by Steve Fisher
There were no more than fifty people in the pit, most of them gathered around the only crap table that was open; where the main line action was on. He saw Joe on one side of the table, Bello on the other. Dee was nowhere in sight. But Sunny Guido was seated at a nearby cocktail lounge table. She seemed fresh and trim, and kept glancing toward Joe.
Mai headed for the Coffee Shop. The small dining room was bright and cheery—with canary-yellow walls that had murals of cowboys, lariats and cactus; and young waitresses who wore crisply starched canary-yellow uniforms. He sat down, picked up the menu, then heard a voice say, “Mr. Davis!”
It was one of his regular customers at the piano—a skinny, angular girl of indeterminate age somewhere this side of twenty-five, who had bony arms and legs, and couldn’t wear clothes right no matter what she put on. She had a pretty though somehow quaint face, and a mop of absolutely white hair—the closest thing to an albino he’d ever seen. Her skin was ghostly white, and her eyes, a light brown, sometimes seemed pink. Yet the very oddity made her seem cute. She was approaching the table, and he was surprised to see her in the canary-yellow uniform. He hadn’t known she was a waitress here.
“What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Exploring the other side of the day,” he said.
Her name was Cindy, but he called her Cottontop. The reason he knew her name was that she was the only person in Las Vegas who had asked him for his autograph. She had sat in at his opening night session, and that was when it happened. “Write ‘To Cindy,’ ” she’d instructed. “That makes it personal. ” It wasn’t because he played piano, wrote songs or sang that she wanted his signature: he had once made a brief appearance in a motion picture as a piano player in a night club. He had been on the screen for less than three minutes, but Cottontop remembered, and recognized him. She had a photographic memory and remembered everybody who had ever done anything in a film.
“You didn’t know I was a waitress, did you?”
“No.”
“What did you think I was?”
“Honey, to tell you the truth, I didn’t give it too much thought.”
“A divorcee maybe?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Somebody’s wife?”
“No, you were around too often. Husbands and wives leave after a couple of days. You didn’t.”
“A showgirl?”
A shill, he thought; if I thought about it at all, Cottontop, I thought you were probably a shill.
“I didn’t have any idea what you were.”
“Well, welcome aboard here in the Coffee Shop, sir.” He ordered orange juice, coffee, toast and ham and eggs. Cottontop brought the items one at a time. With the orange juice, she said: “Tell me again about Hollywood.”
“I’ve already explained to you—there isn’t much to tell.”
“Is it glamorous?”
“No. They’re fixing Hollywood Boulevard, though, in the hope that it’ll look glamorous.”
“Do a lot of stars go to the Brown Derby?”
“Yeah, quite a few.”
With the coffee, she persisted: “Is Beverly Hills glamorous?”
“Well, sort of. Yeah—I guess it is.”
“Do you see a lot of stars on the street?”
“No, not very many.”
“If you went to Romanoff’s you’d see them, wouldn’t you?”
“Quite a few.”
“Like Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck and Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper?”
“Yeah.”
With the toast and jelly, she went on: “Do many of them go to Chasen’s?”
He nodded. “A lot of them.”
“It’s Jimmy Stewart’s favorite restaurant, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Better check Photoplay. ”
“Where do you think I checked?”
Then she brought the ham and eggs. “If I went to Hollywood, do you think I could get a job there?”
“You might. But there are a lot of girls in Hollywood—and almost all of them are looking for jobs.”
“Oh, I mean in a place like Romanoffs.”
“Romanoff’s uses men waiters.” He saw her eyes. “So does Chasen’s, The Brown Derby, Encore and the Mocambo.”
She was crestfallen. “Is that the truth?”
“Yep. Honey, you’ll see more movie actors close up in Las Vegas than you will anywhere else in the world.” Cottontop thought it over. “Yes, I’ve seen a lot of them here. I have three autograph books all filled, and I’m working on my fourth. Mr. Davis, when you make another picture, please let me know so I can go see it. Just write me a card here at Rainbow’s End. I’ll be here. I’ll probably be here forever.”
