The Only Girl in the Game

by John D. MacDonald

  Gidge knows that Al will kid him again about never seeing a man work so hard to win a hundred-dollar bet, and just as the flesh beneath him begins the hungry tumult of its throes of completion, he wonders dolefully if all this is not merely an act of bravado. He wonders if he has not, at last, grown too old for all these prime young wenches who all seem to say and do exactly the same things, as though they were all graduates of the same huge underground school, veterans of endless drill teams, letter perfect in all their obligatory lines.

  Vicky Shannard lies naked and alone, brushed, curled, perfumed, annointed, alone on the big bed, the draperies closed against what is left of the day, alone in the still hum of the air conditioning, her eyes closed, arms at her sides, her eyelids expertly touched with blue shadow. She has made her phone calls. Tomorrow she will fly to New York. Dicky will meet her there, bringing from Nassau the first of the many papers to study and sign.

  Hugh has suggested he move her into other quarters in the hotel, but she has thanked him and told him it is really not necessary. He has thanked her for the gold lighter she sent down to his office.

  She has had a long hot tub. She has scrubbed and brushed and curled and creamed and enameled herself.

  She is alone. The lids hide the bland childish innocence of the slightly protruding blue eyes. She wets her lips with the sharp pink tip of her tongue. She sighs. It is a long sound in the stillness. She raises one leg and braces it there, the knee sharply bent.

  She brings her hands up and presses them with a painful strength against her firm, heavy, white breasts. Something begins to well up inside her, creating a noticeable pressure. It is a feeling very like that final inevitability of sexual completion once the point of sensory endurance has been passed, but it is without any of those delicious overtones. She cannot imagine what is happening to her until the feeling wells up to its crisis. And suddenly she gives a long thin quavering cry of utter desolation and the tears burst from her eyes.

  It is the first time in her life she has wept for any reason other than a reaction to physical pain. Her astonishment does not still her torment. She rocks her curly head from side to side and the tears run tickling down her cheeks to the percale pillow, and her body spasms under the continuous blows of the hard sobbing. She weeps for what she is and what she has been, and for all the empty time ahead of her, and for her sudden recognition of her beloved, too late, too long after it tumbled down through the bright morning toward the soft, horrid sound of impact.

  Max Hanes led Al Marta out to the relative quiet of the foyer of Al’s apartment and stood with him near the door of the private elevator.

  Al said, “You see the way that boy moves? You see those goddam shoulders? He’s a welter from the waist down and a light-heavy from the waist up. You want to come in on him, Max, I’ll sell you a piece of my piece. Thirty-four bouts, twenty-one knockouts. I tell you, this boy is going to go all the way. I got a hunch.”

  “Thanks, but you know about me and the fighters, Al.”

  Al laughed and thumped him on the arm. “So you dropped a little on a couple of canvasbacks. Okay, you stick to the singers and the platter outfits, but don’t ever forget, baby, I either get a piece of every new deal you like, or you don’t get the jukebox pressure nationwide.”

  “I’m not that stupid, Al. What I wanted to tell you, I got Dawson set to work on Gallowell.”

  Al frowned, lost in thought for a few moments. “Okay. She’s a good smart kid. But if she doesn’t swing it, I don’t want you should push too hard. Here we’re not messing with some car dealer or real-estate-promotion guy. I mean if it gets obvious, here we got a guy with a lot of weight, one way and another. You’ve got to keep in mind that a quarter million—a little less—is going to make just one thin-type week on the books, and it isn’t worth a guy with so much weight maybe getting sore and moving against us some other way.”

  “Like what?”

  “How the hell should I know? He’s maybe a little on the senile side, so he gets childish about you trying to push him around. Maybe he uses some of those millions he’s got to put pressure on the Feds to give us the kind of undercover audit and investigation we could do without. He employs a hell of a lot of smart tough people, Maxie. He could just give out orders to bitch up the Cameroon any way they can think of, and some of those people could come up with something we haven’t even figured on. I’m just saying you’ve pushed it about as far as you should, and if he don’t get the hots for the Dawson broad, just let it go. Just let it go.”

  “Okay, Al.”

  “How is it with Darren?”

  “He’s joining the team, a little bit at a time. A little off the top looks just as good to him as it does to anybody. I overpaid him just to bring him along a little. Was that okay?”

  “You know damn well it was, Max. He’s worth sewing so tight he’ll never leave the organization.”

  “What was the reaction in L.A. to Shannard taking that dive?”

  “They were disappointed. It would have been good property to pick up.”

  “The little blonde won’t sell?”

  “She doesn’t have to and she doesn’t want to. I talked to her before I made the call. The insurance takes her off the hook.”

  “Maybe there’s some way to change her mind, Al.”

  “You’re a little late, Maxie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d make book she’s going to meet a very interesting guy in the next few weeks. And I bet he knows just how to make a pretty little widow forget her terrible sorrow. And I’ll bet he has some plans for her.”

  “He better be good.”

  “So why shouldn’t he be good?”

  “That one is rough, Al. She knows every score they ever added up.”

