No House Limit

by Steve Fisher

  Twenty-two minutes later, the shift of croupiers was replaced—at the normal time for the change-over. But Sid Manners, the pit boss, brought fresh boxes of dice, and picked up the current dice from the table and boxes. He did it unobtrusively—Bello scarcely noticed, and thought nothing of it—but Joe knew that standard, honest dice were now coming back into the game and he said a silent word of thanks to Sprig.

  In the office, Sprig now had the culmination of eight hours work: tedious, painstaking, relentless investigation. Besides the beefy, moon-faced man Joe had seen backed to the wall, there were two other strangers. The door opened and Sid Manners came in with the stickman from the crew who had just been relieved from the main table.

  Sprig gazed at the four, his bloodshot eyes burning. Ochoa and Rux lined them up. “Like a police line-up,”

  Sprig said. His voice was hoarse now, and experts in the trade knew enough to be afraid when he spoke like this. The words seemed to come from the pit of his stomach.

  “I have the report from the police lab—and the facts about all four of you. You, the manufacturer of these dice.” He threw a handful of the large, red, razor-sharp edged dice fully into his fat moon face. “You even have a legitimate-looking dump of a factory in town. Who set you up—gave you the money to start?”

  The man’s face was bleeding. “Why, I—I started months ago.”

  “I know it was months ago, chum.”

  “If there’s anything wrong with these dice—it must be my machines. Maybe they’re out of line.”

  “Yeah—they’re out of line. Like you’re out of line. They were built out of line.”

  The stickman, white-faced, said: “When they handed me the new dice, I thought they were the regular—” Sprig crossed and slashed him with his bony fists, then stepped back.

  “I ought to kill you—all of you. But if chummy here—” he returned to the manufacturer, “will speak up loud and clear about who backed him in the loaded dice business—”

  “I don’t know! The contact disappeared after the first few meetings.”

  “Then you were set up?”

  “He said the buyers would be around later.”

  “So who are the buyers?”

  The manufacturer was miserable. “This wasn’t the only sale I had. People found out I had shaved dice and wanted them.”

  “People wanted dice loaded against the house? I thought it was mostly small joint bandit club owners that were in the market for this kind of an operation. They’d want them working for the house—not against it!”

  “Yes. But I had orders for both kinds.”

  “So you had a lot of buyers—and what you’re trying to tell me is, you don’t know who bought this particular batch?”

  “No, honestly I don’t! It could have been a customer a couple of months ago—or last week.”

  “And naturally a man who deals in phony dice doesn’t keep books?”

  “No.”

  Sprig believed him. He backed up a few steps now. His head was throbbing; his body was racked from exhaustion.

  “All right, boys, get out of here—and I never want to run into any of you anywhere, any time, any place in this town, because if I do, you’re going to bleed a little from a lot of different places!”

  The four men filed out one after the other, almost unable to believe their good luck at going scot free, and Rux said:

  “Chief, let me get you some coffee—a sandwich.”

  “Could use,” Sprig said. He sat down behind the desk. He hadn’t eaten in two days.

  “Shall I tell Joe it’s cleaned up?”

  “No, he knows by now.”

  Rux left, and Sprig looked at Ochoa. “Wonder where it’ll come from next?”

  “You expect more?”

  “Yeah,” Sprig said, “more.”

  Half an hour later, in the telephone room in downtown Las Vegas, Wily, a thickset man who wore glasses—and the only human being in town who knew the identity of the group behind Bello—was talking long distance to his bosses. He was reporting on Sprig.

  “He’s uncanny—I don’t know how he does it! Stops us at every turn. Threw the queer chips out right away—and now the loaded dice are gone for good. He has wires everywhere.”

  “Do something about him,” Wily was told.

  “What can I do?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Wily was shocked into silence. “But it’s too late now. He’s done the big damage.”

  “He can do more.”

  “I don’t know what.”

  The voice at the other end of the wire grew harsh. “Find you, maybe—trace us! I gave you an order!”

  Wily was sweating now. “But I doubt anyone could get through to Sprig. He has layers of protection—a network.”

  “Try.”

  Wily still protested. “I don’t know anybody in town who’d do it.”

  “What town do you know somebody in?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Get him.”

  Wily licked his dry lips, half whispered. “It’ll cost five hundred and the round-trip ticket.”

  “Cheap.”

  “All right.”

  He hung up, emerged from the booth and walked up to the busy and harassed operators. After several minutes he got the attention of one of them and placed a person-to-person call to Chicago.

  Nineteen

  The playing cards used in blackjack games are washed every afternoon by several young women seated at a long table in the counting room. They also check the cards for creases, damage or the telltale marks of a professional cheat. A deck with even one damaged or marked card is thrown away; the rest are wiped clean with a cloth that has been dipped in a special solution. At another table, a few feet away, strongboxes taken from beneath the gaming tables are opened and the money inside carefully counted by men expert at such things, the money being checked against the amount of chips allotted to the table at the start of the session.

