Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

The woman’s next words were again inaudible.

George exclaimed, “What do you mean he’s going for the whole thing? You’re out of your mind! He knows he’s up against an organization. Even if he could pull it off, how could he market it? He’ll settle. I guarantee it.”

More scratching followed, broken by scattered words. “… could be bad if…”

George answered but now he, too, had moved beyond the microphone’s effective range.

“Damn!” Christa said. “Damn, damn, damn!”

Shayne was still listening intently. The faint electronic scratchings and mutterings continued, but the voices were too far from the pickup point to come across as words.

After a time he went for drinks. He gave Christa a questioning look when he came back, but she shook her head: still nothing. He paced the rug restlessly, considering and discarding possible courses of action.

She hissed at him, and he picked up the earphone in time to hear George say, “… too bad he knows what Yami looks like. But hell, I suppose it could work. It damn well better. If it doesn’t, then we do it my way, all right? And if that doesn’t work, we might as well quit. What I need is a drink.”

This was followed sometime later by scraping and rustling sounds.

George said harshly, “Not now. Damn it. where’s your sense of timing? I’ll call Mike Shayne for you. He might not even charge you a stud fee.”

There was a resounding slap. It took place near the microphone, and was followed by the sound of a brief struggle. No words were spoken for a time. Something fell.

George said, “You’re a real bitch.”

A door slammed.

Each member of the tour was given a complimentary glass of champagne with dinner and ten dollars’ worth of chips to lure them into the casino. The main gambling room combined features copied from the elegant European casinos-chandeliers, paneled walls, impassive male attendants in evening dress-and the great Las Vegas supermarkets, which go in for varied action, fast turnover, and no frills. Lassiter, the pilot of their chartered DC-8, was shooting craps, the pastime that had got him into trouble when he worked for Pan American. Several sunburned schoolteachers from the tour were feeding half dollars compulsively into the slot machines. It was early in the evening, but they already wore the stupefied look of slot-machine players everywhere.

The Reverend Crane Ward, among the onlookers at the roulette table, caught Michael Shayne’s eye and shook his head in amazement. Shayne, playing idly, had been winning steadily. After an hour and a half, he was thirty thousand dollars ahead. A crowd had collected around him. Women kept touching him, in the hope that some of his luck would rub off. He lost on a combination bet, then won again heavily. There was a general exhalation of breath around him as the croupier’s rake, which usually moved in the opposite direction, pushed another impressive stack of chips toward him.

Shayne bet two fifty-dollar chips on the next spin and lost.

Christa, beside him, in a glistening silver evening gown with no back, was as excited as the others around the table. Shayne staked another hundred dollars and lost. He won again when he increased his bet, and now he began to pay more attention to his surroundings. He surveyed the room casually.

He had no trouble picking out the professionals by a certain quietness of manner. He recognized several of them who at one time or another had worked in Miami Beach.

The croupier was waiting for his play.

“What’s your name, croupier?” Shayne said.

The man, a small, sallow Italian, wet his lips. “Tony Gambino.”

Shayne reached out, but delayed before placing his bet on the table. “I haven’t kept up. Who has the concession here now?”

“Why, Al Luccio.” He corrected himself immediately. “Mr. Luccio.”

“Send for him.”

“Isn’t everything satis-”

“Send for him.”

Shayne dropped the chips on black, and the wheel spun. Black came up, to squeals of delight from Shayne’s little cheering section.

“Michael, you marvelous man!” Christa cried.

While she was stacking the chips, a thin bald man with a cigar appeared at Shayne’s elbow.

“How are you, Al?” Shayne said without looking around.

“Not bad, Mike. And yourself? You seem to be lucky tonight.”

“And all with that complimentary ten bucks. You’ve got a nice store here.”

“The best,” Luccio agreed quietly. “Are you picking up now, Mike?”

“No. The reason I called you over, Al, besides wanting to see a familiar face, is to talk to you about social conditions in St. Albans. I remember how generous you used to be when the Miami ladies passed the hat for some worthy cause.”

“Yeah, well-a lot of that was public relations,” Luccio said modestly. “You know how it is.”

“And I suppose you keep up the good work down here.”

Luccio said quickly, “Why don’t we discuss it in my office? This is no place-”

Shayne wagged his head, and when he spoke next his speech had thickened. He made a loose, drunken gesture.

“Anything I have to say, I’ll say in front of these wonderful people. I’m not going to give you a big speech, but when I was walking around this afternoon, I saw plenty of kids who could use a pair of shoes. Fine-looking kids. Al-I want you to cash in these chips and see to it that the dough gets where it’ll do the most good.”

He interrupted himself to ask Christa for a total.

“Just over forty-seven thousand.”

“As much as that!” Shayne exclaimed happily. “Al, this is going to do your public relations a world of good. Let’s nail this down. Not that I don’t trust you,” he assured the gambler, turning to look at him for the first time, “but there’s always a chance of a bookkeeping mistake. Who can give me the name of a good local outfit that can use forty-seven thousand fish?” He looked around. “Anybody.” A woman across the table said hesitantly, “There’s a free clinic in Old Town. The doctor who runs it is always short of money.”

“Perfect,” Shayne said. “Give Al the address. He’s known all over the Caribbean as a man who’s satisfied with the house percentage, and I think we have enough witnesses so he’ll make sure the clinic gets the full forty-seven thousand. I want to thank you, Al, for running an honest game and giving me this opportunity to help people who may not be quite as fortunate as the rest of us. I’ll be moving on tomorrow, but you’ll be staying. It’s really your money, in a sense. I’m only a vehicle. I know your name is going to be mentioned in a few mothers’ prayers.”

“Yeah,” the gambler said unenthusiastically. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Mike, even if it usually costs me money.”

Shayne cocked an eyebrow at Christa. Leaving the chips where they were, she rose and came with him. The slot machines continued to clank and whir, but the rest of the action in the big room had stopped.

Alone with Shayne in the automatic elevator, Christa let out her breath in a long whistle. “You really think they were planning to jump you?”

“Sure. I spotted a couple of specialists. The wheel has an overhead photoelectric control.”

“You were winning, not losing. It never occurred to me that the wheel might be crooked.”

“The idea was to set up a legitimate excuse so I could be found with a fractured skull and the cops wouldn’t tie up the plane.”

“And Luccio would get his money back.” She shivered. “I was completely taken in. Still,” she added wistfully, “forty-seven thousand dollars! Wasn’t there any way you could put it in the hotel safe?”

Shayne shook his head. “All they were trying to do was get me tabbed publicly as a big winner. The money wouldn’t be there when the cops looked for it.”