by Steve Fisher
Carpenter began to babble: “What are you going to do?”
“How long you worked here?”
“One week.”
Sprig nodded. “Picked you myself, didn’t I?”
“No, it was—”
“I screen everybody.”
“I don’t remember seeing you.”
“You’re not supposed to see me,” Sprig said, “or even know who I am. Baxter sent you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but he—he doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“Who does then?”
“It was just some guy—I thought he was a counterfeiter. Didn’t identify himself or anything. I just thought I could—”
“Split with him later?”
“Yeah, I just thought—”
“You don’t know his name, or what he looks like?”
“Well—no.”
You find dealers stealing from you. All you do is throw them out of the casino. They can go across the street and take another job. Then they’re somebody else’s worry, not yours. But Ed Carpenter was lying.
Sprig knocked him down; then calmly picked him up, holding him by the front of his shirt. He shoved him back against the wall and worked him over a little with his right. He had bony knuckles and Carpenter’s flat, mustached face was splattered with blood.
“Please, for God’s sake, please!”
Sprig shoved him into a chair. Carpenter was whimpering like a woman.
“Beady to have a little talk with me now?”
Carpenter looked up and his whole body quivered. “Listen. Listen, mister. Maybe you don’t know which side your breads buttered on. Maybe in a few days this place’ll belong to somebody else—and you’ll be out of a job if you—”
“That what they told you?”
“Maybe the new owners will join the syndicate.” Carpenter was chattering. “The syndicate don’t go in for this sort of—”
Sprig pulled him to his feet again.
“No—don’t!” Carpenter flinched. Sprig was mad now, wanted to hit him again, but he didn’t. He shoved him back into the chair.
Five minutes later he was on the telephone, saying: “That you, Bax? Listen, come on over here, will you? I want to talk to you about something. Yeah, very important.” There was a long pause. Baxter was evidently leery about showing himself in Rainbow’s End. He wasn’t, though, after Sprig, in hushed tones, said: “All I can tell you over the telephone is that the roof is beginning to fall in over here. There may be some big changes . . . ” He hung up, satisfied, and gazed at Carpenter who was bathing his cut face with a wet towel. “He’ll be over.”
Clarence Henry had gone back out on the floor and they were alone.
Carpenter gazed up at Sprig and didn’t know what to think.
Nine
The croupiers, blackjack dealers, stickmen and money changers who handle thousands every hour make twenty dollars a day; but the pit boss, who is in charge of the whole operation, gets forty. A cocktail waitress, working in the pit where the gambling is done, averages, including tips, a hundred a week. None of them has very much sympathy for the big losers.
“Acey-deucy, three craps, loser, line away.” But Bello was betting with the house on the no come line and picked up five thousand on that roll. “Six, six a number.” Now he stripped the board, putting a thousand dollar chip on each number. “Four . . . the number is six.” His four bore fruit. He let it lay. “Four right back.” The fruit had ripened and he plucked it, leaving just one white chip on four. “Five, the number is six!”
It was 5:30 A.M. now. The big crowd had thinned some, and Mai was at the side of the table, watching with utter fascination. Now and then he glanced at Joe, and saw the strain on his face. Funny, sometimes it seemed that Mai was just about the only human being on earth Joe liked . . . or at least tolerated socially. Except for Sunny Guido, that is. But right now Joe wasn’t even aware that
Mai was alive. Rumor had the last tally one hundred and sixty thousand to nothing in favor of the gentlemanly Bello, and everybody in the room was running a fever over it.
Everybody except something wiggly at Mai’s left elbow. For several minutes, caught up in the heat of the dice game, he wasn’t even vaguely aware of who or what it was. Then he looked over and saw her and she caught him full face and smiled open-mouthed and wet-lipped as if everybody here bored her except him. It was Bello’s girl. Mai’s face flushed. It’d been a long time since he was close to anyone this beautiful. He smiled back, his regular professional smile, and she was encouraged to flirt with her eyes. A moment later Mai saw Joe looking at him and imperceptibly saying “No!” Mai took the hint and moved away.
He’d had a drink at the bar a few minutes ago and intended now to head for his room, but he saw the General seated on a bar stool, his back turned. Mai moved up, took the stool beside him. The General was immediately aware of his presence, but remained staring emptily ahead, morosely, as if he was waiting for himself to drop dead. The bartender came over.
“Straight shot, with a chaser, and one for my friend here.”
The General’s head came up slightly, and he looked at Mai in the bar mirror.
“You were the one who touted me off straight shots.”
“It’s breaking dawn outside,” Mai said, “a time of day when things are always more desperate.”
“I’m leaving here today.”
“Are you?” Mai said coldly. “Without even opening a track for dog racing?”
“That was just conversation.”
“So was your being a General, wasn’t it?”
“No, I’m a General.” He took a wallet from his pocket, opened it and showed authentic identification. Mai gazed at it strangely. The drinks came, and the General put the wallet away again. “I couldn’t stay here and go on looking them in the face.”
“Them?” said Mai. “You mean Georgette?”
“Which one is Georgette?”
“The little redhead.”
