“I was thinking of that girl, that Victoria Lincoln,” Ellen said quietly. “Jake’s girl. And I’m your girl, currently. I was wondering if I ought to dye my hair.”
“This is one of your bad days, isn’t it?” I said. “Are you comparing yourself with that calcimined job?”
“We’re a lot alike,” she said, “if you’d look at it honestly. We both seem to serve the same purpose.”
“You’re prettier and brighter and you can cook,” I said. “I’d like to be an Eau Claire type, Ellen, but I just can’t seem to be anything but Pete Worden. I thought that’s what you wanted, a Pete Worden.”
“It’s all I deserve,” she said. “I’ll snap out of it. Don’t worry about me. Don’t spoil your fun.”
I didn’t answer that. Moody, she is, being Irish, and down to fourteen dollars, and heading where?
I said, “If I had a few more bucks, maybe I could parlay it into something. If we’re going where I think we’re going, there’ll be a crap game. And I feel lucky.”
“I brought the fourteen,” she said. “I thought there was a possibility it might come in handy.”
“You’ll need it,” I told her. “Maybe I can hit Jake for a double sawbuck.”
“Take the fourteen,” she said. “We’ll be partners. I’ll string along with you, Champ, until you’re licked.”
Out Lankersheim to the San Fernando Road, out where the estates are, the big wheels. Producers and stars and oil kings. And racketeers.
It was the place I’d suspected, a sprawling ranch house set back in a grove of eucalyptus, a simple western home of five bedrooms and five baths, with fifty-foot living-room, with playroom, with kidney-shaped pool and well-lighted patio.
Nick Arnold’s place, and Nick was probably Jake’s boss. I’d been here before. The parking-area held nothing you could pick up under four grand. Until I brought the Merc into it.
You don’t get three nights a year when you can use a patio in this country, but it was lighted just the same. Maybe Nick didn’t want anyone to overlook the pool. It was about 55 degrees now.
The host wasn’t at the door nor was anyone else. The four of us went into the deserted entrance hall. The smoke hit us there, and the noise, and the under-tinge of alcohol.
In the immense living-room, Nick stood near the fireplace. It was a wide fireplace, with a knee-high hearth of fieldstone, a mammoth thing. But it didn’t dwarf Nick Arnold.
He’d been a wrestler and a club fighter. He’d been a night-club operator in Chicago, and had been acquitted on white-slave charges for lack of evidence. He’d fought his way out of Chicago’s south side to this, asking no quarter and giving none.
He saw us in the entrance way and came over. “How’s it going, Jake?” he said heartily, and chucked Vicki under the chin. “And Ellen,” he said, smiling his prettiest, and turned to me.
“How are you, Pete? It’s good to see you, boy. Gives some tone to this wing-ding.” He held out his hand, and I took it.
Because my name is Worden, Nick’s got the idea I’m SOCIETY in L.A. and environs. Class conscious, Nick is. I said, “Glad to be here, Nick.”
The living-room was spilling over with people, despite its size. Women in evening gowns and men in tails, three men in tails, without counting Nick. The others wore sport clothes. Informal California living, only the women in evening wear.
A butler came along with a tray of drinks, and we all grabbed one.
“They’re dancing in the playroom,” Nick said, “and shooting crap in the garage. Have fun, kids.”
“Dancing,” Ellen said. “That’s my idea of fun. Come on, flat nose. Let’s give it one whirl.”
We left the others there in the entrance hall, and went into the playroom. The table-tennis tables had been placed up against one wall in there and loaded with food and liquor. There were chairs along the other three walls, and two loud-speakers giving with Lombardo recordings. That’s Nick’s idea of refined music, Guy Lombardo.
This much I’ll give him, he’s a good man to dance to, a virtue he shares with Wayne King. We danced.
The lights were dim in the room, and Ellen was close to me, and we dance well together. You’re aware of Ellen when you dance with her, because of her topography, but not otherwise.
We said nothing, but she looked more contented and sighed once or twice, and I relaxed some, myself. I could have been back in Santa Monica High, at the Junior Prom. Though I don’t remember any gals like Ellen at Santa Monica High.
