by Parnell Hall
“I told this to Tallman. He wouldn’t listen. He said, ‘Bullshit, he’s holding out on you.’”
She looked at me. “Tallman’s not very bright.”
“I’ll buy that. Go on.”
“Well, he wouldn’t give up. He says Dunleavy’s holding out on me because he thinks I’m working for him. For Tallman, I mean. I gotta relax him, make him feel good, make him think I’m on his side.”
She stopped. Took a breath. Looked at me.
“So he tells me to cheat for him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. Look, I’m a blackjack dealer, and a good one. And I know how to stack a deck. I know how to cheat. Most of Tallman’s dealers do. ’Cause he’s desperate for money, see? And we have orders, if there’s chance of some guy making a big run on the bank, to knock him back, you know what I mean?
“But this time Tallman tells me to cheat the other way. To cheat for Dunleavy.” She raised her eyebrows ironically. “Because of his big stock-trading score. So he says, ‘Cheat for him. Let him win money to pay back Nubar. Cheat for him big, just so it don’t go over ten thousand a night.’”
“How could you do that?”
“Easy. I worked it out with Dunleavy. I stacked the deck according to how many players there were at the table. The indicator was the last card dealt the previous time through the deck. Any time that came up as the last card dealt in a hand, it meant Dunleavy would win the next hand.”
“What was to stop Dunleavy from breaking the bank?”
“Two things. One, the indicator was only gonna come up right every five or six times through the deck. And then Tallman had me report exactly how much Dunleavy won. He’d pass the information on to Nubar, so Nubar’d be sure to take most of it and only leave him with a small stake, so he’d have to work his way up again. Of course, Dunleavy knew that Nubar had a spy in the casino. He just never knew it was me.”
“And how did Dunleavy come to hire Steerwell? You say it wasn’t a set-up. Well, that’s the coincidence I don’t buy.”
“It wasn’t a coincidence. And it wasn’t a set-up, either. At least, I don’t think it was. I’ll tell you how it happened. See, Dunleavy fell for me hard, of course.” She smiled. “That’s not being conceited. You throw a guy a girl and ten grand a night, and he’s gonna fall hard.
“But the thing is, he was hooked bad. I didn’t want to encourage him, but I couldn’t discourage him, either. Not with Tallman egging me on. So anyway, Harold went overboard. Sold himself on the idea of dumping his wife and taking up with me. Except, what with me in the picture, Harold figured his wife’s lawyers would take him to the cleaners. He was pretty sure she had some outside interests and he wanted to get the goods on her, you know, so when the lawyers started haggling, it would be tit for tat. So he told me he was going to hire a private detective.
“That’s when I went to Tallman and told him this thing was going too far, and it had to stop. I mean, I wasn’t going through a marriage ceremony with this guy. Believe me, I was really upset.
“Tallman told me to calm down, it wouldn’t be that much longer, just kid the guy along.
“Anyway, Tallman figured if Dunleavy wanted to hire a private detective, fine, let him do it. Only he didn’t like the idea of Harold taking anyone into his confidence, even on a small thing like that. And he wanted to keep tabs on him.
“So he told me to send him to Minton.”
My eyes widened. “So that’s why Dunleavy hired Steerwell.”
“That’s right. And it wasn’t a set-up. At least, I don’t think it was. I don’t know anything about the murders. I didn’t know they were gonna happen, you see.”
“But you knew after.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you heard about the murders. You knew what had happened. You knew who’d done it.”
She was shaking her head back and forth. “No, no. You have to believe me. I didn’t know. There was no way I could know. It makes sense now, when you tell me about it. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Well, you’re all wet about some of it.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Like the bit about Minton being Tallman’s partner.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Hell, no. Why would Minton want to hook up with Tallman? The casino was in deep hock to Nubar. You don’t jump on a sinking ship. Minton was putting the bite on him, that’s all.”
I frowned. “Wait a minute. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What?”
“You said Tallman told you to send Dunleavy to Minton.”
“Right.”
“Why would he do that if Minton was putting the bite on him?”
“Yeah. That surprised me, too. I asked him. Tallman said he and Minton had made a deal. At the time I didn’t know what the deal was. Now I do.”
“What?”
“What you said. A partnership. If Minton took care of Nubar.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. It’s just the only thing that makes sense. Minton was squeezing Tallman. Nubar was squeezing Tallman. Tallman made a deal with Minton. You tell me Minton killed Nubar. If that’s true, it all makes sense. With Nubar out of the way, the casino’s a gold mine. So that had to be the deal. Minton leveraged himself a partnership with Tallman in return for taking care of Nubar.”
I thought that over. It sounded good to me. Of course, by then my mind was mush and anything would have sounded good to me, but even so I figured she was probably right.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get back to Harold Dunleavy.”
“What about him?”
“Have you seen him since the murders?”
“Yeah. He was in there that night. I didn’t talk to him then, of course. We never spoke to each other in the casino. Just dealer and customer.
