The Only Girl in the Game

by John D. MacDonald

  “I’m the specialist. The aging ingenue of Playhouse 190. Max, there’ll be nothing to film. For God’s sake, I could be his granddaughter! It makes me feel slimy for you even to think there could be … anything at all.”

  “Don’t knock those old goats until you’ve been the route, cutie. Maybe you’re his chance to regain his lost youth, like. I told you before. You make the try. For one-third of what he’s carting away, it’s worth the try. And we put the show on in 190, cutie, mostly because I want to be sure you go at it big. If you drag your feet just because you like the old guy, I can find that out from the tape, and you could be the unhappiest broad in Nevada.”

  “So that’s the real reason why it has to be 190. You’re never entirely sure you’ve beaten me right down into the ground, are you, Max?”

  “Nobody has ever laid a hand on you, baby. Maybe it was an oversight. You keep fighting after you’re licked. But there’s more reasons than that. You get him talking to you, maybe there’s some little thing or two he says that can be used someday for some other angle. You never can tell. Fifty million bucks, it’s a good thing to listen to every word.”

  She sighed impatiently. “All right, all right! What comes next?”

  “Fix yourself up pretty, sweetie, and then stand by. The way it looks, I think you can make your move about five o’clock. I’ll let you know.”

  As soon as she had banged the phone back onto the cradle, it rang. She snatched it up and said, “What now, Max?”

  “Not Max. Ol’ Hugh. And what are you so steamed up about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you sore at me, too?”

  “No. I’m not angry at you, Hugh.”

  “What’s wrong with you, honey? Your voice sounds … dead.”

  “I guess I don’t feel well. I’m not going on tonight, either. That’s what I was arguing with Max about.”

  “You should see a doctor, honey.”

  “It’s just a virus. I’ll be all right.”

  “By the way, Betty, thanks for the note you sent me about Temp.”

  “I kept trying to phone you but you were busy. He was a nice man, Hugh. It was a horrible thing. Vicky told me how you both tried to stop him when he was losing all that money.”

  “Then you talked to her?”

  “Earlier this afternoon. She seems to be taking it … pretty well.”

  “Maybe too damned well.”

  “I … sensed that. I could never feel close to her, Hugh. She looks like such a little doll, but.… Anyhow, I guess you found out you can’t soften up the casino mentality.”

  “They were feeding him weak drinks to keep him on his feet. They were keeping play at the table slowed down to his reaction time. It had all the style and dignity of plucking a drugged chicken. God damn it, Betty, let’s get out of here. For keeps. Maybe we shouldn’t wait much longer, because it might turn out to be too late.”

  “That sounds almost like a proposal,” she said in what was an obviously strained attempt at lightness.

  “I don’t know what it is. But we should both get out.”

  “I can’t abandon my career, sir.”

  “You sound damn strange. I’m going to come up there and sit with the sick, girl.”

  “No. Please, Hugh. I don’t want to see you. I might even … go out.”

  “Go out! Where?”

  “Do I have to ask for your permission in writing?”

  “That’s sort of an ugly response, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care, Hugh. I think this whole thing, you and me, has gotten a little too involved. Maybe I don’t have room for it in my life. I’ll let you know.”

  “That’s nice. Thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot, Betty.”

  “It isn’t as if it has been a love affair, Hugh. All it has been is a … convenience.”

  “Have fun tonight,” he said, and hung up on her.

  After she had gently replaced the phone she sat on the edge of her bed. She combed her thick black hair back with her fingers. With a special grayness of soul, she let herself think of what her life was going to be like if Max had read Homer Gallowell more correctly than she had. She wished Homer had not sent that ring. It seemed innocent at the time, but now it made her less positive. Old as he was, if Max was right, he would be easier to endure than the fat man had been. Or the roostery Venezuelan.

  But nobody in all the world could be anything more to her than a feat of dreary endurance, since Hugh. This body was his, in the ultimate sense of possession. Any act would be the theft of what was his, and such a degradation of what was his that she could never, in her guilt, return it to him.