  “If it’s out of my territory, baby, I sure as hell know it’s out of yours. So get your mind back on what the hell you’re being paid for. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tomorrow or the next day, Gidge is going to take Jerry over to Riverside and stick him back in that funny farm for a while. He’s in bad shape, the worst I’ve ever seen him, so it may take a long time to dry him out good. Can you operate okay through Darren?”

  “In another month he’ll shill for me if I ask him.”

  “How about what I hear about him and Dawson?”

  “When we own them both, Al, it’s just that much easier, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes you kill me, baby. Honest to God.”

  “I just like things to run smooth.”

  Hugh Darren stood behind the registration desk. He hefted the solid-gold lighter in his hand, conscious of its unusual weight. It was engraved with block initials spelling T.A.S. They could be ground off and replaced. He wondered if he should do that. Would it be a morbid affectation to leave them?

  “Was that all right?” the desk clerk asked.

  “Was what all right?”

  “What I just said, Mr. D. Mr. Hanes asked me to check Eight-fifteen to see if Mr. Gallowell was staying over. I saw no reason not to, so I did, and he is. Was that all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, that was all right. But you must remember, Jimmy, that Mr. Hanes has nothing to do with the operation of the hotel as such.”

  “Yes sir,” the man said, with a slightly skeptical expression.

  “You can give him information.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “But if there is any request for any sort of … action on your part that you do not understand, or possibly think is not right.…”

  “Such as?”

  “Do I have to draw you a picture? Such as letting one of Mr. Hanes’ people read a message that might be in the box for any hotel guest.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” the man said, with telltale forcefulness.

  “No. You wouldn’t do that. Of course you wouldn’t. You check with me on the innocent acts, but not the other kind.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “You can create the impressi
on of loyalty without cutting off the supply of little gifts of money.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the man said, red and uncomfortable.

  Darren slipped the lighter into his pocket. “Skip it,” he said wearily. “Working here hasn’t changed you at all. You just help out a little during the Saturday-night rush.”

  “What?”

  “In the larger sense, Jimmy, this is a house of ill fame. We all make our own adjustments.”

  The man, looking baffled, tried to laugh at what he suspected was a joke he should have understood. As Hugh walked back toward his office he sensed that the man was still standing there, staring at him.

  I am adjusting, Hugh told himself. That’s all. When your stance is too rigid, they knock you down. So you stand loose, ready to bob, weave and sidestep. Flexibility is the clue to local survival. So I shall stand under the money tree and hold my pockets wide open, and if some falls in, it isn’t my doing. It’s just gravity. This doesn’t have to touch me in any basic way. I’ll make what I have to make, and then I shall pack up and leave, and run my own show in my own way.

  There are good people here. Most of the entertainers are warm, sturdy, wonderful folk, like my Betty. And the little people on the hotel and casino staffs, most of them are solid and good. In a smaller job I could afford their integrity. But I am on the level where I have to deal with people like Hanes. And so I have to adjust to his methods, or get out. Adjustment does not have to imply approval. It is only the realistic approach. Bend or break. That’s the choice they give you. Only a fool would refuse to bend a little.

  But I know damn well that Max Hanes could have worked his telephone deception without my ever knowing about it. That switchboard operator could not have been more obviously for sale. But he went through me, and now there are ten one-hundred-dollar bills in the locked drawer of my desk, and that is an absurd price to pay for the cooperation I gave him, particularly knowing it was not needed.

  I am being purchased? No. I can let him think I am being purchased. One thousand dollars will build a good and solid piece of the dock where the sports cruisers will stop, long after I have forgotten the name Max Hanes. He thinks he is deviously entangling me in his web of deceit, but in truth it is the other way around. I am using him. I have become a realist. I stand, smiling, under the money tree.

  Homer G. Gallowell sat in his big suite in his vest and shirtsleeves, his feet propped up, sipping good bourbon and watching with a patronizing contempt the details of a half-hour western on the television screen. He made no attempt to follow the story or listen to the lines written for the actors. It was a hobby he indulged himself in from time to time, relishing his own professional indignation. He would see them dally a line in a way that would pinch the fingers off a legitimate cowhand. He’d snort at a Miles City rigging or a center-fire rigging on a cow pony carrying a man who was supposed to be from Montana, or a split-ear headstall on a horse supposedly from south of the border, or a remuda containing mares that was supposed to be in Wyoming.

  He got up and, carrying his glass, went to the door to answer a knock.

  “Well now, Miz Betty!” he said with sudden pleasure. “Just you come on in and set.”

  She came in wide-eyed, hesitant, nervous, closing the door behind her in a rather furtive manner. She had a skittish look, like a mare in rattler country.

  “I don’t want to stay here more than one minute, Homer.”

  “You look like a drink would help some,” he said, walking over and turning off the western.

  “No. No thanks, really. Do you remember when we first met and after we’d decided to be friends, you got the idea I was under some kind of pressure or compulsion? You said you’d be willing to help if I ever asked for your help.”