“He was pretty cool, all things considered, but I could tell he was pretty shaken. I didn’t know about the murders then, so I didn’t know what was wrong. But I knew it was something. He just wasn’t himself. He missed a couple of key cards and blew a couple of big bets. It wasn’t like him. Sometimes I’d fuck up the deal and blow it for him—it’s hard to stack the bottom of the deck, believe me—but not Harold. He’d be pissed as hell when that happened.
“Except that night. He kept making mistakes. Later that night I found out why. He’d gone out to Steerwell’s, walked in and found him dead.”
“He told you that?”
“Sure he did. But the thing was, he didn’t know about Nubar. He didn’t find out till we heard it on the news. He was furious with himself. Actually, he was more scared at what Nubar was gonna do to him for not winning enough money than he was about finding Steerwell’s body.
“It came on the news. We’d been listening to the radio, listening to the description of the man who ran in and out of Steerwell’s house. And Harold’s sitting there shaking in his boots, figuring the cops are gonna I.D. him. And then the news about Nubar came on.
“It was a shock, but it was a big relief, too. It actually calmed Harold down.”
“How come he went out to Steerwell’s?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Big difference. It’s the difference between whether he was set up or he just stumbled into it.”
“I see. Well, Harold called Minton’s agency looking for Steerwell and spoke to the secretary there.”
“He give his name?”
“No.”
“Go on.”
“The secretary said Steerwell wasn’t there and wasn’t coming in. Harold asked how come, and the secretary, who must be dumb as a board, tells him. She says Steerwell called in that morning about some pictures that got lost. I mean, isn’t that a hell of a thing to tell a client? So Harold gets hysterical, ’cause he figures they’re pictures Steerwell took for him. So he pumps the secretary for information, and like a dope she gives it to him. She says Steerwell called in early in the mornin
g hysterical because somebody else picked up his pictures at the Photomat, and he wants to know where the hell they are. The secretary looks around and can’t find them, and the guy who signed for the pictures doesn’t even work there. So the secretary decides the pictures have been stolen and she files a complaint with the police, even though Steerwell tells her not to. He didn’t want the police to have anything to do with it.
“Of course, that makes Harold even more hysterical. He doesn’t want the police to have anything to do with it any more than Steerwell. So he worms Steerwell’s address out of this secretary and goes out there and finds him dead.”
She paused. Looked at me. “Now you know as much about it as I do.”
I thought that over. “I see,” I said. “Harold wasn’t the fall guy. He just blundered into it.”
“That’s right,” she said. “See. I didn’t set him up. I didn’t. You gotta believe me.”
“Where’s Harold now?”
“Home, probably. I told him to stay away, to lie low, until all this blows over. It didn’t take that much convincing. The guy’s pretty scared.”
“I would imagine.” I rubbed my head. “All right. Tell me something.”
“What?”
“About Harold Dunleavy.”
“What about him?”
“You spent a lot of time with him, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So what did you think of him?”
She stared at me. “Hey. I told you. Tallman told me to work on him.”
“I know. But aside from that. What was he like?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I just do. Humor me.”
I could tell she thought it was a stupid question. But she wasn’t going to argue with a homicide cop.
“Well, it’s like I told you. Harold’s a little guy trying to be a big guy. That’s his whole thing. That’s what he saw in me, basically. A chance to be a big shot. But he’s not. And he never will be. You know why? Because he doesn’t have the stuff. He’s not ruthless enough, you know what I mean?”
“Give me an example.”
“Well, like hiring Steerwell.”
“What about it?”
“Well, when he hired him, there he was coming off with this big ‘I’m going to get the goods on my wife’ shit, you know? But at the same time, I could tell he was afraid Steerwell really would find out something about his wife. And he didn’t want that. Some guys are funny that way, you know?”
I knew.
And it was the best news I’d heard all day.
She looked at me with pleading eyes.
“Now look. I told you all I know. I swear it. I had nothing to do with these murders. So what’s going to happen to me?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Let me think a minute.” I looked at her. “Where you from?”
“Salt Lake City.”
“How long you been out here?”
“A year and a half”
“Got any friends back there?”
She blinked her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I do.” There was a wistful quality in her voice. “There was a guy back there. A nice guy. He was pretty strong for me. Sometimes I wonder if he still is.”
“It might be a good time to find out.”
She stared at me. “What are you saying?”
“All right, look,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I’m private. But everything else I told you is true. This case is busting wide open and those guys are going down. You can either go with ’em or you can get out. If I were you, I’d get out.”
“Who are you?” she said.
“I’m the guy the witnesses I.D.’d. The guy they took for Dunleavy.”
“You don’t look a thing like him.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I happen to be a private detective working on the case. But it so happens I’m sick of being a murder suspect, so everything is coming down. Before it does, I’m advising you to get out.
“Now look, there’s cops following me, so they’ll know I’ve come here, but that’s it. It’s the middle of the night, they won’t have that many men on the job. They’ll take note of you, but they won’t put a tail on you till tomorrow. They won’t have the manpower. I figure you got a couple of hours at least.
“So, you got any money?”
“Yeah. I got some.”
