The Only Girl in the Game (11 page)

He upended his drink, got up and made himself a heavier one, and began to pace as he talked. “Things like that, Hugh. Damnable, unforeseeable things, as though I had to have a run of bad luck to make up for all the good. If I’d been playing it close to the vest all along, I could have rolled with it,
but it all started to hit me just when I’d stretched myself as far as I dared. And you know how fast bad news travels. So the people who would have been delighted to give me extensions have all tightened down on me.”

“What can you do?”

Temp gave him a fighting grin. “I had to find a way to lick the bastards. If I let them force me to liquidate right now, not only would I be dealing myself out of potential millions to be made in new projects, but I’d end up in such a lousy net-cash position I wouldn’t have a big enough lever to pry my way back into the big-time deals down there. I’d have to start again with the little stuff, and I just haven’t got the patience for that. I can’t get money down there because now they have the idea they can lay back and pick off my good holdings for less. So I made up a brand-new package, Hugh.

“I’ve got a prospectus that would knock your damn eye out. I sold the pieces of the hotels because I could get a fair price there. I’ve put the house and the insurance and every other damn thing in hock, and I paid off just a bare minimum of the people who are leaning on me, and I’m stalling hell out of the rest of them, and I’ve got a hundred thousand bucks cash I moved to the Morgan Guarantee Trust so nobody could get too wise down there and put any kind of attachment on it. I know this much, Temp. You can’t sell a big deal unless you can show that you’re willing to go into it in a respectable way yourself. Otherwise you’re a dubious promoter. I’ve consolidated my personal holdings in raw land, all the stuff on Andros, Eleuthera, Abaco, Spanish Wells and San Salvador. I have maps, descriptions, mortgage deeds, and exhaustive reports on the future of the islands based on the past growth record. I’ve got all the papers on Island Associates, Limited, set up and ready to go.”

“Who’s in with you?”

Shannard ignored the question. “The way it will work, I will put my equities in the land and my hundred grand into the pot in return for thirty thousand shares worth four pounds a share … call it ten dollars a share. I take in seven hundred thousand dollars for the remaining seventy thousand shares. That money pays off the balance on all the land, leaving over three hundred thousand to begin the development of the Eleuthera piece first. That property adjoins the Arvida piece, and I’ve got an engineering and development study that’s a gem. It can’t miss, Hugh. I know those islands. It just can’t miss. Fix you a fresh one?”

“I’ll ride on this, thanks.”

Temp brought a fresh drink back to his chair and sat down a bit heavily. “That’s the picture. With that much backing I can then pledge my Island Associates shares for the line of credit to handle the stuff I’ve been dodging, and then I can save those deals where I’m in with other people. It’s a hell of a lot of scrambling, but I’ll come out the far end smelling like a rose, believe me. In the meantime I’ve been living it wide and handsome. I’ve been the most confident-looking man in town. You have to keep it up, Hugh, even when it hurts.”

“Like asking for a suite?”

“You’re getting the message.”

“Not all the message, Temp. Who do you have to impress here, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I tried to peddle the deal in New York, Hugh. That’s why I went there. I had good contacts. I was dickering with two groups. They both liked the sound of it. I had my chance to grab one or the other, but it looked like a golden chance to improve my end of the thing by playing one against the other. And one day they both turned ice cold. I couldn’t imagine why until one of them was kind enough to tell me to look up a gossip column in a paper of the previous day. I can quote the stinking thing by heart, Hugh. ‘Temple Shannard, golden-tongued promoter who operates in the Bahamas, and whose dreams lately have been turning to nightmares, is in the city with his luscious wife trying to scare up those heavy funds which may or may not keep his tottering tourist empire solvent’ That did it, old boy. That did it to me good. I couldn’t trace the tipster who did me the dirty, and I can’t sue even if it is actionable, which I doubt. That’s the way my luck has been running.”

“What do you do now?”

He smiled at Hugh in a somewhat apologetic way. “I take a suite in Las Vegas and throw myself on the mercy of my good friend, Hugh Darren.”

“If I understand what you mean, I don’t think I like it, Temp.”

