“Not all the message, Temp. Who do you have to impress here, for God’s sake?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I tried to peddle the deal in New York, Hugh. That’s why I went there. I had good contacts. I was dickering with two groups. They both liked the sound of it. I had my chance to grab one or the other, but it looked like a golden chance to improve my end of the thing by playing one against the other. And one day they both turned ice cold. I couldn’t imagine why until one of them was kind enough to tell me to look up a gossip column in a paper of the previous day. I can quote the stinking thing by heart, Hugh. ‘Temple Shannard, golden-tongued promoter who operates in the Bahamas, and whose dreams lately have been turning to nightmares, is in the city with his luscious wife trying to scare up those heavy funds which may or may not keep his tottering tourist empire solvent’ That did it, old boy. That did it to me good. I couldn’t trace the tipster who did me the dirty, and I can’t sue even if it is actionable, which I doubt. That’s the way my luck has been running.”
“What do you do now?”
He smiled at Hugh in a somewhat apologetic way. “I take a suite in Las Vegas and throw myself on the mercy of my good friend, Hugh Darren.”
“If I understand what you mean, I don’t think I like it, Temp.”
“The money is here, Hugh. It’s a resort business. Men who run deals like this know how to analyze deals like mine. And according to my … ah … researches, there is a lot of homeless, unidentified cash in this area looking for a legitimate home away from home.”
“I guess I better have that next drink. Temp.”
“Let me make it, boy. I know what you’re thinking and … what you’re remembering.”
“A long talk in your house one night, Temp.”
“I knew you’d remember that. I was very noble and idealistic, wasn’t I?”
“I wouldn’t have called it that.”
Shannard turned and said in oratorical tones, “We men who love the Islands have an unwritten agreement to keep important holdings out of the hands of the hoodlums and sharpshooters, and the front men they use. We have been largely successful in this, and we will continue to keep the Islands clean.” He brought Hugh his drink and said in a soft and empty voice, “I wasn’t being squeezed then, pal. I could afford high principles. Now it gets down to survival. I need the money. And I can’t let them bring me crashing down because of something I once thought I believed. But I will try to set it up in such a way that I’ll have a long-term contract to operate the venture.”
“They would have seventy per cent to your thirty, so how long would that last?”
“Just so long as I run it the way they want it run.”
“Exactly.”
“Hugh, I love you like you were my kid brother.” There was a thickening of his voice that surprised Darren. Shannard used to be more immune to the effects of a few drinks. “I love you dearly, but I could get a little goddam tired of your attitude of righteousness and disapproval.”
“I do disapprove, Temp. Hell, those islands are my future. Castro ran the syndicate operation out of Cuba—for all the wrong reasons—but he ran the boys out, and it would be a nice new place to light, and I don’t want to spend my future in a spread-out version of Batista’s Havana.”
“No sir! You’re too decent a fellow for that to happen to. But still you’ll come to this town and work, and you’re not too proud to take their money. That’s a double standard, isn’t it? This town is a big milking machine, milking the innocent, and you’re right in here, doing your part.”
“You better get something straight, Temp. I don’t want to get sore at you. I operate this hotel. Food, rooms, drinks. I have nothing to do with the casino operation. The hotel problems are the same as you’d find in New York, Miami or Montreal. I’m worth what I’m paid. It was a good offer and I took it. So kindly don’t confuse what I’m doing with what you’re thinking of doing.”
“Aren’t you a little naive?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hugh, you remind me of an old old joke about the innocent virgin who took a job in a whorehouse, doing mending and light housework. A friend tried to talk her out of it by saying to her that even though it was honest labor she was doing, she would be affected by the dreadful environment. She insisted that she would be untouched by what might be going on around her. Several months later the friend met her on the street and asked her how her job was going. She said it was going very well, and the friend had been wrong in thinking it would change her in any way. So the friend asked her if that was still the limit of her duties, the dusting and scrubbing and mending. The maiden said, ‘Yes, that’s really all I do’ She paused and blushed prettily. ‘But sometimes, like on Saturday night, when there’s a big rush of business, I just come in and help out a little’ ”
“That’s hilarious,” Hugh said stiffly.
