The Only Girl in the Game

by John D. MacDonald

  “So what happens to the fancy budget system we got, huh?”

  “You’ll keep it in line.”

  “Cut quality?”

  “That’s your problem.”

  Ladori stood up. “It was nice while it lasted, Darren. Now it’s the same old crap like other places. Who scared you?”

  “That’s all for now, George. When I want to see you again, I’ll let you know.”

  “Make it a long time.”

  He gave the same orders to John Trabe, in charge of liquor, to Walter Welch, in charge of maintenance, to Byron “Bunny” Rice, his night man, and to his office manager. It created a new wariness in every one of them, and he sensed that the good relationships had been destroyed, perhaps beyond rebuilding.

  And then it was necessary merely to sit back and wait.

  The first customer was one of the maids. She had been employed for just four mouths. The housekeeper on her floor suspected the woman of petty theft. Guests had complained about small mysterious disappearances. The problem was brought to Hugh. With the cooperation of a guest, they set a trap for her, a stack of seven fifty-dollar chips on a dressing table. After the woman cleaned the room there were six. One of the two security officers who worked under Darren brought the woman to his office. After vehement denials that grew constantly weaker, she produced the pre-marked chip from her brassiere, flung it onto Hugh’s desk and collapsed into angry tears.

  Hugh typed out a confession. The maid signed it. Hugh and the security officer witnessed it. Just as he dismissed the security officer, Jane Sanderson came in and went to her desk, frankly curious. Hugh took the maid to the small conference room off the office and closed the door. The woman’s name was Mary Michin. She had a weak, dull face.

  When she was under control he said, “It isn’t just petty theft, Mary. It’s fifty dollars. You know that. I can push it, and the least you’ll get is six months. I could promise you that. Six months.”

  After he waited out the new storm of weeping, he said, “But I might not do it if I get a few solemn promises from you, with the understanding that the first time you fail to keep them, I throw you to the cops.” She bobbed her head eagerly. “Without telling a soul about this, Mary, you will dig up every scrap of information you can about Betty Dawson, who left here six weeks ago. You will report everything to me you can learn. I want every scrap of gossip about her and what could have happened to her. Do you understand? Good. Also, I want gossip about staff people who may be in some kind of trouble—money trouble, marriage trouble. Don’t try to get in touch with me with any of this. Every once in a while, when I make my rounds, I’ll find you and you’ll have a chance to tell me these things. Keep your ears open. Ask questions. And if you can’t get any information for me, Mary, I’ll take this confession out of my personal private file and make sure you go to jail. Is that clear?”

  After he had dismissed the browbeaten woman, he felt soiled and brutal. But he knew he was proceeding in the only possible way. In similar ways, with equivalent threats, he acquired the ears and memory of an electrician on the maintenance staff, a waitress in the coffee shop, a fat and greedy bellhop. Through their whispered disclosures of intrigue between other members of the staff he was able to acquire a bartender, a solarium attendant, a young gardener, a swimming-pool guard. He brought a cold and relentless pressure down upon them, using their own fear and greed and insecurity to whip them into a great diligence of espionage.

  As, piece by piece, a horrid picture began to form, he could not permit himself to realize that he was getting this information about the woman he loved. He had to steel himself to a special objectivity. The full emotional significance was there, like a presence a half step behind him, but he could not let himself turn and look into its face, because he sensed that it would break him.

  He noted down each significant fragment, and as the picture began to form it provided clues to the areas where he should intensify the pressure.

  At five o’clock on the fifteenth day of June, a Wednesday, Jane Sanderson marched to his desk, sat in the chair, looked at him with anger and curiosity and said, “Don’t you think it’s about time you told me what the hell you’re doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, so bland and so innocent! For God’s sake, Hugh, in two lousy weeks you’ve turned this whole place into a ferment of fear and confusion. Ladori is quietly job-hunting. People were in danger of liking you so much they tried to do their best for you. But all of a sudden you don’t give a damn about performance. People are scared of you. You have pets. So we’re getting guest complaints by the bale.”

