by Lou Cameron
“That’s not my job,” the desk clerk said. “Long as they pay their bills and don’t frighten horses in the halls—”
“We are talking,” I cut in, “about a homicide rap.”
“You’d better talk to the security men,” he suggested.
The head of the security detail that afternoon was an ex-Vegas cop who wouldn’t want me to use his name. I’ll call him Jim.
“I remember Mrs. Dipple,” he said, making a grimace over his quinine water setup as we sat at a table in the lounge.
“Trouble dame?” I asked.
“Bitch on wheels,” he grunted. “Nice-looking head. Though not as nice-looking as she thought she was. Nobody could be. Made a lot of trouble around the place before she cut out.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“’Bout a month. She was one of those six weeks’ residence types. But I remember she didn’t stay here more than three or four weeks.”
I made a mental note that Sandra Dipple had left the Sands about the time Kathy Gorm had disappeared from her job. It could be a coincidence, like the red hair. But it was something to think about.
“You know a guy named Duncan MacDonald, Jim?” I asked.
“Can’t say as I do. What’s he look like?”
“Wish I knew,” I said “We’ve got a description on him. Period. Tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed guy. Supposed to be good-looking and a heller with the ladies.”
“That could fit a lot of guys in this town, Frank. He tie in with this Dipple broad you found in the trunk?”
“Maybe. It was his car she was found in and he’s definitely tied in with another redhead who dropped out of sight about the same time. We’d like to talk to him. About both of them.”
“Wish I could help, Frank.” Jim frowned. “But he just don’t ring a bell with me. This Dipple dame was a blonde while she was living here. And she was fooling around with so many guys I couldn’t have kept track if I tried. Threw a known jewel thief out of her room one night. But he was a little grease monkey.”
“That wouldn’t have been him,” I observed. “She had round heels, huh?”
“The roundest. Regular nympho. I mean, this is a fun town, Frank, and we don’t like to spoil anyone’s vacation, see? But this one night she had about seven or eight guys up in her pad for a gang bang, and I had to get rough. Went up with a couple of other house dicks and tossed the whole bunch out. She left the next morning. Said something about looking for a place with some action.”
“She found action. But somehow I don’t think it was the kind of action she was looking for.”
“That’s for sure.” Jim smiled thinly. “You figure she tied in with this MacDonald and he bumped her off?”
“Could be,” I said. “We don’t have a motive. But she was carrying a lot of dough around with her, and dough is something this guy needs a lot of. Compulsive gambler.”
“Oh,” Jim grunted, “one of those. You try the casino yet?”
“Next stop,” I said. “I’ve been saving dessert for last.”
• • • The casino security chief was another man who didn’t want his name bruited about. So let’s call him Max. He was a short, thickset Italian with iron-gray hair and a perpetual look of boredom covering a steel-trap awareness of everything within range of his sleepy-looking eyes.
“MacDonald, MacDonald, MacDonald,” Max mused, staring down at the crowded floor through the one-way mirror hiding us from the patrons’ view. He shrugged and said, “Old MacDonald had a farm? That’s the only MacDonald I know.”
I went over it again, from the top. I described Duncan MacDonald, told Max about his gambling, and went into as much of his background as I knew while the little security man sat there as if he were having a hell of a time staying awake.
I was about ready to give up. I’d chased down one red herring after another since we’d found Sandra Dipple’s battered corpse in MacDonald’s stolen car. It was beginning to look like I was going to run out of leads before he ran out of the state.
Then Max pursed his lips thoughtfully and said, “Hit me again with that lead burning bit, Frank.”
“He installs lead shielding in dentist’s offices,” I said. “Like for X-rays.”
“Tall guy, you say? Good-looking, in a pimpy sort of way?”
I nodded. “Sounds like. Know him?”
“Not by the name of MacDonald,” Max replied. He swiveled in his seat and opened a drawer in a nearby steel desk. He leafed through a stack of index cards and pulled one out. He read it, nodded to himself, and said, “Malcolm Gordon. That’s the guy. Worked out at the radiation lab near the university a few months ago. Put together something they called a cobalt safe. Like out of lead plates.”
