The Only Girl in the Game

by John D. MacDonald

“The forms and papers will be pure horror. It’s terribly awkward to die so far from home. I shall phone Dicky Armbruster. You remember him, of course—our long-suffering barrister in Nassau—and unload most of this problem on him. Like a perfect coward, I wired Temp’s children rather than ringing them up. But I think I should phone them, a little later. It may be possible to arrange to bury him in a family plot in the States. His first wife is buried there, but I shan’t mind that. That would be a macabre jealousy indeed.”

  “But how will you manage, Vicky? How will you be fixed?”

  “Perhaps that was what Temp had on his mind, Hugh. I believe I shall be quite well-situated after the dust settles. We have a very small estate tax in the Bahamas, you know. And poor Temp carried a large amount of life assurance. I never urged him to do so. In fact I rather resented the size of the payments we had to make. But he felt, being older than I, that it was only right to give me as much protection as he could afford. I do not believe that some of his creditors will be able to come back on me for payment. And I believe the others will be inclined to be patient. It would be dreadfully bad form to press me, wouldn’t it? So I should be able to retain his land holdings and then, because I have no head for business, put it all in the hands of some terribly earnest bank officer and let him manage it for me. I will have the house, of course, and I can sell it and buy or build something smaller and easier to manage.”

  “I didn’t know you had it all thought out.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t! I’ve been thinking aloud. I know he has borrowed against his policies, but that should only be a small dent in their face value.”

  “I feel sick about this, Vicky. Depressed and sick.”

  She reached out and touched his hand with a quick and almost deliberate shyness. “Of course, you poor dear. I’d forgotten how much you were planning on poor Temp to finance your little hotel.”

  He felt his face turn hot. “I didn’t mean that, damn it!”

  She looked at him with gentle mockery, her China-blue eyes bright. “Is there any good reason, my darling Hugh, why old friends should try to play noble games with each other? Would you care to try to tell me that the money has not entered your mind?”

  “Well … I think it’s a perfectly natural thing that I should relate it to my plans … when you’ve dreamed of something for so long …”

  She leaned toward him in a way that created a special intimacy. “We are much more alike than you would ever admit. I know that. I’ve always felt that, Hugh.”

  “How can I possibly answer a statement like that?”

  “Just don’t try,” she said, and stood up. “Old friends should not forsake each other, my dear. When you have reached your … monetary goal, please do come to Nassau and talk to me about it. You can visit me at my small house, and we shall plot and scheme to see if we cannot find a way to give you your heart’s desire. You will be a great comfort to a lonely widow, my dear. I do not believe I will marry again. I shall concentrate on becoming a dowager, with many cats and jasmine tea, absolutely clanking with tiresome bracelets and brooches. As for now, I shall find you and say good-bye to you before I leave.”

  She turned, frowning, her hand on the door latch, and said, “Will it be necessary to tender me a bill for our charges here?”

  “No. Don’t even think about it.”

  “You’re very sweet. I’ll go up now and pack poor Temp’s things and make those disheartening telephone calls. Oh, would you like to look over Temp’s things and select something … as a keepsake?”

  “I … I really don’t …”

  “I shall send you down his lighter, Hugh. You must have noticed it. It’s solid gold and quite pretty. I think he would want you to have it, you know.”

  The door swung shut behind her. He sat very still and closed his eyes and searched his heart for the tears he had been saving to shed for Temp, but he found that she had managed to dry them up. In some way beyond his understanding she had achieved a subtle distortion in his image of Temple Shannard.

  In death the man was without dignity. He was a fool who had burst his explosive blood onto the whitewalls of a parked Cadillac. He was a “fell or jumped” in the police records. He was a sealed box that would travel eastward. He had not even left a mark at the edge of the parking lot. After the sawdust had been spread and shoveled, the area had been hosed down, and the sun had dried it in minutes. The ambulance had picked up a broken something from under a tarp, and there had been no siren, and there would be no reference in any public records as to the actual name of the hotel, or to the fact that he had lost as much as one dollar in any casino.