“All right, pack your bags and get out. Start packing now. I’ll leave here and lead the cops on a chase and give you time to get away. Anything you can take with you, take. Anything you can’t, leave. Don’t have anything shipped. Don’t leave a trace. Don’t travel under your right name.
“What is your right name, by the way?”
That startled her. “It’s Margery.”
“All right, Margery, it’s nice to meet you, now get out.”
She stood up and stared at me. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m a sucker for a pretty face. Never mind. Just go.”
“But my life here.”
“Yeah. Some kind of life. Listen, after guys like Dunleavy and Tallman, that guy in Salt Lake City’s gonna look awful good.”
I got up and went to the door. She followed me.
“Fifteen minutes, no longer,” I said. “Then you go.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. Her eyes were misted over. “You’re pretty wonderful, you know that?” she said.
I smiled and chucked her under the chin. I was doing Bogart. I almost said, “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”
I didn’t. What I said was, “I sure wish you could tell that to a homicide cop named Barnes.”
33.
IT’S GREAT WHEN you’ve lost your mind. When you’re so far over the edge that what you do doesn’t seem to matter anymore. And it’s a good thing I had lost it, because, as I said, I’m a devout coward, and the things I was about to do were things I wouldn’t normally have done.
Maybe that’s not true. ’Cause somehow I always manage to do the things I have to do. Like on the job for Richard, when sometimes I have to go into some rundown project next to a Methadone clinic with a bunch of junkies hanging out all over the place. And me, a white man in a suit and tie, the only one in the area, standing out like a sore thumb, looking like a cop or an easy mark.
It isn’t sane to go in there, but I have to, so I do. And I don’t psych myself up to do it. I don’t say, “Fuck it, you’re Stanley Hastings, private detective, now get in there and kick some ass.” I just go in there scared out of my mind and do it because I have to.
And in the end, that’s what it comes down to: you just do it because you have to.
And the things I did in Atlantic City, I did because I had to, whether I was in my right mind or not.
Now, you might argue I had to be out of my mind to let Margery Carson go. But that was actually one of the sanest things I did. The thing was, she could have got me off the hook with the cops. She could have told the cops I wasn’t the guy who hired Steerwell. That would have branded Minton’s identification as false and made him a liar. Then the identifications of Miss Busybody and the secretary would have collapsed as well.
That would have got me out of it, but it would have got Harold Dunleavy right into it. And, of course, in spite of everything, I was still obeying the prime directive. Getting her out of there was not only protecting Harold Dunleavy from the cops, it was removing Harold Dunleavy’s prime source of temptation, which could go a long way toward settling his marital woes. Not that the Dunleavys necessarily had any marriage left to patch up, but if they did, it couldn’t hurt.
The other thing was, situations change. Circumstances alter. You have to roll with the punches. Go with the flow. Adjust your parameters and full speed ahead.
Yeah, Margery Carson probably could have done a pretty good job of convincing the police I hadn’t hired Steerwell.
But you see, the thing was, by that time I had decided that, all things considered, I probably had hired Steerwell.
34.
; “I’M HERE TO SETTLE my bill.”
The dumb secretary at Minton’s stared at me as if she’d seen a ghost. I couldn’t blame her. After all, here I was. The murderer. The one that she’d I.D.’d. Standing there in front of her, large as life. Probably hell-bent on revenge.
“What?” she croaked.
“My name’s Stanley Hastings and I’ve come to pay my bill. Can I have it, please?”
“I ... I ...”
“I haven’t got all day, you know. Do you handle the bookkeeping or don’t you?”
“I ... I ... Well, Mr. Minton, you see ...”
“Fine. Then I’d better talk to Minton.”
“Yes ... well ...”
The secretary gulped twice and dove for the phone.
She hit the intercom button. “Mr. Minton ... Sorry to bother you, sir. There’s a gentleman here insists on paying his bill ... That’s right. A Mr. Stanley Hastings ... Yes, sir.”
The secretary hung up the phone and looked at me sideways. I’ve heard of someone looking at someone sideways before, but she took the cake. I swear she gave me a straight profile.
“Go right in,” she said.
I stepped around the desk, pushed the door open and went in.
Minton was seated at his desk. I could see that the top drawer was open. I assumed that there was a gun in it. If so, it meant Minton had seen the same old movies I had.
“And what can I do for you, Mr. Hastings?” Minton said.
“I’m here to pay my bill.”
“What bill?”
“You ought to know. The one you told the cops about. The bill for hiring Steerwell.”
“Really?” Minton said. “I thought you told the cops you didn’t hire Steerwell.”
I smiled. “Yes, but one doesn’t always tell the cops the truth, now does one, Mr. Minton?”
Minton furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure I understand this. You are now—pardon me if I use the word—admitting that you hired Steerwell?”
“Of course I hired Steerwell. Your secretary says I hired Steerwell. You say I hired Steerwell. Don’t you think I’d be a damn fool to try to deny I hired Steerwell? All right. I hired him, and I’m here to pay the bill.”
Minton looked at me narrowly. “I’m not sure I understand. No, I take that back. I’m certain I don’t understand.”