A. Fair: Spill the Jackpot

“No, just frankly told me she didn’t know anything at all about it. Seemed rather bored.”

“Do you know Corla?” I asked.

His eyes shifted, not to his mother this lime, but to Eloise. “I’ve met her. Philip introduced me.”

“You knew, of course, that she and Philip were planning on getting married?”

Ogden said nothing. Eloise said, “Yes, we knew.”

I said, “Whitewell gave me the address of Miss Framley’s apartment. I presume he got that from you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know whether she’s still there?”

“I believe she is — at least as far as I know. I haven’t seen her since that time, but she gave me the impression of being settled.”

“When did Arthur — Mr. Whitewell get to town?” Mrs. Dearborne asked.

“He came in on the plane with me this afternoon.”

“Oh.”

Eloise asked, “Do you know if Philip was planning to join him?”

“I haven’t heard.”

Mrs. Dearborne said confidently, “Arthur will be down after dinner.”

There was just a subtle accent on the word dinner.

“What about Helen Framley herself?” I asked Ogden.

He said, “She’s typical,” and then gave a little laugh.

“Of what?”

“Of a type you’ll find here in town.”

“What sort of type?”

He hesitated as though trying to find words.

Eloise said promptly, “A tart.”

Ogden said, “A man came in while I was talking with her. I think — well; he doesn’t seem to be her husband but—”

“He’s living with her,” Eloise interposed. “Is that what you are trying to tell Mr. Lam, Ogden?”

“Yes,” he blurted.

“After all, Ogden, Mr. Lain has to have the facts, you know.”

“He’s got them now,” Ogden said, embarrassed.

I looked at my watch, said, “Well, thanks a lot. I’ll see if I can get anything out of her.”

I got up.

They all three arose. I had neither the time nor the inclination to go through the polite patter.

I said, “Well, thanks for the help. I’ll talk with her,” and started for the door.

Ogden let me out.

“You don’t know how long Arthur Whitewell intends to be here?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t hear him mention whether Philip was coming?”

“No.”

“If there’s anything I can do, I hope you’ll let me know. Good night.”

“Thank you, I will. Good night.”

It was four-thirty when I climbed the steps to Helen Framley’s apartment and rang the bell. I rang a couple of times, then tried the apartment next door. A woman pushed her head out so quickly that I knew she’d been standing at her door listening. Evidently, she could hear Helen Framley’s bell over in her apartment.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I’m looking for Helen Framley.”

“She lives in that apartment next door.”

“I know, but she doesn’t seem to be home.”

“No. She wouldn’t be.”

The woman was somewhere in the forties. Her glittering, black eyes had the fidgets. They darted to my face, then away, then back, then made a quick survey of thehallway, and came back to me again.

“Know where I might find her?”

“Do you know her when you see her?”

“No. I’m investigating her nineteen-thirty-nine income tax.”

“Can you fancy that—” She half turned and called over her shoulder, “Paw, did you hear that? That woman pays an income tax!”

A man’s voice from the inside of the apartment said, “Uh huh.”

The woman moistened her lips, took a deep breath. “Well, Lord knows as how I’m not the one to pry into a neighbor’s business. Live and let live, that’s my motto. Personally, I don’t care what she does as long as she’s quiet about it. I was telling my husband just the other day. The Lord knows what the world is coming to when a girl like this Framley girl can turn night into day, have men friends calling at her apartment, and stay until all hours of the night. Heaven knows what she does! She certainly doesn’t work, and she’s never up before eleven or twelve in the morning. And I don’t think there’s a night in her life she goes to bed before two o’clock. Of course, you understand I’m not saying anything against the girl, and heaven knows she’s decent-appearing enough, perfectly quiet, and all that. But—”

“Where can I find her?”

“Well, mind you, I’m not one to say anything. Personally I can’t afford to play those slot machines. They tell me they’re so arranged that it’s just like throwing money away. Yet three afternoons now when I’ve walked past the place, I’ve looked in and seen that girl standing in front of the slot machines at the Cactus Patch, dropping one coin after another, working the handles just as fast as she could pump her hand up and down.

“She hasn’t a job, and I don’t know as she’s ever had a job. But for a girl to live a life like that — such a nice, decent-appearing girl, too — and then you tell me she pays an income tax! Well, Ah-h-h-h-l declare! How-much-did-she-pay?”

That last question was shot out at me so fast the words all ran together.

I heard steps behind the woman. A man with round shoulders, a shirt open at the neck, an unbuttoned vest flaring away from the hollow chest, pushed reading glasses up out of the way onto his forehead, and stared at me owlishly. “What’s he want?” he asked the woman.

He was holding a newspaper between his thumb and forefinger. It was open at the sporting page. He had a little drooping, black mustache, and seemed comfortable and relaxed in his bedroom slippers.

“He wants to know where he can find that Framley girl.”

“Why don’t you tell him?”

“I am telling him.”

He pushed her to one side, and said, “Try the Cactus Patch.”

“Where’s that?”

“On the main stem, a casino, big bank of slot machines. You can’t miss it. Come on, Maw, mind your own business and let the girl mind hers.”

He pushed the woman to one side and slammed the door.

I didn’t have any difficulty finding the Cactus Patch. It preserved a fiction of having the bar and the casino in two different establishments; but both opened on the street through wide doorways, and there was a glass partition between the two. The casino had a big wheel of fortune right up in front, then a couple of roulette wheels, a crap table, and some stud poker games. There was a bingo parlor in back of that. Over on the right was a whole bank of slot machines, a double row standing side by side and containing possibly a hundred machines in all.

There were a few scattering customers here and there. It was too early as yet for the bulk of the tourist trade to come in, but the crowd was the mixture that can be found only in a Nevada town.

Here were professional gamblers, panhandlers, touts, and some of the higher-class girls from the red-light district. A couple of the men at the bar were probably miners. Three chaps who were at the wheel of fortune might be engineers from the Boulder Dam. A small sprinkling of auto tourists wandered aimlessly around the place.

Some of these tourists were from the west and more or less familiar with Nevada. Some of them were seeing it for the first time, and their reaction to the wide-open gambling, the shirt-sleeved camaraderie of the crowd was one of gawking wonderment.

I got a dollar changed into nickels, went over to the slot machine, and started playing. It seemed as though every time the wheels clicked to a stop a lemon would be staring me in the face.

A woman was playing a two-bit machine halfway down the bank of machines. She was in the thirties, and her face was touched up like a desert sunset. She didn’t register as Helen Framley. I was down to my last nickel, when two cherries clicked coins into the metal pay-off cup. Just then, a girl came in.