They stared at each other. Shannard said gently, “I’m nearly fifty-one years old, Hugh. And I haven’t got the guts to start from scratch. You’re a little bit younger than Vicky. Somehow I don’t think we should be fighting.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“I’ll see what I can do to develop my own contacts, Hugh.”
“There’s no need of that. I’ll set up an appointment with Al Marta.”
“Is he … well-connected?”
“Temp, they don’t publish a list of officers and directors, and they aren’t listed on the exchange, so you can’t get hold of a balance sheet. He lives here. He owns thirty per cent of the place. He has a whole slew of other business operations here and over into Arizona. And I have the idea he is one of the men in the area you could talk to who could check the deal out with … the top brass you have in mind. Okay?”
“So let’s be grateful we don’t have to talk about the damn thing any more tonight.”
“I’ve got some rounds to make and errands to do.” Hugh looked at his watch. “Suppose I meet you two at about eight o’clock in the Little Room for dinner, and after that we can catch the acts in the Afrique Bar.”
“Sounds like fun,” Temp said.
As Hugh walked back toward the elevators he experienced a feeling of depression that surprised him with its bleakness. Temple and Vicki had always seemed so invulnerable, so securely stationed in their gay and profitable world, accustomed to a kind of success that required short periods of very hard work by Temp which freed them for long times of the fun they had together. This revelation of crisis made Hugh feel more vulnerable, less confident of his own plans and purposes.
When Hugh met the Shannards at eight o’clock in the Little Room, he told them he had asked Betty Dawson to join them for dinner, explaining that she was an entertainer working at the Cameroon. He had hoped to state this in a way that would give them no particular clue, but he saw a quick interest in Vicky’s eyes.
“Please don’t tell me there is a woman who has gotten past your guard, my pet,” Vicky said.
“She’s a nice gal and a good friend,” Hugh said, slightly annoyed.
“Drink to all nice gals,” Temp said thickly. They both looked at him with concealed apprehension, trying to guess whether he would spoil the evening. He was not really bad, but he was as drunk as Hugh had ever seen him.
“Hugh has no drink yet, and mine is gone, darling, so let’s make a loving cup out of that lovely toast, shall we?” Vicky said, and reached for Temp’s double bourbon on the rocks.
He surrendered it with suspicion and reluctance. She drank and handed it to Hugh. When Temp got his glass back he glowered at the amount remaining and tossed it off and said, “Surrounded by spongers, by God.”
When Hugh ordered the next round he gave the waiter an inconspicuous signal. From then on Temp would be given drinks that would look hearty, but would be as innocuous as a light wine. His bourbon would come out of one of the special bottles filled with liquor which had been simmered until little alcoho
l remained. And his previous drinking would keep him from detecting the subterfuge. It was a much more civilized device than refusing to serve the unruly drunk. And considerably more gracious than the chloral hydrate which would end all drinking for the evening.
It was a local solution to a special problem. A man who became too drunk could not gamble. A man refused service would go elsewhere. A man knocked out could not gamble. But a man could, with doctored drinks, be sustained at the outer limits of his own precarious control until he had made his appropriate donation to the house percentages. Temple Shannard was not at the point where a waiter or bartender would have made that decision, but the availability of the device gave Hugh a chance to make the evening more pleasant.
Betty Dawson found herself unduly tense about meeting Hugh’s friends. She took time and care in the selection of what to wear, and with her makeup. After her final inspection of herself in her full-length mirror, wearing the strapless sheath top in dull coral, and the long full skirt in a fine stripe of black and coral, she decided she looked as well as she could look. The top seemed to exaggerate slightly a sweep of bosom she believed unduly bountiful, but it also emphasized the shoulders, which she hoped were wide enough to sustain that hammocked abundance.
