by Jack Finney
Mockingly the voice from the cart said, Yeah, mister; you getting this?
The big man swallowed, nodding a me; then he glanced at the cart and said Yes.
Brick said, There's no question about it; you can capture our boy any time you want to. Get him between those two barred doors and just glance up at the ceiling. Or push a signal button. Or start yelling. Or inside the cashroom try scribbling a quick note while your hands are on the shelves filling the sack. Or give someone a quick wink, or a look, in the cashroom or out on the floor. And I don't know — Brick shrugged — I don't say it's absolutely impossible that you could get away with it. I just say I'm pretty sure that you can't.
Hundreds of times we'd rehearsed this, every word and gesture, standing in Guy's barn as we stood now. We'd hated Jerry then, but now I was glad. Automatically now, without ever having to think, without a worry that I'd miss a word or cue, I stood there, my thumb pressing the little stud, then releasing it, at precisely the right moments; and the tape recorder, the battery and converter, welded into place on sponge-rubber mountings, worked exactly as they had in test after test. If they hadn't, we'd have run for it.
Deliberately repeating what we'd already said, Brick went on talking. You better get it through your head that if you try any kind of signal whatever, he'll see it, and kill you if it's the last thing he does. In fact — Brick laughed shortly, and I pressed the stud again — it will be the last thing he does, and—
Tense and violent, the recorded voice snarled, Come on, get going! Shut up the talk! If he don't believe it now, he never will till I prove it! Shut up and get going.
I released the stud as Brick said hurriedly to the cart, Okay, okay, I'm sorry. To the man he said quietly, Get going. Into the cashroom, and get all the cash; we're not through with you till we check that you brought it all. When you come out, have the sack on top of the cart, and wheel it to the south entrance on Lincoln Alley. Get that; no mistakes; the south entrance on Lincoln Alley. Brick nodded toward me. He'll be standing there, just inside the door, waiting. Any questions, mister? Speak up.
The big man thought for a moment. His face was pale but expressionless; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or what he would do. Then he shook his head. Guess not, he said.
Then move, Brick said, nodding at the cart; and as the big man stepped forward, taking the handle of the cart, I turned back to the inner doors. Keeping just ahead of the metal cart, I opened one door, hiding the cart with my body as it came through after me as well as I could. The sustained roaring drone of the room tripled in volume; and we were inside the big room again.
We'd often debated the next step. My post when the man in the white shirt came out of the cashroom with the cart again — if he ever did — was at a corner entrance at the back of Harold's Club — the south entrance on Lincoln Alley. Instead of walking through the casino to reach it now, I could have stepped out of the vestibule into Douglas Alley, then walked nonchalantly around the corner, turning into Lincoln Alley, where Jerry was waiting with the trailer, and stepped into the casino again, through the south entrance, to my post.
I desperately wanted to do that instead of walking the whole length and width of the casino, as I was doing now. For the next half minute I wanted to be out of this place in case the big man let out a shout once he was safe inside here. But we'd decided no; someone had to be here watching him, forming an opinion on whether he was bluffed or not, whether he was behaving as he should; we couldn't let him out of our sight a moment longer than we had to.
So I stepped through the door first, into the roar of Harold's Club again, and I walked slowly forward through the crowd in the general direction of my post at the farthermost corner of the next room. I turned, gave the man with the cart a smiling nod, as though I were leaving him; but I walked on slowly enough so that he kept just behind me. Then I stopped for a moment beside a roulette table; he passed me, and I let several people get between us before I walked on again, following. But I didn't look at him directly any more; I looked around as I walked, a sight-seer again.
Nothing changed, nothing happened, that I could see. All the hectic activity of a great gambling establishment on the busiest day of the year went on around me. No one seemed to pay any attention to me or the man with his cart. Behind the escalator ahead, out of sight, stood the genuine cart, as far as I knew. I told myself our plan was working.