“She and the other three.”
“How many did you proposition?”
“All of them.”
“All of them?”
“When I checked in here, I rented an extra room. I just thought if something stray turned up, I might have use for it. Then tonight I had a big, wild whim; and I offered each of the ten showgirls five hundred dollars if she’d come there—setting a different time for each one.”
“A real sense of humor,” Mai said bitterly.
“It kicked back on me.”
Mai asked; “What were you trying to prove?”
The General rubbed his hand down over his face. “How many beautiful bodies I could buy before I die. I’m fifty-eight years old—how much longer do I have?”
Mai had guessed him to be no more than fifty, if that. “I’ve been strait-laced all my life. Career, promotion, raising a family, setting an example; playing military politics—holding it down to two martinis, mixing well, being upright, sober, intelligent—everything I was supposed to be. Then a year and a half ago my wife died. I grieved for six months, and I’d started dying, too. Then one day I looked in the mirror and it seemed to me I was thirty again. And what I thought was this: I can run wild for four or five more years before old age sets in—and I’m going to do every goddamn thing a man ever thought of
Mai was somehow touched. “Then you really didn’t know how to drink when I suggested you mix it?”
“No, I didn’t. I’d been going around for a year gulping down straight shots, and getting loaded. I’ve been living big, all right.”
“Really having fun, huh?”
“Until tonight.” His face darkened. “Tonight I went too far.”
“Wouldn’t be any good to apologize to the kids,” Mai reflected.
“No, it’d just make it worse.”
Mai ordered two more straight shots. It was past six, and undoubtedly broad daylight outside. He wanted to drink himself to oblivion and hit the sack; but now the General’s problem weighed o
n him. He brooded over it for several minutes, then heard a soft, low voice say: “Daddy, where have you been all night?”
The General turned on his stool; so did Mai, and saw that the girl who had called him “Daddy” was not his daughter. She was a tall, statuesque platinum blonde with golden skin, and garbed in a tight white knit dress. She was probably nineteen, all right, but a different, more seductive and sophisticated nineteen than his daughter. The hair was obviously a dye job, but it was flawless and stunning, and contrasted her shining dark eyes.
“I was over at The Tropicana gambling,” the General Bed.
“We looked everywhere for you, then turned in about midnight.” She evidently referred to his daughter. “But when I woke up half an hour ago and saw you hadn’t come to bed, I was worried; so I got dressed.”
“She really looks after me,” the General told Mai. Then he introduced her. “This is Cherry. It isn’t really her name. I just call her that because she’s a full-blooded Cherokee Indian.”
“Hi, Cherry.”
“Hi,” she said, then looked at the General. “No use going to bed now, sweetie. Why don’t you go back to the bungalow and shave, then put on your trunks. The sun’ll be out in another hour, and we can go swimming.”
“These Indians are very athletic,” said the General. “He’s pretty athletic himself,” Cherry told Mai, and smiled. She was obviously very fond of him.
“Okay, we swim,” the General said. He climbed from the stool. “See you later, Mai.”
“Sure. Glad I met you, Cherry.”
They moved off together, and made a good-looking couple. Mai wondered how the General managed without sleep; then wondered about a lot of things, his mind getting hazy, and wandering. Life was so confusing. Was he sore at the General for what he had done to the four showgirls? Did he sympathize with Georgette? Who is wrong, who is right, and what the hell time is it?
“Give me one more straight shot,” he told the bartender, “then I’m off and running—for the sack. It’s been a big, big night.”
“Seedy” Baxter (his real name was Cedric D. Baxter) was a small-time promoter who had been mixed up in many minor operations in town for years. Yet somehow he’d never been in any real trouble before. Now, in Joe Martin’s private office, looking at Ed Carpenter’s raw’, beefy face, then at Sprig’s smooth, expressionless one, he suspected that his time had come. Yet Sprig kept up the con—or was it his idea of a terrible joke? He was saving:
“You’ve really got something, Bax.” Sprig was too polite to call him “Seedy,” or was that part of the con? “New ownership will naturally call for new faces, and I want to be in on the ground floor. Like you are. Now tell me, who are we going to be working for?”
“I honest to God don’t know,” Baxter said, and his face indicated that he didn’t. “I was just in charge of pushing the queer ten chips.”
“Who hired you?”
“Some guy I’ve never seen before.”
“Without a name?”
“What’s a name? He was nobody, I could tell. I can always tell when a guy’s important. He was strictly hired talent.”
Sprig studied him a minute and decided he was telling the truth, because Baxter was smart enough to know no matter how Sprig stood, the truth was his only out.
“So you rounded up people to push the queer ten chips. Who’d you get—besides Carp here?”
Even Ed Carpenter blanched at the way Baxter blurted the names right out: “Fat Morgan—blackjack. Cooley, roulette. And Carp here.” Seedy Baxter shrugged now. “I swear that’s it. I did just lousy. You keep too tight a house. I promised them ten bucks for every chip they pushed plus an inside track when the new management takes over.” Sprig pushed a button and two plainclothes security men arrived moments later. He asked them to pick up Morgan and Cooley, and when they brought them in, said: “Float these scum out of town.”
