The Only Girl in the Game (25 page)

He phoned Betty Dawson’s room.

“What’s the matter with you, baby? You sound dreary.”

“I was asleep, Max.”

“I wanted to fill you in and make sure you’re standing by. Our pigeon has cashed in, but somehow he isn’t going to be able to get airborne until tomorrow. I don’t think he knows it yet, but that’s the way it stands. You got an approach worked out?”

“An approach, yes. I think. But that’s as far as it will go.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. He’s not a compulsive gambler, Max. He’s not a compulsive anything.”

“He’s a man, kid. I want him in the state of mind he’ll lay down a couple of those special chips to show you what a big shot he is. You’re the gal to do it, Dawson.”

“I’m the specialist. The aging ingenue of Playhouse 190. Max, there’ll be nothing to film. For God’s sake, I could be his granddaughter! It makes me feel slimy for you even to think there could be … anything at all.”

“Don’t knock those old goats until you’ve been the route, cutie. Maybe you’re his chance to regain his lost youth, like. I told you before. You make the try. For one-third of what he’s carting away, it’s worth the try. And we put the show on in 190, cutie, mostly because I want to be sure you go at it big. If you drag your feet just because you like the old guy, I can
find that out from the tape, and you could be the unhappiest broad in Nevada.”

“So that’s the real reason why it has to be 190. You’re never entirely sure you’ve beaten me right down into the ground, are you, Max?”

“Nobody has ever laid a hand on you, baby. Maybe it was an oversight. You keep fighting after you’re licked. But there’s more reasons than that. You get him talking to you, maybe there’s some little thing or two he says that can be used someday for some other angle. You never can tell. Fifty million bucks, it’s a good thing to listen to every word.”

She sighed impatiently. “All right, all
right
! What comes next?”

“Fix yourself up pretty, sweetie, and then stand by. The way it looks, I think you can make your move about five o’clock. I’ll let you know.”

As soon as she had banged the phone back onto the cradle, it rang. She snatched it up and said, “What now, Max?”

“Not Max. Ol’ Hugh. And what are you so steamed up about?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sore at me, too?”

“No. I’m not angry at you, Hugh.”

“What’s wrong with you, honey? Your voice sounds … dead.”

“I guess I don’t feel well. I’m not going on tonight, either. That’s what I was arguing with Max about.”

“You should see a doctor, honey.”

“It’s just a virus. I’ll be all right.”

“By the way, Betty, thanks for the note you sent me about Temp.”

“I kept trying to phone you but you were busy. He was a nice man, Hugh. It was a horrible thing. Vicky told me how you both tried to stop him when he was losing all that money.”

“Then you talked to her?”

“Earlier this afternoon. She seems to be taking it … pretty well.”

“Maybe too damned well.”

“I … sensed that. I could never feel close to her, Hugh. She looks like such a little doll, but.… Anyhow, I guess you found out you can’t soften up the casino mentality.”

“They were feeding him weak drinks to keep him on his feet. They were keeping play at the table slowed down to his
reaction time. It had all the style and dignity of plucking a drugged chicken. God damn it, Betty, let’s get out of here. For keeps. Maybe we shouldn’t wait much longer, because it might turn out to be too late.”

“That sounds almost like a proposal,” she said in what was an obviously strained attempt at lightness.

“I don’t know what it is. But we should both get out.”

“I can’t abandon my career, sir.”

“You sound damn strange. I’m going to come up there and sit with the sick, girl.”

“No. Please, Hugh. I don’t want to see you. I might even … go out.”

“Go out! Where?”

“Do I have to ask for your permission in writing?”

“That’s sort of an ugly response, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care, Hugh. I think this whole thing, you and me, has gotten a little too involved. Maybe I don’t have room for it in my life. I’ll let you know.”

“That’s nice. Thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot, Betty.”

“It isn’t as if it has been a love affair, Hugh. All it has been is a … convenience.”

“Have fun tonight,” he said, and hung up on her.