“The money is here, Hugh. It’s a resort business. Men who run deals like this know how to analyze deals like mine. And according to my … ah … researches, there is a lot of homeless, unidentified cash in this area looking for a legitimate home away from home.”

“I guess I better have that next drink. Temp.”

“Let me make it, boy. I know what you’re thinking and … what you’re remembering.”

“A long talk in your house one night, Temp.”

“I knew you’d remember that. I was very noble and idealistic, wasn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t have called it that.”

Shannard turned and said in oratorical tones, “We men who love the Islands have an unwritten agreement to keep important holdings out of the hands of the hoodlums and sharpshooters, and the front men they use. We have been largely successful in this, and we will continue to keep the Islands clean.” He brought Hugh his drink and said in a soft and empty voice, “I wasn’t being squeezed then, pal. I could afford high principles. Now it gets down to survival. I need the money. And I can’t let them bring me crashing down because of something I once thought I believed. But I will try to set it up in such a way that I’ll have a long-term contract to operate the venture.”

“They would have seventy per cent to your thirty, so how long would that last?”

“Just so long as I run it the way they want it run.”

“Exactly.”

“Hugh, I love you like you were my kid brother.” There was a thickening of his voice that surprised Darren. Shannard used to be more immune to the effects of a few drinks. “I love you dearly, but I could get a little goddam tired of your attitude of righteousness and disapproval.”

“I do disapprove, Temp. Hell, those islands are my future. Castro ran the syndicate operation out of Cuba—for all the wrong reasons—but he ran the boys out, and it would be a nice new place to light, and I don’t want to spend my future in a spread-out version of Batista’s Havana.”

“No sir! You’re too decent a fellow for that to happen to. But still you’ll come to this town and work, and you’re not too proud to take their money. That’s a double standard, isn’t it? This town is a big milking machine, milking the innocent, and you’re right in here, doing your part.”

“You better get something straight, Temp. I don’t want to get sore at you. I operate this hotel. Food, rooms, drinks. I have nothing to do with the casino operation. The hotel problems are the same as you’d find in New York, Miami or Montreal. I’m worth what I’m paid. It was a good offer and I took it. So kindly don’t confuse what I’m doing with what you’re thinking of doing.”

“Aren’t you a little naive?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hugh, you remind me of an old old joke about the innocent virgin who took a job in a whorehouse, doing mending and light housework. A friend tried to talk her out of it by saying to her that even though it was honest labor she was doing, she would be affected by the dreadful environment. She insisted that she would be untouched by what might be going on around her. Several months later the friend met her on the street and asked her how her job was going. She said it was going very well, and the friend had been wrong in thinking it would change her in any way. So the friend asked her if that was still the limit of her duties, the dusting and scrubbing and mending. The maiden said, ‘Yes, that’s really all I do’ She paused and blushed prettily. ‘But sometimes, like on Saturday night, when there’s a big rush of business, I just come in and help out a little’ ”

“That’s hilarious,” Hugh said stiffly.

They stared at each other. Shannard said gently, “I’m nearly fifty-one years old, Hugh. And I haven’t got the guts to start from scratch. You’re a little bit younger than Vicky. Somehow I don’t think we should be fighting.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“I’ll see what I can do to develop my own contacts, Hugh.”

“There’s no need of that. I’ll set up an appointment with Al Marta.”

“Is he … well-connected?”

“Temp, they don’t publish a list of officers and directors, and they aren’t listed on the exchange, so you can’t get hold of a balance sheet. He lives here. He owns thirty per cent of the place. He has a whole slew of other business operations here and over into Arizona. And I have the idea he is one of the men in the area you could talk to who could check the deal out with … the top brass you have in mind. Okay?”

“So let’s be grateful we don’t have to talk about the damn thing any more tonight.”

“I’ve got some rounds to make and errands to do.” Hugh looked at his watch. “Suppose I meet you two at about eight o’clock in the Little Room for dinner, and after that we can catch the acts in the Afrique Bar.”

“Sounds like fun,” Temp said.