  It was going on three o’clock when Mai entered the casino. He was just back from Boulder City. Dee would arrive a few minutes later, through a different door. He gazed around, saw that all four of the crap tables were going, a fair crowd patronizing them, several of the men (guests at the hotel) wearing open sports shirts and no coats, and a few clad in swimming trunks, sandals and a tee shirt. Everything seemed quiet, casual. The big game was operating the same as before: a crowd of Vegas people thronged around it.

  He felt hungry and started for the adjoining buffet when he saw Sunny Guido headed in the same direction. He caught up with her.

  “Could I buy you a lunch—a sandwich—food?”

  She smiled. “How about Dutch treat?”

  “Are schoolteachers always so proper?”

  She laughed. “They try to be.” But thinking of Joe, she wasn’t laughing, and the word “proper” upset her. How proper had she been early this morning when he pulled off the bed covers?

  They found a table in view of the big crap game, ordered a light lunch; he noticed her eyes turning again and again in the direction of Joe.

  “You and Joe getting along all right?”

  Wondering whether he knew she was now living in the penthouse, she flushed, but answered: “I like him a lot.”

  “So do I. That makes two of us.”

  He shot her a quick look and decided Joe must have scored. But he had his own problems. Dee. They had talked more than two hours trying to find a realistic way out. “Old Mai Davis and his advice to lost and confused human beings,” he had said. “If you want the truth, I think I need advice more than you do.”

  “Why,” she’d asked, “what’s wrong with you?”

  “Forget it. We’re not here to talk about me.” And they didn’t. They had sipped endless cocktails and discussed her problem and finally didn’t agree on anything except that they’d somehow meet again—and maybe by that time he’d have a plan. But meet where? “Certainly not in public,” he’d said. “Maybe in some cheap out-of-the-way
old hotel downtown. And don’t think—don’t think for a minute I say a hotel room because I have anything dirty on my mind. I won’t so much as try to touch you.” She believed him and asked him to arrange for the room, and he’d promised to do so first thing tomorrow. It’d be after 1 a.m., when he was off the piano. How to slip away from Bello again was something she was going to have to work out.

  Old Mai Davis, he thought now, on his sturdy white charger, wearing his shining white plume. Who am I kidding? I can’t even help myself!

  The food came and he ate, trying not to think about it any more. Two tables away he noticed a stately young woman who was a customer from the swimming pool area. She was garbed in a yellow bathing suit and matching sandals, with a smart, stiff-collared black half-coolie coat draped over her shoulders. He could see her long, lean, tanned legs under the table. There was something familiar about her. Suddenly he knew . . . she was Kitty Erin—a TV actress. He’d met her in Palm Springs.

  When he and Sunny finished, he insisted on paying the check after all, then left her there at the table, with apologies. He stopped by Kitty Erin’s table and said “Hello,” then walked outside.

  A minute or two later, Sunny finished her second cup of coffee and was ready to get up when a woman stopped in front of her. “Are you—yes, you must be.”

  “Must be what?” Sunny wanted to know.

  “I’m the public stenographer here. Mr. Martin dictated something a couple of hours ago. It would have been finished before now, but Mr. Sprig had work that couldn’t wait. I’m sorry.”

  “Mr. Martin dictated something?”

  “Yes. Said it was for you—pointed you out. I’ve been looking for you. Here it is.”

  She held out a sheet of paper.

  Sunny took it, bewildered, then sat back down and looked at it. It was typewritten.

  J. to S.

  Subject: Some of the data you wanted on my past.

  Age 8. Cot a paper route. Am only child. Parents not rich, not poor—more poor than rich, though. They are both forty to fifty years old. Older than other kids’ parents. Sort of Blah. Best thing about them is they leave me alone—come and go as I like. So I’m alone a lot. Father a jeweler. Small shop somewhere. Doesn’t talk much. Reads newspaper all the time. Mother helps him at the jewelry shop.

  Age 9. Now selling papers on a comer instead of delivering them. Step up. More money. Also making money from various pastimes like lagging or matching coins. I always figured a way to get the “edge.”

  Age 11. Approached by bookie to take local horse bets from customers for a commission.

  Age 12. Began booking the smaller bets myself (without telling bookie) and began then to make big money.

  At fourteen I didn’t run away from home—I drove away—in a pretty good little car that was all paid for and all mine. Just walked out of the house and kept going. I’ll bet it was weeks before my parents looked up one day and discovered I was gone.

  Went to New York City and got a job as

  It ended there, abruptly, in the middle of a sentence. When she finished reading, she was startled to see Joe standing there gazing down. “That the thing I dictated?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean you just now got it?”

  She rose slowly. “Joe, why aren’t you at the dice table?”

  “Bello wants a break. Two hours.”

  She stared at him. “Any reason?”

  “Sprig tells me it’s girl trouble. But I think it goes farther. He’s folding a little—wants to take a nap to refresh himself.”

  “Good! That means you can get some sleep.”

  He shook his head. “No, no sleep. We’re going to Lake Mead.”

  “Lake Mead? But you need rest!”

  “What I need is to talk to you.”

  She felt her face flush.

  “Swim . . . and talk to you,” he was saying. “No, we won’t even swim. We’ll just get wet, and we’ll talk. We’ll talk in the water neck deep.”

