Chance Elson

by Ballard, Todhunter, 1903-1980

  When he spoke, his voice showed none of the emotion surging through him, a mingled emotion: hatred of Cellini, mockery at the man's clumsy handling of the situation, contempt for every man facing him.

  "Ralph, you're trying to fill Danzig's shoes, and you don't know how. He bulled things through, you try to be clever. The trouble is, you aren't clever. You look at your cards and figure how the game is going to go. You never think about the other man or what he might do."

  "What can you do?** Cellini sounded beUigerent.

  "Several things," Chance told him. "You undoubtedly sold these gentlemen on the idea that this was the perfect setup. I'm well known in Vegas. I would have no trouble getting a gambling Hcense, or holding one. The thing you forgot is that this Hcense gives me power, because you or anyone else in this room would never in the world get past the tax commission."

  CeUini said, "Danzig did."

  Chance nodded. "Danzig was clean. He never took a fall." He looked at the others, "Can any of you gentlemen claim that?"

  Johnny Rossi had ceased to smile. Aldhouse was leaning 278

  forward, his dark eyes hard and watchful. The other three had not moved but their tension showed.

  Cellini said, "I don't see how that does you much good. We control the hotel and—"

  "Some of your friends are smarter than you are. You tell him, Rossi."

  The man shook his head. His voice was slightly guttural. **You're talking."

  "I've been waiting for you," Chance said, "ever since I talked to Smith. Either you thought I was too dimib to realize what the demand for the extra five per cent of the hotel meant, or that I wanted to open this place so badly I'd make any kind of a deal you wanted. Well, you are wrong on both counts."

  He paused as if to give emphasis to his words. "I will not open this place unless I am in control."

  "You won't open!" Cellini was gaping at him. ''Why, you've got to open. You've gone too far. That's why I waited, imtil you were in so deep you had to open."

  "Why do I have to open?"

  Cellini twisted slowly to look at the men behind him as if searching for help. He got none. They watched, studied him now as they had studied Chance only moments before. He sensed their hostility and it made him nervous.

  "You've got to open. It would cost you a fortune if you failed to open."

  "Cost who?"

  Cellini got his meaning. He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped it across his forehead. "Don't try to bluff me, Chance."

  "I never bluff. You can make book on that. I have here on this desk a stock transfer for six per cent of the shares of stock in The Desert Queen Hotel Company. It's been typed up for weeks, waiting for this meeting. I did not know when it would happen, or how, or who would show up, but I did know that unless this transfer is made before this hotel opens I'll turn my license back to the tax commission. I will admit to them that I falsified my application when I stated that no one with a criminal record was connected with

  this enterprise, and, Ralph, 1*11 do more. Ill make such a pubKc stink in all the newspapers that the commission will be forced to investigate the ownership of every hotel and club in this area. Your friends in the East are not going to be happy if this is done, and they are going to blame you for bringing it on. I realize this is a personal thing between us, that you are trying to get even with me for things which have happened in the past. I want all the men in this room to understand that, to understand that they have been used.*'

  Cellini was sweating now. Rossi said curiously, "You really mean you'd junk the joint just to keep us out of control?"

  Chance looked at him. "Youd better believe me for all our sakes."

  "I believe you." It was Aldhouse. He stood up. He came three steps forward and grabbed CeUini with one hamlike hand. He swung him around. "You stupid bastard." He hit him directly in the face.

  CeUini went down. No one moved for a long moment, then calmly Aldhouse went back to his chair. "You'd better handle things, Paul."

  The others nodded consent. Paul Grossman was the best dressed of the lot, and there was quiet authority in his voice. "Look, Elson, we're all in this now."

  "That's right."

  "CeUini sold us a bUl."

  "I know that."

  "We aren't hunting trouble. We got a lot of dough in this place and it isn't aU ours."

  "I realize that too."

  "So what do you want?"

  "Six per cent of the stock. The transfer v/as drawn up by a Los Angeles lawyer. I no longer trust Morton Hoffner."

  "Then what? What protection do we get? How do we know we get a fair break?*

  Chance said, "I don't know about other places, but my spot always made an honest return to the tax commission. I wouldn't take a chance on doing it otherwise. I want to keep my license. So, you'U get your share, but I'U teU you one other

  thing. rU only go ahead and open if you all agree to keep out of this place, and I mean out. The special officers will have orders to roust you if you show up."

  Color came up behind the dull gray of Grossman's cheeks. "That's a httle rough."

  Chance said flatly, "That's the way it is." He paused as Cellini slowly picked himself off the floor. "I'm not trying to in-siJt you. I'm only thinking of the hotel. We can't afford to let our guests get the idea that this is a hangout for criminals."

  Grossman said slowly, "You make sense. I feel better about my dough." He tinned to the others. "What about it?"

  Aldhouse shrugged. "Seems okay to me."

  Chance asked, "Who signs?"

  Grossman said, "The stock is held by the Randolph Finance Company. I'm president. I guess I sign."

  Chance pressed the buzzer on his desk and, when Young-er's voice answered, said, "Have that pubhc stenographer come in. She's a notary. Have her bring her seal."

