Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  I was a fool, she thought. No. I wasn’t. This is a lot more fun. There were things I had to learn.

  As she looked at him again, pushing his plate away and getting a cigarette out of his pocket, squinting as he took the candle from the middle of the table to light it, Connie smiled to herself.

  Maybe it’s just the old Oedipus complex, after all. I could get it psyched out of me and save a lot of trouble.

  He was very like her father, except that his hair was a crisp sandy ginger instead of iron-gray. He was as tall and strongly built, his shoulders had the same slight stoop, he moved in the same relaxed and easygoing fashion and with the same deceptive calm, concealing both power and energy, different in kind and perhaps used for different purposes, but the same in quality and latent reserve. Nobody would ever shove either of them twice. She knew that about her father. Jim Ferguson had proved it about Gus by passing the buck to her father in the form of Janey’s checks. Other people would get a routine notice in the morning mail. Or Doc Wernitz would have got the checks bounced back to him, like a lot of others he’d got back from Smithville’s slot machine addicts, written in their avid search for fool’s gold. Fergie had done neither to Gus, whose bank balance was always precariously low and a matter of apparent indifference to him. And there was something odd somewhere—something odd about all of it that she couldn’t quite put her finger on at the moment.

  She shrugged it off. Gus’s bank balance wasn’t precariously low now. It was nonexistent, with three hundred and twenty strikes on it in the form of Janey’s checks in her father’s drawer. And it was her father’s fault, in a way. She knew Gus was paid about half what he was worth, in terms of what he had made the paper pay or what her father would have had to pay anybody else as good, or not as good. There must have been some sort of a deal. She suspected that without knowing, but she knew one thing for sure. Gus, not her father, would be the one gypped in the end. That was one thing about John Maynard’s deals. Like the slot machine over there in the corner. If the twenty-five per cent—and it was a lot nearer forty—that went to the League for Civic Improvement hadn’t come out of their friends’ pockets, John Maynard would have had to put it up out of his own, just to keep Aunt Mamie out of his hair. It was all good, clean fun, and it was still a gyp.

  Connie pushed her chair back and looked over at the corner. The machine was rattling away again now that people were through supper. Janey was still at the table with Orvie Rogers and Jim Ferguson. Martha Ferguson was at the slot machine with Dorsey Syms, Martha putting in the quarters and Dorsey pulling down the iron arm. It came down then, with the tinkle of a coin and an empty metallic sound, and suddenly both Martha and Dorsey Syms thrust their arms out around it.

  “Hey, Janey! Come on, Janey!” Both of them were calling her. “Come on, Janey! We know this machine—it’s ready to give! Come on, Janey!”

  Connie Maynard had never heard Martha Ferguson so excited before. Her cheeks tingled. My God, she thought, they’ll even stand aside for her to take their dough in a thirty-dollar jack pot. She was aware that she had got up abruptly and was standing gripping the back of her chair, watching everybody crowd forward, everybody shouting, “Come on, Janey, it’s your turn at the jack pot!” Everybody but Gus Blake. She looked around at him. He was still lounging lazily there on the seat in the corner behind the table, his wide mouth twisted in his semi sardonic smile, relaxed and waiting for the tumult to die down.

  “Come on, Janey!”

  Janey had not moved. She was sitting bolt upright at her table, shaking her head, shaking out what was left of the mop of tow-colored fuzz tied with the velvet bow.

  “No,” she said. She shook her head again. “I’m not going to play.”

  “Oh, come on, Janey. Come on, be a sport. Just two quarters, Janey. Look, nobody’s won it for three weeks.” Jim Ferguson was pointing up to the framed cardboard bulletin behind the bar. “Look, Janey, the last jack pot was in October. Nelly won it in October.”

  Connie glanced at the board. It was a record of the jack pots, the dates and winners—all part of the fine, high plausibility that made Doc Wernitz’s Christmas gift to her father all open and aboveboard and For Amusement Only. And keeps our playroom different from an ordinary clip joint— She turned sharply and looked at Gus Blake, her cheeks flushing. She’d said it to herself, but it was what he was thinking, too. She could tell by the amused glint in his eyes before his craggy face broke into an open grin.

