressing, but instead had begun to slip. Two more years and he’d be like that trio that had once been world-famous and was now playing little joints in the San Fernando Valley and glad to get the hundred and a half a week that had to feed the three of them.
He lifted his drink. “To oblivion.”
Her answer was: “I just don’t dig this kick you’re on.” He ordered a drink for himself, but none for her, because her glass was still half full. He was getting ahead of her now. She looked at him worriedly. After a few minutes, he said:
“Let’s go downtown tonight.”
She made a face. “Why?” It was as if he had asked her to go to Skid Bow with him. “What’s downtown?”
“What’s here?”
“Everything. People. Class.”
He said: “I’m going. You coming along?”
“All right, honey, I’ll humor you.”
Downtown Las Vegas is roughly two and a half miles from the Strip, and on a side street a couple of blocks away from the main intersection they passed a large, dilapidated house with a sign on the front that read:
Night Sleepers - 50¢
Day Sleepers - 75¢
“We’re still in time for the night rates,” Kiki teased, “and for fifty cents what can you lose?” He smiled, and saw her glance at the dashboard clock. It was three-thirty. The hour reminded her of something unpleasant. “Want to know what it was the old gentleman really whispered in my ear?”
She was referring to the General. “What?” he asked.
“He said if I came to Bungalow 138 at exactly three-thirty, he’d give me five hundred dollars.”
He glanced over and saw that she was telling the truth. “I’m sorry I said he was harmless. I thought he was.” He felt as if the world was chipping away from him. He couldn’t even judge people any more. Then he considered the value and valuelessness of sex. He’d slept with Kiki the first time they met, and neither of them attached any great importance to it. Yet tonight she had turned down five hundred dollars to be with him for nothing; and it wasn’t love, or even the nearest thing to it.
They reached Fremont, the main street—a shimmering canyon of neon, the giant signs projecting the images of dice, race horses, ace-high card hands, and sparkling horseshoes. The lights danced, revolved, flashed on and off; and through the plate-glass windows of the gambling emporiums he saw that the tables were mobbed. This was the seedy crowd, many wearing dungarees and work clothes; the women seemed dowdy, and older, and the men somehow more forlorn, as if they didn’t really expect to win anything.
Mai kept driving, looking for a place to park, and passed the small Western Union office that never closed and saw that it, too, was crowded—mostly with losers, people whose faces looked sick, or drawn, as they waited in line to hurry’ a message back to someone in civilization. “Urgently need carfare home.” “Wire a hundred dollars at once.” “This is my third telegram to you. Am desperate. Must have money. ” “For the love of God, send money.” But some of the messages were just the reverse. Outgoing money orders in large amounts. A Western Union girl had once told Mai about people who wired their winnings home before they could lose it back again.
The whole downtown area was as light as day, crowded, buzzing, and he thought: here’s where the average working man loses his pay; and here’s where the fugitives come, the real lost ones who have burned their bridges and don’t even know that local and Federal officers are everywhere, ready to pick them up. He finally found a parking space in front of the telephone office, half a block from Fremont.
As he and Kiki climbed from the car, he looked at the small building. It had ten private booths inside, and two special operators always on duty, and he realized that, like Western Union, this was also a crying room. For a great number of people were too frantic to send a telegram, and made their requests for money by the more immediate and personal means of the telephone. Every outgoing call from this building was long distance.
He and Kiki moved toward Fremont Street. It wasn’t plush down here; but it was far from being a Skid Row. She was too snobbish; there was nothing wrong with the central part of town.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Who knows?”
Eventually, they found themselves in the big impressive Horseshoe Club. They went inside, and he pretended, for a while, to be interested in blackjack; she sat up at a table with him as he lost five straight hands. Then he fooled around with two different fifty-cent slot machines. But inevitably they migrated toward the big display that made this club so famous—the glass-enclosed million dollars.
There it was, held in suspension, enclosed in super thick glass, but very visible. One hundred ten thousand dollar bills. An exhibition that cost the owner of the Horseshoe Club forty-nine thousand dollars a year—the annual interest a bank would pay on a million dollars. There it was, all that money in plain view, but except for him and Kiki, not even the nickel slot machine players seemed to so much as glance at it. The lonely, isolated million dollars that nobody could touch.
He was looking at it when he heard the nearby voices. He caught the words “Rainbow’s End,” then “Bello,” and began listening closely.
“The big man’s going to lay down a siege, they say.”
“Think the action’ll start tonight?”
“He doesn’t waste time once he hits town,” the other man was saying.
Mai caught Kiki’s arm. “Come on, we’re heading back to Rainbow’s End.”
Six
In addition to the regular chips stacked on the business side of the table are three rows of blue, yellow and white chips, unmarked; they are special, kept in reserve and never used except for the rare times when the house limit is off for a very big gambler. The big gambler, his rating established, plays entirely on credit. If he asks for fifty thousand dollars, his I.O.U. for that amount is stuffed down the slot—where it drops into the iron strongbox below the table, and he is given the blue, yellow and white chips, which the pit boss marks by hand: yellow, five hundred; white, one thousand; blue, five thousand. Others who may be at a table where a giant operation is in progress keep risking silver dollars and five and twenty-five dollar chips, and are generally more concerned with their own luck than they are with the big action.
At the stroke of three o’clock in the morning, the casino was packed, the action heavy; there was the usual babble of voices, with the chant of stickmen rising above. But now, a short seven minutes later, there was a commotion in the gambling pit; it was mild at first, then seemed to grow into a frenzy of excitement, one person telling another, necks craning. At exactly eleven minutes after the hour, the voices died to what was almost a hush.
Someone commented about it later. At precisely seven minutes
after the hour word seemed to reach everyone at once that he was coming in; and he made his actual appearance at eleven after—as if to spook the house, or create another legend about himself: a man who was already steeped in legend. Seven and eleven, the two magic numbers on dice.
As he made his way toward a crap table, players fell back, opening a path for him, giving him plenty of room. Coming from hard-losing customers intent only on recouping their losses, it was an unheard of gesture. It bespoke Bello’s importance. And now’ people were flooding into the pit from all over the casino, and from outside as well, to catch a glimpse of the big man. Mai and Kiki were among them.
“Probably the most famous gambler in the world.” Mai told her.
Kiki nodded. “I’ve never seen him before, have you?”
“Not until now.”
Bello was in his early fifties, with coal-black hair, graving sideburns, full, heavy features and dark eyes. Though his nose was a trifle too large, if he smiled he might have been handsome; but he didn’t, his face was inscrutable. He was dressed casually in a charcoal-black suit, with a white sports shirt, open at the collar. His cheeks were not only cleanly shaven, but wore the bloom of a good massage. His eyes were bright and clear, indicating he’d been getting a lot of sleep and perhaps vitamin health shots. A gambler like Bello went into training prior to a prolonged play at the tables, just as a prizefighter before a title bout.
An exquisite young girl was trailing one step behind him. She was small, just an inch or two over five feet, with large breasts and rounded hips that were accentuated in a dazzling white blue-sequined cocktail dress. Blue sandal straps crisscrossed on the calves of her delicate legs, looking sexy and contrasting with her angelic-waif face which was framed with curls of dark hair worn in a short bob. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. But she was Bello’s girl, part of his entourage. He was noted for his taste in young and beautiful women.
Mai whistled when he saw her, and Kiki poked her elbow into his ribs. “I’ll kill you, hon’.”