  And so, if Max was right, after tonight she would have to invent a new girl who was not in love with Hugh Darren. She would quarrel with him, and then she would become remote and cold to him. Friendship would be too much an involvement in temptation. Love would not die. She would see him here and there in the hotel, and her heart would twist and break each time.

  He would not leave a job so good. Max would not let her leave.

  But if, through some miracle, she could be suddenly permitted to leave, that would be the thing to do, because it would be best for Hugh. His memories of her would be good ones, warm and pleasing to him.

  She was not aware she was weeping until a tear fell onto the roundness of her thigh, startling her.

  People in traps, she thought, should remember they are in traps, and not get those big fancy ideas about happiness and so on. Now pretty yourself up for half the money in Texas. Silks and bows, lace and perfume, new lips and new eyes. Big seduction scene from the Book of Methuselah.

  At a few minutes past four, Max Hanes led Homer Gallowell back to his private office, and there supervised the packing of $425,000 into the limp and ancient black leather satchel provided by Gallowell. Homer checked the totals as written on the paper ribbons encircling each packet of currency.

  He locked the satchel, put the tarnished brass key in his vest pocket and said, “I suspicioned you were going to tell me you needed more time to get my money.”

  “How come, Mr. Gallowell?”

  “People do hate to let loose of money.”

  Max Hanes slapped the satchel. “Well, here it is. You bruised us good, Mr. Gallowell. If you’re heading for the airport right now, I can send you in my own car with a couple of my security guards.”

  “I’m not leaving right this minute.”

  “Then I wouldn’t advise carrying this around with you. No sense in taking chances you don’t have to. You can leave it right here, if you want, and get it in ten seconds at any time. I’ll give you a receipt that shows what you’ve got in the satchel, if that would make you feel easier about it.”

  “You’re worrying about this a lot more than I am, Hanes. They got a safe at the front desk, haven’t they? I’ll check it right there. Thank you kindly.” He picked the satchel off the desk, turning in the same motion to march out of the office, a spare, erect old man, baked and withered by the years, with the suggestion of the ranch hand in his gait.

  “We’re not completely licked, Brownie,” Max said after. the door swung shut.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He could have decided to go right to the airport and buy himself a pilot.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that. It gets me, the way he handles that money, like he was carrying his lunch.”

  “You’re a stupid creep, Ben Brown. That money doesn’t mean much of anything to that old bastard. The only thing means anything, we took him last year. If he went to a junk carnival and lost ten bucks on rollaball, he’d spend a year practising and go get his ten back and a little more if he could, and he’d feel the same way about it he feels about that sack of money. He conned me, the old fox. He conned Max Hanes. I was stupid. I figured him to play progressive, doubling the bets on his losses, and that’s the same as giving me the money. So I fell for his limit, and he plays it just as smart as I’ve ever seen. He bet nineteen times. H
e hit it fourteen times and he lost five times. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand he tries to walk away with.”

  “Will the Dawson broad be able to work him over?”

  “How the hell should I know!”

  “So okay. I’m leaving. Take it easy, Maxie.”

  • • • nine

  Twenty after five on Monday at the Cameroon. The sun groups around the pool and up in the rooftop solariums are thinning out. The pool attendants and solarium attendants and patio waitresses are furtively checking the day’s tips. Throughout their shift they have diligently hustled the customers with a determined solicitousness about towels, lotions, drinks, and special attention to the placement of the sun cots.

  There are, at this time of day, more people in their rooms and suites than perhaps at any other time. Showers create a peak water demand. Bellhops are hustling ice and setups to the rooms. Liquor waiters are making frequent trips upstairs. The doorman is busy. In addition to the late registrations, he has to cope with those beginning to arrive by private car and cab for the dinner show, nail the cabs for those leaving for other places along the Strip, see that private cars are parked in the big lot and retrieved from the big lot with the celerity which feeds silver dollars into the depth of the special pocket in his uniform.

