Cash My Chips, Croupier

by Piers Marlowe

‘No, I couldn’t say that. But as he ran his left shoulder was lower, as though he leaned to that side.’

  ‘Well, he was turning to the left as he ran inside, wasn’t he?’

  Drury stood back and pointed in a curving line from where the police car driver stood by Cuzak’s body to the club’s entrance. Bill Hazard followed the direction of his superior’s moving finger and shook his head.

  ‘No, it wasn’t the dipping of his left shoulder as he turned. I was well back when I first saw him running, and his left shoulder was down before he turned inside.’

  ‘Like a man who was hurt?’

  ‘That could be making too much of it. He had dark clothes, wore a soft hat, and his coat came midway down his thighs.’

  ‘You saw nothing of his face?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even as he turned to go inside? No impression?’

  ‘No more than an indistinct blur, a spot of paleness under the hat. No real shape.’

  ‘His hands?’

  Hazard straightened, frowning again.

  ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I don’t remember a thing about his hands. They weren’t pushed out in front of him, so I couldn’t say whether he wore gloves or not. If they had been pushed into his pockets I would have seen light between his elbows and his sides as they stuck out. But no light. So they must have been pushed against him.’

  He stopped talking to look at Drury, and saw from the expression on the superintendent’s face that his superior had got there with him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Drury, ‘he could have been hurt and was pressing his hands against his body, maybe to ease some pain.’

  ‘Blood.’

  Drury shook his head. ‘We won’t find any.’ He switched on the pencil-ray torch and directed it over the pavement before turning if off. ‘A switch-blade went into Cuzak’s brain through his ear. He had to be unconscious to let that happen without a fight. The blade was sprung back into the handle. Any other blade would have carved the ear.’

  ‘A spike.’

  ‘Not in the open, too risky. A switch-blade, and used by a man who was hurt. All right, so now we go inside with an idea of what we’re looking for, Bill. But I’m not counting any chickens. This one looks too simple. I always distrust that kind.’

  ‘You want me to cover the entrance?’

  ‘Till the technical boys arrive. I already asked Central to notify the local D.D.I. We should have help any minute.’

  Drury turned to go inside the club, putting his pencil-ray torch in his pocket as he stepped under the blaze of porchlights, but before he could pass inside the glass of the door beyond them someone came out.

  It was a man who was settling the hang of his overcoat as he came, as though he had just put it on and the fit was not comfortable.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Drury. ‘Micky Perran. Weren’t you told to stay out of trouble?’

  Micky Perran smiled one-sidedly as though forcing himself to acknowledge a snide joke at his own expense.

  ‘By the editor who fired me, by Bandelli, and by you, Frank Drury. We’ve both got adequate memories.’

  ‘And here you are mixed up with the cops, a gambling club, and a dead man,’ said Drury shaking his head and making disapproving sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  Micky became serious.

  ‘A dead man,’ he repeated in a flat voice, but his manner so heavily cautious that Frank Drury wasn’t fooled for a moment.

  ‘Someone you know, Micky. Or rather knew.’

  Micky Perran tried to keep his eyes from betraying him, but he couldn’t. They swivelled in the direction where Toni Cuzak lay with a pool of blood drying in his left ear.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Drury. ‘You were too smart, Micky. You rushed in, and then came out like someone leaving and taking his time about it. You must have read somewhere that a show of being leisurely, with all the time in the world, turns away suspicion. I’ll give you something for free, Micky. Don’t believe all you read. These smart fiction writers don’t know even how the game begins. But you do, Micky. Crime reporter on the Banner for — how many years was it?’

  Micky Perran unclasped his teeth. As though Frank Drury didn’t know!

  ‘Six.’

  ‘I thought it was nearer seven. But like I say, you know how the game begins. With a search. Bill, run your hands over Micky. He won’t take it amiss because he’s been advised to keep out of trouble.’

  Bill Hazard’s large hands tapped Micky Perran three times and then the inspector whistled and sank one of them into a pocket. He produced a gun, holding it by the tip of the barrel.

