by Steve Fisher
He hit Sprig now, sent him sprawling back. The lanky security man made no effort to fight. Joe approached, pulled him in close and hit him again. A trickle of blood seeped out the corner of Sprig’s mouth. Sprig—whom Joe knew to be one of the toughest human beings on the face of the earth. He could probably break Joe in two, and still there was no fight in him. Joe wanted to hit him again, but couldn’t.
“Get out of here—out of the casino—off the premises. You’re fired!”
Sprig shook his head. “Like most of the other employees, I own stock here, stock you made us buy so we’d all be co-owners. All of us partners together. So you can’t fire me—at least not until this siege is over. I’m staying on—to protect my interest.” Then he added, “Partner.”
“You heard me, Sprig—get your ass out of Rainbow’s End—now!”
“No. I’m going to continue working for you whether you want me to or not.”
“Badgering the girl I’m in love with? That’s working for me?” Joe was conscious that he had said aloud to someone besides Sunny that he loved her.
“Joe—I don’t say she isn’t everything you think she is—she could have been roped into some kind of a deal—didn’t know what the hell she was doing—”
“She wasn’t roped into anything!”
“Maybe not.” Sprig’s voice was dead. “But I’m paid to check on everything—every angle. And that’s what I was doing.”
Joe stood there; he was leaden. Sprig moved past him, hand on his jaw, and went out.
He walked down the stairs from the penthouse feeling worse than he had ever felt at any time in his life. In the casino, he moved toward the office, and went in.
Rux looked at him, saw the bloody mouth.
“I didn’t tell him you were up there.”
“No, the man’s uncanny, that’s all. Let me sit down.” Rux got up and Sprig sat in the swivel chair. He leaned forward on the desk, putting his hand to his forehead. There was pain all over him.
“He actually hit you, huh?”
“Yeah—he actually did.”
“Doesn’t he know you’re the best man he’s ever—”
“Yeah, he knows.”
“You going to take it?”
“I took it.”
Rux fell silent.
Sprig leaned back, looking at the ceiling. “I feel awful. I feel like hell! Will you go out and leave me alone for a while, Rux?”
“Sure.”
Twenty-nine
An airline round trip for two to Las Vegas from Los Angeles will cost between sixty and eighty dollars, a first-class hotel room fifteen, dinner for two ten; cocktails average seventy-five cents each. Yet, under “business announcements,” the classified ad section of newspapers in this city offer:
VISIT
Fabulous
LAS VEGAS
3 days & 2 nights
$25.00
(per person)
Choice of Strip Hotel Luxury
Room, 2 nites
Cocktail & Dinner at
Another Hotel with
$10 per couple
TO SPEND
Cocktails at 3rd Spot
Golf and Swimming.
HO. 3000
The ten dollars “to spend” is in the form of white chits of paper, worth one dollar each in Las Vegas only, and not exchangeable for either money or chips. A person using them in a blackjack game or at a crap table usually feels self-conscious, and then secretly glad when he’s lost the last of them. Las Vegas is also glad, because that’s where the gimmick of the bargain offer begins to work: when the customer reaches into his wallet for money.
It was almost five-thirty, and Mai, wearing bathing trunks, a towel over his shoulder, his feet pushed into beach sandals, was just leaving his bungalow when the telephone rang. He stepped back inside, answered. It was Shelby, his voice urgent:
“Krazycat, buddy, I’ve got to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Later,” Mai said.
“Later? Listen—I’m wiped out!”
“I’m sorry to hear—”
“Don’t give me that crap you’re sorry. You’re with them. You told me if I followed Bello’s bets—”
“Look, you son of a bitch—”
Shelby’s voice was contrite now. “Krazycat—I was just blowing off steam. I’m a little excited. I’ve wired to California for money. It’ll be here tomorrow. Meantime, how about a geeola? I’ll pay you back as soon as—”
“A thousand dollars?” Mai said. “Are you nuts? I don’t keep that kind of dough.”
