Three by Cain: Serenade/Love's Lovely Counterfeit/The Butterfly

by James M. Cain

  By two o’clock, Ballroom A was a beehive, with every folding chair occupied, and people standing in the aisles. Ben entered with Mr. Yates, who sat down at the table which had been placed at one end of the room. Ben didn’t sit. He faced the crowd, rapped them to order with a large glass ashtray, and asked somebody near the doors to close them. He had changed perceptibly, even since the interview with Mr. Yates, and enormously since that day when a sniveling chauffeur had told his woes to Lefty. Yet there was something of that chauffeur in him now, as he threw back his shoulders and began to talk in quick, jerky, confident sentences. Perhaps it was his inability, in spite of his effort to do so, to give more than the meanest of assurances to this crowd, who were nervous about today, and worried about tomorrow. He tried to be lofty, to appeal to their civic spirit, or pride in their establishments, or something of the sort, as he told them what he had told Mr. Yates about the association and the new class of machine which he would make available to members; and yet somehow he sounded like a professional football coach, haranguing his men before a game, and barking, rather than talking.

  Fortunately, however, it was an occasion where sense counted more than manner. They listened to him intently. When, coming to the question of membership, he borrowed a device from June and broke open a package of slips, they sprang forward, those on the front row, to help him distribute them, and when they had been filled out, to collect them and pile them on the table. Practically everybody, it seemed, wanted to be a member, to be supplied with the new type of machine, to be represented in court by Mr. Yates, to pay a moderate assessment, which would be collected only from the earnings of the machines.

  Ben spoke perhaps twenty minutes, the formalities with the slips took another twenty, and then there were quite a few questions.

  Then Mr. Yates took the floor. “Before we leave here to appear in court, I’d like to make my position clear. I represent association members and association members only. But any others, and any members who want to appear individually, with different counsel or with no counsel, are welcome to do so, and will merely have to ask the court that their cases be disjoined, and they’ll have separate trial. Now just to get straight whom I represent and whom I don’t will those who want separate trials please raise their hands?”

  There were no hands.

  “Very well, then I take it I represent you all. Now this isn’t binding on you, but my advice is that when your case is called—whichever one of you happens to be called first as a sort of test case—you plead guilty. I can then ask the court to let me put into evidence, before it imposes sentence, the circumstances that attended the installation of these machines, the pressure from the Caspar organization, the intimidation, the ‘heat,’ as they say, that was turned on, and that ought to have great weight with the court in fixing the degree of guilt. There may be a small fine. If so, it will be credited to you, against the dues of the association—in other words you will have to pay the fine today, in cash, but the association will reimburse you. Now are there any questions?”

  There weren’t any, and a half hour later the throng was in Magistrate Himmelhaber’s courtroom, filling it to the last row of benches, and streaming out into the hall and down the marble staircase into the lobby of the Hall of Justice. The police sergeant’s voice sounded small and queer as he read the charges, and started to read the names, but Mr. Himmelhaber stopped him.

  “Call the first case.”

  “Roscoe Darnat.”

  “Here.”

  “Roscoe Darnat, you are charged with the maintenance of a nuisance, in violation of Section 448 of the—”

  “Dismiss it.”

  Mr. Himmelhaber looked a little annoyed, motioned to the sergeant. “Dismiss all those funny ones, try him on gambling charges only.”

  “Yes, Judge. Roscoe Darnat, you are charged with the operation of games of chance, on or about your premises at 3321 West Distler Avenue, on July 7 and various dates previous thereto—are you guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty.”

  Mr. Himmelhaber leaned forward with interest, looked at Mr. Yates. “Are they all taking a plea?”

  “Yes, your honor. I would like the court to hear a little testimony on the pressure that was put on them to let the games come into their establishments, as establishing extenuating circumstances—”

  “O.K.”

  Led by Mr. Yates, with occasional questions from the magistrate, Mr. Darnat told his harrowing tale, of how under pressure from Mr. Caspar’s lieutenants he had installed one machine; of how, after downright intimidation, he had accepted another; of how, when he was afraid for the lives of his wife and children, he had accepted a third and a fourth; of how he asked only to be clear of gambling in any form; how he actually threw up his hat and cheered, if the Judge didn’t believe it he could ask his wife, when the truck carried off the four machines—

  “O.K., that’s enough.”

  Mr. Himmelhaber looked at Mr. Bleeker, who was prosecuting the case in person, and who had said nothing so far. He looked over his glasses at the judge, said: “Your honor, I have no questions to ask the witness. In fact, I’m sure that every word he says is true.… I may say, to make the position of the prosecution clear, that I have no desire to harry these people, or inflict undue hardship. If they were actually the owners of the machines, that would be different. But since no owners have come forward to claim their property—quite naturally, I would say—what I am interested in is the destruction of the machines, so that the nuisance they represent can be abated, for good and all.”

  Mr. Himmelhaber looked at Mr. Yates. “That’s all right with me, your honor. My clients, so far as I know, don’t own a single machine.”

  “Then, sergeant, will you write the order?”

  “I got it already wrote.”