But all the time I knew that for three or four seconds, absolutely unavoidably, the man in the white shirt could have been seen pushing the cart we had given him in through the doors from that vestibule outside — where he had no reason to be with it. To any patrons seeing him that fact would mean nothing. An employe might wonder about it, but the big man was an important official here; it wouldn't be up to employes to question what he did.
But the guards behind the mirror glass: Had they noticed him during those few seconds? Maybe not; their biggest job today was to watch the thronged gambling tables, not this man and his cart. But suppose they had noticed him coming in from the vestibule; what then? Would they simply wonder about it, making a mental note to question him later, if at all? We felt that they would. For obviously he was moving along of his own free will; no one with him, no one coercing him. Why should anyone do more than wonder a little, at most, why he'd been out in the vestibule?
But maybe they'd noticed him earlier, wheeling the genuine cart to the table behind the escalator. Then maybe they'd watched him cross the room to the vestibule without his cart; and now, some minutes later, they'd seen him come back into the room, mysteriously in possession of his cart once more. But we didn't think so; there was far too much going on, this busiest day of the year, too much that needed watching, for so much attention to be given to the man with the cart carrying a few hundred silver dollars.
As I moved through that crowded casino, those were the things I told myself, fighting to believe them; but underneath lay the simple terrifying thought: Suppose we were wrong? I'd be the man they'd grab if they were suspicious at all —the bearded guy in the green shirt who'd been so busy talking to the man with the cart. Right now, and in the next few minutes while I stood at the Lincoln Alley entrance, I'd be a sitting duck. I could be surrounded without knowing it by plain-clothes men, grabbed before I could move a muscle. For all I knew they were around me now.
Making my way along through an aisle, the cart slowly wheeling ahead of me toward the cashroom, I was sweating. Then the big man stopped at the barred door of the little corridor leading to the cashroom. Passing directly behind him, I saw him, from the corner of my eye, push the little button on the wall, and heard it ring inside the cashroom. I didn't look at him directly, and his back was toward me; but I could feel how intensely aware of each other we were. Air pressure hissed, the barred door swung open, the man stepped forward pushing our cart, and I passed with the crowd toward my post across the room.
I reached it, standing at the end of a crap table against the south wall, where I could watch the barred door; it was closed again. My eyes on the green-felt surface of the crap table, I stood, doing my best to look casual, just a part of the crowd. All I could do now was wait — to be suddenly grabbed by three or four pairs of hands, or for the big man to come out again, finally.
It wasn't too bad, waiting; I was actually able to follow the game, watching to see if the shooter, a middle-aged woman wearing sunglasses, would make her point with the dice. It was partly that I had no more to do now; all I could do was stand and wait. And it was partly that I'd almost had the illusion myself, out in the vestibule, that there really was somebody in the cart; the voice had sounded utterly real and believable. It seemed to me now, watching the crap game, that the man in the white shirt simply had to believe what he'd been told. All we ever know is what our senses tell us, and he'd heard the man in the cart, without question. He'd heard him respond to and actually take part in our conversation, and the weight in the cart he'd pushed was exactly right for a small man. He had to believe there w
as a man inside it.
But did he believe the man in that cart could and would kill him? I could only wait here and see. I told myself that he wouldn't take chances; it wasn't his money he was guarding, but it was his life. If I were in his place, I thought, I'd take no chances; I'd do what I was told.
The woman made her point at the crap table, let her bet stand, and stood waiting to roll out the dice again. Across the room the barred door remained closed, and the thought rose up in my mind that people are different; they don't always think and act logically; they get mad or frightened and act recklessly. I could feel myself sweating.
Jerry was smart, just a kid but wiser than I'd realized; I knew that now. Two thousand miles away, and long ago, he'd described precisely how I'd feel at this point. You won't be able to judge time with any accuracy, Al, and we've got to give that man a good six minutes. Use a stop watch. Give him six full minutes by the clock; then turn slowly, walk out, get into the car, and we'll be off immediately.
