Purple shadows were creeping across the desert. The air was clear as gin, dry as a piece of new blotting paper. It was early spring, but none of the men wore coats, except an occasional tourist.
Las Vegas keeps to the traditions of western towns by having one main street which shoots the works. A few cash-and-carry grocers and businesses that people will search out hang on to the side streets. Two main districts branch out at each end of this main street: one of them a two-mile-long collection of tourist camps containing some of the best air-conditioned auto cabins in the country. At the other end, like the arm of a big Z, is the stretch of houses where women sit around — waiting.
The length of the main street is sprinkled with gambling-casinos, eating-places, hotels, drugstores, and saloons. Virtually every form of gambling runs wide open. The whir of roulette wheels and the peculiar rattling clatter of the wheels of fortune were distinctly audible on the side walk as I walked along, taking stock of the place.
After I’d soaked up a little atmosphere, I found a taxi cab, and gave the address which Whitewell had written out for me.
The house itself was rather small, but it was distinctive. Whoever had designed it had tried to break away from the conventional styling which characterized the other house on the street.
I paid off the cab, walked up three cement steps to porch, and rang the bell.
The young giant who came to the door had blond hair but his face was the color of saddle leather. He looked out at me from gray, sun-bleached eyes, said, “You’re Lam from Los Angeles,” and, at my nod, gripped my hand with lean, strong fingers.
“Come in. Arthur Whitewell telephoned about you.”
I followed him into the house. The smell of cooking came to my nostrils. “My day off,” he explained. “We’re having dinner at five. Come on in. Try that chair over by the window. It’s comfortable.”
It was comfortable. It was the only really comfortable chair in the room. The whole house was like that. Little economies paved the way for a splurge on one or two items that would count. The house didn’t hive the stamp of poverty, but it bore unmistakable evidences of persons who wanted better things, and would make every sacrifice to possess one or two objects that would be symbols of what they wanted.
Ogden Dearborne was lean as a log, but he moved with quick, easy grace. You could see his job was outdoors in the desert, and he was young enough to have a boyish pride in his deeply bronzed skin.
A door opened. A woman came in. I got up, and Ogden said, “Mother, may I present Mr. Lam of Los Angeles — the one Arthur Whitewell telephoned about.”
She came toward me, smiling graciously.
She was a woman who was still in the running. She’d taken care of her figure and her face. She might be in the late forties, perhaps in the early fifties, but she might have been in the thirties. She knew the pinch of self-denial, this woman. She didn’t eat everything she wanted and try to keep her figure by wrapping her body with elastic. She had kept her figure by self-discipline — by going hungry.
She was brunette with eyes that glittered like polished, black marble. Her nose was long and straight, and the nostrils were so thin they seemed almost transparent.
She said, “How do you do, Mr. Lam. Anything we can do for a friend of Arthur Whitewell will be a privilege. Won’t you make our house your headquarters while you’re in Las Vegas?”
It was one of those invitations that was a symbol. If I’d said yes, someone would have had to sleep on the back porch, I wasn’t expected to say yes. I said very gravely, “Thank you very much. I’ll probably be here only a few hours, and I’ll be busy. But I appreciate your invitation.”
The girl came in then. It was as though they’d been standing outside the door, timing their entrance, each one careful not to interfere with the impression the others would make.
Mrs. Dearborne went through the formula. “Eloise, I wish to present Mr. Lam of Los Angeles, the person Mr. Whitewell telephoned about.”
Eloise was unmistakably the daughter of her mother. She had the same long, straight nose. The nostrils weren’t quite as paper thin. Her hair was a deep auburn. Her eyes were blue, but there was the same hard leanness, the same purpose of living, the same impression of self-discipline. These women were hunters, and they had just that feline touch which the woman hunter always has. A cat, sprawling out in front of the warmth of a fireplace, looks as softly ornamental as the fur thrown about a woman’s throat. The padded feet move noiselessly, and softly. But the claws are there, and it’s because they’re kept sheathed, they’re so deadly dangerous. A dog doesn’t conceal his claws, and they’re only good for digging. A cat sheathes its claws, and they possess needlesharp efficiency in the problem of sustaining life by death.
“Won’t you sit down?” Mrs. Dearborne asked when I had muttered the conventional formula.
We all sat down.
You could see that whatever was discussed was going to be discussed jointly — not that they distrusted Ogden’s ability to report, but these people weren’t the kind to trust anyone else. They wanted firsthand information. They’d all come to attend the conference. They’d planned it that way.
I said, “I’ll only stay for a minute. I want to find out about Helen Framley.”
“I really know virtually nothing,” Ogden said.
“That’s good. Then you won’t have to skip over any of the details.”
He smiled. “Well, I went up—”
“I think, Ogden, Mr. Lam would like to have you begin at the beginning.”
“Yes,” Eloise said, “your call from Arthur Whitewell.”
He didn’t even bother to communicate his acceptance, simply adopted their suggestion as a matter of course, something that went without saying. “I received a call from Arthur Whitewell. He was calling from Los Angeles. We’ve known the family for some time. Eloise met Philip in Los Angeles a year ago. He’s called at the house several times. She’s been entertained in Los Angeles. Arthur, you know, is Philip’s father. He’s—” Ogden flashed a quick glance at his mother, evidently failed to get a go-ahead signal, so said instead, “He comes through here quite frequently and drops in to spend an evening.”
“What did he say over the telephone?” I asked.
“Said that a someone named Framley had sent a letter to Corla Burke. He wanted me to find this Framley and ask about what was in it. Said it had seemed to upset Miss Burke.
“I didn’t have anything whatever to work on. It took me half a day to locate this party. She’s living in an apartment, has only been here for two or three weeks. She said she didn’t know anything about it, that she didn’t know any Corla Burke, that she hadn’t sent any letter, and, therefore, couldn’t help me in the least.”
“Then what?”
“That’s all there is.”
“Did Miss Framley seem frightened or evasive?”
“No, just frankly told me she didn’t know anything at all about it. Seemed rather bored.”
“Do you know Corla?” I asked.