“Malcolm’s a Scotch name, isn’t it?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know? Last Malcolm I heard of was a black named Malcolm X.”
“It’s Scotch,” I insisted. “Just like Duncan’s Scotch and like I’ll bet Fraser is. Hell, he’s used Gordon twice! Once as a last name and once as a first name. I’ll lay you odds there’s somebody named Gordon in his family.”
“Looks Irish,” observed Max. “He was working for a shill, down the Strip, and walked out with his winnings. Very naughty boy.”
“What do you mean he looks Irish?” I blinked. “You haven’t got a picture of him, have you?”
“Sure,” Max replied. “You don’t think any club in Vegas is going to hire a dealer or a shill without they take a couple of snapshots, do you?” He handed the file card to me and continued, “This MacDonald, Gordon, Fraser, whatever the hell his name is, said he came to Vegas to work on some sort of technical jazz at the radiation lab. Liked the place so much he decided to hang around.”
I nodded, listening with half my mind while I studied a Polaroid print pasted to the card.
So this was Duncan MacDonald, Gordon Fraser, or whatever he was calling himself these days.
The man in the picture had been smiling into the camera when it was taken. He had a bright, too-easy smile. But he looked clean-cut, upright, and sincere. He’d have made a hell of a Bible salesman in the Midwest. The features were regular, handsome just this side of pretty, and had a pronounced Celtic cast. He looked something like that actor who played Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde.
At the rate he was going, Duncan MacDonald’s career was shaping up to be the same kind of pointless chase scene.
“I turned him down,” Max was saying. “Something about the kid rubbed me the wrong way. But they gave him a job shilling down at Phoebe’s. Know the place?”
“Little joint near the Frontier Village?”
“That’s Phoebe’s. Took them for a bundle, the way I got it.”
“How? Shills play with worthless chips, don’t they?”
“House gives them all the chips they want,” explained Max. “Only, naturally, they don’t cash them in. The shills move around the room, dropping chips wherever the action’s slow and moving on once they’ve got a few savages playing that particular table. Some of the savages have heard about shills, so they use regular chips. At Phoebe’s, this guy calling himself Gordon waited until one night when he was ahead of the house and cashed his winnings in. Nailed them for close to a couple of Gs.”
“But you just said the house won’t cash chips for a shill.”
“The guy used a confederate,” Max explained in a bored tone. “Passed his winnings to a friend, or maybe a couple of friends, and they went to the cashier while he stood across the room, looking innocent. After the chips were cashed, he waited until quitting time, handed in a handful of chips, picked up his pay, and walked away without looking back. Happens all the time.”
I started to object. Then I nodded and said, “They wouldn’t know they’d been taken until they totaled up the day’s take, would they?”
“You’re learning,” Max grunted.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
Max said, “Two, three weeks ago. Same time that Dipple dame cut
out, now that you mention it.”
“I think,” I said, getting to my feet, “I’d better have a talk with the house at Phoebe’s.”
“Make sure you flash your buzzer, Frank,” he said indifferently. “They’ve got some funny hairpins working down there.”
“Tough joint?”
“Mob joint,” he muttered. “Phoebe LeRoy’s okay. Used to be an actress on the Coast before she lost her shape. But she’s not the real owner.”
“Who is?” I asked.
“Look, Franky,” he sighed, “I’ve already stuck my neck out, huh? I mean, you want I should have it chopped off just because we’ve done each other a few favors?”
“One thing, Max,” I said, “one thing I’d like to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Two thousand dollars isn’t that much, on the Strip. You think anyone might lean on a guy who clipped that much? Or on a dame who helped him? I mean… lean hard?”
Max snorted, “You kidding? I know a couple of gorillas in this town who’d scrag you for a hundred clams. Maybe less if you got them mad. And, Franky, it ain’t nice to steal from the house when you’re working for it.”