He finished his breakfast, tipped her a dollar, and left. A few moments later he groped his way through the sizzling heat to the parking lot, and once he was seated on the blistering leather upholstery in the white Cad, put the top up to protect himself from the sun.
He reached Boulder Dam a half an hour later, parked the car, then stood on the opposite side of the street from the shimmering mass of stopped-up water in the Colorado River where he could look over the stone embankment far down at the people moving around the bottom of the dry side of the dam. Now, here by the river, there was a riffle of breeze, and the weather was almost, but not quite, endurable.
He waited several minutes, watching everything and everyone, but it still wasn’t eleven o’clock yet. He had managed to calm his emotions by a dull, flat inner certainty that Dee wouldn’t show up. And even when he saw the sleek, blue Cad back into a parking space down the street, he was positive she couldn’t be the driver. But she stepped from it, wearing a sleeveless yellow dress and bright toeless sandals, and started toward the dam.
He looked at her as she approached—the short-cut black hair, her sad, angelic little face with the big eyes and the large mouth, and wondered why she had to be so dangerous to know. She saw him now and quickened her step.
They stood there just looking at one another for a moment, and there was something wondrous about it. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Want to see the dam?”
“Do you?”
“We’re here,” he said, “so we might as well.”
“Why?”
“No reason, I guess.”
“What I came here to see was you.”
“You’re seeing.” He was hoping she’d be disillusioned, disenchanted: making it easier to break off with her.
She said: “And I like.”
“You’re a beautiful girl, Dee.” It was an understatement. “Let’s go somewhere!”
He remembered Sprig’s instructions. “A bar maybe? In Boulder City?”
“Fine!”
“My car or yours?”
“Let’s take both of them.”
“You mean—for a quick getaway, if necessary?”
“That’s cruel.”
He’d meant it to be cruel. He was building up for his explanation of why he wouldn’t want to see her any more.
“All right, we’ll take both of them. Must be at least two miles back to Boulder City.”
“I’ll follow you,” she said.
“Good.”
“Mai—” He turned back. “Don’t look so awfully disgusted with me.”
He peered at her. “What a thing to say!”
“You’re not like last night at all.”
“Dee, maybe I’m scared.”
“You drive, I’ll follow.”
In Boulder City, they walked into two cocktail restaurants before the third one proved to be dark and moody enough. They sat at a secluded table back by the wall, with only a candle between them, making a tiny light. They hadn’t spoken since leaving the dam, and now she said:
“I’m scared, too.”
It startled him.
“He knows about last night,” she went on.
“About me?”
“Not you—by name. But he suspects I went there
to meet somebody.”
It hadn’t occurred to Mai she would be as frightened as he was; for a moment, it was something he didn’t know how to cope with. Then he came right out with it:
“He’s going to know about this meeting, too.”
She almost blanched. “Why? I have his permission to go to Boulder Dam.”
“Is this a dam?”
“We’re being watched?”
He nodded.
“By whom? Somebody he’s hired?”
And now he no longer had the courage to tell her the truth. “Yeah.” Let it go at that.
“Oh, God, I’m sick of it!” she said. “I’m sick of this!”
“I don’t think we should meet again.” There! It was said.
“All right. And goodbye.” Her eyes were wet.
He was uneasy. “Goodbye? This minute?”
“Run away. I can’t, but you go ahead.”
He was leaning forward. “Why can’t you?”
“What do you want—the story of my life?”
“If you really want to go there’s no way he can hold you.”