His eyes shifted, not to his mother this lime, but to Eloise. “I’ve met her. Philip introduced me.”
“You knew, of course, that she and Philip were planning on getting married?”
Ogden said nothing. Eloise said, “Yes, we knew.”
I said, “Whitewell gave me the address of Miss Framley’s apartment. I presume he got that from you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether she’s still there?”
“I believe she is — at least as far as I know. I haven’t seen her since that time, but she gave me the impression of being settled.”
“When did Arthur — Mr. Whitewell get to town?” Mrs. Dearborne asked.
“He came in on the plane with me this afternoon.”
“Oh.”
Eloise asked, “Do you know if Philip was planning to join him?”
“I haven’t heard.”
Mrs. Dearborne said confidently, “Arthur will be down after dinner.”
There was just a subtle accent on the word dinner.
“What about Helen Framley herself?” I asked Ogden.
He said, “She’s typical,” and then gave a little laugh.
“Of what?”
“Of a type you’ll find here in town.”
“What sort of type?”
He hesitated as though trying to find words.
Eloise said promptly, “A tart.”
Ogden said, “A man came in while I was talking with her. I think — well; he doesn’t seem to be her husband but—”
“He’s living with her,” Eloise interposed. “Is that what you are trying to tell Mr. Lam, Ogden?”
“Yes,” he blurted.
“After all, Ogden, Mr. Lain has to have the facts, you know.”
“He’s got them now,” Ogden said, embarrassed.
I looked at my watch, said, “Well, thanks a lot. I’ll see if I can get anything out of her.”
I got up.
They all three arose. I had neither the time nor the inclination to go through the polite patter.
I said, “Well, thanks for the help. I’ll talk with her,” and started for the door.
Ogden let me out.
“You don’t know how long Arthur Whitewell intends to be here?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t hear him mention whether Philip was coming?”
“No.”
“If there’s anything I can do, I hope you’ll let me know. Good night.”
“Thank you, I will. Good night.”
It was four-thirty when I climbed the steps to Helen Framley’s apartment and rang the bell. I rang a couple of times, then tried the apartment next door. A woman pushed her head out so quickly that I knew she’d been standing at her door listening. Evidently, she could hear Helen Framley’s bell over in her apartment.
“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I’m looking for Helen Framley.”
“She lives in that apartment next door.”
“I know, but she doesn’t seem to be home.”
“No. She wouldn’t be.”
The woman was somewhere in the forties. Her glittering, black eyes had the fidgets. They darted to my face, then away, then back, then made a quick survey of thehallway, and came back to me again.
“Know where I might find her?”
“Do you know her when you see her?”
“No. I’m investigating her nineteen-thirty-nine income tax.”
“Can you fancy that—” She half turned and called over her shoulder, “Paw, did you hear that? That woman pays an income tax!”
A man’s voice from the inside of the apartment said, “Uh huh.”
The woman moistened her lips, took a deep breath. “Well, Lord knows as how I’m not the one to pry into a neighbor’s business. Live and let live, that’s my motto. Personally, I don’t care what she does as long as she’s quiet about it. I was telling my husband just the other day. The Lord knows what the world is coming to when a girl like this Framley girl can turn night into day, have men friends calling at her apartment, and stay until all hours of the night. Heaven knows what she does! She certainly doesn’t work, and she’s never up before eleven or twelve in the morning. And I don’t think there’s a night in her life she goes to bed before two o’clock. Of course, you understand I’m not saying anything against the girl, and heaven knows she’s decent-appearing enough, perfectly quiet, and all that. But—”
“Where can I find her?”
“Well, mind you, I’m not one to say anything. Personally I can’t afford to play those slot machines. They tell me they’re so arranged that it’s just like throwing money away. Yet three afternoons now when I’ve walked past the place, I’ve looked in and seen that girl standing in front of the slot machines at the Cactus Patch, dropping one coin after another, working the handles just as fast as she could pump her hand up and down.
“She hasn’t a job, and I don’t know as she’s ever had a job. But for a girl to live a life like that — such a nice, decent-appearing girl, too — and then you tell me she pays an income tax! Well, Ah-h-h-h-l declare! How-much-did-she-pay?”
That last question was shot out at me so fast the words all ran together.
I heard steps behind the woman. A man with round shoulders, a shirt open at the neck, an unbuttoned vest flaring away from the hollow chest, pushed reading glasses up out of the way onto his forehead, and stared at me owlishly. “What’s he want?” he asked the woman.
He was holding a newspaper between his thumb and forefinger. It was open at the sporting page. He had a little drooping, black mustache, and seemed comfortable and relaxed in his bedroom slippers.
“He wants to know where he can find that Framley girl.”
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“I am telling him.”
He pushed her to one side, and said, “Try the Cactus Patch.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the main stem, a casino, big bank of slot machines. You can’t miss it. Come on, Maw, mind your own business and let the girl mind hers.”
He pushed the woman to one side and slammed the door.
I didn’t have any difficulty finding the Cactus Patch. It preserved a fiction of having the bar and the casino in two different establishments; but both opened on the street through wide doorways, and there was a glass partition between the two. The casino had a big wheel of fortune right up in front, then a couple of roulette wheels, a crap table, and some stud poker games. There was a bingo parlor in back of that. Over on the right was a whole bank of slot machines, a double row standing side by side and containing possibly a hundred machines in all.
There were a few scattering customers here and there. It was too early as yet for the bulk of the tourist trade to come in, but the crowd was the mixture that can be found only in a Nevada town.
Here were professional gamblers, panhandlers, touts, and some of the higher-class girls from the red-light district. A couple of the men at the bar were probably miners. Three chaps who were at the wheel of fortune might be engineers from the Boulder Dam. A small sprinkling of auto tourists wandered aimlessly around the place.
Some of these tourists were from the west and more or less familiar with Nevada. Some of them were seeing it for the first time, and their reaction to the wide-open gambling, the shirt-sleeved camaraderie of the crowd was one of gawking wonderment.