  “Jane, honestly, I can’t tell you what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. There’s only one thing I can tell you. It won’t last much longer.”

  “Do you realize how long it will take to undo what you’re doing?”

  “A long time.”

  “In another month we’ll be right back where we started.”

  “I know that too.”

  “But why are you doing this?”

  “The reason is important.”

  She sighed. “I give up. Some day, let me in on these things, huh?”

  That same evening he sat at the small desk in his room on the second floor and carefully wrote out, in no special order, a series of statements. Though he had no proof of any of them, he believed them to be true.

  1. There exists somewhere, away from the hotel, a special place to which big winners are enticed for purposes of blackmail.

  2. Betty assisted Hanes in such projects.

  3. Hanes, with Marta’s knowledge and approval, had and perhaps still has unsavory still pictures or tapes or movies proving Betty’s complicity in this blackmail operation.

  4. Gallowell won a large sum of money. On the night she was last seen, she entered Gallowell’s suite in the early evening. Prior to that time she had left the hotel with a small suitcase and had returned without it.

  5. Though a sealed note of farewell was presumably slipped under my door by Betty, and I mentioned it to no one, Hanes and others know of that note.

  6. The airline ticket was delivered to Betty’s room at 8:30. She was packing at that time.

  7. Gidge Allen was seen turning out of the parking lot at one o’clock on Tuesday morning, alone in Betty’s car. He returned to the hotel by cab a half hour later.

  8. Brownell was seen holding a service elevator at the second floor shortly after nine o’clock that evening. He was seen again, maybe a half hour later, wheeling an empty hamper down the rear service ramp into the basement.

  9. At some undetermined time that evening, Harry Charm parked Al Malta’s Lincoln at the end of the service alley in the shadows beyond the convention hall.

  10. (Possibly no connection) On Tuesday morning Allen was up much earlier than usual, enlisting the help of Marta’s people in an effort to locate a woman named Murial Bentann.

  11. Marta’s Lincoln, though clean Monday, was so dusty on Tuesday it was sent down the street for wash and service.

  12. Brownell, on Tuesday, required medical attention for some undisclosed injury.

  13. This is indefinite, but perhaps most significant of all. There is a definite flavor of secrecy involved here. Informants have all been given the strong impression that it is “unhealthy” to, be too curious about Betty. There seems to be desire she be forgotten as quickly as possible. This emanates from Marta, Charm, Allen, Hanes and their people, infiltrating my staff.

  So, if I must summarize this whole thing, much as it hurts to do so, I can speculate that Betty, for some reason I do not know, was taken out of the hotel by Brownell and Charm and, perhaps, Allen, and taken away in Marta’s Lincoln. I am certain that Allen drove out in her car. I have double-checked that. It is the most alarming thing I have learned. It indicates an effort to make it look as though Betty caught that flight. If she did not, someone did, posing as her. That would be the reason why the trail disappears in San Francisco. I am beginning to believe she may be.…<
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  He could not write the word. He could not put that starkness, that end of hope, down on paper. He tried to tell himself they had frightened her so badly she did not dare come back.

  He knew that he would probably sieve more scraps of information out of the network he had set up, but he suspected it would be repetitive, that little more of any significance would be learned.

  He checked his list, and from that list he knew what he would do next. Points four and ten cried out for further investigation, and they were things he would have to undertake personally.

  Muriel Bentann awoke at two o’clock on Sunday afternoon, the nineteenth day of June. It had been more than six weeks since she moved to this smaller, cheaper room on Perry Street. The two narrow windows faced west, and the sun, glaring through yellow draperies that hung lifeless in the heat, had brought the room up to an almost unbearable temperature. She lay nude and gleaming with sweat on the narrow studio bed until she was convinced she could not get back to sleep.

  Though she had had nothing to drink for the past forty hours, and very little to eat, she had the dull, nagging headache of a hangover. She guessed it was the result of all the smoke and tension of the hours at the wheel.