  ‘You got a clean hanky?’ he asked Micky. ‘Mine’s bloody.’

  Micky looked at Drury, who said, ‘I’m disappointed.’

  He produced a clean handkerchief and passed it to Hazard, who wrapped the gun in it and dropped the bundle in his own pocket.

  ‘What did you expect, a ’scope-mounted rifle?’ Micky asked but his sarcasm was too heavy and fell short, completely wasted.

  ‘A switch-blade.’

  The frank announcement took Micky by surprise. He turned his head towards Cuzak’s coat-concealed body and his face wore a fresh look of genuine puzzlement.

  ‘You mean someone stuck a knife in the bastard?’

  ‘In a very special place.’

  ‘Like the left ear?’

  Both Bill Hazard and Frank Drury held their breath.

  ‘How would you know, Micky?’ Drury inquired, trying not to give the words tonal significance.

  ‘Cuzak was a Mafioso. The blade in the ear is reserved for their own kind. It reaches the brain in less than a second and it takes death all the way. There’s no appeal.’

  ‘And how come you know it’s Cuzak under the coat?’

  ‘That’s where I dumped him after chopping him down and then clipping him over the ear.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘His own gun. Bill’s got it in his pocket.’

  ‘Which ear?’

  ‘Hell, the right. You know damned well I’m not left-handed.’

  Frank Drury sighed.

  ‘And just why did you do that, Micky?’ he asked.

  ‘To stop Cuzak killing her.’

  ‘Killing who?’

  ‘I don’t know her name. She works inside.’ Micky Perran nodded back towards the club entrance.

  ‘And you ran in after her?’

  ‘When I saw the lights of your car turn at the top.’

  ‘You didn’t wait until we were halfway down the street?’

  Micky Perran snorted. ‘You think I’m crazy?’

  Drury sighed again. ‘It is a question I have asked myself more than once, Micky, but don’t ask me for the answer I came up with. There was no one else in the street when you ran inside?’

  ‘I didn’t bother to check. I was in a hurry, in case the fact’s missed you.’

  ‘Oh, it hasn’t done that. But you’re holding out, Micky. That hasn’t missed me either.’

  ‘What haven’t I told you?’

  ‘This woman’s name — ’

  Micky shrugged. ‘I don’t think you’re going to credit this, but I still don’t know it.’

  ‘Not after saving her life and risking Mafia vengeance?’

  This time it was Drury’s sarcasm that fell short.

  ‘I never got the chance to ask her. She’s disappeared.’

  That was the moment chosen for the ambulance to arrive.

  ‘Bill,’ said Drury, ‘do your stuff.’ He nodded to the new arrivals, and as Hazard walked towards the kerb said to Perran, ‘Tell it to me once, Micky, straight through as it happened, and don’t leave out a comma.’

  Micky Perran felt the moisture pooling in his armpits as he told Frank Drury what had happened. He had no way of telling if the Yard superintendent held reservations or disbelieved him or even suspected him of being tied in with the killer.

  If Toni Cuzak really was dead.

  That was a sobering
thought. He had no way of checking. He looked at Drury’s face, found the Yard man looking at him with a calculating expression, and decided he didn’t have to get fanciful. Cuzak was as dead as he would ever be. Normally he would have been delighted. But somehow he couldn’t get enthusiastic.

  Cuzak alive was a problem.

  Cuzak dead was still a problem.

  At least the bastard remained consistent, he reflected cynically.

  He came out of it when Drury said. ‘You went inside after her. Why?’

  ‘Hell, to get off the street before you arrived — only I don’t mean you personally. The cops. And to be scarce when Cuzak woke up with an outsize headache and his gun missing.’

  ‘You went inside to find her, didn’t see her, and suddenly decided to leave. Just like that.’

  Drury made the last words sound as though they required explaining.

  ‘Exactly like that, damn it,’ Perran snapped at him. ‘I’d manhandled her out of that phone box. She’d got the receiver lifted and was dialling, I know that much. Hell, it could have been a 999 call. She could have brought you.’