I got a dollar changed into nickels, went over to the slot machine, and started playing. It seemed as though every time the wheels clicked to a stop a lemon would be staring me in the face.
A woman was playing a two-bit machine halfway down the bank of machines. She was in the thirties, and her face was touched up like a desert sunset. She didn’t register as Helen Framley. I was down to my last nickel, when two cherries clicked coins into the metal pay-off cup. Just then, a girl came in.
I said to the machine in a voice loud enough to be distinctly audible to the girl, “Don’t get generous now.”
She turned, looked me over, walked past without saying anything, and dropped a dime in the ten-cent machine. She got three oranges, and dimes cascaded into the cup in a jingling tune.
I could have made her Helen Framley; but she stood looking at the machine with a dazed expression of “What-do-I-do-next?” so I decided at once she was no old hand at the game. She played another dime.
A jaunty chap with quick, restless eyes and head that, seemed perfectly poised on a muscular neck paused in front of the quarter machine. I watched his hands as he dropped the coin and slammed down the lever. Not a wasted motion. Everything was as smoothly graceful as hough his arms had been pistons working in an oil bath.
The girl over at the dime machine called, “Oh, I must have broken something.”
Her eyes shifted over toward me, but the other chap was nearest. He beat me to it. “What’s the matter?”
She said, “I dropped a dime in the machine. And I guess I must have broken something. Dimes spilled out over everything — all over the floor.”
He laughed easily, and moved over toward her. I noticed particularly the broad, supple shoulders, the straight line of his back, and the thin waist and narrow hips.
“You didn’t break the machine — not yet. But if you keep on being lucky, maybe you will. Ion just won a jackpot.”
He glanced over at me, and winked.
“Wish she’d show me how it’s done,” I said.
She laughed uncertainly.
The young chap got down on his hands and knees, picked up a couple of dozen dimes, scooped a handful out of the cup, arid said, “Now, let’s make certain there aren’t any back up in there.”
His fingers explored the cup.
“Nope. Everything’s swell.”
I caught the reflection of light gleaming from a dime on the floor’. I picked it up, handed it to her, and said, “Don’t overlook this one. It may be lucky.”
She thanked me with a swift smile, said, “Well, I’ll see if it is.”
I felt someone watching me, turned around, and saw an attendant, wearing a green apron with change pockets in it, eyeing us in scowling suspicion.
The girl dropped the dime into the machine, and jerked the handle. The woman who had the gaudy face was walking out past us. She coughed as she caught the eye of the green-aproned attendant.
Apparently, it was a signal.
He came walking swiftly toward us as the whirling dials of the slot machine went “clack” — “click” — “bang” — “chunk” — “jingle”!
A tinkling shower of dimes spilled into the metal cup and overflowed into her hands.
The attendant busied himself at a machine right behind us.
The young man said, “That’s the way.” His laugh was easy. “Go to it, sister. You’re playing a run of luck. Only you don’t know it. I’ll see what I can do on the two-bit Machine while you tickle the dimes.”
He dropped another quarter in the two-bit machine, spun the lever, and called to me, “How you doing, stranger?”
I said, “I’ve got this machine fed up to a place where it’s bound to start paying off. It’s so full of nickels now, it’s ready to bust.”
I put in a nickel and pulled the lever.
The three discs whirled in a bewildering kaleidoscope. With a click the left-hand disc stopped. A half second later, the middle one snapped into position.
I saw two bars.
The third one jarred to a stop.
A metallic click emanated from the inside of the machine, and the floodgates opened. Nickels poured out into the cup, out from the jackpot, dancing a merry jig as they spilled over my hands and dropped to the floor.
I grabbed a double handful, but they kept coming. I pushed coins down into my side pockets, cleaned out the cups, and then started looking for nickels on the floor.
The attendant said, “Perhaps I can help.”
He leaned over me. Suddenly his hands shot out, and his fingers gripped my wrists.
“What’s the idea?” I asked, and tried to fight free.
He said, “Come on, buddy. The manager wants talk with you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you want to come the easy way, or do you want to come the hard way?”
I tried to shake myself loose and couldn’t. I said, “I’m going to get these nickels on the floor. They’re mine.”
“ Just a minute,” he said.
His fingers slid up my sleeve, felt around my forearm.
I jerked one arm free and made a swing. He brushed the blow aside, stepped in and grabbed the lapels of my coat, pushed down so that my coat was halfway down my arms, holding them pinioned. For the moment, I was helpless. The weight of coins in the side pockets became swinging pendulums of weight which struck against me as I moved.
Back of me I could hear sounds coming from a machine, and a light tinkle as a shower of dimes hit the metal cup. A moment later, there was another clack, and this time twenty-five-tent pieces cascaded out.
The attendant twisted his fingers into my coat collar, and, getting his weight behind me, gave me a push which sent me over toward the other machine.
“Okay, buddy,” he said to the man, “I’ll take a look up your coat sleeves.”
“Mine?” the young chap said.
“Yours.”
I said, “What’s the matter with this guy? Has he gone crazy?”
The man who was standing at the two-bit machine weaved slightly back and forth, just an inch or two at a time as he shifted his weight, on the balls of his feet.
The girl said, “I’m going to quit,” and started for the door.
The attendant said, “Just a minute, sister,” and grabbed.
She eluded him. People were crowding around.
The attendant said, “You three crooks are going to get yours right now. The law has a date with you.”
“Not with me,” I said.
He moved his right shoulder. I saw a blur of motion. Something hit me on the side of the jaw. The blow jarred me all the way down my spine.
“Try that, wise guy,” he said.
My eyes were jarred out of focus; but I started both fists swinging and waded in. A left landed somewhere on his face. A right grazed his temple, then a mule kicked me. I went back against the machines and felt as though a ten-story building was using me for a basement.
I looked through eyes that kept showing double distorted images of what was happening. I saw the attendant lash out with a quick right, and the weaving shoulders of the other man slid past the blow and inside. I saw his back grow rigid. I heard a meaty sound as though a butcher had slammed a leg of lamb down on the chopping-block. The attendant’s head shot up in the air. His feet left the floor. For a moment, it seemed as though he was taking off like a skyrocket, and I looked to see him go through the roof.