After she had gently replaced the phone she sat on the edge of her bed. She combed her thick black hair back with her fingers. With a special grayness of soul, she let herself think of what her life was going to be like if Max had read Homer Gallowell more correctly than she had. She wished Homer had not sent that ring. It seemed innocent at the time, but now it made her less positive. Old as he was, if Max was right, he would be easier to endure than the fat man had been. Or the roostery Venezuelan.

But nobody in all the world could be anything more to her than a feat of dreary endurance, since Hugh. This body was his, in the ultimate sense of possession. Any act would be the theft of what was his, and such a degradation of what was his that she could never, in her guilt, return it to him.

And so, if Max was right, after tonight she would have to invent a new girl who was not in love with Hugh Darren. She would quarrel with him, and then she would become remote and cold to him. Friendship would be too much an involvement in temptation. Love would not die. She would see him here and there in the hotel, and her heart would twist and break each time.

He would not leave a job so good. Max would not let her leave.

But if, through some miracle, she could be suddenly permitted to leave, that would be the thing to do, because it would be best for Hugh. His memories of her would be good ones, warm and pleasing to him.

She was not aware she was weeping until a tear fell onto the roundness of her thigh, startling her.

People in traps, she thought, should remember they are in traps, and not get those big fancy ideas about happiness and so on. Now pretty yourself up for half the money in Texas. Silks and bows, lace and perfume, new lips and new eyes. Big seduction scene from the Book of Methuselah.

At a few minutes past four, Max Hanes led Homer Gallowell back to his private office, and there supervised the packing of $425,000 into the limp and ancient black leather satchel provided by Gallowell. Homer checked the totals as written on the paper ribbons encircling each packet of currency.

He locked the satchel, put the tarnished brass key in his vest pocket and said, “I suspicioned you were going to tell me you needed more time to get my money.”

“How come, Mr. Gallowell?”

“People do hate to let loose of money.”

Max Hanes slapped the satchel. “Well, here it is. You bruised us good, Mr. Gallowell. If you’re heading for the airport right now, I can send you in my own car with a couple of my security guards.”

“I’m not leaving right this minute.”

“Then I wouldn’t advise carrying this around with you. No sense in taking chances you don’t have to. You can leave it right here, if you want, and get it in ten seconds at any time. I’ll give you a receipt that shows what you’ve got in the satchel, if that would make you feel easier about it.”

“You’re worrying about this a lot more than I am, Hanes. They got a safe at the front desk, haven’t they? I’ll check it right there. Thank you kindly.” He picked the satchel off the desk, turning in the same motion to march out of the office, a spare, erect old man, baked and withered by the years, with the suggestion of the ranch hand in his gait.

“We’re not completely licked, Brownie,” Max said after. the door swung shut.

“How do you mean?”

“He could have decided to go right to the airport and buy himself a pilot.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that. It gets me, the way he handles that money, like he was carrying his lunch.”

“You’re a stupid creep, Ben Brown. That money doesn’t mean much of anything to that old bastard. The only thing means anything, we took him last year. If he went to a junk carnival and lost ten bucks on rollaball, he’d spend a year practising and go get his ten back and a little more if he could, and he’d feel the same way about it he feels about that sack of money. He conned me, the old fox. He conned Max Hanes. I was stupid. I figured him to play progressive, doubling the bets on his losses, and that’s the same as giving me the money. So I fell for his limit, and he plays it just as smart as I’ve ever seen. He bet nineteen times. He hit it fourteen times and he lost five times. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand he tries to walk away with.”

“Will the Dawson broad be able to work him over?”

“
How the hell should I know!
”

“So okay. I’m leaving. Take it easy, Maxie.”

• • •  nine

Twenty after five on Monday at the Cameroon. The sun groups around the pool and up in the rooftop solariums are thinning out. The pool attendants and solarium attendants and patio waitresses are furtively checking the day’s tips. Throughout their shift they have diligently hustled the customers with a determined solicitousness about towels, lotions, drinks, and special attention to the placement of the sun cots.