  He looked at Grossman. "I hate to mention this, since all of you except Cellini have been decent about it, but this office is bugged. There's a tape recording of everything that has been said since you came in."

  Grossman smiled for the first time. "You don't take many chances, do you?"

  "I try not to."

  Grossman came forward. He picked up the stock transfer and studied it. The door behind him opened and a girl came in. Chance told her what was wanted. She witnessed the signature and affixed her seal.

  Grossman said, "It's all right if we stay in Vegas until after the opening, isn't it?"

  Chance grinned. "I'm not trying to rub it in. I'll even buy a drink." He walked to the bar which folded back into the wall and poured the glasses. Cellini refused. Cellini had not said a word.

  When they had gone. Chance sank back into the chair, his knees suddenly weak from reaction. He felt no elation. He had planned the whole scene carefully, building in his mind everything that he would say. It had been a break that Cellini

  had brought the others with him, that Cellini had not come alone.

  Cellini was a fool, and fools were dangerous. You couldn't reason with a fool. You never knew what they would do.

  Chance had been under an emotional strain these last few weeks. He was feeHng the effect now.

  Lucky for him that Grossman was a realist, that Grossman was shrewd enough to know Chance had not been bluffing. He shuddered at what would have happened had they not beUeved him, had they failed to take him at his word.

  Cellini had been whipped, cowed, not by Chance but by the knowledge that his whole position in Vegas, yes, and in the Syndicate, was shaken by this mistake.

  But Chance did not write off Cellini. The man was still dangerous, and the Syndicate did not like to be whipped. They might agree to his terms now, because common sense told them they had no choice. But the Syndicate was like an elephant. It seldom forgot.

  There was a knock at the door and he called, "Come in.*'

  Doc slipped through. "Younger told me Cellini was here."

  Chance motioned for him to shut the door. He reached down under the desk to make certain the tape rec
order was shut off, then he handed Doc the stock transfer.

  Doc read it twice, in silence. "How did you work this?**

  Chance told him, repeating almost every word.

  Doc walked over and poured himself a stiff drink. He took it slowly. "Whoosh. Tm glad I didn't have to go through that. How did Cellini take it?"

  "Cellini's in trouble. There are five men with him who aren't very friendly toward him at the m.oment. I don't think we have to worry about Cellini for a while. Hell be too busy trying to explain his mistake in the East to give us much of a headache in the next few months."

  "Think the others were sore?"

  "Of coin-se they were sore. The question is, who are they sore at?"

  "You."

  "In a way, yes, but they also showed that they have quite a bit of respect for me, and they have a lot of dough tied up

  that they don't want disturbed. I'm playing with them, but I'm playing on my terms."

  Doc took another drink. "]eese, I don't like this." There was a lot that Chance did not like about it, either, but he couldn't help himself. He said, "That's the reason I didn't tell you what I was going to do. I knew you'd worry, and what was the use two of us worrying about it? Now, let's go ahead and get this joint rolling."

  C/i
  If Chance Elson lived to be a hundred, he thought, he would never forget the day The Desert Queen opened. In a twelve-hour period he lived a dozen lifetimes.

  Even in the morning, before the guests started to arrive, there was an electric expectancy about the place. The staff was finely tuned, nervous, hke a football team poised before a big game. Chance hoped that this nervousness would be dispelled as the guests arrived, that the habit of their training would cushion them.

  A Hollywood director and his wife were the first to check in, at twelve fifty-nine, thereby winning a wrist watch for the girl and a hundred dollars in chips for the man.

  Chance stood in the entry watching the cars arrive. Most of them had California tags. The local people who had engaged tables would not appear imtil evening.

  By four o'clock the hotel had come to life. The gambhng room was better than half filled. Customers Hned the bar and occupied most of the cocktail tables on the raised mezzanine. There were shouts and laughter from the pool.

  Chance prowled everywhere. He went to the kitchen to check with Leon. He checked with the headwaiter. They had had to turn down over a hundred requests for tables.

  He went to the gambhng room. Doc was at the raised desk in the center. Before him were copies of the sheets from every table. Every ten minutes an assistant floorman made a

  check of the chip racks at each table. If one was low, he brought fresh cases from the cashier and these chips were signed for by the slotman, the sheet delivered to Doc.

  Against two walls of the room slot machines made a solid phalanx. Change girls were stationed at each comer, ready to trade silver for bills for those who wanted to play. Cigarette girls and bar girls sifted slowly through the crowd. A customer need only signal and make his want known; the drinks were on the house.

  Nine of the twenty crap tables and two of the five roulette wheels were in action, and there were people at every twenty-one game, seated across the small, curved table from the dealer. Chance knew that later all the games would be crowded. Tonight would probably be the biggest single evening the hotel would ever enjoy, for a curious habit had grown up in Vegas. Whenever a new spot opened, the club-owners ralHed around, gambling on the wrong side of the table in celebration. Their purpose was not to win, but to swell the take of the new enterprise.

  Most of the two million that had been put up by Cellini's friends was spent, and they were opening the games with less than a hundred-thousand bankroll. In an ordinary operation, this would have been more than enough, but the play in Vegas had grown to such proportions that most of the downtown clubs kept a million doUars available at all times to back their games.