Running between the rain drops, dum de dum de dum de dum—I cried for you, what a fool, da da da da. No jive in Pete Worden, no rumba nor samba nor dipsey doodle. Too young I was to remember the Charleston and too old to take a crack at jitter-bugging. Just a good, serviceable fox trot with rhythm and some grace. And my current love in my arms.
Close your eyes, Pete Worden, and pretend this is the Country Club, and you’re a good solid citizen, a foreign correspondent or like that, with a good wife and a couple kids who look like John. A Saturday night dance at the Country Club, and you’re going to get pleasantly lit and maybe make a minor pass at some old classmate’s wife, and get a bit of hell for it in the morning from your own beloved, but nothing she’d make a major issue of.
Close your eyes, Pete Worden, and forget the 101,528 people who chanted your name at the Coliseum the day you beat the Irish. Forget Joe Devlin, and the arm he left at Attu. Forget the headlines of today, and the blood of yesterday, and the faces of all the girls you’ve held in your arms like this.
“Hey,” Ellen said, “you look happy, for a change. I’ll bet you’re thinking of some girl.”
“You,” I told her. “You’re the best dancer from Eau Claire I ever danced with.”
She smiled, looking whole and happy again. She put something into my hand and we stopped dancing. It was her fourteen dollars, a ten and four ones.
We were next to the entrance to the living-room, and she stood there a moment looking at me. Then she patted my cheek.
“Luck, Pete,” she said quietly. “I’ll be waiting.”
I watched her head for the big circular davenport near the fireplace, where Jake and Vicki were sitting with Nick. I saw Nick’s broad face light up at sight of her, and saw him rise.
I turned and went back through the game room, toward the breezeway that led to the garage.
About nine men in there, nine men and two boys, no women. A four-car garage, though only two cars occupied it at the moment. There was a big table with a walled edge, not a regular crap layout; that would make Nick look unrefined. A table used for the kind of craps you played among friends, not a house game.
The men ranged from thirty to fifty, and they all looked solvent, but who doesn’t out here? The boys I couldn’t place; they looked like college kids, one short and fat with a crew haircut, one tall and thin with horn-rimmed glasses, the grind type.
They stood against the wall, out of the way, talking quietly. I stood in front of them, watching the play.
The fat kid tapped me on the shoulder. “Pardon me, sir, but aren’t you Pete Worden?”
I turned to look at him. “That’s right.”
“I‘m Chris Arnold,” Chubby said, “and this is my brother, Paul.”
“Oh,” I said, “Nick’s sons. He certainly talks a lot about you boys.”
The skinny one, Paul, said, “You’d better shake Chris’s hand, Mr. Worden. He thinks football players are something special.” Superiority in the tone, contempt in his tone, and no doubt in my mind what he thought about football players. Well, maybe he was right.
I shook Chubby’s hand, and smiled at Paul. I asked, “You boys play the game?”
“Third-string guard, I am,” Chubby said. “Paul’s too intellectual for anything like football.” He hung onto my hand.
“Too light, too,” I said. “My brother was a third-string guard, boy, and a much more worth-while citizen. Keep digging, Chris.”
And I turned back to the table, conscious of the
scorn in Paul’s eyes. Where had the punk been, what did he know? Why should his scorn bother me?
The dice were cold. I followed them through eight hands and saw the coldness of them. A point and fall off. A crap, a natural, a tough point, and fall off. I passed them the first time, covered the man to my right when he shot ten, and watched him come out on a nine.
A four followed the nine, and then a seven. I picked up the twenty, and realized I’d been holding my breath. I could have been through, right there, playing the ten, for it wasn’t the kind of game where you shoot four bucks.
The next man shot twenty, but the man to my right wanted all of it, and I let him have it.
I didn’t get a chance to fade, all the way around; the man to the left of the shooter always willing to get on. With these dice, fading was the better proposition.