He rocked the whole bank of slot machines as he hit.
I heard a policeman’s whistle, then some big man had me by the arm. He slammed me around some, and I tried to fight back.
A man’s voice came through to my consciousness. “—one of them. We’ve had an eye on ’em for two weeks now. They’ve looted the place clean. Working a cup. It’s a racket.”
“Come along,” the law said. A big hand twisted my coat collar and jerked.
I wanted to talk, but I couldn’t get words to come the way they should. The girl who had been playing the machines and the man who had hit the attendant had gone. The attendant lay on the floor. His eyelids were quivering, and I could see the whites of his eyes beneath those fluttering lids.
There were faces gathered around in a circle of open-mouthed curiosity.
The hand twisted my coat, hard. I took a deep breath and managed to start talking, but the words sounded funny, as though I was listening to someone else say some of the things I wanted to say.
“I’m from Los Angeles. I haven’t been in Las Vegas for an hour. I came in on the Salt Lake plane. I never saw this place before. I played a dollar’s worth of nickels into the machine, and hit the jackpot with the last nickel.”
There was silence. Gradually my head was clearing. The man who was holding me glanced at a newcomer who looked as though he might be the manager of the place. The manager said, “Talk’s cheap. These crooks always have a swell alibi cooked up.” But his voice didn’t have quite the ring of assurance it should have had.
The green-aproned attendant who lay sprawled out on the floor stirred, got up on one elbow, and looked past us with glassy eyes that seemed to stare right through the wall of the building.
The manager bent over him. “Now listen, Louie, we can’t muff this. Are you all right?”
The attendant mumbled something.
“Look, Louie, we’ve got to be sure now. Is this one of them? Is this the guy?”
The manager pointed at me.
The groggy attendant said, “That’s him. He’s the brains of the gang. They’re cup-and-wire workers. I’ve seen ’em before. This guy’s the leader. The others came in first an’ cased the joint.”
“Come on,” the law said to me. “You’re going places.”
My head had cleared now. “This,” I said, “is going to cost somebody money.”
“Okay, let it cost. Come on and take a ride. We want to show you our city. Coming in on the afternoon plane the way you did, you haven’t had a chance to see it.”
The big hand of the law caught my coat again, started pushing me toward the door.
The manager said, “Wait a minute, Bill,” and to me, “What’s your name?”
“Lam — Donald Lam. I’m in business in Los Angeles.”
“What sort of business?”
“I don’t care to tell you that.”
They laughed then.
I said to the officer, “You’ll find a card in the wallet in my right-hand hip pocket, but don’t read it out loud.”
The officer pulled a wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and took a look at my identification card as a private detective. That sobered him. He showed the wallet to the manager. I saw the manager’s face change expression.
“Did you say you came in on that Salt Lake plane?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Bring him over here, Bill.”
The curious faces melted away from in front of us and closed in behind as though they had been wisps of fog, clinging to a road. The manager picked up a telephone, got his number, said, “Was there a Donald Lam came in on that plane from Salt Lake today?… There was?… A chap in the twenties, regular features, wavy hair, weight about a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, about five-feet-five… The hell!.. Okay, thanks.”
He hung up the telephone, said to the officer, “Bring him upstairs, Bill.”
He opened a door. We climbed stairs to a cool office which looked out through broad windows on the constantly increasing activity of the town’s main stem. We all three sat down. The manager picked up a telephone and said, “Get Louie up here right away.”
He hung up the telephone, and almost immediately I heard steps on the stairs, then the door opened, and the attendant, still looking punch groggy, came into the room.
“Take a good look at this chap,” the manager said.
The attendant took a good look at me, said, “He’s the guy they ran in to make the clean-up. That means he’s the brains of the gang. He was cupping the machine.”
“How do you know?”
“I could tell by the way he was standing, the way he leaned against the machine.”
“You didn’t see any cup?”
“Well, no. But he was with the other two, talking with the girl.”
“Where are the other two?”
The attendant blinked his eyes and started to turn his head. Then he stopped quickly as though something hurt him when he tried to turn his neck.
“They got away.”
The manager said impatiently, “What the hell? I hired you because you said you could handle this stuff. You’re supposed to know all the rackets and all of the gangs who work ’em.”
The attendant was getting the cobwebs out of his brain. “Listen,” he said, “that guy’s a prize fighter. I didn’t make him at first. Then when he threw that punch, I recognized his style. That’s Sid Jannix. He was in line for a title once, but they framed him. He’s good — plenty good.” He looked at the officer, and then at me, and said, “This guy is the brains — but he’s a new one on me.”
“This is a hell of a time to say so,” the manager said. “Why didn’t you grab their cups so you’d have some evidence?”
The attendant was silent.
“Was that what you were trying to do when you grabbed my wrist and felt up my arms and jerked my coat off?” I Asked.
The manager’s face kept getting darker. The attendant didn’t say anything.
After a moment, the manager said disgustedly, “Okay, Louie, get the hell out of here.”
Louie left without a word.
The manager turned to me. “Now,” he said, “this is too bad.”
“For you.”
“For one of us,” he admitted. “I’m in so deep, I’m not going to quit. Suppose you tell me about you.”
“What about me?”
“Who you are, what you’re doing here, and how I know this isn’t a racket.”
“What isn’t a racket?”
“The whole play. You can’t stick me without bringing your life’s history into court, anyway, so you may as well spill it now.”
I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m here on business. I’m employed by the B. Cool Detective Agency. Bertha Cool and a client are up in the Sal Sagev Hotel right now. Give her a ring if you want to. Bertha Cool’s been in a sanitarium for months. This is her first day out. I’ve been running the Los Angeles office. I’m here to try and find a certain person. The person was out when I called. I killed time playing the slot machines.” They tried to interrupt me, but I droned right on. “I put in a dollar without getting a smell. The last nickel gave me two cherries. I scooped out the winnings, and the next nickel hit the jackpot. I never saw either of those other two people in my life, and I don’t know a damn thing about the slot-machine racket. I’m telling you all this because I don’t want you to be able to stand up in front of the jury and say that I didn’t co-operate by giving you everything. It’s your move now. Go ahead.”