“You can get it—you work here. The cashier’ll give it to you.”
“Won’t the cashier give it to you? You’re a businessman. You can write checks.”
“I haven’t established credit yet.”
“Well, I don’t have it,” Mai said. “My salary goes to my business manager every week and he just gives me so much to live on.”
“You Hollywood bastards!” Shelby rasped. “Business managers!”
“I’m on my way to go swimming,” Mai told him. “See you around.”
He hoped he wouldn’t, but when he crawled out of the water twenty minutes later, Si Shelby was sitting tensely in a sloped-back canvas deck chair as close to the edge of the pool as he could get. Mai shook his head to flick water off, and the smoldering late afternoon sun, still breathtakingly hot, absorbed most of the rest almost immediately. “Looking for me?”
“Krazycat, I’ve got to have that G—just until morning!” Mai sat down on the tile. “I told you—I don’t have it, can’t get it.”
“Jesus, you must have some money!”
“I’ve got a hundred I was going to play around with.”
“A hundred? A lousy, stinking hundred dollars?”
“Yeah—you see, I’m not a big man like you.”
Shelby looked at him long and hard. “Listen, I’ll tell you what kind of a jam I’m in—I’ll level with you. Then maybe you’ll spring for more than just a measly hundred bucks.”
“Why should I spring for anything?” Mai snapped, “I’m no kin to you.”
“Listen, just listen, will you? Things went to hell for me in the car business. It was coming for a long time—”
“Shelby—I don’t want to hear about it.”
“My wife left me eight or ten months ago—Tijuana divorce. Cutest doll you’ve ever seen. She used to be a cigarette girl in a night club. Only she had a bad personal smash-up of some kind—busted romance. And she was pretty sad when I married her. But she was so terrific looking, I didn’t care—and we hit everything off fine.”
“Will you get to the point—if there is one?”
But Si Shelby took his time, suffering inwardly. “It was fine, just fine; I made her forget the other romance; but I’d been married twice before and had three kids by one and one by the other—and these two ex-wives kept giving me a bad time: eating up my money; and finally I began drinking a little, and dating bar tarts now and then, and Mildred caught me a few times. Mildred is the ex-cigarette girl. I guess she caught me one time too many. Anyway, she took off.”
“Which is what I’m going to do,” Mai said, “if you don’t get to the point.” And he thought of Mildred, whoever she was, and wherever she was—with one more busted romance on her hands. Ex-Mrs. Shelby the third. Maybe she was back peddling cigarettes; or maybe she had just lain down and died.
“So being a bachelor again, I played around a lot—spent too much dough—” He saw the boredom in Mai’s eyes and cut it short. “I chiseled on some pink slips to the cars—got them from a wholesaler—floored them with both a bank and a finance company—the same cars—and left town with eleven thousand dollars that wasn’t mine.”
“Is the law after you?”
“I don’t think so, not yet. The bank, the wholesaler and the finance company’ll be snarled up for weeks, each claiming ownership of the cars. They may swear out warrants later, but even so, somebody told me it’s hard to reach across a st
ate line on an embezzlement rap.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
Shelby reddened. The splash of water, laughter and excited voices echoed from the pool. A blonde stretched herself out on the lawn not ten feet away.
“You trying to scare me, Krazycat?”
“No, they pick them up every day, and Nevada is happy to sign the extradition papers.”
“Quit needling me!”
“I’m not,” Mai told him quietly. “For a man who’s just turned crooked, you’re awfully naive. I’ll bet your real name is Shelby, isn’t it?”
“Sure it is.” Shelby was taut now. “Look, cut it out; cut this stuff out.”
“Did you really believe you could steal from all those different people and wriggle out of it by merely crossing a state line?”
“Nobody’s come near me so far!”
“As you say, it takes time to swear out the warrants; but I bet they know where you are.”
The blonde lying on the lawn was joined by a middle-aged man and two children in their teens. They sat down around her, cross-legged; then the four of them talked to one another in soft pleasant voices. They seemed happy and very relaxed.
