A. Fair - Spill the Jackpot

“I’ll stay with him,” I told her. “You take the car, go uptown, and get your hair fixed at that beauty shop you were talking about.”

She looked at me, hesitated a moment.

I said, “I’ll have to give you a traveler’s check. I—”

She laughed up at me. “Forget it. I’ve got money.”

“All you need?”

“Sure. I lit out with Pug’s bank roll. And listen, Donald, if you get short, I can stake you. I know you’re paying for this show, and I know you’re going to come out on it all right when you’ve finished up, but in case you find the shoe pinching, just let me know.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“ ’By,” she said.

“Be seeing you.”

She started for the door, turned back to me, took my face in her hands, looked down into my eyes, and then kissed me. “The landlord was over while you were gone,” she said casually. “He was calling me Mrs. Lam. So don’t destroy his illusions. By-by.”

She breezed out of the door. I sat down at the kitchen table, took a telephone directory, and made up a list of the places I wanted to call. I found some old magazines, read for a while, and then began to feel the effects of my unaccustomed exercise. I dozed off into a light sleep, waking occasionally just enough to realize that I should go in and see how Louie was getting along. But getting up out of the comfortable chair seemed too great an effort, and I’d drift off to sleep again.

I finally woke up enough to look in on Louie. He heard the door open. He opened bloodshot eyes, looked up at me and said, “Hello, buddy, how about some water?”

“In that pitcher right by your bed.”

He picked up the pitcher, disdained the glass, and drank about half of the contents.

“You know I’m a heel,” he said, putting down the pitcher and avoiding my eyes. “An’ I know I’m a heel.”

“You’re all right.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so damn nice about it.”

“Forget it.”

“I’d like to do some little thing for you, buddy — like a murder or something.”

I grinned down at him. “How’s the head?” I asked. “Aching?”

“It always aches. I guess that’s why I take up the booze. I’ve had a headache so long now I’m used to it. I always tried to give the customers a run for their money. I’d stay in there and swap punches when I should have been down on the canvas, listenin’ to the birdies. And now here I am, a drunken bum with a headache all the time.”

“You’ll feel better after a while. Want to go back to sleep again?”

“No. I’m goin’ to get up and drink lots of water. What happened to the rest of that bottle of whisky?”

“I left it in there.”

“It was paid for,” he said regretfully.

“It’s better in the saloon than in you.”

“You’re right,” he said, “if I can get my mind off’n it, but I’m afraid I’ll be thinkin’ of that half bottle of whisky — you’d better kick me out, pal, before I get you in a spot. I ain’t worth it.”

“Snap out of it. You’ll feel better when you get your stomach back into shape.”

His bloodshot eyes stared up at me. “Tell you one thing,” he said, “I’m going to teach you everything I know, every little trick of the ring. I’m going to make you a fighter.”

“Okay. Now listen, I’m going to take a walk. Helen’s in town. She’ll be back in a couple of hours. You feel like keeping an eye on the place?”

“Sure.”

“You won’t leave?”

He said, “Where’s my pants?”

“Over there on the chair.”

“Turn the pockets inside out, take all the dough out, then I won’t leave.”

I said, “You gave me the change — what was left of it.”

He heaved a sigh. “Okay then, that’s fine. Go ahead.” He punched the pillows back into shape behind his head, said, “Gimme a cigarette, buddy, and I’ll be all right as soon as that water quits sloshin’ around in my stomach.”

I gave him a cigarette, and walked out to the highway. I hadn’t gone over half a mile when a car stopped and gave me a ride to town.

A newsstand featured papers from all the principal cities. I found a Las Vegas paper. The police made much over the disappearance of Helen Framley. They had finally traced her to an apartment where she had been in hiding since the night of the murder. She had disappeared, and police, checking up on the activities of one Donald Lam, a private investigator who had been employed on another angle of the case, were convinced that she, an ex-prize fighter by the name of Hazen, and Lam had all left town together. The police were inclined to believe that Helen Framley had either been implicated in the murder or had highly significant information, and that the private detective, seeking to steal a march on police, was offering her a chance to escape in return for such information as she could give. There was a strong intimation that the officials would consider this a serious matter, and that Lam might well find himself prosecuted for compounding a felony. Hazen, it seemed, was also implicated. He’d positively identified the body as that of a former pugilist named Sidney Jannix.

Evidently, the police hadn’t as yet linked me with the purchase of the secondhand automobile.

I rang up a few more places, handed them my regular line, cut out the article from the Las Vegas paper, left the rest of the newspaper in a telephone booth, and started back for the cabin.

I had to walk nearly a mile before I caught a ride.

Helen returned about an hour after I got back. Louie got the dinner, washed and wiped the dishes. The three of us went to a movie, and then went to bed.

Louie Hazen was pulling me out of bed before I hardly realized I’d been asleep. The air was filled with cold dawn.

“Come on,” he said. “Get this road work in while it’s cool. I don’t want you to sweat.”

I sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbed my eyes. “It’s not cool, it’s cold,” I protested.

“You’ll be all right when you get out.”

He slipped a hand under my arm, lifted me to my feet. My legs all but buckled, the muscles were so sore.

“Gosh, Louie, I can’t take it this morning. I’ll have to rest.”

“Come on,” he said, and started pushing me around.

“Oh, forget it, Louie. I’m not training for any fight or anything. After all, we can—”

He opened the window, pulled off the screen, dropped it to the ground, tossed out my running-shoes, pants, and light sweater, and then, before I realized what he was intending to do, picked me up as though I had weighed precisely nothing, and tossed me out after them. Then he closed and locked the window.

The door was locked. It was cold out there on the ground. I picked up my clothes and moved around to the side of the house away from the highway, dressed in shivering silence, took a deep breath, and started jog trotting after Louie along the road. Every step was agony.

Louie kept watching me over his shoulder, looking at the expression on my face, the way I was moving my legs. He seemed to know exactly when the soreness began to leave me, and then again knew exactly when the breathlessness became acute.

We walked all the way back, taking deep breaths. I suddenly picked up Louie’s trick of breathing with my diaphragm, sucking air way down, squeezing out every last bit of it before taking another deep breath.

Louie, watching me, nodded approvingly.

We went back to the house and put on the stiff set of fighting-gloves. Louie said, “I’m going to train you to throw a hard punch this morning. Now swing one right at this glove. Put everything you’ve got right behind it. No, no, no. Don’t draw back.”

It seemed interminable hours that we worked out there in the sunlight, and then Louie had me under the shower, was kneading and pounding my muscles again, and by the time I was up and dressed, Helen Framley had the kitchen full of the fragrance of steaming coffee.