“Where would I go? Back to dancing in a second-rate casino in Covington, Kentucky, where three-fourths of the girls are prostitutes on the side? Or to my family? My mother and father who live in the slums of Cincinnati? You’d love my father. Came home drunk one night and raped me. Listen, I met Mr. Bello in Covington. He gambled there. He wanted me. He was a gentleman. He had a lot to offer. A mink coat—clothes, a car—and even an ounce and a half of dignity. I went for it. My eyes were open. I’m not apologizing. But now I can’t take it any more and I don’t know how to get out. Not without giving it all back. Which means, I’d hit the road every’ other girl hits. Do you really think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“So I’d get along—but like that? I’ve made the last deal for my body I’m ever going to make. The first deal and the last one. Now the thing is, I had to tell this to somebody. Anybody who’d listen. I heard you sing last night and watched your face and saw something in your eyes so I selected you. It’s a very sad story, isn’t it? You’re moved, aren’t you? Well, the story’s over now, so you can go.”
“What was it you saw in my eyes?”
“Never mind, I was mistaken.”
“Tell me!”
“Sympathy,” she said. “I thought you were the kind who’d want to help somebody in trouble. It was the trance the music put me in—I actually—for a crazy minute—thought you were somebody to turn to. So I was wrong.” Now she examined his face. “What did you think my reason was? I wanted to make a pass at you? That I arranged to meet you because I was looking for a quick lay somewhere? Oh, you were wrong, mister. We both were. Scratch it all out—it never happened.”
“Dee, you’re crying!”
“Yes, I’m crying. But it’s dark in here, nobody’ll see, not even his pet spy, whoever he is; nobody can see but you—and it doesn’t matter to you.”
Gazing at her intently, he felt challenged now. “Anyway,” she said, “I thought you were leaving?”
And he said: “I thought I was, too.”
Eighteen
Shills are considered one of the lowest forms of casino humanity, yet are not only necessary, but must dress and seem to look like the well-to-do customers. During slow hours it is their duty to make a dead or a “cold” table come alive. They converge on it, one at a time, and start playing, using silver dollars that have been advanced to them by the house. At the end of a shift they return the money along with whatever they have won; it is impossible to hold out, as a croupier has kept a careful tally. When they have drawn legitimate players to the game, they drop out and are directed by a signal from the pit boss to a less prosperous area: a blackjack game that has dwindled to nothing, or an idle roulette wheel.
The usual wage of a shill is six dollars a day, and they do not have to be recruited. Every casino has a waiting list: men who have gone broke and for whatever reason can’t return home eke out a bare existence at the work. Divorcees waiting out the six weeks augment their meager allowance. Off-duty waitresses find it a way to pick up extra money. They would be perfect decoys except that they are easily detected by the total lack of interest they show as they pretend to gamble.
It was noon now, a slow hour on an ordinarily slow day, but the casino was gradually whipping up momentum: mostly because of the big game which was legend all over town. Spectators crowded in and some eventually drifted to the other tables to gamble. Number two table was packed, number three was getting a fair play and the croupiers had just taken the wraps off number four.
Shills in various parts of the room had their eyes on it, waiting for the signal to come over. Nobody likes to risk money in a cold, lonely place and they’d give it the push it needed—like a car with a faulty battery.
Joe stood across the main table from Bello, his shirt open at the throat. He had slipped into the office a while ago, long enough to shave; he operated on the theory that the owner of the place should always make a neat appearance. He was wan, gaunt, but Bello looked worse now. The grueling, unending hours were beginning to weigh on him. His dark eyes seemed sunken, and his face was covered with a heavy, black, gray-tipped beard. He looked around every now and then, as if wondering where Dee was.
Bello had passed the eight hundred thousand dollar mark during the early hours of the morning, but after Joe appeared, around 5 A.M., had tapered off and was now under seven hundred thousand winner: enough to quit and walk away with a fabulous coup. But he wasn’t quitting, and Joe knew why. This was the big game of the big man’s lifetime. And it wouldn’t be his money. anyway, he’d get his fee, maybe a fat bonus—no more. The bulk of the winnings would belong to his backers. So he could afford to appear tremendous in the eyes of the public—a big winner, but playing for more. “Trying to win the cloth off the table.”