  The Afrique Bar and the Little Room are beginning to fill up. A few people are beginning to move into the vast, plush, terraced silence of the Safari Room, preferring to get their table assignments early and do their drinking there and have ample time for their dinner before the big show begins. Bartenders at all public and service bars in the hotel are beginning to move into highest gear, making use of all the time-saving steps they have performed earlier during their shift.

  The kitchens are in a clattering, frenzied crescendo of preparation, with all ranges and steam tables in operation, all chefs vigilant in their familiar jungles of stainless steel and fluorescence.

  In the casino only three 21 tables, one crap table and one wheel are not yet in operation, but they are manned and ready to go. Back in the staff lounge the off-duty casino personnel, working the long shift (thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off) take their paper cups to the big coffee urn, and talk idly about their kids, their lawns, the next fishing trip on Lake Mead.

  In the Little Room the piano player is working her way through all the Gershwin she knows, while the unused part of her mind prays steadily for Skippy, who is very very sick indeed, so sick he didn’t even make his usual fuss about being taken to the vet’s.

  At the busy front desk a clerk is explaining for the third time, with a visible show of patience, that the Cameroon can take no responsibility for a camera left out by the pool.

  In the Lady Eloise Beauty Salon in the arcade of concession shops between the hotel and its convention hall, an operator is working with end-of-the-day haste upon the hair of a stout saddened woman who has been saying all afternoon, “He just went right ahead and lost everything we got and now I’ll have to go back to work and I haven’t had to work in seventeen years. I couldn’t stop him. He was like a crazy man, honest.” The operator makes a comforting murmur. It is a rare week when she does not hear this story three or four times. They come to Vegas on vacation and they have no one else to talk to.

  In the Afrique Bar an instrumental and vocal sextet is knocking itself out with its special slapstick version of “Chloe”. A rather nice-looking woman who has been drinking with ladylike restraint for over twenty hours suddenly topples off her bar stool, and the incident is handled so deftly only a dozen people realize what happened.

  The star of the big show in the Safari Room is being diligently sobered by his manager and his mistress so that he will be able to do the dinner show.

  Downtown, in one of the back rooms never seen by mourners, in the establishment of Leffingson and Flass, an assistant does a brisk neat job of tacking the destination address on the special coffin approved for transportation of bodies by common carriers. It will be delivered to a funeral establishment in the East.

  “Give me a hand,” he says to his helper.

  The coffin is on a utility cart. Together they roll it into the coldroom where it will remain until time to transport it to the railroad station tomorrow.

  “Now scrub that slab down, Albert,” he orders.

  The assistant leans against a wall, smoking a cigarette.

  “Seems funny,” Albert says, “the way you gotta buy two tickets for a … for the remains.”

  “You’re improving. Your language is getting much more professional, Albert.”

  “Why two tickets?”

  “It’s just a rule, that’s all. But if, for example, the widow wished to go along on one of them, that would be permitted.”

  “Will she?”

  “She isn’t that hard up, Albert. It depresses them, to accompany a body.”

  “You said it then.”

  “I can, because I know better. Use the hose again, Albert, and we’re through here.”

  “Since you been here, Mr. Looden, about how many would you say jumped out of hotels tall enough to jump out of?”

  “Albert! You astonish me. You should know better than that. The happy vacationers in Las Vegas never jump from a tall building. Some of them have dizzy spells now and then. It’s due to the high oxygen content of our crisp desert air, Albert. They become too invigorated.”

  “Sure. Just like that fella last month that wrote all the bad checks and lost the money. He went off that slanty side of Hoover Dam and rolled and bounced all the way down and ended up on top of the power plant without no skin left on him. He got himself invigorated all to hell.”

  “Albert, if you want to be a success in the trade, you must stop thinking the worst of people. It’s a good thing you aren’t the one compiling our local mortality statistics. The desert is the healthiest place in the world. Now coil your hose and hang it up and let’s get out of here.”

  Hugh Darren and George Ladori stand in the largest walk-in cooler in the hotel. George is showing Hugh the sides of beef that have been delivered this day. With a keen and slender knife he makes a shallow slice into a flank and holds the layer of fat back. There is a quality in the hard artificial light which makes the meat look slightly blue.