As Hugh walked back toward the elevators he experienced a feeling of depression that surprised him with its bleakness. Temple and Vicki had always seemed so invulnerable, so securely stationed in their gay and profitable
world, accustomed to a kind of success that required short periods of very hard work by Temp which freed them for long times of the fun they had together. This revelation of crisis made Hugh feel more vulnerable, less confident of his own plans and purposes.

When Hugh met the Shannards at eight o’clock in the Little Room, he told them he had asked Betty Dawson to join them for dinner, explaining that she was an entertainer working at the Cameroon. He had hoped to state this in a way that would give them no particular clue, but he saw a quick interest in Vicky’s eyes.

“Please don’t tell me there is a woman who has gotten past your guard, my pet,” Vicky said.

“She’s a nice gal and a good friend,” Hugh said, slightly annoyed.

“Drink to all nice gals,” Temp said thickly. They both looked at him with concealed apprehension, trying to guess whether he would spoil the evening. He was not really bad, but he was as drunk as Hugh had ever seen him.

“Hugh has no drink yet, and mine is gone, darling, so let’s make a loving cup out of that lovely toast, shall we?” Vicky said, and reached for Temp’s double bourbon on the rocks.

He surrendered it with suspicion and reluctance. She drank and handed it to Hugh. When Temp got his glass back he glowered at the amount remaining and tossed it off and said, “Surrounded by spongers, by God.”

When Hugh ordered the next round he gave the waiter an inconspicuous signal. From then on Temp would be given drinks that would look hearty, but would be as innocuous as a light wine. His bourbon would come out of one of the special bottles filled with liquor which had been simmered until little alcohol remained. And his previous drinking would keep him from detecting the subterfuge. It was a much more civilized device than refusing to serve the unruly drunk. And considerably more gracious than the chloral hydrate which would end all drinking for the evening.

It was a local solution to a special problem. A man who became too drunk could not gamble. A man refused service would go elsewhere. A man knocked out could not gamble. But a man could, with doctored drinks, be sustained at the outer limits of his own precarious control until he had made his appropriate donation to the house percentages. Temple Shannard was not at the point where a waiter or bartender
would have made that decision, but the availability of the device gave Hugh a chance to make the evening more pleasant.

Betty Dawson found herself unduly tense about meeting Hugh’s friends. She took time and care in the selection of what to wear, and with her makeup. After her final inspection of herself in her full-length mirror, wearing the strapless sheath top in dull coral, and the long full skirt in a fine stripe of black and coral, she decided she looked as well as she could look. The top seemed to exaggerate slightly a sweep of bosom she believed unduly bountiful, but it also emphasized the shoulders, which she hoped were wide enough to sustain that hammocked abundance.

“You’ll have to do, babe,” she told herself. “And what the hell am I trying to prove anyway?”

As she went to the table, and throughout the introductions and the first few minutes of small talk, she was so involved with reinforcing the impression she had planned to make that she had no time for observation. But with all the facets of her entrance accomplished, she was able to be aware of Hugh’s friends, and she felt a sense of disappointment as she overtly studied them. They did not match his glowing descriptions. The blonde had an empty prettiness, but there was a look of frigid calculation in her eyes, and a slight cast of piggishness to her nose and mouth. The man was just drunk enough so it was difficult to say what he was like.

And, for a meeting of old friends, the attitude at the table was all wrong. There was a strain which shouldn’t be there, and she had the wisdom to know she was not responsible for it. She detected, in Hugh, a faint flavor of apology. These things, she knew, could happen. Perhaps this pair was marvelous over in the Bahamas, but inadequate here. And sometimes people outgrow each other in as little as the eight months since he had last seen them. She knew from the tentative glances Hugh gave her across the round table that the apology was for them rather than for her. Had it been for her, she could not have forgiven him.

Vicky, on her left, chose a time when the men had started to talk of Bahama politics to say, “What sort of bit do you do, Betty?”

“Horrible people say it’s a magic act. Without a voice, I sing. And accompany myself with a no-talent piano, Vicky.”

“But you’re so marvelous to look at. That must be a help. I do hope we’ll be able to see you tonight.”