  “Relax, Con,” he said. “Or is it against the house rules for the customers to get a break?” He looked over at his wife. “Go on, Janey. We can use thirty bucks—if you get it.”

  For a fraction of an instant Connie Maynard felt really sorry for the girl. She’s scared. She’s terribly scared, she thought. And she ought to be. Even I’d be scared, in her shoes.

  She turned her head. One of the colored boys had come down the steps and was beckoning to Gus.

  “Telephone, Mr. Blake.” He motioned to the recess behind the stairs. “It’s the paper.”

  Connie felt her cheeks flush again as Gus got instantly to his feet. Now it was the paper. First it was her Uncle Nelly, then all the jack pot and Janey business, absorbing his attention in spite of all her maneuvering. Now the paper. The paper was the only thing he really gave a damn about, she thought irritably, glancing resentfully at his broad back as he reached the stairs, everybody still clamoring for Janey to come and win the jack pot.

  “Go on, Janey, and maybe they’ll all shut up.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs and grinned at his wife before he went on around to answer the phone.

  Janey’s lips moved in a wooden smile. She pushed her chair back from the table. With the stiff movement of her young body the black velvet bow came loose and toppled into her lap. She picked it up, untied the bow, caught her hair and pulled it up, tying it into a topknot again. Then she raised her pointed little face. It was pinched and pale and her eyes were like black smudges. She tried to smile as she got to her feet.

  “You’re all—you’re all terribly sweet. I—I’d love to get a jack pot, but I—I never do.”

  She moved with the curious grace of a wooden doll across to the machine, fishing in her bag.

  Orvie Rogers sprang forward. “Here, Janey, I’ll lend you some quarters.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got one. Maybe two—I don’t know.” She took another step forward to the machine.

  “Come on, Janey. Don’t let Dorsey pull it for you. He’ll jinx it, Janey!”

  Somebody shouted that, but it sounded disproportionately loud and raucous. Everybody else was suddenly tense and silent. It was like that moment at the race track when a hundred people hold their breath as the hundred-to-one shot pulls ahead of the favorite at the finish. It was absurd. Connie Maynard felt the sharp chill prickle across her bare shoulders and down her spine. Janey raised her hand, hesitating an instant before she put the coin in the slot. She reached over quickly, took hold of the iron handle, pulled it down, and dropped it as if it had burned into her hand. The reels spun through the harshly colored, blurred cycle of cherries, lemons, oranges, plums, and bells, spun the full cycle and whirred in turn to a stop. A cherry, another cherry, and an orange. Then came the final click, sharp and still curiously hollow, and the jingle of the three quarters falling.

  “Leave ’em in, Janey! Leave ’em in for a nest egg!” someone shouted. “One more, Janey!”

  “Go on, Janey. One more. I know this machine.” It was Martha Ferguson who said that. She spoke quietly, but it sounded oddly like a command, as if thirty people there each willing the machine to pay must in some way make it pay. Janey Blake stood there motionless for a moment, her slight body rigid in front of the garishly painted machine, tensed sharply. She straightened her shoulders. Her towhead went up in a small gesture of defiance. Defiance, or was it pride? Connie Maynard, unconsciously gripping the back of her chair again, her own body as rigid as Janey’s, saw it as Janey’s hand went quickly out. She dropped the quarter
, yanked down the arm, and flashed around.

  “There,” she said. “That’s that.” She took three steps forward, her eyes swimming blindly, her face white, her chin up. She took another step toward her table and had put her hand out to reach for it when the room broke into delighted tumultuous cheers.

  “Jack pot! Janey! Janey! It’s a jack pot, Janey!”

  Some of the quarters burst out over the cup, metal ringing on the tiled floor as everybody scrambled, laughing and excited, to pick up Janey’s jack pot out of the corners. One came rolling across the room, spinning crazily at last an inch from Connie Maynard’s green slipper. She put her foot out and stopped it without moving her eyes from Janey’s rigid figure by the table. Her hand was still out. She was balancing herself against the table, her face blank and white, blind and deaf.