That meant all four of them would be driven to the Nevada state line, in the middle of the desert, and be left to walk or hitchhike from there. They knew without anybody telling them it wouldn’t be healthy to try to come back. There had been times when a floater did come back. Days later he was found dead in the desert sand twenty miles away. Sprig felt that under the circumstances, the penalty was merciful.
As the men were being taken out, Clarence Henry came in. His shift was almost over. He looked at the guilty employees, then asked:
“Shouldn’t we tell Joe?”
Sprig shook his head. “Why bother him? I’m his nerve center now. Anyway, this is only one unit of them. There’s something much bigger going on somewhere. I’m sure of it, but I don’t know where to look.”
“One unit of what?” Clarence Henry asked. “Distractions and confusion to pull him away from the main-line action. Once you get a casino owner off balance, you really have him. No, don’t tell Joe anything at all about this—unless he asks about the phony tens. He’s survived this one; maybe I can spare him one or two more just like it.”
Clarence Henry looked at him, then nodded. “You’re a good man, Sprig.”
Ten
In the hot summer day time you can cavort in the cool swimming pool for a while, lie on the blistering tile beside it and sun yourself for an hour or two, and then, if the notion strikes you, put on a short jacket, slip your feet into beach go-aheads, and saunter into the pit for a little gambling. For no matter how ornate the casino or how plush the fixtures, if you have money to risk, even damp bathing trunks will be looked upon with approval.
It was nearly 10 A.M. Bello was now almost three hundred thousand dollars into the house. Joe’s face was chalky and showed strain; but Bello was as fit as he had been when he first walked up to the table seven hours ago. His girl (Bello called her “Dee”) had ordered coffee; but she could not have ham and eggs brought to a crap table and had been complaining since seven o’clock that she was tired and hungry. If Bello heard her, he showed no sign.
He had not budged from the table for even so much as a short walk to the rest room.
“Four . . . four, a point . . .”
“Odds on the four,” Bello said.
There were new stickmen, new croupiers, a different pit boss; Clarence Henry had been relieved by another floor manager, Si Collins. The players and customers who had watched all night left shortly after daybreak, and those who had slept through the big action were up now, crowding around—women garbed in high heels, bathing suit and house coat; men in denims and tee shirts.
Joe watched the continuous, changing action on the green felt cloth and seemed scarcely breathing. He had a throbbing headache and wished Bello would take his snot-nosed flirty little girlfriend to breakfast. Even a thirty-minute break would help refresh him.
Then, suddenly, his gaze was attracted to the registration desk at the far end of the casino. Sunny Guido was there. She wore a beige knit dress and small hat. Two suitcases were at her feet. The desk clerk was looking toward Joe, talking to Sunny, probably explaining to her what all the commotion was about at this hour of the morning.
Joe caught Bellos eye. “Coffee break?”
Bello looked back with no intention of agreeing, then saw something in Joe s face and nodded his head, a courtesy gesture. It was only then, as he started picking his chips off the table, that Bello glanced with annoyance at Dee who was overjoyed. Now she could have breakfast.
“Thirty minutes?” Bello asked Joe.
“All right,” Joe said. “And we switch to number three table.”
Bello half smiled. “New game, huh?”
“Maybe a change of luck.”
Joe was off then, moving toward the registration desk.
Sunny was gazing up at him as he arrived, staring into his face. Joe indicated her baggage, said to the bellboy:
“Take them to the penthouse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But Joe, I’m checking out.”
The boy hesitated. “Get going,” Joe told him. Then he looked at Sunny. “Why?”
“Like what? Name one.”
She looked around. “Not here.”
“Come on.”
He led her up to the second floor penthouse. It was his own private apartment, encased with picture windows over which heavy white drapes had been drawn to keep out the summer heat. The thick, expensive rug was white, too, and the furniture black in contrast. Everything was extremely modem, the king-size divan low, soft. The walls were adorned with splashy Parisian watercolors. The bellboy was leaving as they walked in.
While Sunny stood in the middle of the room looking around, Joe walked past her into the bathroom, poured cold water and doused his face. He put his hand at the back of his neck and rolled his head around. Then he took aspirins from the cabinet, washed down three of them.
“Order coffee sent up . . . poached eggs.” He spoke from the bathroom.
“But, Joe—what am I doing here?”
“Just order the food,” he said.
“But—!”
He closed the bathroom door, got out of his clothes fast and stepped into the shower. He turned it on cold and stood under the icy water for five minutes. Then he was out, drying himself, climbing into a robe. When he emerged, Sunny looked at him, startled.
“A change of clothes,” he said, and started toward the closet. “You order the food?”
“Yes.”
He stepped into the closet, put on fresh shorts and a pair of slacks, then came out, bare-waisted, while he hunted for a shirt.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Joe!”
“Will you quit arguing with me?”
“I haven’t had a chance to argue yet.”
“I’ve got a head full of troubles.”
“Yes, the desk clerk was telling me.” She moved toward him. “But how do you think it looks—having my bags brought up here?”