  “But if this game is going to go on—”

  “Oh, it’s going to go on,” he said, “on and on. But let’s not think of it now.”

  “But—”

  “Quit arguing, Sunny. I don’t want to change my mind. I don’t want to change the way I feel right now.”

  “All right, darling. I won’t argue.”

  “Go up and get your bathing suit. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Joe and Sunny drove off the premises at 3:22 P.M.

  Exactly four minutes later, the phone rang in Sprig’s office. He picked it up and spoke scarcely a word, just listened, as Rux and Ochoa watched him. At last Sprig said: “Thanks very much,” and hung up. Though he was wan, weary, he seemed pleased now, excited.

  “That was Chicago—a tip.”

  (The man Wily had been right. Sprig did have wires everywhere.)

  “And I have news for you, boys. The syndicate that’s trying to bust Joe—they’re a little upset. The fact is, they’re beginning to panic!”

  Rux asked: “What happened?”

  “A two-bit Chi torpedo will be here on the midnight plane.”

  Ochoa groaned. “How can they be that crude?”

  Sprig only smiled, rubbing his bony hands together. “They’re beginning to act like amateur night in Dixie. Means we’ve got them on the ropes. And we’re going to keep them there.”

  “Don’t they know,” said Rux, “that a hood hasn’t a chance in Vegas?”

  “If they did, they’ve forgotten,” Sprig answered. “Because this is dumb. Beal dumb. They’re playing right into my hands!”

  “Who’s he supposed to kill—Joe?”

  “Me,” Sprig said. He was so happy, he got up and paced the room. “Isn’t that beautiful? I’ve upset some of their flipping plans. So they’re mad. They’re sulking. They want revenge. Sprig’s bright red blood. Well, they’d play hell getting it even if I hadn’t gotten the call. That gorilla would have been spotted the moment he walked in.” Sprig kept pacing. “Trouble is, we would have rousted him out and that’s all. Never would have known what was in his evil little mind. But now it’s juicy—good and juicy.”

  “We meet him at the plane?” Ochoa asked.

  “No, we’ll just be there—in the woodwork, watching to see who meets him; then we’ll follow them, and the man we want to nail isn’t the torpedo—it’s the one who pays him and gives him his instructions. Because he’ll know who it is we’re dealing with—what group it is.” He sighed. “Oh, I love this! Boys, our work isn’t without certain compensations now and then.”

  “A guy’s coming to bump you off, and you love it,” Rux teased.

  “Oh, I do, I do—nothing I like better than to see the expression on their potato faces when you pull the rug out from under them.”

  Twenty

  Heat was rising in shimmering layers visible to the eye, and Lake Mead, its shores and water deserted in the swelter of heat, lay flat and motionless, like a giant blob of steel, mirroring torrid sunlight. A short drive from Las Vegas, the casino brochures that advertised it as a gay resort with swimming, fishing, boating and camping sites for tourists exaggerated outrageously. It was no more than a bleak desert lake with a hilly, craggy bank that sheltered hidden coves and inlets.

  Joe had driven fast. The top was down on the car, and with wind whipping by, neither he nor Sunny had spoken. She was clad in a bathing suit, wearing a short coat over it, and beach sandals. He parked the car in a lonely section, directed her to a spot facing the water, then changed to trunks he had in the back of the Cadillac.

  When he joined her, she was seated in the sand, almost broiling under the rays of the sun. But she looked up with a half smile.

  “Got a job as what?”

  He flopped down beside her, feeling faint for a moment. He was exhausted, did need sleep; yet he was buoyant, and determined to hold this feeling, this soaring feeling that was lifting him, exciting him. “What? What job?”

  “Your note. You left home—wen
t to New York.”

  “Oh. That. The drab, dead past.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Why?”

  “You were only fourteen—how could you get a job?”

  “Easy. Box boy. And I corrupted the whole company. With a pair of dice. Had games going all the time in the back room. I didn’t play—just kept watch—and collected a percentage off the top for organizing and running things.”

  “A casino owner at a tender age.”

  “No—owner of a floating crap game. They caught up with me, finally—fired me. But the die was cast. I knew how to make a buck without risking a penny. Formula for easy living.”

  “Did you live easy?”

  “I’ve always lived easy. I don’t want to talk about the past any more.” He was holding his hand up to shield his face from the sun. “There isn’t much variation in my past. I’ve never been able to trust anybody much. Never had any what you’d call real friends. I’ve lived alone with a million people around me. Just like the way I was raised—alone, with two parents there in the same house. Only I don’t eat out of the icebox any more. I can buy anything and anybody I want.”

  “Anybody?”

  “I didn’t mean it personally. Literally.”

  “But you’ve been in love, of course?” She was studying him, his hard, lean face running with sweat now.

  “I’m beginning to doubt it.”

  “But surely—”

  “No—don’t try to pry and peek any more. My yesterdays are my own—dull, stupid—and all of them too intense; God, I’ve been going like a freight train all my life.”

  “And getting places,” she said.

  “I’m already there—that’s why I called it ‘Rainbow’s End.’ ”

  “And is it?”

  “I thought so for a while.”