  Deaf, blind, and very dumb, Connie Maynard thought sharply. She didn’t seem to realize she’d won the jack pot, or that it might have been for a thousand dollars the way Smithville’s elite were laughing and scrambling around on all fours picking up her rolling take. Jim Ferguson, president of the leading bank, and Martha his wife. Orvie Rogers, son of the richest man in the county. Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief. To say nothing of Dorsey Syms, rising young banker, and his father Uncle Nelly. Or herself, for that matter, she thought, bending down and picking up the quarter at her feet.

  “Here,” she said. She thrust it into Jim Ferguson’s hand. “Give her this one, too.”

  He looked down at it, the banker’s caution so automatic that she laughed for the first time since Janey and Gus had come. “It rolled out, Jim. Right over at my feet. If it’s a counterfeit, some kind friend put it in.”

  He was already bursting back across the room to Janey.

  “Look, Janey! Here’s a gold quarter, somebody’s lucky piece! It’s a quarter with gold wash—it’s your lucky piece, Janey!” He opened her evening bag and thrust it inside, and dumped the rest of the quarters he’d picked up onto the pile on the table. “Come on, everybody. Bring out your folding money.”

  “What’s all this? What’s all this noise and racket?” Connie looked quickly over at the stairs. The screaming and laughter had brought her father down. John Maynard was bending over the banisters, handsome and smiling, as happy as everybody else. “What’s going on down here?”

  “It’s Janey, John.” Jim Ferguson pointed to the shining pile of coins heaped on the table. “Janey won the jack pot.”

  “Oh, good for Janey!”

  If he had won it himself John Maynard could not have been more pleased. He reached in his pocket for his billfold. “How much, Jim?”

  The president of the bank finished counting. “Thirty-two fifty, unless somebody’s holding out on us.”

  “Fine.” John Maynard took the bills out of his wallet. He looked across the room. “Phone Doc Wernitz, will you, Connie? Tell him the jack pot’s hit and to come over and set the machine up again. Maybe Janey’ll get another. Here, Jim, give Janey this. Janey, there ain’t nobody, honey, I’d rather—”

  With the gold-washed lucky piece and counting Janey’s quarters to put them into portable form, everybody had forgotten Janey for a moment, and everybody but Constance Maynard had forgotten Gus. He had come out of the cubicle behind the stairs and had stopped, his gray eyes hard as stone, looking over at Janey, as everybody else was looking at her then. She was standing there, not wooden any more or rigid, but trembling, shaking from the black velvet bow on the top of her head to the soles of her gold-slippered feet. The tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “Janey!” Orvie Rogers sprang forward. “Janey! What’s the—”

  “No, no—don’t! Let me alone! Let me alone!”

  She broke loose from Orvie Rogers and Martha Ferguson and ran blindly, choking back her sobs, through the mute and staggered crowd, past her husband and past John Maynard up the stairs, tripping at the top but catching herself and on out of sight.

  Gus Blake took a step toward her and stopped again, a light in his eyes that was new to Connie Maynard, new and almost unbearably exciting, neither amused nor sardonic and least of all lazy or detached.

  He said quietly, “Maybe somebody here better tell me what in hell’s the matter with my child bride. Or maybe I’d better tell you something.”

  He turned and looked up the stairs. “There’s no use Connie’s calling Doc Wernitz to reset the machine, Maynard. Doc Wernitz is dead. They’ve just found him down in his cellar, his skull smashed with an iron bar. Somebody murdered Doc Wernitz a couple of hours ago—while everybody here was having a quick drink and getting into his black tie, white shirt, and dinner coat.”

  He turned back to Connie Maynard. “Go up and get Janey, will you? I’ll take her home first.”

  “Orvie can take Janey home.”

  Who it was said that, in the intense silence of the room, Connie Maynard did not know.

  “I’ll take her home,” Gus Blake said shortly.