Then they came to me again, and I turned to rub them on Chris’s short hair. “For luck,” I said, and winked at him. and didn’t look at Paul the scholar.
I bounced both of them against the walled edge opposite me, shooting ten bucks. I saw the four hop up while one die spun and spun and spun.
And fell with the three uppermost.
“Shoot the twenty,” I said, and turned to rub the dice on the crew cut again.
The man to the left of me said, “If you can cut out the ham, Golden Boy, I’ll be glad to cover you.”
About my size though thinner, a dark man with a few pockmarks and muddy brown eyes.
“I don’t care who fades me,” I said. “This is a democracy.”
He threw out a pair of tens.
I came out on a four. Well, I’d have fourteen bucks left of Ellen’s money. Who makes a four with dice as cold as these? I rolled, and rolled, and no seven showed. I rolled and rolled and a three-one popped up to stare me in the face.
Maybe the dice were changing. A smart man would drag now, but maybe the dice were changing. I’d made a four.
“Shoot the forty,” I said.
“I’ve got it,” Brown-Eyes said, “and bounce both of them against the wall, huh?”
“One’s good enough for my friends,” I said, studying him.
“I’m not one of your friends,” he said. “Shoot.” He put two twenties on top of my tens.
I picked up the dice and Chris said, “Hey, Mr. Worden, aren’t you going to rub them on my head?”
“The customers are kicking, Chris,” I said. “You gave me my start, boy.”
They went out along the felt, and both of them bounced off the opposite wall. One was a five and the other was a two.
I dragged sixty bucks. I said, “Shoot twenty.”
Brown-Eyes covered, saying something under his breath. I came out on a nine and fell off two rolls later.
I covered the man to my right, and he came out with snake-eyes. He’d shot ten, and I reached in to get my money.
“Leave it,” he said. “I’m shooting twenty.”
I hesitated. I don’t like to be told what to do with my money. But I couldn’t make enemies all around me. I said, “Shoot. You’re loaded.”
A pair of sixes came to rest against the opposite wall. It wasn’t the best time in the world to chuckle, but I couldn’t help it. It had been his idea.
I reached out, and he said, “Leave it. I’m shooting forty.”
He was squat and the blue-black of his beard showed under his tanned cheeks. There was a silence all around while I looked at him.
Chris said, “He couldn’t make a point with a pencil, Mr. Worden. Ride him to death.”
“Shoot,” I said.
He put two twenties into the middle, and breathed on the dice in his clenched hand. “Now,” he said, and sent them bouncing into the wall.
A two came into view, and then a one. Three craps in a row he’d shot, and I had eighty dollars in the middle of the table.
He stared at the dice for seconds, and then expelled his breath. “That’s enough for me,” he said, and turned and walked out.
The next man took the dice, and now I was the man to the left of him, and he was shooting fifty, and I took it all.
And won it, and could do no wrong from there in. It was one of those times when you can almost call them as they roll, when you know what you can do and how to do it.
The lad to my left started playing it cagey on the fade, and they began to divide me up. And they began to drift off, to leave the garage.
Until there was just the lad to my left, Brown-Eyes. And I started to sort out my money.
“You quitting?” he said. “I’ve still got dough.”
“I don’t play a two-man game,” I told him. “What the hell kind of sucker do you think I am?”
He told me what kind, and I grabbed him by one shoulder, and his left hand went sliding in under his coat.
I don’t know if he had a gun in there or not. I know his chin was tilted a little to one side and I brought the right away around from left field.
I caught him very clean and he went back and down, his head hitting the concrete of the garage floor with a horrible thump.
Only Chris was there, and he stood next to me as we both stared at him.
“Who is he, Chris?” I asked. “Is he a good friend of your dad’s?”
“I don’t know. Is he—is he dead, Mr. Worden?”
CHAPTER TWO
I KNELT BESIDE HIM, and reached under his coat to see if he was loaded, and he was. I took the .32 from the shoulder holster and snapped the cylinder out and emptied it, and put the revolver back into the holster. The cartridges I put into my pocket.