  ‘A bit quick, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I suppose so. But Cuzak was desperate to stop her. He called out, ‘Hey, Sandra!’ and when she took no notice he dragged out his gun and called to her again, ‘Sandra!’ But for all the sign she gave she hadn’t heard him.’

  ‘You said you didn’t know her name?’

  ‘I don’t. That’s what Cuzak called her. It doesn’t have to be her name. These girls who work in gambling clubs, some of them have fancy names like models and actresses. He could call her Sandra and she could be Nellie Smith for all I know.’

  ‘All right,’ said Drury, ‘don’t get peeved. This is a murder case, boy, and I’ve got the right to ask all the questions I have to. There’s another. It’s an important one. Did you see a man come in shortly after you, walking as though he favoured his left side?’

  ‘The killer!’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Drury said coldly but patiently. ‘I asked a question.’

  ‘I know. Must have been Bill Hazard saw him. Bill’s got eyes like a lynx. No, I didn’t see anyone. But you might be wasting time here, Frank.’

  ‘There’s another way out?’

  Perran shrugged and the movement made the moisture under his arms feel sticky.

  ‘The girl, this Sandra, she’s vanished. This left-leaning character could have followed her.’

  Another car turned into Damsel Street. A street lamp touched uniforms.

  ‘Well, now we can find out,’ said Drury.

  He turned his back on Micky Perran, who was suddenly wondering what had brought Frank Drury and Bill Hazard to the Marmaduke Red Ace in the first place.

  Chapter 2

  Mario Bandelli stirred in the king-size bed and withdrew his bare arm from under the woman’s dark head. He ran his fingertips down the side of her face to her neck, along a shoulder, down over a bare breast until the heel of his hand was on her stomach and he pressed with it. Then he stopped pressing and drummed on the satiny flesh with his fingers.

  All the while she watched him with her dark eyes. She was a woman who had missed exquisite loveliness by a hair’s breadth and she knew it, as she was aware Bandelli knew it. If it had not been for that lacking hair’s breadth she wouldn’t have been his bodyguard. She would have been his whole-time mistress. Maybe even his wife.

  She had often wondered about it.

  Bandelli moved his bulk and sprawled across her, and now he cupped her face in his hands and said, ‘What’s the big thought? When we’re in bed I like you to concentrate on one thing. So let’s hear it first, then you concentrate.’

  ‘No really big thought, Mario.’

  ‘I still want to know,’ he said, his broad dark features twisted in a quick frown of displeasure.

  His right hand closed around her left ear. He screwed up the flesh and then rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, pressing at the same time, and he knew it hurt, but she made no sound, and he grinned.

  He liked that. To show his approval he stopped, smoothed the crumpled bright pink flesh of her mistreated ear.

  She said, ‘I was wondering why it has to be me in this bed. You have me around like a piece of furniture that can become lethal when you want. You had me trained to handle any man who draws a knife or a gun, to handle any man who fancies he can get what he wants with his bare hands. So why in bed as well?’

  ‘You’re good in bed,’ he grinned.

  ‘That’s another skill you paid for. It’s not the real reason.’

  Mario Bandelli smiled until the lobes of his ears lifted. He really was amused. So much that he rolled off her and lay beside her stroking one of her thighs like an absentminded lover. Only, Mario Bandelli was never absentminded.

  He couldn’t afford to be.

  Not if he wanted to continue breathing, and he did, more than anything else in the world, and he was a man who wanted a great many things, even though he had already acquired more than most men.

  He said amused, ‘You’d really like to know, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I really would,’ she said.

  He lay on his back, pinching the flesh of her thigh with his finger and thumb, and staring into the ceiling mirror so that he could watch the expression on her face when he told her.