  All those lousy hours, she thought, sitting at that table, and how the hell did I go wrong this time. Went into Dusty’s with a hundred and fifty cash dollars, and God knows how many times I got it up over two hundred, and three or four times over three hundred, and one time within spitting distance of five hundred, but every time the luck would sag off and scare me to death, and the last time it just kept right on dribbling away and by three o’clock it was gone.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, gathering her strength, then got up and slipped her robe on and went down the hall to the bathroom carrying soap, towel, toilet articles and makeup kit. After her shower she avoided looking at herself too directly and too inclusively until she had fixed her hair and made herself a new mouth. She then risked an impartial examination. Her eyes were sunken and shadowed with fatigue, but she would keep her sunglasses on.

  She smiled in a friendly open way at herself and thought, you’ll still do, gal. And it’s like a miracle, considering this life you’re leading—you should look like Sinatra in a brunette wig.

  Back in her room, she dressed hastily before the heat could spoil the effect of her shower. She put on trim blue-gray short shorts because her legs were very good, their value negotiable, and a white sleeveless blouse with a red question mark embroidered over a silly pocket, because a mild touch of insanity made conversations easier to start. With sunglasses, sandals and straw purse, she was armored for the world. She grimaced as she quickly checked her total reserves and confirmed her own knowledge that, she was down to three ones and some small change.

  After a drugstore breakfast, she walked another block and a half to Casa Cupid, which she had come to call her “afternoon place”. It was a small cocktail lounge owned and operated by Jimmy Cupid, a husky, friendly, displaced carney who had parlayed his portable shooting gallery into a more sedentary occupation.

  Jimmy was behind the bar and the place was empty when she walked into the chilly gloom, half blinded after the glare of sun outside, her sandals clacking across the floor toward one of the upholstered bar stools.

  “Now isn’t this a madly gay place,” she said, sliding onto the stool, fumbling for her cigarettes.

  “A Sunday afternoon in June, Muriel? If I give away the drinks I couldn’t fill it.”

  He fixed her the customary spritzer, Rhine wine and soda, on the house. There would be as many of them on the house as she cared to drink, which would not be many, as she made each one last a long time. It was an arrangement they had drifted into without having to draw up a contract, or even talk about it. Should any customer become interested in her to the extent of buying drinks for her, she would switch, but her drink then, rum and coke, would contain but a breath of rum. On her next visit, Jimmy would have a small gift of cash. If she brought a date or a group in, the arrangement was the same. There was no set rate. A rate would have stigmatized her as a B girl.

  “How did you make out?” Jimmy asked.

  She made a face. “They busted me, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I could have told you, Muriel. How long is it going to take you to get smart?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  Jimmy Cupid shifted uncomfortably. “Look what you do and how many times you’ve done it. You live in a crummy room and starve yourself so you can build up a stake outa what you can hustle here and there.”

  “Are you trying to call me a.…”

  “Don’t get sore. I’m not calling you anything. You don’t set a cash price and you don’t take all comers, so you’re not a real hustler, okay? What I mean is you’re not taking care of yourself. How long you going to keep your looks? Forever, maybe? Thirty already, aren’t you? And where are you going from here?”

  “I’ll hit, Jimmy. I’ve got it coming, sooner or later. Honest to God, I’ll hit and get my money back. Who am I hurting? I work up a stake and I play. Sooner or later, I’ll hit.”

  “But if you hit pretty good, you won’t stop.”

  “I’ll stop. Believe me. When I got the divorce settlement, I had a Cad, a mink, diamonds and over eight thousand bucks cash, Jimmy. I’ll get it all back and go home.”

  “Maybe it has got so the only time you feel like you’re really living is when you’re bucking that wheel, Muriel.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are old dolls in this town who go through trash barrels to find junk to sell to get sixty cents in dimes so they can go back to the slots and pull the handle.”

  “Slots are for suckers.”

  “And wheels are for smart people?”