“Think so?” Shelby was tense, his body stiffening; veins bulged at his neck.
“Wouldn’t be hard to guess, would it?” Mai said. “You came to the obvious place.”
“All right,” Shelby cut in harshly, desperately; the blonde and one of the children looked over. “But what about getting me some dough? I’ve leveled with you, told you the whole thing—”
“And before that,” Mai reminded him, “you said you had money coming tomorrow. But when you realized you couldn’t steal from me, you decided to beg!”
“Look, just let me have a thousand and I’ll get it back so fast—”
“How? How’ll you get it back?”
“Never mind. I have a way.”
“So does everybody who comes to Las Vegas. You’ve already dropped eleven thousand dollars of other people’s money, but you’re not adding a thousand of mine to it.” Shelby’s face was crestfallen, panicky. “You mean you’re going to let me down?”
“You let your brokenhearted wife Mildred down, didn’t you?” Mai’s voice was just above a whisper, but very intense. “And your other two wives, and your four children; you were even going to let me down a thousand dollars’ worth if you could swing it.”
“How much will you give me, then? Will you give me anything?”
“The hundred we talked about. Use it to pay your hotel and food bill. Then check out.” Mai climbed to his feet.
Shelby stood now, too, and looked worse standing up: He seemed almost falling to pieces. “Can I go to your bungalow with you and get the hundred?”
“No. I’ll see you in the casino.”
“When?”
“Half an hour or so.”
When he entered the casino forty-five minutes later, Shelby was waiting. He motioned him away, then walked over to the cashier and got a hundred dollar bill by signing a chit. When he turned around, he saw that Shelby was no longer alone. Cottontop had joined him, her very white face so flushed with relief she was nearly crying, and she more than ever resembled a kind of cute scarecrow: or a flippy-floppy rag doll with white braid hair. Mai strolled over to them.
“Oh, honey,” Cottontop was saying, “I’ve tried to reach you everywhere! But here you are at last, dear. I’m all packed and ready. Quit my job this morning. Are we leaving for Hollywood soon?”
“Look,” Shelby said irritably, “get lost.”
“Get lost? Dear, what do you mean by that?”
“I MEAN GET THE HELL LOST!”
Cottontop was horror-struck, and several people turned around, staring at them.
“Tell her the truth,” Mai said.
“Stay out of this, Krazycat!”
“The truth about what?” Cottontop asked. “Please! The truth about what?”
“I tried to tell you at the piano before this started.”
But she didn’t look at him or hear him; she was clutching Shelby’s sleeve. “The truth about what?”
“The truth about nothing,” Shelby snapped. He was embarrassed. “Just go away, will you, you’re attracting attention.”
“Either you tell her or you don’t get this C-note,” Mai threatened.
Shelby looked at the hundred dollar bill, then said to Cottontop: “I’m not a talent scout. I’m no part of the movies. I’m a used car dealer.”
The little waitress was numb with shock. It was a moment before she could speak; then, giddy with a truth she couldn’t accept, she said: “Oh, I know. I know! This is a joke. You and Mr. Davis made it up together. Oh, what a good practical joker you are, honey! Very convincing.
That’s the way people in Hollywood do, don’t they? Everything’s a joke.”
“It’s no joke,” Mai said.
She looked at him. “I told him about The Home. You know, that orphanage in Nebraska.”
“I didn’t know anything about it,” Mai said.
Cottontop was swaying very slightly from side to side. “How nobody would ever adopt me because I look so odd—I’m so white all over.” She turned back to Shelby. “And you said it was probably because I was too unusual, but being unusual was what would make me a star.” She returned her gaze to Mai. “There were no movies there, or TV, either. I didn’t see one single movie until they let me out—and I was eighteen by then. But, oh, did I make up for lost time! I became a student of Hollywood—kept files with the name of every star; then I started a list of every actor, no matter how small his part was—like—like when you played in a movie once. Oh, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, you had a fine part, but—” Her voice ran down, and then she said: “Did he lie to me?”