“You’ll have to do, babe,” she told herself. “And what the hell am I trying to prove anyway?”
As she went to the table, and throughout the introductions and the first few minutes of small talk, she was so involved with reinforcing the impression she had planned to make that she had no time for observation. But with all the facets of her entrance accomplished, she was able to be aware of Hugh’s friends, and she felt a sense of disappointment as she overtly studied them. They did not match his glowing descriptions. The blonde had an empty prettiness, but there was a look of frigid calculation in her eyes, and a slight cast of piggishness to her nose and mouth. The man was just drunk enough so it was difficult to say what he was like.
And, for a meeting of old friends, the attitude at the table was all wrong. There was a strain which shouldn’t be there, and she had the wisdom to know she was not responsible for it. She detected, in Hugh, a faint flavor of apology. These things, she knew, could happen. Perhaps this pair was marvelous over in the Bahamas, but inadequate here. And sometimes people outgrow each other in as little as the eight months since he had last seen them. She knew from the tentative glances Hugh gave her across the round table that the apology was for them rather than for her. Had it been for her, she could not have forgiven him.
Vicky, on her left, chose a time when the men had started to talk of Bahama politics to say, “What sort of bit do you do, Betty?”
“Horrible people say it’s a magic act. Without a voice, I sing. And accompany myself with a no-talent piano, Vicky.”
“But you’re so marvelous to look at. That must be a help. I do hope we’ll be able to see you tonight.”
“You can, if you don’t collapse early. I start at midnight.”
“Hugh has been telling us you’ve been here for years.”
And that, Betty thought, is a sharp switchblade you carry around, little blonde. “If I can hold out for ten, they’ll give me a gold watch and a testimonial banquet.”
“I should think your agent would want you to have bookings in other places.”
Betty looked at her with amusement. “I didn’t know you’d ever been with it, pal. That’s an inside comment, isn’t it?”
“It was all a very long time ago.”
“What did you do?”
Vicky gave a little lift of her snug, padded shoulders. “A spot of singing and dancing. I wasn’t very good, actually. My voice is too small.”
“What sort of places, Vicky?”
The blonde’s little smile was very bland. “Oh, you wouldn’t know any of them, darling. I never worked in this country.” She sipped her drink. “As a matter of fact, I gave it all up when I was twenty, over three years before I met Temp. My guardian was always raising such a horrid fuss about it, you know. He didn’t think it a suitable thing for me to do. And I guess it wasn’t, really.”
“Performers are socially unacceptable, of course.”
“But I didn’t mean it that way, darling! Don’t be cross with me. It’s really very different in this country, you know. People have so much more chance to do what they want to do. Without criticism. It must give you such a wonderful sense of freedom.”
“Oh, it does!” Betty said. “I’m a free spirit, all right. Self-expression Admiration. Free meals.”
At that moment one of the desk clerks approached the table. Hugh apologized and stood up quickly. They talked in low tones and Hugh said he would be back in a few minutes, to go right ahead. Their dinner was being served. With Hugh gone. Temp found it necessary to explain to Betty how you went about getting a ketch built at Abaco, ignoring Vicky’s attempts to divert him to a more suitable pattern of conversation. In spite of her absolute indifference to how you went about getting a boat built, Betty found herself liking the man. He was deeply troubled by something. He was trying to sustain a flavor of holiday in his own way.
When Hugh came back he seemed upset. “What was it?” Betty asked.
“Some damn foolishness in the parking lot. The problem was to find the quietest way to handle it. A married man from San Diego is in town with his girl friend. Somebody tipped the wife off. She’s been laying for them. She tried to run them down in the parking lot when they were walking out to his car. She missed him, broke the girlfriend’s leg, and clobbered the hell out of three parked cars.”
“How veddy violent!” Vicky said.
“The police in this town are good. They have to be,” Hugh said. His mouth twisted in a sardonic way. “Nothing must upset the fun times of the merrymakers, or bring any realistic note to fantasyland. My people are trained to put the lid on as quickly as possible. And so I had to coordinate how three very chastened people should be handled. Attempted murder by motor vehicle isn’t an attractive story. So a lady lost control of her car. That’s all.”