  He knows about Janey. As Connie Maynard thought it, a sharp quiver of excitement ran through her. There was something in the way he said it— She caught herself up quickly. Or was it something else? What could there be about the killing of the little gambler none of them could have known that had created instantly the extraordinary tension she could feel now in the room? It was so real and electric that she could feel it to the tips of her fingers as she slipped across to the stairs and up to go after Janey. She could feel it implicit in Gus Blake’s voice as she heard him again and stopped at the head of the stairs to listen.

  “I didn’t know Doc Wernitz myself, but I knew something about him. He was a pretty decent sort of guy, for the racket he was in. I don’t like the idea of his being murdered. So don’t anybody here call up the Gazette tomorrow and try to tell me to lay off, and that Smithville doesn’t want to get mixed up with gamblers getting what’s coming to them. You’re all gamblers, friends, and tomorrow I’m telling you all why I think it’s okay for suckers to play Doc’s slot machines.”

  He started up the stairs and stopped. “And don’t get me wrong, pals,” he said evenly. “I’m not condoning you, or the machines. Personally and privately, I think you both stink. So if you’ll excuse me now, I’ll go out and see what happened.”

  FOUR

  GUS BLAKE BROUGHT THE CAR to a lurching stop and reached over across Janey to open the door. Maybe he should have left her at the Maynards’ and let Orvie Rogers bring her home later, but their house was on the way to Doc Wernitz’s at Newton’s Corner, and home in bed was obviously where she belonged. He tried to make her face out in the light coming through the dusty windshield from the overhead traffic signal on the corner. All he could see was a greenish seasick blob above the black velvet collar of her evening wrap.

  “You sure you’ll be okay, Janey? I’ve got to get out there before they start pushing things around. There’s something screwy about this. You can smell it a mile.”

  “I’m okay, Gus.”

  “You don’t sound it.”

  As the light changed, turning the greenish cast of her face into a rosy red, she looked a little better, anyway. She pulled herself forward in the seat.

  “I’m all right, Gus. You go ahead. I told you I’m all right now.”

  “Sure, you told me. I still don’t get it. I don’t see anything about getting a thirty-two-fifty jack pot that’s enough to make you blow your top the way you did. But there’s no use our yakking about it anymore. You’re a wreck.” He opened the door. “You go on in and go to bed. Get your mother to stay all night. I’ll make up the couch if I get home in time to need it. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Janey pulled her skirt around her legs and got out, holding on to the door to steady her wooden knees. She took a step and turned back.

  “What is it, Janey?”

  He didn’t mean to sound abrupt or impatient, but he was in a hurry. When he’d said there was something screwy about Wernitz’s murder he meant it. Smithville was not in any of the big-time gambling circuits. A
s such things went, Doc Wernitz had operated quietly and reasonably within the law. But slot machines and murder had teamed up before. If Doc Wernitz had been killed earlier, it might easily have been written off as an occupational hazard. Coming now, just as the news that he was shutting up shop and leaving Smithville had barely begun to trickle out into the open, it was something else again.

  And what had the great Blake done when the counter man at the Margot Lunch had told him, that evening at six o’clock, that he’d heard Doc Wernitz was leaving? Blake, the Narcissus, had looked at himself in the black pool of the Margot’s lousy coffee and wondered whether he ought to go back and pull his trenchant and thought-provoking editorial reply to Aunt Mamie on the slot machines, and decided against it. There’d always be another Wernitz to operate the machines, and always suckers to play them. That, plus a commendable caution on his part; he didn’t want anybody in Smithville saying he’d written the editorial and then hot-footed it out to Wernitz for his approval—which is what they’d say if he’d been seen within a mile of Newton’s Corner that or any other day.

  And now it was too late. At that moment, or a little earlier, or a little later, Doc Wernitz had been murdered. He gave himself a vicious kick in the seat of his mental pants, setting up a chain reaction that made his voice sound sharper and more impatient as he repeated his question. “What is it now? I’m in one hell of a hurry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She drew back quietly. The light on the corner behind them switched to red, but the convertible coming along the street speeded up and shot through, live rubber screaming on the pavement as it slid to a sharp stop behind Gus Blake’s dingy coupe. Janey stiffened. It was too late for her to get the door shut. Connie Maynard was already there.