The manager looked at me for a minute, then picked up the telephone, and said, “I’m calling your bluff.”
“Go ahead.”
He called the Sal Sagev Hotel. “You got a Bertha Cool registered there?” he asked. “That’s right, from Los Angeles. Let me talk with her.”
He held the phone a moment, then suddenly said to the officer, “Better make this official, Bill, just in case.”
“Uh huh,” the officer said.
His thick fingers enveloped the telephone. He swallowed the receiver in his big hand, and raised it up to his left ear. Watching his face, I could tell when Bertha came on the line.
“This is Lieutenant William Kleinsmidt of the Las Vegas police. You’ve got a man working for you whose first name is Donald?… I see… What’s his last name?… How about a description?”
He held the phone and looked at me as though checking things off. Once he grinned, and I knew that Bertha’s description would have the unmistakable salty tang that characterized all of her utterances.
“And you operate a detective agency in Los Angeles? Thanks very much, Mrs. Cool… No, he hasn’t done anything. I was just checking up, that’s all— Well, just a minute. Hold the phone.”
He clamped the palm of his right hand over the transmitter, looked up at the manager, and said, “It checks. She wants to talk with him.”
The manager heaved a weary sigh. “Put him on.”
The officer handed me the phone. The hard rubber was hot and moist where his big hand had been touching it. I said, “Hello.”
Bertha said, “What the hell have you done now?”
“Nothing.”
“Baloney!”
I said, “I got a line on our party.”
“Talked with her?”
“No.”
“Well, that isn’t going to get us any bonus.”
“I know. She wasn’t in.”
“Well, what the hell have you been doing?”
I said, “I’ve been out to see the other people. Then I went to see this party. She was out. I dropped in to a casino while I was waiting, and played the slot machine.”
“Did what?” Bertha screamed over the telephone.
“Played the slot machine.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Because this party that I’m looking for is supposed to hang around the slot machines in that joint.”
“Now you listen to me, Donald Lam,” Bertha yelled. “You don’t have to play slot machines in order to find a woman. The trouble with you—” Suddenly her voice changed. “How much did you play?”
“Nineteen nickels without even getting a smell. I didn’t even—”
She interrupted me. “And it serves you right. Don’t try to charge that as an expense. Whenever you do any gambling, it’s on your own. I’m not interested. You’re—”
“And then,” I interrupted, “I won three nickels with the last play.”
“And then shot the three nickels I suppose,” Bertha said sarcastically.
“And the last nickel,” I said, “hit the jackpot.”
There was silence. Then Bertha’s silky voice said, “How much did you win, lover?”
“I don’t know, because about that time the law came down on me. I’m supposed to have been milking the slot machines.”
“Now you listen to me, Donald Lam. You’re supposed to have brains. If you haven’t got brains enough to keep yourself out of jail, you’re fired. Can’t you realize that we have to work fast?”
“Sure,” I said, and hung up.
The manager looked at Lieutenant Kleinsmidt. “How does the description check, Bill?”
“It checks. She says he’s a pint-sized parcel of dynamite with the nerve of a prize fighter and a punch that wouldn’t jar a fly loose from a syrup jug — but he’s always trying.”
The manager heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his boot tops. “All right, Lam, how much?”
“For what?”
“For everything. A complete release.”
“I couldn’t set a price.”
“You’re crazy. You probably work for ten dollars a day. Fifty dollars would square everything. You—”
“You heard what Bertha told the officer.”
“I’ll make it a hundred, even money.”
I got up and smoothed my clothes down. The nickels in each of my side pockets sagged the cloth of the coat. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Harvey Breckenridge. I want you to understand, Lam, there’s nothing personal about this. When you’re running a place such as we run, we have to contend with—”
I shoved my right hand out at him. “All right, Mr. Breckenridge, no hard feelings. After all, it’s just a matter of business. I’ll have my lawyer get in touch with your lawyer.”
“Now listen, Lam, let’s be reasonable. There are slickers who go around the country milking the slot machines. They cost us thousands of dollars every year. We keep laying for them, but they’re damned hard to catch. Louie, this attendant of mine, came to me a week ago looking for a job. He said he knew all the gangs who are in the game. He was boxing champion in the Navy, and he’s a little too handy with his fists. He just lost his head, that’s all. I guess the guy’s slap-happy. Now, why not be reasonable and—”
“I’m the one that’s reasonable,” I said. “You’re the one that isn’t. I’ve been exposed to ridicule. I’ve been humiliated. Not only that, but you called up my employer and forced me to explain the circumstances to her. She’ll—”
“Oh, hell, take five hundred dollars in cash and sign a receipt and we’ll call it square.”
I said, “No hard feelings. It’s just a matter of business,” and started for the door.
He didn’t say anything.
At the door, I turned. “Understand, Breckenridge, I’m not trying to stick you. If I hadn’t been working on a case that was very important, I wouldn’t have cared so much. But you asked me my name in front of all those people.”
“That didn’t hurt you any.”
“The girl who was playing that dime machine was the one I was tailing. I’ll have a hell of a time doing anything with her now.”
That rang the bell. He said, “Hell,” with more disgust in his voice than I’ve heard since the Republicans lost the election. “Come back and sit down.”
I walked back and sat down. Lieutenant Kleinsmidt was staring at me. I said to Breckenridge, “The law’s in this, too.”
“What do you mean?” Kleinsmidt asked.
“You.”
“The hell I am. I won’t pay you a damn cent.”
“You’re in it just the same.”
“I was following instructions,” Kleinsmidt said.
“Whose?”
“His.” He jerked his head toward Breckenridge.
Breckenridge said, “How much, Lam?”
“Ten thousand or nothing. I’d prefer to have it nothing.”
They looked at me.
I said, “I may be here for a while. I may want some cooperation. You fellows made things hard for me while I was getting started. I just want you to understand that. You can make up for it later. That would be all I’d want.”