Then I felt for his heart but could feel nothing. I got weak, and faintly nauseated. I reached for his wrist, groping for the artery. Sweat ran down the back of my neck, and I could hear Chris’s heavy breathing.
It was there, his pulse, steady and strong. I stood up.
“Dead?” Chris asked.
“Alive,” I said. “I’d better tell your dad about it.”
“I’ll tell him,” Chris said, “if you want me to.”
I shook my head. “We’ll let Brown-Eyes get some sleep. He’s harmless now.”
He came along with me out to the breezeway and through that to the playroom. The lights were completely out in here now, and the couples still on the floor didn’t take many steps.
“You sure caught him on the button,” Chris said. “He was asking for it, wasn’t he, Mr. Worden?”
“Call me Pete,” I said. “I’m not as old as I look, Chris.”
“You don’t look old, Pete,” he said, “but I’m only nineteen.”
We moved along the side of the room to the living-room. Nick and his other son and Ellen were sitting there, on a love seat grouping near the glass doors that led to the patio.
Nick grinned at me. “Cleaned them I hear, Pete?”
“Cleaned them,” I said. “Nick—I slugged one of your guests.”
His eyes went from me to Chris and back. “Which one?”
“Dark man, brown eyes, some pockmarks. I don’t know his name. He had a gun in a shoulder holster.” I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the cartridges. “I thought it would be best to unload them. He’s still out, Nick.”
“Do you know who he is, Chris?” Nick’s gaze shifted to his son.
Chris shook his head. “No, Pop. We could go and look.”
Nick stood up. “I could. But the rest of you stay here.”
We watched his broad back disappear into the dark game room. Or playroom, as Nick called it.
Ellen said, “Sit down, tailback, and tell us about your adventures.”
“Nothing to tell,” I said. I sat down. “I was lucky, just the way I figured I would be.”
“You’ve met Paul?” she asked.
I nodded, and looked at him. He smiled.
“Paul’s going to be a writer, an author,” Ellen said sweetly.
I was still looking at him, and I saw him color. He said stiffly, “I’m sure Mr. Worden wouldn’t be interested in that.”
Chris said, “You ought to see the verse he wrote for the school quarterly in prep school. Boy, was that lurid.”
Paul looked at Chris and said, “Quiet, Meat.”
“Sensitive,” Chris said. “Poet, you know. Pop makes him get haircuts, though.”
Ellen changed the subject. “How much did you make, Mr. Moneybags?”
I smiled at her. “I haven’t counted it all. Around thirteen hundred, I’d say.”
“Pete—” She stared at me. “Pete, you’re kidding.”
I shook my head.
“Let’s see it. Pete, you’re insane—it’s—”
“Your lower middle class background is showing,” I told her. “Relax, Irish. Pretend you’re a lady.”
Nick was coming across from the playroom now, and I tried to read his face. It’s not an easy face to read. When he got close enough to notice my gaze, he smiled.
He sat down next to Paul. “Everything’s under control. He came to, and I convinced him it would be bright to leave.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
Nick gestured with a flat hand. “Forget it, Pete. A nothing, a nobody, a poor loser.”
“A poor loser with a gun,” Paul said.
This time Nick colored. It must be some deal for Nick, living with that lanky sneer, feeding him and sending him to college and making a pseudo-intellectual out of him.
Up until his wife had died, Nick had been a one-woman man, despite his background. He wasn’t anything to burn incense in front of, but he had a reputation for keeping his word and never forgetting a friend.
I said, “I came here with fourteen bucks, Nick. And that was Ellen’s. I feel a little on the piker side.”
He laughed. “Oh, Lordy. With fourteen bucks. Wouldn’t those jerks burn if they knew that? Pete, the money you’ve lost to Jake, don’t apologize for anything.”
The money I’d lost to Jake— So Nick was Jake’s boss, as I’d suspected. And where was Jake? I looked around the room, but there was no sign of Jake nor the plaster job.
Ellen said, “Could you waltz me around once more, Dream Boat? I’ve been a long time out of your arms.”
Don't Cry For Me Page 2