  And she had extended that distortion from Temp to him, had reduced his own stature in the same proportion. He felt smaller and meaner and more selfish than he had believed himself to be. Not only had she made him conscious of his financial interest in Temp’s death, but she had sown a sickly seed of intrigue, using that talk of “great comfort to a lonely widow” to bring his inadvertent conjecture into focus upon the richness of her breasts and hips and the mature and milky textures of her. It all had the effect of burying Temp too quickly.

  It seemed to Hugh as he sat there that this was a very bad place on the face of the earth, that it was unwise to bring to this place any decent impulse or emotion, because there was a curiously corrosive agent adrift in this bright desert air. Here, attuned to the constant clinking of the silver dollars in forty thousand pockets, honesty became watchful opportunism, friendship became a pry bar, love turned to license, and legitimate sentiment drowned in a pink sea of sentimentality. It would not be a good thing to stay in such a place too long, because you might lose the ability to react to any other human being save on the level of estimating how best to use them, or how they were trying to use you. The impossibility of any more savory relationship was perfectly symbolized by the pink-and-white-and-blue neon crosses shining above the quaint gabled roofs of the twenty-four-hour-a-day marriage chapels.

  At two o’clock on Monday afternoon, Homer Gallowell put a $25,000 clip on the Won’t Pass line, watched the shooter roll an eleven, and saw his chip slide into the banker’s stack.

  He had counted the exact number of bets he had made. He had reached the limit set by the young mathematician, the limit where with continued play the odds against him became too great to buck. He turned away from the table and walked to the casino cashiers’ cage. A pale young man came to the window to attend to his needs.

  “I got me this little stack of eight that I started with, and I got this here second stack of eight I won, and this one little chip left over, son.”

  “Yes sir. That’ll be seventeen hundred dollars, sir. How would.…”

  “These are worth a hair more than that, son.”

  “What? Oh! Oh, excuse me, Mr. Gallowell. If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll get Mr. Hanes, our manager.”

  It was a full minute before the floridly dressed bulk of Max Hanes filled the space on the other side of the wicket.

  “You’re not quitting when you’re into us this deep, are you, Mr. Gallowell?”

  “Well, it’s fun and all, and you’ve got a nice place here, but it’s work too, all that time standing up. My legs are about to drop right off, so I guess it’s time to cash in. Anyhow, Hanes, I’m not so deep into you. I got back what I give you before, and twenty-five thousand interest on it. Comes to just about twelve per cent, and I’ve seen fools pay more. You could rightly say we’ve arrived at a standoff, Hanes. So if you’ve still got my check, you can give me that back, plus two hundred twenty-five thousand cash money.”

  “That check was part of our bank deposit this morning, Mr. Gallowell.”

  “Then it’ll have to be four hundred twenty-five thousand. I brought me a little old satchel along empty just in case, so you be getting it together while I go on up to that ballroom they give me and pack up.”

  “It will take time to get that much together, Mr. Gallowell.”

  “It shouldn’t take much time. Got it,
haven’t you?”

  “We only keep a three-hundred float on hand, and I couldn’t cut it down to nothing. You can understand that.”

  “Then you better get on the run, boy, and start picking it up here and there, because I want to get in the air soon as I can.”

  “Isn’t it … a large sum to carry around in cash?”

  Gallowell looked at him with dry and ancient amusement. “Might be, if the news got around. But there’s only you gambling people know about it, and I guess you don’t go around stealing back the money you lose, do you?”

  “No. No, I didn’t mean that. I just meant … you know, that much dough can make a guy nervous.”

  “I haven’t been rightly nervous since the time I was taking a bath in a crick and a bear took a dislike to me. Now you round up that money fast, Hanes. I pay some boys to keep my name out of the papers, and it would be a refreshin’ project to them to spend some time getting your name in.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away. Max Hanes cursed under his breath. He got hold of Ben Brown. “That old hick thinks he’s quitting. Get up four and a quarter. You know where to go and who to take with you.”