• • • Phoebe LeRoy had made a movie with Gary Cooper one time, she said. You couldn’t prove it by me. She was a brassy, middle-aged blonde, with a rather astounding lung capacity and a set of false eyelashes she could have carried cocktail glasses on. She batted them at me provocatively as she offered me a seat on a white velvet sofa in her private office.
“Can I fix you a drink, Lieutenant, honey?” she asked by way of openers. I said something silly about being on duty and flashed the print of the photo they’d Xeroxed for me at the Sands.
“That mother-loving son of a syphilitic bitch!” she trilled, pressing a button on the intercom beside her and bellowing, “Tex, get your ass in here on the double!” in dulcet tones. Then she turned to me and smiled. “What’s he stolen now?”
“Couple of cars, technically,” I said. “We’re looking for him in connection with something heavier.”
“He knock somebody off?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s a switch,” she said with a puzzled smile.
The door opened and a man built something like a Mack truck came in. He scowled down at both of us from a rather imposing height advantage and growled, “Yeah?”
“Tex,” she said, “I want you to meet Lieutenant Talbot of the state police. Tex is our security man, Lieutenant. He can tell you more than I can about that no-good little snot Malcolm.”
“We talking about Malcolm Gordon?” Tex grinned, obviously enjoying a private joke of his own.
“We’re talking about the two-faced shit who walked out of here with his winnings, you smirking ape!”
“I thought you liked him.” Tex grinned again.
“I’d like him,” Phoebe LeRoy said murderously, “six feet under with a lily in his hand. Tell the lieutenant about the way he clipped us, for Chrissake.”
“I never wanted to hire him,” explained Tex. “He looked like a punk to me, and there was something mighty fishy about that story he gave us about being some kinda scientist out at the university. I checked around and found out he was only some kinda part-time help out there.”
“The radiation lab?”
“Yeah. Said he worked with atoms or something. Anyway, Phoebe here bought his story, or maybe she liked the way he… ah… talked.”
“The way you’re talking, Tex,” the blonde cut in ominously, “you’ll be looking for another job if you don’t watch that big mouth!”
“Yeah.” Tex nodded as if the thought failed to worry him. He grinned at me and continued, “He worked for us, off and on, for a couple of weeks. I noticed right off he was different from most of our regular shills. Like, this guy played to win. I mean, like it was his own money he was playing with, see?”
“Thought he was Nick the Greek, the little shit!” added Phoebe LeRoy helpfully.
“Lost, most of the time,” continued the burly Tex. “The guy was a born loser. Get ’em in here all the time. Guys who play too fast and don’t figure the odds. I remember thinking how it was a good thing he was playing with free chips, the way he kept throwing them down like he was afraid they’d maybe melt in his hands.”
“But he won the night he cut out,” I said.
“Had to happen, sooner or later.” Tex shrugged. “He got lucky on the wheel. Doubled up on the red and hit a winning streak. Should have known better than to trust him with three G’s in chips. But he had friends in the front office and—”
“Damn you!” shouted Phoebe LeRoy, her face livid under its pancake makeup. “You know I had nothing to do with him taking the club, you lying bastard!”
“Never said you was more than friends,” Tex answered, unperturbed, “but you can’t say that part’s a lie, Phoebe.” He looked at me and cracked, “Phoebe likes her studs young.”
“You… dirty… rotten… foul-mouthed—” the blonde began, winding up for a dramatic scene before I cut in with, “You think he passed the chips to someone else in the club? Someone who cashed them in and split with him later?”
“Only way it could have happened,” Tex agreed. “Only I wouldn’t make book on him splitting with anybody. He was a bad boy, Lieutenant.”
“I’ve got something I want you to look at,” I said, taking out one of the close-ups of Sandra Dipple we’d recovered from her dead husband’s impounded wallet. I said, “See if you recognize the girl in this photo.”
The big Texan studied the close-up for a moment. Then he frowned and said, “Seen her in here. But I can’t say I make any connection with this Gordon guy. She always have blond hair like that?”