  In the old Ninth Street station house, not used since the erection of the Belle Haven building further out, the machines had been stored pending court order for their disposal, and thither, around eight that night, flocked the photographers who had snapped the throng in the Hall of Justice. They were to take pictures of an ancient constabular rite: the destruction of equipment seized in a gambling raid. The attorneys were not there for the occasion, but Mr. Cantrell was, dressed in a neat pinstripe, with a white carnation in his buttonhole. His hair was rather specially combed, as was the hair of various officers, who opened the front door for the cameramen, and consulted with them as to the scene of the ceremony.

  The big front room, with the old sergeant’s desk in it, seemed the only likely place, as the rest of the building was jammed with equipment to be destroyed. So the pitch was made there, and the police, with unusual courtesy, helped adjust lights, set up cameras, and pick out the most colorful equipment. Then two of them stepped forward, armed with axes. Then Mr. Cantrell was posed, and warned not to smile, as it was a solemn occasion. Then various prominent detectives were posed, in the background, to be “looking on,” in the picture caption, later.Then the cameras began to shoot. Amid frantic cries of “Hold it,” “One more,” “Don’t drop that axe yet,” and so on, several more shots were made, and then abruptly, with scarcely a word of thanks, the photographers left, to rush their pictures into their papers.

  Ben, who had sat to one side during this, now jumped forward, just in time to stop one of the axemen from crashing down on the machine, a beautiful thing that had been plugged into a socket and illuminated for the occasion. Mr. Cantrell looked at him questioningly, but he beckoned the new Chief back to one of the cells in the rear. “Joe, you ever been abroad?”

  “No, Ben, I haven’t.”

  “Neither have I, except once to Mexico.”

  “Mexico, south of the Rio Grande.”

  “Juarez, across the river from El Paso. Well, when I came back, I thought I’d bring in some perfume. Just a fool notion I had, but— ”

  “Well, we all get drunk.”

  “Just what I said to myself. Now get this: On some of that perfume, they got a rule tha
t the customs officer has to destroy the label before it’s brought in. You got that?”

  “Gee, you sure can spread light, Ben.”

  “You know how he destroyed it?”

  “No, but I’m dying to hear.”

  “He drew a blue pencil across it. He made one blue mark on it, and legally that destroyed it. Listen, Joe, if one blue mark will destroy a label, why won’t it destroy a pinball machine?”

  Mr. Cantrell jammed his hands into his trousers pockets and stared at Ben for a long time. “Say, you can think of things, can’t you?”

  “I do my best.”

  “You mean, destroy it legally?”

  “Yeah, legally.”

  “If you got a blue pencil, I could try.”

  “I got one, right here.”

  “Then we’ll see.”

  “And one other thing.”

  “Yeah, Ben?”

  “You’ll want those trucks again, hey? To haul the destroyed machines over to the Reservoir Street dump?”

  “Why—they got to be put some place.”

  “O.K.—I’ll have them here tonight. And if you don’t mind, have a police photographer at that dump tomorrow, to take pictures of the destroyed machines. Of course they’ll be nothing but junk, but it’ll prove I hauled them—and that you destroyed them.”

  “Funny how a blue pencil ruins stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, and another thing.”

  “Just one?”

  “Sign these vouchers.”

  “What vouchers?”

  “For the trucks! The trucks I furnished the city yesterday, to haul these gambling machines from various and sundry addresses, here to the Ninth Street station house. Three hundred bucks in all—”

  “Hey, what is this?”

  “You think trucks work for nothing?”

  “No, but I got to check—”

  “Costs money to clean a town up, you ought to know that. Now if you’ll sign there, where I put the pencil check, I can get over to the hotel with them before they close the safe, and—”

  “Won’t they keep till tomorrow?”

  “Joe, I need cash to pay workmen. I—”

  “O.K., Ben, but don’t run a good thing to death.”

  “Nuts, it’s the people’s will.”

  “What?”

  “You forgot that mandate to cleanliness. Sign.”

  Around nine, however, Ben wasn’t so cynically confident. He walked up and down the main room of a big warehouse with a neat little man in a blue gabardine suit and a soft straw hat. It was a shabby warehouse, and the only illumination was from a single poisonous light hanging very high. He kept looking at his watch, but presently a horn sounded outside, and he hurried to open the big trolley door at one end. Shaking the building, while the man in gabardine yelled to “cut those lights,” a truck rolled in, and when it was squarely in the middle of the room, stopped. Cutting lights and motor, three men jumped down, peeled tarpaulins from the load, and proceeded to unload it. It was the same equipment as had been seized, condemned, and legally destroyed in the last twenty-four hours, but appeared to be in quite passable condition. Working rapidly, under the direction of the man in gabardine, the three from the truck stacked the machines against the wall and departed, saying the other crew would report at ten, and from then on they’d make time.

  The man in gabardine looked over the machines with professional interest, testing springs here, counting bright steel balls there. Ben, however, seemed uneasy. Presently he said, “Listen, Mr. Roberts—of course I’m sure you know your business, but are you really sure these games can be transformed?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Yeah, but—look, this is what I mean. Like in golf, which is one of the games we’re going to have, there’s only so many things a player can do. He can get in the rough, he can shoot past the green, he can pitch on the green, he can sink a putt—I don’t know how many, but it’s just so many. Well, suppose that don’t correspond to the number of holes on the table? Without we plug some holes up, or put new ones in, or redesign the whole thing, how do we—”

  “O.K., now—pick out a table.”