Holding the watch in my pants pocket, I'd clicked it on the moment the man with the cart had rung the little bell at the cashroom corridor. Now, standing at the crap table, I waited till I was certain two minutes, then three, then a little longer for good measure, had passed. I took out the stop watch and glanced at it then, as though it were an ordinary watch and I was checking the time. The tiny indicator on the dial said that just over one minute had passed, and I knew the watch had stopped and I got panicky. Then I saw that the sweep secondhand was passing from the fifteen- to the twenty-second mark; the watch was running; only a minute had actually gone by, and I wondered if I could possibly keep my nerve for five more minutes.
The watch in my pocket again, I was determined to wait three more minutes before I looked at it once more. I waited. Nothing happened. Nothing in the room changed, and I waited some more, feeling the time slowly pass, watching the dice tumble out on the green table and stop, over and over again. Then the panic rose up in me. I was suddenly certain that six, maybe seven or eight, minutes had gone by, and trying not to move so quickly I'd attract attention, I pulled out the watch. Two minutes and thirty-five seconds had passed, and I closed my eyes and actually moaned.
Now the men on either side of me at the crap table were a menace, plain-clothes men about to grab me, slug me, or ram a gun into my side. And I could feel the hostile eyes back of the mirrored glass beside me, watching me every second, fully aware of everything I'd done since the moment I'd arrived. I began to count to myself. One hundred and one, one hundred and two, one hundred and three — I'd read somewhere that you could time pretty accurately that way. When I'd timed two minutes that way, I reached for my watch again, and as my hand touched it the barred door across the room opened, and the man in the white shirt came out slowly, wheeling the cart toward me.
I turned casually from the crap table, toward the alley entrance a few steps away; then I stood beside the door, trying to look bored, pulling a cigarette from the pack in my pocket. A dozen yards away now, slowly nudging through the crowd, the cart moved toward me; lying on its top was the gray canvas sack, plump and full.
The man in the white shirt stopped beside me; my mouth opened and the rehearsed words came out automatically. Now, get this, I said, smiling at him, the cigarette in my mouth, my hands shoved into the back of my belt, making no move to touch the sack, not even glancing at it. I pick up the sack, turn, and step out the door. I get into a car waiting outside; the horn honks twice. The instant he hears it — I glanced down at the cart — he pushes out a side panel and gets out that door as fast as he can move. He'll have his pistol ready, and if you try anything, he shoots. I paused, looking at the big man, and still smiling, I made my eyes as cold and hostile as I could; this was important, the lie he had to believe if we were going to get the few minutes we had to have now. If the car isn't outside yet, I said carefully, if it's late getting here, mister, then you stand right here and you wait. Stand right where you are with the cart; don't try to walk away or give any alarm. Understand? You wait right here till the horn honks twice outside. If the car isn't out there now, it might take five minutes, maybe ten, to get here. But you wait till it does. Wait till the horn honks twice and my partner busts out of that cart, no matter how long it takes. You understand? You getting this, mister? I smiled at him pleasantly.
He nodded. I've got it so far, haven't I? He raised his voice just a little, glancing down at the cart. I'll wait, don't worry. I just want your friend to take it easy and not get nervous. I've done what you said, all of it; I've done my part — his voice began to rise higher — I just don't want him to get wild at the last minute. I don't want—
I shut him off. Just follow directions, I said quietly, and you'll be okay. He's not shooting anybody he doesn't have to.
I hesitated a moment, not able to do it; I couldn't bring myself to make the next move. Then I took a deep breath, reached out, picked up the sack, turned on my heel, and stepped through the door into the night and Lincoln Alley.
The car wasn't there. It simply was not there. Where our car and trailer should have been standing there was empty pavement. It simply wasn't to be believed; my eyes and brain wouldn't accept it, and I kept glancing around, from one direction to the other as though I could make it appear where it had to be. I realized vaguely that I was taking tentative little steps, a few paces north, a few paces south, then back again, the stuffed canvas sack in my fist. My brain wasn't working; I was like a rat in a maze, helpless in a predicament beyond his imagination. Because there was simply nothing I could do. I couldn't start running down that alley to nowhere; that was disaster for sure. I couldn't walk back where I'd come from; I couldn't turn right, couldn't turn left; yet I couldn't stay where I was. The car and trailer had no right to be gone, but they were; and I stopped pacing and just stood in that semidark alley, the sky above me pink with neon; and there was suddenly and simply no place for me on the whole face of the earth.