The stickmen droned: “Four . . . four a point . . . take the odds on four.” (“Come on, dice—how do ducks come to water—two by two!”) “Five, the number is four. Four a point, four will win it. Six, out of the field, the number is four. The shooter must make a four. Seven! Seven, loser. Line away. New shooter coming out . . . ”
That chipped Bello down over ten thousand. Joe glanced across the room at Sunny. She was at the same cocktail table, glancing through the pages of a fashion magazine. On a crazy impulse, he sent for a secretary. “Have her bring a shorthand book.”
The secretary arrived fifteen minutes later, and by that time the whim had left Joe. He was about to dismiss her, when he noticed the curious look on Bello’s face—seeing a woman with a shorthand book and a pencil on the house side of the dice table. Joe was delighted. Hell, he thought, it bothers him; and any little distraction counts right now. It’ll distract me to dictate, even haphazard, only a few words at a time, but it’ll worry him even more, wondering what I’m doing.
So he kept the secretary, and whenever he had a moment, leaned over and spoke a few words into her ear—which she jotted down. The dictation was so sporadic it seemed as if he was making notes on Bello’s play, and the famous gambler frowned at this; his expression made it appear as if Joe was committing some cardinal discourtesy.
So he continued it. The girl was there nearly forty minutes, and he would have dictated even longer, but something began to bother and alarm him. The drone of the stickman had changed, the calls were different. It was as if a river flowing at a certain speed had suddenly started moving with a roar. “Seven, seven the winner! Pay the board. Coming out again. Ee-o-leven—lucky eleven. Pay the board! Here we go once again, all bets down! Who wants the odds on craps? Seven! Seven again!” In between hot surges like these a number would be thrown—always a six or an eight—and it would seven out the very next throw. Then the sevens and elevens would start again. It was a feat mathematically incredible for regular playing dice.
Joe studied Bello, glaring at him. But the gambler was so swept up in the fever of the sudden giant coups he was raking
in, he decided he hadn’t noticed the now heavy fall of the dice. If there was a “fix” in, Bello, so far at least, seemed unaware of it.
But it was clear to Joe. Somebody had taken advantage of his byplay—his somewhat less than rapt attention to the board, and had pushed queer dice into action.
He started away from the table. The secretary followed, asking: “What’ll I do with this?”
Joe paused only an instant, then pointed out Sunny. “Type it up and give it to her.”
Then he went straight to the office.
Sprig looked grim, unshaven. (“Old High Pockets,” Joe used to call him: long and lean. “The barefoot boy.” Because he liked to take his shoes off when he wasn’t in public.) He had his shoes off now, and in his stocking feet had a two hundred pound, six-foot three, moon-faced man backed up against the wall. The big man was sweating. Carlos Ochoa and Bill Rux, two of Sprig’s best undercover boys were present. All turned to look at Joe, their eyes asking why he was here.
“We’re getting a dice switch,” Joe said.
Sprig nodded wearily. “I know. I’ve been tracking it for eight solid hours. What did they do, put it back in?”
“You mean it was in before?”
“Yeah. Must have happened during the dawn break—while you were resting. I was pretty busy. But the moment Bello came back, he began having fantastic luck. Except that it wasn’t luck.”
“Shaved dice?”
“That’s it,” Sprig said, “but they must be the world’s best. I’ve sent four boxes up to the police lab. I’ll get a report any minute.”
“What about the feed in? Who in the hell’s doing it?”
“Joe, just go back to the table and keep both eyes wide open. I’m close to this now. I’ll have the whole thing lifted and out of here in the next half hour. Go back and act like it’s all right—nothing’s wrong. If you scare them now, it’ll take me longer.”
“Right.” One thing he had learned was to trust Sprig implicitly: ask no questions. Let him run his end of the show.
He returned to the dice table. Bello was still pulling in chips. The sudden bonanza had picked him up physically: he wasn’t even concerned that Joe had been gone for a couple of minutes. Joe stood and watched him win on throw after throw of the bad dice. His stomach was churning, he wanted to shut down the table—run everybody and his brother out of the pit. But he did nothing and his face was without expression.