  Hanes, moving with exceptional speed, went to the elevator. Five minutes later he came out of an elevator into the lobby and hurried to Hugh Darren’s office. Darren looked up with surprise and displeasure.

  “You did a hell of a nice job on Shannard, Max.”

  “Okay, so I held his hand and told him to jump. I’m sorry. I haven’t got time for that now. I need one of those special favors we were talking about.”

  “Take your troubles to Jerry Buckler.”

  “He’s dead drunk. Out cold on his bathroom floor. I shook hell out of him. I threw water on him. All he does is mumble. You got to help me, and for God’s sake let’s argue about it later. I’ll give you a thousand bucks to paste on your conscience, Darren.”

  “Who do I kill?”

  “With lines like that, I’ll book you into the Safari Room. Now shut up. Maybe I’m too damn late already. We’ve got to give special orders to the girl on the switchboard. She’ll listen to you. I’ll grease her with a hundred to keep her happy. Here’s all she has to do, if she isn’t too late. She’s got to bitch up the phone call Gallowell is going to make to his private pilot. The old bastard won’t fly at night, and I want to keep him from getting in touch until too late.”

  “Why?”

  Max hit the desk with his fist. “I want the old guy to have a chance to keep playing. Maybe he won’t, no matter what I do. But I’ve got to give it the best chance. Replace that girl on the board a minute and let me fill her in. Bring her in here and let me give her some orders. I wouldn’t have to do it through you, Hugh buddy, except she’s one of the ones I don’t have on my team.”

  Hugh thought it over. What did it matter if one old man didn’t get a call through? It was an old man he didn’t know against a thousand dollars that had become a lot more essential since Shannard had flown eight stories onto asphalt. He went out, arranged for the relief operator to take over, and brought Miss Gates back to his office. She was a soured fifty, with hair died an improbable shade of cranberry red.

  “This is Mr. Hanes, Miss Gates.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “He’s got a special request to make to you, Miss Gates. It has my approval.”

  “Like what?”

  Hanes took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Eight-fifteen is going to ask for that number. If he’s done it already, I’m licked. Can you remember, honey?”

  “Not if I wasn’t looking for it.”

  “So look for it. When he phones it, make like you’re dialing out. You might just as well dial it, let it have a piece of the first ring, then cut the connection and change your voice and tell eight-fifteen you’re the Sage Motel. He’ll ask for a man named Scott. Let him hang on for a while, then tell him Mr. Scott’s room doesn’t answer. If he tries again, give him the same business. If he leaves a message, make like you’re taking it. And you don’t talk to anybody about this.”

  “I’m doing it just for kicks?”

  “You’re doing it for these here two souvenir pictures of U. S. Grant, sweetheart. And you ring my office and tell me whether you get a chance to block the call as soon as it happens. Maybe some day we want another little favor, hey?”

  “I’m ready any time,” she said, tucking the folded bills into her bra.

  “Now get out there.”

  “I go off at six,” she said as she moved toward the door.

  “After six it doesn’t matter, sweetheart.”

  After she was gone Hugh said, “Where did you get that number?”

  “I fixed it up Saturday to get a look at whatever went into his box. I checked that name out at the airport. They got him down as the pilot of Gallowell’s airplane.”

  Up in Suite 815, Homer Gallowell readied himself for his departure. He always carried more than his immediate needs in his big old suitcase, because his business trips often lasted longer than he anticipated. Even when he planned to stay only one night in any hotel, he always unpacked completely and repacked when it was time to leave. He traveled with one extra suit of the same cheap dark fabric and cut as the one he wore, one extra pair of black work shoes, a good supply of cheap white cotton dress shirts from J C. Penney’s low-priced racks, a few bright and knot-worn dollar ties, an abundance of socks and underwear he was accustomed to purchase at Army and Navy stores.