Breckenridge held his face in a poker mask. “You kidding us?”
“No. It’s on the square.”
Breckenridge pushed back his chair, shot his hand across the desk, and said, “That’s damn square, Lam. Shake.”
I shook hands. When Breckenridge released my hand, I saw Kleinsmidt’s big paw out in front of me. I shook it, too. It was moist and hot, and it had bone-crushing strength.
“Exactly what do you want?” Breckenridge asked.
“First,” I said, “I want to talk with Louie. I want to know what he knows about the girl who was playing the machines.”
Breckenridge said, “Personally, I think Louie is full of prunes. He drifted in here from San Francisco, telling me about how he’d worked in the resorts and knew all the gangs that were working on the slot machines. Evidently, he was a good man with his mitts in the Navy. That’s the trouble. They’ve jarred his brain loose from its moorings. He’s punch drunk.”
I rubbed my sore face. “He’s got a good wallop,” I admitted.
They laughed.
The manager picked up the interoffice phone, and said, “Send Louie back up here.”
Lieutenant Kleinsmidt said, “We meet lots of your kind who don’t want to co-operate. We don’t waste much time with them. You’re different. Anything you want, just ask for it. I’ll see that you get it.”
Louie came back in.
Breckenridge said, “Louie, this guy is one of the family. Give him anything he wants. All of his drinks are on the house. As far as you’re concerned, he owns the joint.”
I could see the surprise in Louie’s eyes.
I got up and said, “Thanks. I’ll have a talk with Louie.”
Louie looked past me to Breckenridge. “You mean anything?” he asked.
“Anything in the place,” Breckenridge said.
Louie shifted his eyes to me.
“Come on,” I said. “I want to look at the inside of a slot machine, and I want to find out how they’re fixed.”
Louie began to fit his clothes a lot better. “I can show you the whole dope,” he said. “There ain’t anybody in the West that knows more about ’em than I do. I know all the gangs, and there ain’t one of ’em can slip anything over on me. What’s more, the way I handle my mitts, I don’t need to take no run-around. When I see ’em cupping a machine, I give ’em the old one-two before they can ditch the evidence and—”
The manager coughed, a dry, significant, sarcastic cough.
Louie quit talking abruptly.
“Come on,” I said, and pushed toward the door. I looked back over my shoulder. Breckenridge gave me a slow, solemn wink, put his thumb and forefinger to his temple, and made little circles.
“Got a machine I can play with?” I asked Louie. “I want to take it to pieces. It’s five-fifteen now. I have half an hour.”
“Yeah. Down in the basement,” Louie said.
“All right, let’s go down to the basement then.”
We went down the stairs, across the casino to a back door, and down into a cool basement. Louie switched on lights. “What you want first?” he asked.
“How do they fix ’em?”
He said, “There’s lots of ways. They drill ’em right here and stick in a piece of piano wire. Then the machine don’t lock off after each play, and they can keep pulling the handle until they milk the machine dry.
“Or they can drill ’em, stick in a wire, and pull down the trigger that releases the gold award. Or they can take a cup and slide it up through the pay slot. They play until they get a win, and the fingers start to work. Then they shove the cup up in the fingers. That keeps ’em from closing, and they can milk all the money that’s in the tube out through the pay cup.”
“What’s the tube?” I asked.
“Say, you don’t know much about slot machines, huh?”
“Not a thing.”
He looked at me, and seemed rather sheepish. He said, “I guess I stepped on my foot. No bad feelings over the sock I gave you?”
“Only my face is sore, not my feelings.”
“Say, guy, you’re all right. Here, let me show you something about a machine.”
Louie pointed to a workbench. A slot machine was sitting on this bench. It took him only a few moments to unlock the back, take it off, unfasten a couple of catches, and lift out the internal mechanism.
“Here you are,” he said.
“How does it work?”
“Simple. You drop the coin. That pulls back this little finger. You press the lever. That gives the power that starts ’em going. Here’s a little time clock — right down here. That spins around, and when it comes to the first notch, that stops the first wheel. Then a bit later, the second stops, and then the third. Now, a slot machine has five clicks. The first three are the wheels. The fourth is the lock off, and the fifth is when the pay-off snaps. If you don’t get those five clicks, your machine’s gone flooey. Get me?”
I looked at the three dials with the strings of different figures.
“Those pictures don’t mean nothing,” Louie said. “The whole thing comes from these notches in the back. You can see where this shovel slides into the slot in the first one, then the second, and then the third. It’s the notches that count, and the notches are in the back.”
“And how about this tube?”
“That tube is always filled with coins. After it gets filled, the overflow goes into the jackpot and down into the box in the machine. You’ve got two jackpots. After the first pays off, the second comes into the pay-off position and the coins begin feeding into the first one again.”
“Then once the wheels have started spinning, the clock in back determines the time when they’re going to stop?”
“That’s right. It’s a question of timing. That’s what it is in everything: golf, baseball, tennis, fighting — anything.”
I studied the mechanism of the machine.
Louie said, “Timing! That’s the way I won the championship bout in the Navy.”
He danced out into the middle of the cement floor, ducked his head down, raised his left shoulder, and started making jabs at an imaginary opponent, ducking and weaving around, dancing lightly on the balls of his feet, the leather soles of his shoes making a peculiar shuffling sound as they slid over the cement. I let him go because I wanted to study the machine.
“Now, lookit,” Louie said.
I looked up.
“He comes at me with a hard left twice, like this, see?” And Louie lashed out with his left. “You get me?” he asked anxiously, pausing in his shuffle to look over his shoulder, his left arm still outstretched.
“I get you, but let’s get back—”
“All right, then the third time I’m waiting for it. I throw up a block. And what happens? He outguesses me. His right comes across like a pile driver. I manage to duck and—”
“Snap out of it!”
But Louie started dancing again, all around the cellar, his feet stirring up a continual fog of dust as he weaved his shoulders, lashing out quick blows and battering out a blow-by-blow account of his fight. I couldn’t stop him. He was in the ring and I couldn’t get him out. I finally gave up and waited for him to finish. He ended up right in front of me.