  There was a pulse in the room around him. A gambling crowd is neither loud nor boisterous. It is far too intent on the roll of the dice or the turn of the wheel to make much noise. But there was an urgency which carried through the room with compelling force. There had been people in the hotel that morning, the staff, the workers, the dealers and kitchen help, but the place had had a lifeless feel. Now it was breathing. It had a soul.

  He said to Doc, "Take a break," and moved onto the stool at the high desk. He did not belong at the front desk, or in the dining room, or even in his own office. He belonged here. This was the nerve center, the spot where they could suffer

  heavy losses or make the money necessary to keep the hotel running.

  He sat and watched. He saw a Hollywood producer winning heavily at an end table. A floorman went to stand behind the slctman. Another floorman brought fresh chips to the table and then carried the signed slip to Chance. He noted that there were ten thousand dollars' worth of chips involved.

  The play went on. The floorman was talking to the producer. The crowd, as always attracted to a winning table, thronged around this one nearly four deep. The floorman raised a hand to Chance. Chance moved to his side.

  The producer was fifty, red faced from excitement and whisky. The floorman said in an undertone, "He wants the limit raised." The limit on line bets was five hundred dollars.

  Chance glanced at the twenty-five-dollar chips racked in the groove along the table edge before the player. He saw that the man had five hundred on the line and had placed a hundred dollars on each number for odds bets.

  "How much?"

  "A thousand."

  "How much did he start withF*

  "A hundred."

  Chance hesitated. The practice in a gambling house was to raise the limit for certain customers, but only if they had bought into the game with a sizable amount. Still, this was the opening. He did not want it noised through the crowd that they had refused to lift the limit. But if he did, if the man continued his wirming streak, it could be dangerous. It could break them.

  The player was nearly ten thousand dollars ahead. He rolled the dice and came up with another natural. "What about it, Elson?"

  The man knew him. Chance could not recall having seen him before.

  "How much do you want?"

  "Five thousand."

  He had jumped the request from one to five. If he continued to win he would want to raise it still higher. The

  limit on a game was the house's protection. It kept a hot player from doubling past a certain point; it checked the players of involved systems based on progression.

  "Go ahead."

  The producer counted out five thousand dollars' worth of chips. He picked up the dice and blew on them elaborately. "Come on, baby, give me an eleven."

  He spun them across the green cloth to bounce back from the opposite rail. They turned up six-five.

  There was an audible sigh from the crowd. The dealer with the help of the stickman counted out the winning chips. The producer stared at Chance.

  "All of it."

  Chance nodded. The dice came up seven.

  The crowd was nearly pushing the table over in its eagerness to see. The producer picked up the dice. He cupped them nervously, trying to make up his mind. "All of it." There was twenty thousand on the table before him.

  Chance nodded again.

  The dice rolled. They turned up three. The player stared at them as if he could not believe his eyes. The red of his face drained out. He ran the tip of his tongue around too-dry lips. Slowly he began coimting the chips before him on the table rim.

  "Fifteen thousand." He shoved it on the line without asking permission. The slotman glanced at Chance. Chance nodded almost imperceptibly, turned and walked back to his seat. From its altitude he could see the floor of the table.

  The producer came out on an eight. He rolled six times and fell oJBF on a seven. With a muttered curse, he turned and pushed his way almost blindly from the table. Chance knew that for the rest of his life the man would tel
l about the time he lost thirty-five thousand on two rolls of the dice. He would ignore the fact that he had started with only a hundred dollars.

  People were hke that. They took pride in their losses. Chance sat on the stool trying to uncoil, letting his stomach muscles relax. What if the man had passed for twenty thousand and wanted to shoot forty? What if he had passed

  for forty and tried to shoot the eighty? They couldn't have covered it. But you couldn't let it get around that you were running a chintzy game, and it would be good advertising. People are always attracted by the rumor of high play. Every v/ould-be gambler expected to win a fortune on a ten-dollar bill. They refused to accept the dictimi in gambling, "Never try to win more than you can afford to lose."

  Doc reheved him at five. Chance checked his office for messages, then tried to phone Judy's room. There was no answer.

  He took the private hall back to his suite. Joe was there, grinning from ear to ear.

  "Some joint. I been watching them dolls around the pool.'*

  "Just keep your hands off them. We want no suits for rape."

  Joe grinned. He knew he was being kidded.

  "Put my dinner clothes out. I'm going to take a shower.**

  In the privacy of the bathroom he could admit to himself that he had not actually believed it would happen. There had been so many obstacles. He wished John Kern were here to see it. He had almost invited Mrs. Kern. He was glad now that he had not. This opening would remind her of too many things.

  He shaved and dressed. Then he went into the bedroom and tried Judy's phone again. There was still-no answer. Where jn hell was she? Maybe she had taken a walk in the patio. He crossed to the window and tried to pick her out of the girls around the pool, and failed. It was six-thirty.

  The supper show did not start for two hours, but tonight the people would be arriving early. He had better get downstairs.