  “Well, that one. What do we make out of it?”

  “Baseball.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Taking off his coat, Mr. Roberts went over to a chest that stood in one corner, opened it, and took out a hammer and screw driver, then selected a number of metal clips from little compartments inside that were arranged like printers’ type cases. These he dropped into a paper bag. Then he took the table Ben had pointed out, upended it, and screwed legs into it. Then he stood it rightside up, and for a moment inspected its metal fittings, its gleaming pins, springs, and bells. Then he motioned at the legend LUCKY BALL WIN 5¢—10¢—25¢— $1, which rose over one end. “You understand, that comes off and the new one goes on: Baseball, the National Game, Play One Whole Inning for Five Cents—”

  “Yeah, I understand about that part.”

  “O.K., then. Watch.”

  Deftly, Mr. Roberts began unscrewing tags that labeled each hole with numbers from 0 to 1,000. Soon Ben interrupted: “All right, I’ve doped this out. The batter can get a strike, or a ball, or he can single, double, triple, or pole one over the fence, or he can sacrifice, or maybe a couple of other things. Not over fifteen, though. That’s top. Well there’s exactly twenty holes on that table. What then?”

  Without answering, Mr. Roberts began screwing new tags in front of the holes. They bore legends, in neat red letters, of “Strike,”

  “Ball,”

  “Out on Fly,” etc., just as Ben had anticipated, but when all of them had been screwed into place there were still four unlabeled holes. Mr. Roberts smiled.

  “Now, then, here’s where we equalize.”

  So saying, he screwed on four tags. Ben, peering, saw that two of them read: “Out on foul,” and two others, “Hit into Double.” On the last two, Mr. Roberts dropped loose metal covers. “Those holes are dead till there’s a man on base. Can’t have a double play without anybody on. Same way with a sacrifice. But don’t you get it? If there’s too many holes we equalize by having a few of those holes read the same thing—that doubles the chances for foul balls, maybe, but who says this ain’t fast pitching we got? If there’s not enough holes, we knock out sacrifice bunt, advance on error, whatever we want. Look: they play the game you got, not the game you wish you had. You get it?”

  “Well, gee, it’s simple, isn’t it?”

  “O.K., you be the Gi’nts, I’ll be the Dodgers.”

  “You mean that’s all? We can play now?”

  “I like pinball. Buck on the side?”

  “McPhail, show what you got.”

  “I’ve singled, big boy.”

  The midsummer twilight was fading as Ben entered his living room and lit it, not with the wall brackets, which were harsh, but with the floor lamps, which were soft. He checked the contents of a tray which had arrived a few minutes before: shaker, evidently full; two glasses, bottoms up, in a bowl of ice; a saucer of cherries, with fork; a dish of tiny canapes, six anchovies, six eggs, six cheese; two napkins, folded. The buzzer sounded, and he hastened to the door with the springy stride that seemed never to desert him.

  June came in, nodded, and sat down, pulling off her gloves. She too had changed since that night a few months ago when she had made the speech at the high school auditorium, and a man had made a note in a little red book. The neat, school-teacherish blue silk had given way to a smart black polka-dot, with belt, bag, and shoes of coral alligator skin, hat of red straw, and stockings of powdery sheer that set off an exciting pair of legs. It all combined beautifully with her dark, creamy good looks, and it seemed that perhaps she knew it. She came in with languid hauteur, or at least the imitation of languid hauteur; it might be recent, but it was innocent.

  Ben, however, seemed neither surprised nor unduly upset. He righted the glasses, flipped a cherry in each, and poure
d the Manhattans. Setting one beside her, he said, “Here’s how,” took a sip of his own, put it down. Then he took an envelope from the inner pocket of his coat and handed it to her. “Your share.”

  “… Of what?”

  “Of what we’re doing.”

  “Oh, thanks. I’d forgotten.”

  “You’d better count it.”

  She opened the envelope, started in spite of herself when she saw the thick mat of $20’s, $10’s, and $5’s that it contained. Her voice shook a little as she said: “Well—that’s very nice.”

  He suddenly remembered something he had meant to tell her: about a suite that would be vacant next week, at the hotel. It seemed she was living here now, in a suite on the third floor, but the one to be vacated would give her a better view, at the same price. She said something about her apartment, which she had under lease until January 1, and hadn’t been able to rent He made no comment, and she returned to the envelope, actually counting the money this time. Then she counted it again, and drew a trembling breath. Then she lapsed into a long, moody silence. He asked, “How’s social service?”

  “All right, thank you.”

  “Plenty of milk for the anemic kids?”

  “Not as much as we want, but—”

  “That can be fixed. Or helped, anyway.”

  “Any help will be welcome.”

  “I told you before, the main kick I get out of having a little dough is to be able to help on a few things where help counts. Tomorrow, I’ll send a little check, and it’s a promise.”