“Do you have this sort of thing often, actually?” Vicky asked.
Hugh looked at her patiently. “Vicky, dear, when you give people the maximum opportunity to make damn fools of themselves, sexually, financially and alcoholically, in an environment that makes movie sets look like low-cost housing, all sorts of things happen often. We get one fat spectrum of trouble out here along the Strip, and down in town they get all the other kinds. Down in town they have fun with the floaters, the winos, the junkies, the bums and tramps and sharpshooters who drift in looking for enchantment. The thing that spices the whole pudding is the divorce-mill operation. The severed ones have a kind of emotional trauma that makes them reckless.”
With a sidelong glance at Betty, Vicky said, “You must be getting a very extensive education here, you poor boy!”
Betty turned directly toward Vicky Shannard. “At least, darling, he’s learning to identify a phony at forty paces, and that’s something that will benefit him all his life.”
“But I think Hugh always had good instincts about people,” Vicky protested.
“In that case, we should both be proud to be his female friends, darling,” Betty said, and enjoyed the sudden pinkness of Vicky’s dainty little ears.
After dinner the four of them sat at a good table in the Afrique Bar, and at a little after eleven Betty excused herself to go change for her night’s work.
“What do you think of her?” Hugh asked, and then cursed himself for his illuminating display of eagerness.
“All in all,” Vicky said judiciously, “I think she’s quite nice, Hugh. It must be very … satisfying to you to have a close friendship with her. But I rather suspect she is considerably more attractive in … this particular context than she would be, say, in the Islands. She seems so … suitable to this sort of a place.”
“Murrroooww,” Temp said.
“Do be quiet, ducks,” Vicky told him firmly. “Hugh asked us, and I felt an obligation
to give him my opinion, my veddy honest opinion. If I suspected for one moment that he had more than a … casual interest in this … entertainment person, I would certainly be much less kind in my remarks.”
“How do you mean?” Hugh demanded.
She smiled at him and reached to touch his cheek. “You’re so wonderfully loyal to your friends, my dear. It’s very earnest and becoming. But shall we drop it, please? She is really, as I said, quite nice. But it would take a very long search to find any girl nice enough for you. Remember how I used to try?”
“She’s still trying,” Temp said. “She’s still giving you the hard sell in Nassau.”
When Betty did her first forty-minute session, Hugh was conscious of a subtle lack of control and conviction. She lacked her usual ability to silence her audience completely, so that at times it was difficult to hear her. Her timing seemed slightly off.
After she rejoined the table he eventually excused himself and said goodnight to them. He had been up for twenty hours, and they had not been easy hours, and no week end was ever without constant demands on his energies and attention.
He clambered slowly up and out of sleep at six-thirty, squinting through the glare of his bedside light until he could make out Betty’s smiling face. She sat close to him on the edge of his bed in her skin-tight gold lame costume, wearing her professional makeup. She bent over and kissed him.
“This is a brutal invasion of privacy, my dearest,” she whispered. “But I was lonely. I didn’t get to say word one to you all evening.”
He found her hand, turned it and kissed the palm. “I’ll give you a special medal for each invasion, lady.”
“Now I know you’re awake! Darling, I am sorry I was so lousy on the first set. I think that female got to me. I shouldn’t have let her, but she did.”
“I couldn’t understand why she was using the needle.”
“Can’t you? That one is an acquisitive bitch. She has to keep a firm hold on everything in sight. I got back into the swing when I went on again. But I didn’t rejoin them. I didn’t have a chance. I had to stop at the bar a moment on my way back to the table to do the greeting-old-fans bit, and when I looked over I could tell they were having one of those grim quarrels, so I prolonged the stay at the bar. She marched out and Temp came over and said a very gracious goodnight. You know, I like him, Hugh. But what the hell is eating him?”
The Only Girl in the Game Page 9