Good Housekeeping, August 1953, 137(2):52-53, 160-198
5 Against the House, Conclusion
My muscles were screaming for action, but — like a pair of enormous hands on my shoulders holding me in place — I forced myself to stand still and think, there in the darkness of Lincoln Alley, Reno, Nevada. Twenty yards away, on Douglas Alley, which meets Lincoln like the top of a capital T, a man passed, glancing in my direction with no particular interest, then disappeared on past the corner of Harold's Club.
Now I looked in the only direction left to me: up. Directly above hung the building's fire escape: the usual kind, its final step parallel to the pavement and maybe eight feet above it. I've played some basketball. Holding the canvas sack in both hands at my chest, I glanced around — no one was in sight — then arched it up onto the fire escape. Instantly I took a short run and leaped, harder and with more desperation than ever before in my life, and caught the iron sides of the steps. Heaving my feet up, I struggled onto the fire escape, cracking my head on a metal support. Then I rolled onto my stomach and lay motionless, eyes darting, covering the alley below me.
The doors I'd come out of swung open, the brilliant white light from inside glaring into the alley, and a rush of men spilled onto the pavement. Above the sustained roar of sound from inside I heard a voice — I tell you there is! There's a man inside it! — then the doors swung closed. Instantly they opened again and more men poured out to join the swelling knot of people below me; I had a crazy impulse to reach down with one arm and sweep off their hats. Darting glances to one end of the alley or the other, some stood, some hurried a few paces in baffled pursuit, actually bumping into each other in utter confusion. Three or four had run down to Douglas Alley, and two men tore down toward Second Street.
I was paralyzed. All I wanted to do was curl into a tight ball, knees to my chest, and squeeze my eyes shut; it could only be seconds till someone glanced up. Even in the fright I was experiencing, I realized — and it surprised me — that there was very little talk; only low and excited questioning murmu
rs that I couldn't make out. But the scrape of leather on pavement was constant.
I kept my brain working as well as I could, and now I made myself stand, slowly, picking up my sack. Then, moving quietly on the balls of my feet, I began to climb fast. But the stiff tip of my sole struck a stair rod, and the low-pitched iron sound rang out. I stopped dead, waiting for a dozen faces to turn toward me. But no one heard it above his own excitement, or at least no one connected it with its source. I kept on then — it probably took six or seven seconds at most — up past the top floor, and threw myself over the ledge running around the roof of the building. I fell a yard to the graveled surface, scraping a shoulder, then lay there listening.
An angry, authoritative voice said, Well, they wouldn't be waiting out here! Someone asked a quick murmuring question, and the first voice, furious, said, What? The low, excited murmur began again, but faded in volume, and I guessed they were moving inside. Incessantly the swinging doors opened and closed, and a voice, a woman's, said, What happened? Now I forced myself to ignore the alley below. Behind me, from the center of the roof, the mechanism of the moving searchlights clicked monotonously, and I rolled to my back, glancing at them, then looked around. There were no higher buildings nearby; no one could see me so long as I kept below the yard-high parapet.
Something moved, a sudden sharp rasp on a far corner of the roof ahead, and I scrambled to my knees, facing the sound. An enormous dark bulk moved toward me, I couldn't tell what — it was hard to see past the blue-white beams of the searchlights; then it retreated, the rasping, scraping sound repeating itself. I closed my eyes, limp and spent with relief. The great moving bulk was the balloon — the Harold's Club balloon — that hung high over Reno in the daytime, now reeled down to the roof for the night; and the rasping sound was the gas-filled bag scraping the parapet or the graveled roof as it swayed on the moving night air.