“Come on over here. I want to show you. I won’t hurt you, just get yourself in position. That’s right. Now shoot out a right at my chin. Go ahead. Shoot it out. Don’t be afraid. Just give me the works.”
“I’m afraid I could never do it,” I said.
“Shucks,” he said modestly. “It’s easy.”
“That fall you took upstairs doesn’t seem to have hurt you at all.”
The eager glow of animation faded from his eyes, left him as only a shell.
“Shucks,” he said, “that was Sid Jannix. I seen him fight once. He’s good — awful good. But he ain’t too good. I could have taken him if I’d known who he was sooner, but you know how it is, buddy. You get careless in this business. You get so you don’t want to miss a punch. You try to get set, and get in just the position you want before you turn it loose. You can’t get set on Sid Jannix. You can’t get set on any pug that’s up on his toes. He just threw a fist at me, that’s all. Now let me show you something, buddy. You don’t hit right. You hit with your arms. You can’t do that. You gotta sink your body in back of the blows. Here, let me show you.”
“I want to look at this slot machine.”
“Okay, buddy, sure. I ain’t tryin’ to butt in. I just thought I’d teach you something, that’s all.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“What else do you want to know about the machine, buddy?”
“What are your chances of winning?”
“Pretty good. Of course, if you was to play a hundred dollars right across the board, you’d probably only get forty of it back. That sixty would represent the profit for the house. But, in playing that hundred, you might feed five bucks into the machine without getting over fifty cents back. Then you might play fifty cents, and get four dollars back — see? That’s the way it works. Guys don’t play slot machines the way they play the stock market, putting a bunch of dough in it. They just come in and try ’em out to see if they’re lucky. Or in a restaurant if they get some change in nickels, they put ten or fifteen cents into the slot machines. Then maybe they get hot and pull all the nickels out of their pocket and play ’em. They’ll get a few wins, and they play back their winnings. That’s why they keep machines around restaurants rollered so heavy. They don’t have to let the customer win. Up here, we figure it’s good advertisement to hear the coins jingle in the pay-off up once in a while; but that’s not saying we can afford to donate to charity.”
“What do you mean by a machine being rollered?”
He pointed to a bulky piece of metal clamped over one of the sprockets and screwed into place. “See the roller on hat first wheel?”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s a roller. That’s on one of the oranges. Now, you see there’s three oranges on the first wheel, four on the second, and six on the third. That makes a man feel good. You see, the machine stops just that way. One — two — three. Now suppose he gets an orange on the first, and an orange on the second. He’s got time to do a little thinking before be third wheel clicks, and if it’s an orange, he thinks he made it come just by thinking about it. That’s why there’s so many oranges on the third wheel. Six out of twenty. Get me? There’s twenty figures on each wheel. Well, with six oranges on the third wheel, there’s about one chance jut of three that it’ll stop on an orange after you’ve got the;first two oranges. That’s the trick. Getting the first two oranges.
“Now that’s where the roller comes in. Ain’t you never played a slot machine and seen a pay-off figure sorta hesitate in front of the window, and then shoot on by, and the wheel lock with a hell of a heavy click on the next figure? Well, buddy, when that happens, you’ve been rollered off. Take this machine, for instance. There’s three oranges on the first wheel. That means you got about one chance in seven of gettin’ your first orange. All right, we put a roller on this orange slot, and that means there’s only two oranges left. Get me? Two oranges out of twenty. That means you only stand one chance in ten of getting your first orange. You might not think there was much difference between one chance in seven and one chance in ten, but when you’re givin’ a machine steady play, it sure shows up in the old bread basket.”
I looked the machine over. “How do they tamper with them?”
“They carry a little drill, and they drill a hole right through here. See? Now you notice these rivets here? Well, they plug up that little hole with a fake rivet head. Then if a man looks at the machine, he don’t see nothing wrong. Get me? A man don’t never bother to count the rivets in a machine. Just one extra rivet don’t show up at all.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then after they get the machine bored and riveted, they’ll come back. Usually, they have a gang of three or four. There’s usually a hell of a good-looking jane in the gang. They pretend to be liquored up, and they’re having a great time. They get all excited and crowd around the machine. And one of the good-looking janes will slip that false rivet out. They got a piece of stiff wire that they stick in that hole, and it’s got a little twister on the end, and they turn it. Now, if they’ve drilled that hole in the right place, when they turn that wire, it pushes this metal finger back, and they can keep on playing the machine without putting no coin in. If the machine ain’t got a cheese knife — or if the cheese knife has been disconnected.”
“What’s a cheese knife?” I asked.
“Well, that’s something that rolls over the nickel. It won’t release unless it first slides over the round part of a nickel. But they’re pretty delicate, and they’re always jamming, so lots of places take ’em off. Then lots of times they get stuck and won’t work at all.”
“You said something about a cup.”
“That’s different,” he said. “That goes up in the pay-off mechanism. They stick it up through the cup where the coins come out, and when those little metal fingers that release just so many coins start working, they slip this cup up and jam ’em open. Then the coins start spilling out until they empty the tubes.”
“You keep the machines here rollered?” I asked.
“Sure, they’re rollered. Particularly those near the front of the line. You get me? We figure that the customer that just drops by the slot machine and only puts in four or five nickels is the guy that’s going to quit after he’s put in those four or five nickels. He’s just playing to be doing something. May be a tourist who wants to say he’s been out in the wild West where they have gambling running wide open. Get me?”
“But why not let those people win occasionally? I think that would be good bait.”
“Nope,” he said. “The percentage is against you. They’ve only got four or five nickels in their pocket to lose. They ain’t going to change fifty-cent pieces or dollars into nickels. They’re just going to play with what they’ve got. All right, we let ’em win on a couple of cherries, and maybe sometimes on three oranges. But the heavy stuff is all rollered off. There ain’t no percentage in letting a man win five bucks on a jackpot if the limit he’d let you win is twenty cents. Get me?”
I nodded.