  ‘I like making love to you,’ he said in his thick accented voice that made it sound as though he chewed his words before uttering them, ‘because I know you can kill me just by catching me with the side of your hand where you could destroy a nerve centre. I like knowing that while we’re making love I’m coming through a big risk. You can be hurt but you do nothing, because that’s the whole point. You, who could really slay me, do nothing when I get mad at you. That’s stimulating. That’s really bigger than just living.’

  In the ceiling mirror he watched the frown come to her face and then dissolve, like a small cloud dispersed by a freshening breeze.

  ‘Now you know,’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, I don’t know why.’

  ‘Why?’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘Yes, of course why. That’s what I find tantalising — why the risk is important if it isn’t really a risk, if you know beforehand I’m never going to harm you — never kill you.’

  The last three words were whispered.

  He took his gaze from the mirror over them and turned on his side to stare down into her face, but she did not meet his gaze.

  ‘You sound like a nagging wife, damn you,’ he said roughly, dropping back away from her, as though tired of looking into her face. ‘It’s enough that’s what I want, isn’t it? That this way I get a real kick, making love to a woman who could kill me with her fingers. Hell, it’s like making love to death and winning.’

  He turned his head when he felt her shivering.

  ‘God, what’s got into you?’

  She whispered, ‘It’s obscene.’

  He stared incredulously. ‘Why, you damned — ’

  The telephone interrupted with a strident peal. He broke off to swear under his breath, and reached across the bed for the instrument. He held it to his ear and said, ‘Who the hell is it?’

  Frank Drury said, ‘The police, Bandelli. If you’re in bed you’d better get up. I’m coming round. Before I arrive here’s something to think about.’

  Drury spoke fast for almost a full minute, then the line went dead. Bandelli remained sitting upright in bed, grotesque in his swarthy nakedness, the grimace on his face equally grotesque. He lifted his empty hand and scratched among the curly black hairs on his chest and the sound was like a cook grating a nutmeg on a metal scraper. He slammed the receiver back in its cradle, turned to the woman and opened his month.

  No words came out because he was caught by surprise.

  She was crying.

  ‘Now what the hell’s wrong?’ he demanded roughly. ‘You know I hate a woman who cries in bed. It makes me feel bad
, like lamb stew shoved on your plate after being taken straight from the fridge, with a thick casing of fat over — ’

  He broke off.

  ‘Make it swift,’ he growled. ‘I got troubles.’

  She pushed herself upright in the bed and turned her tearful face towards him. But his eyes weren’t on her face. They were staring at her breasts and the dark shadow below, cut across by the bedclothes.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t swear at me and you wouldn’t let Toni get his hands on me again. Two promises. You made them when you took me off the roulette table and the Red Queen job was changed for — ’

  She looked down at herself and shivered again.

  ‘So now I’ve only got to keep one promise,’ he said, and something in his voice dragged her gaze to his face. ‘That was the cops. They’re coming here, so up you get and make yourself presentable.’

  He jumped out of bed on his side and grabbed for his underclothes. She knew it was a way of baiting her, but he would never tell her unless she asked.

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘To talk. Always the cops want to talk. They’re the greatest talkers in the world. They’d take prizes for it if anyone offered prizes.’

  She played along. ‘What about, Mario?’

  He turned and looked at her, one leg in his trousers, the other poised so that he had to balance on one foot.

  ‘Toni’s dead. The police want to know what I can tell them about it, and you know how much that is, don’t you, cara mia? Sweet nothing. I was in bed with you, but not exactly enjoying myself. Now get the hell up and start moving. We’ll want coffee and booze and cigars laid out. You know what cops are like this time of night. They’re mean bastards at best. But at this time they’re — ’

  He finished with a sibilant burst of vituperative Italian.

  Bandelli had lived twenty-five years in England, and spoke English as good as most Englishmen and better than many, but in moments of stress he reverted to the tongue he had used as a boy running with rents in his clothes through the back-streets of Napoli. It was as though, at such times, his background caught up with him. Or possibly he retreated emotionally to conceal himself in it, as though it were a perpetual camouflage waiting for him to use it whenever the stress grew too much building pressure.