There are, at this time of day, more people in their rooms and suites than perhaps at any other time. Showers create a peak water demand. Bellhops are hustling ice and setups to the rooms. Liquor waiters are making frequent trips upstairs. The doorman is busy. In addition to the late registrations, he has to cope with those beginning to arrive by private car and cab for the dinner show, nail the cabs for those leaving for other places along the Strip, see that private cars are parked in the big lot and retrieved from the big lot with the celerity which feeds silver dollars into the depth of the special pocket in his uniform.

The Afrique Bar and the Little Room are beginning to fill up. A few people are beginning to move into the vast, plush, terraced silence of the Safari Room, preferring to
get their table assignments early and do their drinking there and have ample time for their dinner before the big show begins. Bartenders at all public and service bars in the hotel are beginning to move into highest gear, making use of all the time-saving steps they have performed earlier during their shift.

The kitchens are in a clattering, frenzied crescendo of preparation, with all ranges and steam tables in operation, all chefs vigilant in their familiar jungles of stainless steel and fluorescence.

In the casino only three 21 tables, one crap table and one wheel are not yet in operation, but they are manned and ready to go. Back in the staff lounge the off-duty casino personnel, working the long shift (thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off) take their paper cups to the big coffee urn, and talk idly about their kids, their lawns, the next fishing trip on Lake Mead.

In the Little Room the piano player is working her way through all the Gershwin she knows, while the unused part of her mind prays steadily for Skippy, who is very very sick indeed, so sick he didn’t even make his usual fuss about being taken to the vet’s.

At the busy front desk a clerk is explaining for the third time, with a visible show of patience, that the Cameroon can take no responsibility for a camera left out by the pool.

In the Lady Eloise Beauty Salon in the arcade of concession shops between the hotel and its convention hall, an operator is working with end-of-the-day haste upon the hair of a stout saddened woman who has been saying all afternoon, “He just went right ahead and lost everything we got and now I’ll have to go back to work and I haven’t had to work in seventeen years. I couldn’t stop him. He was like a crazy man, honest.” The operator makes a comforting murmur. It is a rare week when she does not hear this story three or four times. They come to Vegas on vacation and they have no one else to talk to.

In the Afrique Bar an instrumental and vocal sextet is knocking itself out with its special slapstick version of “Chloe”. A rather nice-looking woman who has been drinking with ladylike restraint for over twenty hours suddenly topples off her bar stool, and the incident is handled so deftly only a dozen people realize what happened.

The star of the big show in the Safari Room is being diligently sobered by his manager and his mistress so that he will be able to do the dinner show.

Downtown, in one of the back rooms never seen by mourners, in the establishment of Leffingson and Flass, an assistant does a brisk neat job of tacking the destination address on the special coffin approved for transportation of bodies by common carriers. It will be delivered to a funeral establishment in the East.

“Give me a hand,” he says to his helper.

The coffin is on a utility cart. Together they roll it into the coldroom where it will remain until time to transport it to the railroad station tomorrow.

“Now scrub that slab down, Albert,” he orders.

The assistant leans against a wall, smoking a cigarette.

“Seems funny,” Albert says, “the way you gotta buy two tickets for a … for the remains.”

“You’re improving. Your language is getting much more professional, Albert.”

“Why two tickets?”

“It’s just a rule, that’s all. But if, for example, the widow wished to go along on one of them, that would be permitted.”

“Will she?”

“She isn’t that hard up, Albert. It depresses them, to accompany a body.”

“You said it then.”

“I can, because I know better. Use the hose again, Albert, and we’re through here.”

“Since you been here, Mr. Looden, about how many would you say jumped out of hotels tall enough to jump out of?”

“Albert! You astonish me. You should know better than that. The happy vacationers in Las Vegas
never
jump from a tall building. Some of them have dizzy spells now and then. It’s due to the high oxygen content of our crisp desert air, Albert. They become too invigorated.”

“Sure. Just like that fella last month that wrote all the bad checks and lost the money. He went off that slanty side of Hoover Dam and rolled and bounced all the way down and ended up on top of the power plant without no skin left on him. He got himself invigorated all to hell.”