  “It’s got the Prime stamp, Hugh, but it’s on the low side of Prime. You can see. It isn’t marbled the way it should be. It’s more like the very best level of Choice. But we’re paying Prime. What the hell do you think I should do?”

  “Are all sixteen sides that came in like this?”

  “Well … there’s not a one of them real good looking.”

  “How many of them disturb you?”

  “I’d say six.”

  “I’d say get Krauss over here in person and tell him the facts of life. Get a concession on replacement or price on those six sides. If it’s price, or if you get nowhere, use these six on your convention specials, and don’t menu them out to the regular trade.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  Hugh gives him a half smile and says, “So next time you don’t have to ask, do you?”

  Out back in one of the small rooms off the shower room used by the lifeguards, Beaver Brownell and Bobby Waldo are playing three-handed gin with Harry Charm, another one of those specialists whose names, like Waldo and Brownell, appear on the payroll of one of the corporations administered out of the X-Sell offices downtown. Their started pay is fattened by cash from Al Marta at irregular, unpredictable interviews.

  “Gin!” Beaver says.

  “How you making out with that showgirl, that Gretchen?” Bobby asks slyly.

  “I don’t know why she’s so sore. I can’t get near that stupid broad.”

  “So give up,” Bobby suggests.

  Brownell exposes all of his outthrust teeth in a long yellow grin. “The Beaver never gives up, men.”

  Harry Charm finishes checking the score. Beaver is dealing to him. “What’s this about some girl?” Harry asks heavily. He is a puff
y, scarred, asthmatic old hoodlum who frets endlessly about minor matters. He looks at his hand. “All my life, I never held cards. All my life, losing.”

  Charm has been both cop and convict. He is trusted. In the customary channel of command, when some punitive action seems necessary, Al Marta speaks to Gidge Allen, who speaks to Harry Charm, who gives the orders to Brownell or Waldo or whoever he thinks can best handle the particular operation.

  “There’s this Gretchen, madly in love with Beaver, only she don’t realize it yet,” Bobby explains.

  Beaver wins the hand and the game. Bobby Waldo gets up restlessly. “Enough for me. Goddam, I get restless lately. We haven’t had anything to do in a long time, you realize that?”

  Beaver grins. “You bucking for sergeant, Bobby?” He turns to Harry. “Bobby wants we should get sent back to Phoenix and smack some more of those laundry workers back into line. That’s the line of work he likes.”

  Bobby flushes and stands over Beaver, who looks up at him calmly. “The kind of work I would like, Beaver, is they decide you got too much mouth and I get to take you out on the desert and close it for good.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Harry says irritably. “Deal the cards, Beaver.”

  Jerry Buckler, the manager of the Cameroon, sleeps, bare to the waist, on the tile floor of his bathroom. The tile is cool against chest and cheek. There is a purple knot on his forehead where he struck the edge of the toilet in falling. He is still damp with the water Max Hanes sprayed upon him by holding one thick thumb against the lavatory stream, deflecting it. Jerry Buckler glides swiftly down a long snowy hill of sleep. He is on a red sled in a long-ago time, and his father is on the sled behind him, steering it, holding him safe and close, and laughing into the wind in his giant voice. The wind whips cold against their faces. But suddenly his father is gone. He cannot turn the sled. The hill steepens and the wind howls in his ears, and the hill tilts downward into some great blackness of a night that cannot end. It is late, and it is past time to go home, but all he can do is cling to the red sled, and cry unheard.

  Gidge Allen is holed up back in his own room in Al Marta’s penthouse apartment, and he is once again pleasuring Miss Gretchen Lane, and finding her needs to be as strenuous as before. He had found himself liking the look of her when, because of Al’s lies, she had become furious with Beaver. So he had quietly sought her out, and found her quite ready to be persuaded. In just a little while now, they will rest and dress, and pick up drinks turned tepid, and wander, with some attempt at casualness, out to the random party going on in the big living room.