“Not always,” I replied. “Would it make any difference if she had darker hair? Say red?”
“Just a minute,” muttered Tex. “I wanna check something.” He walked out, leaving me alone with the still flustered Phoebe LeRoy.
“Dirty-minded son of a bitch,” she hissed after him as the door closed.
I waited until she’d taken a slug from the glass on her desk before I asked casually, “Anything to it, Miss LeRoy? I’ve got a reason for asking.”
“Anything to what?” She sniffed. “You mean about me and Malcolm Gordon, or whatever you say his name was? We were friendly, if that’s what you mean.”
“How friendly?”
“Okay, real friendly.” She shrugged. “What the hell. I’m over twenty-one, you know. What I do on my own time is my own business, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” I soothed. “It’s just that we’ve heard this guy we’re looking for is, well, sort of a bedroom athlete. Seems to have a lot of power over women.”
“Power-shmower. He was a good lay.” She snorted. “He was young and good-looking and I took him home to raise a few times. He didn’t hypnotize me, if that’s what you mean.”
“What do you think his effect would be on a younger woman?”
“What do you think I am, an old bag?” She frowned. “I don’t think that was very nice, Lieutenant.”
“We think he’s traveling with a young girl. A not-very-pretty girl who was probably a virgin when she met him,” I explained. “What do you think, as a woman of the world, he’d be able to get a girl like that to do?”
“You name it.” She shrugged. Then she grinned, a bit roguishly, and added, “He was damned good in bed. I don’t mind admitting he’d have driven me out of my skull a few years and five husbands ago.”
Before we could discuss her sex life further, the man called Tex came back into the room. He was wearing a pleased look as he handed me a Xerox copy of a card similar to the one Max had shown me earlier. There was a blurred photo of a dark-haired girl in a midriff bolero outfit. It looked very much like the late Sandra Dipple.
“This was taken at the Club Celeste,” he said. “Dame worked for them about a week. Same MO. Hit a winning streak, handed her chips to somebody, and took off!”
The name Harriet Do
rmer was printed under the picture, along with a Social Security number. I took out my pocket log and checked the information we had on Sandra Dipple. Her Social Security number was exactly transposed, end for end, with the number she’d given as Harriet Dormer’s when she applied for a job as a shill.
“The way we figure it,” explained Tex, “they both took jobs as shills about the same time. She was working the day shift. He worked here at night. Each one joined the other on their time off and waited for a big win. Then they slipped chips to one another, cashed them with each other’s houses, and then live happily until we catch them!”
“She didn’t live happily,” I muttered. “At least, not very long.”
“She’s dead?” Tex blinked. He seemed sincerely surprised and a little disappointed.
I told them she’d been found dead, not giving out too many details, and added that MacDonald was wanted for questioning in connection with her death.
Tex let out a low whistle. Then, shooting a sidelong glance at Miss LeRoy, he said, “I knew he was a bad one. But I wouldn’t worry too hard about catching him, Lieutenant.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
Tex dropped his eyes and shrugged. “It’s not considered polite, in some circles, to rook the house you’re shilling for.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you ain’t got much time, if you want to take him alive.”
“He’s got a gun looking for him?”
“Maybe.” Tex grinned. “Maybe more than one. Why don’t you just sit back and relax, Lieutenant? He ain’t gonna get far. And you might get caught in the cross fire.”
I smiled. “Thanks for the advice, but while we’re handing out friendly warnings, you might pass the word that he’s traveling with an innocent bystander. She’s got red hair. If somebody were to mistake her for the Dipple woman, we’d take a very dim view of the matter. You read me?”
“Loud and clear.” Tex nodded. “But it ain’t up to me, Lieutenant. I don’t give no orders. I just hear what I hear.”
“No chance of calling off the wolves?”
“Not a Chinaman’s, Lieutenant. You want to take MacDonald alive and save that other redhead from a sudden dose of leaking skin, you better move fast!”