  “I can remember that. I remember it well, because it isn’t a thing I’ve said often in my life to many people. You said something about phoning Texas if you ever had the need of a white knight on a horse. And there’s no need to ask me if it still holds good, because once I say a thing like that, I don’t take it back. Now if you’re ready to tell me who’s got you messed up, and how, I’ll get you loose of it one way or another.”

  “I can’t talk here, Homer. I can’t risk talking to you here. I’ve lined up a place where we can meet, where I can talk to you privately.” She glanced at her watch. “Would you meet me there at about seven-thirty?”

  “Anything that’s got you this unsettled is worth listening to, Betty.”

  “It’s the Playland Motel, Number 190. I’ll be there first. You can come right on back to the room. It’s in the rear. You won’t have to stop at the office.”

  “I’ll be proud to help any way I can, and you know it.”

  She left with a haste that was like flight. Homer frowned at the closed door after she left. The flavor of secret assignation set off alarm warnings in the back of his mind. Over the years many clever and unscrupulous women had attempted the entrapment of so much raw power and money. But he was not vulnerable to the scandal lies could create, and his lawyers moved with a gifted ruthlessness in such matters, shredding and flattening all guileful hopes.

  This Betty Dawson was not of that breed. He knew he had nothing to fear from her. She had not simulated her own distress.

  After she was back in her room, Betty felt emotionally drained. It had worked, just as she had known it would. The old man would come to the Playland Motel, and she would open the door and let him in, and the unseen reels of tape would begin to turn. But she had no idea of what she would do next, what she could say to him. She would lie, and sooner or later he would sense what she was up to, and, depending on his whim, he would either make use of her or walk out. In either case it would be the death of a friendship and a respect she valued highly. But this was a loss you took to avoid taking a much greater one. You cast off the small loves to protect the big ones.

  In a few minutes it would be time to drive over there and wait for him. She touched her hair and fixed her lips, and looked, with neither contempt nor curiosity, into her own dead eyes.

  When the phone rang she picked it up and said, “Yes?”

  “I have a long-distance call for you, Miss Dawson.”

  Another operator said, “Is this Miss Elizabeth Dawson?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Go ahead, please. Your party is on the line.”

  “Betty? Betty, darling, is that you?” It was a husky voice, familiar from all the childhood years, but now broken with anguish.

  “Lottie! What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s him. Oh, God, darlin’, it’s him. Gone in the twinkling of an eye. After the last patient, he went out to look at the roses in the back the way he does always. My Charlie was at the far side of the yard, and saw the doctor fall and went running to him. The doctor was trying to get up again and got up only as far as one knee, his face like paper, holding his fist against his heart, and he fell again just as Charlie reached him. Dr. Wellborn was here in two minutes, I swear, ready with his needles and all, and your father lived to be loaded on the ambulance, but him unconscious entirely. They went screaming off through the traffic, Charlie and me following in the car, not even locking the house, but he passed away before they got there. Doctor Wellborn was telling us there was no saving him in any case, child. We have just come back here, and I haven’t even had the chance to cry yet, the way I will for the dear man, gone so sudden from us.… Betty? Betty, darling?”

  “I’m here, Lottie.”

  “It’s the blessing of the Lord you two made up so nice these last couple of years. I keep thinking of that and you keep thinking of it too, darling. He was happy, and it’s a blessing these days to die fast and easy when it’s your time, because we see enough of the other kind around here, dragging on in the agonies. He was struck down in the midst of life, child, and he was in happiness when it came.”

  “I … I’ll fly home tomorrow, Lottie.”

  “It’s a bitter sad thing, child. Y
ou should be able to stay here for a time and not go back into that singing and funning.”

  “I may be able to stay … quite a long time, Lottie.”

  She sat by the phone after she had hung up. She was stricken by such an incomparable feeling of aloneness it seemed to her she could not breathe. The wheel of the world had stopped, and there were no sounds in the dust.

  Not that way, she thought. I wanted to be free. Not this way. I didn’t ask for it, thinking it could happen this way.

  She felt that she was straining for comprehension, but that it could not all come to her at once, that this was only a partial knowing, and all the rest of it would come, and soon.

  She tried to get back into the world, and after a long time she looked at her watch and made slow sense of the position of the hands. She had a nagging sense of obligation, of a routine to be followed, and suddenly remembered Homer and the Playland Motel.

  She even stood up in preparation to go, moving in a way like that of a semi-blind person in an unfamiliar environment, picking up her purse and her wrap, actually reaching her door before she remembered that the obligation no longer existed. Her father had passed beyond their ability to reach out and sicken him. The leverage was gone.

  • • • ten

  It was a minute or two before seven when Homer Gallowell answered the knock at the door of his suite.

  “Well now, hello, Miz Betty!” he said, surprised.

  “Homer,” she said, and walked slowly in.

  He closed the door and waited for some word of explanation, studying her, intrigued by the change in her. All tensions and anxieties seemed gone. She seemed placid. But it was a placidity that disturbed him in some way he could not define. She turned and looked calmly at him.