“Now then, the machines toward the back we don’t roller so heavy. The people that get back that far are the slot-machine addicts. They get a fad for it, just like drinking whisky or anything else. They keep thinking that the next machine farther down is going to be a little hotter. Well, they are hotter. They stand more chance there, and those people stand a chance of making a big winning. That brings ’em back.
“You get me? Suppose a party keeps working his way down the slot machines? Well, we’ve got four or five nickel machines, then a dime machine, then a nickel machine, then a two-bit machine, then two nickel machines, and another two-bit machine. Well, by the time he’s got down toward the end of the line, he’s paid a bunch of money to us. Because those first machines are all rollered so heavy, he can’t win nothing big. Now then, what do we care if we give him an even break on the last machine? We’re already working on velvet. Maybe if he wins a jackpot, he’ll put the coins in his pocket and walk out, but don’t worry. He’s a slot-machine addict, and next day, he’ll be back. And the next and the next and the next. That’s why I figured you for a crook when you won the jackpot on that nickel machine up near the front. Ordinarily, your jackpot has two bars on the first wheel. That gives you one chance in ten. Then there’s one on the middle wheel, and one on the third wheel. Get it? One chance in twenty on each of those wheels, and one chance in ten on the first wheel. Now, on that nickel machine, we’d rollered off one of the bars on the first wheel, so figure how much chance you’ve got of hitting a big jackpot. Right away, I thought you was slicking the machine.”
“What about that girl?” I asked.
“‘The jane, brother, was a slicker.”
“How do you know, Louie?”
“How does a guy know anything? Shucks, I had her spotted ever since I came here.”
“How long’s that been?”
“About ten days or two weeks. She’s been a slot-machine fiend. She played it on the square at first, all right. That’s where she threw me off guard, and she’s such a cute little trick. She certainly did play me for a sucker. She’d play those machines. I don’t think she was doing much more than breaking even. So I’d look the machines over after she left, and there wouldn’t be nothing wrong with ’em. Well, she fooled me all right. She drilled a couple of machines after I’d classed her as okay. She’d been milkin’ them for a couple of days, and then she and this boy friend of hers showed up for the big clean-up tonight. They were going co cup ’em dry. And if it hadn’t been for you winning that big jackpot on the machine that was rollered off, I’d have had ’em.”
“Where you from?”
“N’Orleans originally. I came here from San Francisco. I looked over the machines, and seen about half of ’em was drilled. I went up to Harvey Breckenridge and told him he was a sucker, that they was milking him dry. So after I’d talked with him awhile, and showed him the machines, he give me the job of taking charge of the joint. I told him I knew all the mobs that was working the machines. And I did, too. I didn’t know Sid Jannix had gone into the machine racket, and this jane is a new one. But all the regulars I know. You understand they ain’t so bad here in Las Vegas as they are in California.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s illegal in other states. Here in Las Vegas it’s legal.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Be your age, buddy. Be your age. Suppose the machines is illegal, and you catch a guy cupping the pay-off? Well, you kick him out in the street and cuss him, but you don’t arrest him, because he ain’t stealing nothing, and the reason he ain’t stealing nothing is because you ain’t got no machine, and the reason you ain’t got no machine is because the law says you can’t have it. Get me?”
“I get you.”
“Anything else you want to know?”
“You don’t know that girl’s name?”
“No.”
“How does she play the game? Is she on the make?”
“You mean with men?”
“Yes.”
He thought for a while, scratched the fringe of dark, woolly hair around his ears, and said, “Now you got me, buddy. Y’understand Las Vegas is different from other places. Girls come here to get a divorce. They have to wait to establish a residence. It ain’t a long time, when you just think of it as so much time out of a year, but when you stay here, it gets pretty long. The girls get lonesome, and if a good-looking guy gives ’em the eye, they figure what the hell. They ain’t got nothing else to do, and they fall. Back in their home town, they’d give him the icy stare, but out here, they want something to break the monotony and they’re just getting a divorce so they figure it’s sorta in between drinks, and a little cheating don’t count. You get me?”
“I get you.”
“So when you ask me, is a woman on the make, I can’t tell much unless she’s pretty heavy on the make, because out here they’re all more or less on the make. You get me?”
“Can you remember anybody who’s been in with her?”
“No, I can’t. But wait a minute. I do, too. I remember one girl that was in with her yesterday, a knockout.”
“Can you describe her?”
“She had red hair. I don’t remember what color her eyes were, but she was all strawberries an’ cream, and when she moved, she moved as easy as jelly on a plate.”
“Fat?” I asked.
“No. That’s it. She wasn’t fat. She was thin like, but she wasn’t stiff. Lots of women go on a diet and starve themselves until their joints get frozen stiff, and they move like wooden jumping jacks. This girl just walked like she w; all double-jointed. I noticed her particularly.”
“Anything else about her?”
“No.”
“How old?”
“In the twenties maybe.”
“How many times has she been here?”
“She was here a couple of times with this girl. Say, wait a minute. I remember something about her, too. She was a bunny-nose.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know the way a bunny moves his nose? Well, she had thin nostrils, and when she’d get a little excited, they’d twitch. I remember now, I noticed that. She was a good-looking jane. Boy, I could have gone for her in a big way.”
I gave him my hand. “Thanks, Louie,” I said.
“Not at all. And no hard feelings over the sock I gave you?”
I shook my head.
“Honest,” he said, “you was a pushover. Now mind, I ain’t throwing no slams at you, buddy. I’m just telling you. You didn’t have any neck hold at all. When you’re fight-mg, you want to keep your neck muscles so that when a punch gets by your guard and you have to take it on the button, you can roll it off. You get me?”
“No,” I said, “and I haven’t time to go into it right now. But I’m coming back some day and let you show me.”
His face lit up. “Do you mean that, buddy? Gee, that’d be swell. I need to get in practice a little, and I’d like to show you. First we start out with the old one-two—” And be got the fighter’s crouch again, and his feet started shuffling over the cement.
“Okay,” I said hastily, “I’ll be back,” and headed for the door. My watch gave the time as five minutes before six.