“Yeah, Cindy, he did.”
“But how could he?” Her face began to break. She looked at Shelby: and there was almost nothing left of him. He was pasty, sweating. “How could you, honey? I—I told you I was a virgin. I asked you to wait. Oh, I was terribly drunk—I’ve never been drunk like that—but I remember asking you—”
“Will you shut up!”
“No, I won’t shut up.”
“Lower your voice then,” Shelby demanded.
“I won’t do that, either,” said Cottontop. “I told you, I warned you, I begged—but you wouldn’t listen—and you were so filthy, so—” She began to sob uncontrollably, and a uniformed casino policeman, alerted by the sound, headed over. “You were so—How could you? How could anybody be so—”
The policeman arrived, and Mai said: “Take her to Joe’s office, will you?”
A small crowd had begun to gather, and the cop led Cottontop gently away, still crying loudly. Shelby had taken all he could without collapsing and didn’t care about the people who remained, watching the two of them.
“Have I earned that hundred dollars yet?”
“Sure,” Mai said. He handed it to him.
Thirty
When Mai entered the office, Cottontop was on the floor, sobbing loudly, beating her fists into the cushions on one of the divans; she seemed almost in a spasm of pain. Sprig was watching, bewildered. The casino policeman nodded at Mai, his eyes eager. “We all like this kid,” he said. “What’d he do to her?”
“Better get back outside,” Sprig told him curtly.
As the cop went out, Mai said: “I’ll tell you about it some other time.”
“Tell me about it,” Sprig invited.
“When Joe gets here.”
“You’ve sent for him?”
“Yeah.”
There was a peculiar look on Sprig’s face. “I guess he can take care of it then—whatever it is. See you later.” Mai gaped as Sprig closed the door behind him. Bad blood between Sprig and Joe? It was too incredible to believe.
Cottontop was still sobbing, and he tried to pick her up now, but she fought him off, flailing her arms. “Leave me alone! Just leave me alone! I’m going to kill myself!” As he backed aw
ay, she swung her body around, still sitting on the floor by the divan, her face streaked with tears and blobs of mascara, her hair disarrayed; she was biting her lips. Her breath was short, fast. “He was going to take me to Hollywood. HOLLYWOOD!” The crying started again now, worse than ever, and she crawled into the middle of the room, beating soundlessly on the thick, black rug.
“Cindy, listen to me. Joe’ll be here in a minute. Do you want him to see you looking like this?”
She went on crying, but allowed Mai to lift her to her feet. Even burdened with such heavy grief, she was light as a blade of grass: a skinny little thing, not much to her. The door opened and Joe came in. She saw him, and tried to calm herself somewhat: she had a terrible respect for anybody in authority. Mai helped her onto a divan, and she sat there crying softly. Joe looked at her. He seemed almost irritated.
“What’s the matter?”
Mai said: “She was manhandled by a phony who said he was going to take her to Hollywood. Even quit her job.”
“Where is the guy?”
“It was a pretty bad scene out there. I imagine he’s hit the road. He’s a go-broke.”
Joe walked over to Cottontop and sat down beside her, and Mai was surprised at the gentleness in his tone. “Take it easy, kitten; the world hasn’t ended yet. Maybe that phony jerk doesn’t want you, but we do.”
Cottontop tried to subdue the little sobs that kept welling up in her throat. “Please don’t say that because I know it isn’t true; nothing is any more, nothing is true. It’s very nice of you, sir, but—”
“It is true,” Joe said. “You see me tomorrow morning.
I’ll put you on temporarily as a shill; and the first waitress job that opens up is yours. Hell, it might even be in the casino where the main-line action is instead of that unexciting coffee shop.”
Mai continued to be amazed: Joe knew just how to talk to her, exactly what to say; when he wanted to turn it on, this man had real charm. Cottontop had suddenly stopped crying entirely.