  “Now goddam it, Jimmy, I don’t like.…” She stopped talking as the door swung open and the street sounds came into the icy hush of the small lounge. A tall man came in, placid and unhurried, took a stool eight feet away and ordered a bottle of imported ale. Muriel gave him a careful yet unobtrusive inspection. The town was so full of phonies you had to be very careful. Usually the shoes were a giveaway. But these were black, moccasin type with a dull gleam of polish. Dark socks. (Be wary of the ones wearing bright cheap socks, or, even more emphatically unprofitable, the ones with no socks at all.) Gray slacks with a press, a dark blue sports shirt in a weave that looked like linen, a wrist-watch with that flat, expensive look. Clean hands, the nails well-kept.

  She sipped her drink as she looked at his reflection in the backbar mirror. Really quite an attractive guy, with that slanty bony face, that had a sort of crooked look, as if the two halves of it didn’t match. A nice expression, and those big bushy coppery eyebrows, lighter than the brown short hair. But she had the strong impression she had seen him around Vegas, had glimpsed him from time to time, and that was bad. You couldn’t hustle the locals. They’d seen everything and heard everything twice.

  “Hot out there,” the man said, and she liked his slow heavy voice.

  “Shock hell out of everybody if it wasn’t,” Jimmy said.

  The stranger turned and looked directly at Muriel for the first time, frowned in a puzzled way and said, “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” He grinned. “It sounds like a dull approach. I mean really.”

  “I had that same feeling,” Muriel said. “Do you live here?”

  “I work at the Cameroon.”

  “Oh, hell yes! I think I’ve seen you behind the front desk.”

  “Very probably.”

  “Funny how you see somebody in a new place and you can’t hook it up. I know a lot of people in that operation. Gidge Allen, Max, Bobby Waldo. I’ve been to parties up in Al Marta’s penthouse. You see Gidge Allen next time, you tell him Muriel Bentann wonders what the hell happened to him.”

  “My name is Hugh Darren. I’ll tell him, Muriel. Drink?”

  She looked startled for a moment, then said, “Sure. Thanks. Make this one a rum coke, Ji
mmy.”

  Hugh Darren picked up his bottle and glass and moved over to the stool beside hers. Jimmy put the drink in front of her and then found something to do at the far end of the bar.

  “Whenever I have a Sunday off,” he said, “this town defeats me, Muriel. I don’t know what the hell to do with myself.”

  “I should think you’d find enough action at the Cameroon.”

  “There’s action, but I get sick of that place. How do you kill Sunday?”

  “I just ride with it, Hugh, and see where it takes me.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I don’t. You see, I’ve got this little income and I don’t have to. So why should I?”

  “Why should you, indeed?”

  “Only I’m like broke until I get the next check. What I should do is help you kill Sunday, at an hourly rate. I’ll make with conversation and ideas of things to do.”

  He shook hands with her. “Very creative idea.” He looked around at the room. “I hope one of your very first ideas gets us out of here.”

  “Got a car?”

  “Right around the corner.”

  In another few minutes they went out together. They stopped in two other places she knew and had drinks. They drove twenty miles into the empty baking landscape and twenty miles back, telling bad jokes, and laughing too hard. At six o’clock she knew that in spite of his working in Vegas, she had him properly set up for a fifty-dollar “loan” to tide her over until her fictitious check arrived. So, equipped with bottles and mix, they holed up in the air-conditioned unit of a motel where she knew, from past experience, she could get a small kickback on the rate he paid.

  Hugh observed her with great care. He loaded her drinks and kept his light. He tried to avoid the necessity of making love to her because, in spite of the fact that she was passably attractive, he could feel no desire for her. But after a time he realized that his hesitancy was puzzling her, and so he began those mechanical caressings which, after a time, created enough meaningless excitement to render him potent.

  It was all over quickly, and he did not know or care whether she had achieved completion or had merely pretended to. It was a trite and ordinary coupling, with mechanical love words said, stereotyped caressings, and that final hasty gallop shared, this time, by strangers enacting that final inevitable culmination of the cheap pickup. After it was over he saw that she was reassured by now being able to classify him properly—by motivation.