  In the last few years he had indulged himself in an extravagance that always made him feel a guilty twinge when he exercised it. Rather than cart laundry back to the old ranch, he discarded it whenever it became soiled. This had the effect of making him more conscious of price when he replenished his supply. He had computed that this extravagance, figuring two days per white shirt, and a daily change of socks and underwear, cost him an additional $1.25 a day while away from home. Try as he might to put this figure in proper proportion to his personal income—from all sources and before taxes—of close to three hundred thousand a month, he could never drop the laundry into a hotel wastebasket without feeling reckless and slightly foolish.

  It was at this point in his preparations that he interrupted his routine to call Pilot Scott. He hung up with a glare and a mutter of annoyance. Told the damn fool to stay by the phone. Maybe he just stepped out for cigarettes, or a magazine. Something like that. Try again in ten minutes.…

  The tin voice of the telephone said into Max’s hirsute ear, “This is Mabel Gates, Mr. Hanes. That call you were asking about. I just took care of it the way you said.”

  “Thank you so much, sweetheart. Keep up the good work.”

  He hung up and slowly moved a thumbnail back and forth across the shadow of bristle on his chin, making a small whispering sound. Twenty after three. There were toll phones off the lobby. Or the old boy might be sore enough to take a cab over to that Sage Motel with the idea of waiting there for his pilot. There was one idea he had previously examined and discarded, but as he appraised it again, it seemed worth the small risk involved. He picked up his phone and dialed the zero that took him off the automatic staff circuit and connected him with the central switchboard.

  “Mabel, Max Hanes again. Put me through to that Sage Motel, sweetheart.”

  The motel operator rang Scott’s room. He answered on the first ring.

  “Yes sir?”

  “Mr. Scott? Are you Mr. Gallowell’s pilot?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “This is the desk at the Cameroon, sir. Mr. Gallowell asked me to inform you that he won’t be leaving today.”

  “It will be tomorrow, then?”

  “He didn’t say. I wouldn’t know about that. I guess he thought there was no need of you hanging around the phone in a place like Las Vegas.”

  “I didn’t know he cared.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind. Thanks for calling. I’m glad to get out of here.”

 
; Max hung up. It seemed safe enough. Gallowell would probably figure it as an imaginative lie cooked up by a goof-off flyboy. But sir! They called me and told me you wouldn’t need me!

  The thing you had to do, every time, was maroon the winners who wanted to walk off with your money. Tie them down, no matter what you used. If they hung around, they’d sooner or later put your money right back into the money machine. And you were breaking no law. The tables were honest. You were just giving the house percentage a chance to work.

  And the better it worked, the more came off the top for Max Hanes.

  Garages could be talked into delaying simple repair jobs. Airline reservations could be mysteriously fouled up. (But, sir, you phoned me yourself and canceled!) Sometimes it was a simple matter of sending a couple of big iced bottles of congratulatory champagne up to the winner’s room. Or arranging for a hundred-dollar broad to tap on the wrong door. You had to send them all back where they came from saying bitterly, I didn’t have the sense to quit at the right time. I was going to quit, but somehow I got started again. If the car had been ready … if I hadn’t met that out-going gal … if I hadn’t gotten loaded … if I hadn’t been fouled up on my flight … if I hadn’t gotten those complimentary tickets to that late show … if leaving when I planned to hadn’t conflicted with the chance to go to Al Marta’s cocktail party and meet Jackie Luster …

  He phoned Betty Dawson’s room.

  “What’s the matter with you, baby? You sound dreary.”

  “I was asleep, Max.”

  “I wanted to fill you in and make sure you’re standing by. Our pigeon has cashed in, but somehow he isn’t going to be able to get airborne until tomorrow. I don’t think he knows it yet, but that’s the way it stands. You got an approach worked out?”

  “An approach, yes. I think. But that’s as far as it will go.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. He’s not a compulsive gambler, Max. He’s not a compulsive anything.”

  “He’s a man, kid. I want him in the state of mind he’ll lay down a couple of those special chips to show you what a big shot he is. You’re the gal to do it, Dawson.”