Brett Halliday - The Careless Corpse

Shayne frowned thoughtfully. “You say she cashes in around midnight, if she’s ahead. What if she’s behind, but still has some of her original stake at midnight?”

“Then she keeps on spreading chips around until she breaks or gets ahead,” said Griffin, promptly.

“Do you keep such minute records on all your customers, Alex?”

“You know we don’t. But you notice a woman like Mrs. Peralta. The house-men all get to know her and they begin talking about her. In all my years in the business I’ve never known another player who followed a line so exactly.”

“A good customer,” mused Shayne. He took a sip of cognac and made a rapid calculation. “Dropping several grand a month.”

“That’s about it.” Alexander Griffin’s voice was bland. “So you can see why we wouldn’t like it if… you did anything to disturb the set-up.”

“By ‘we’ you mean Joe Locke?”

“Joe’s the owner,” agreed Griffin. “I just work on a salary. Does that satisfy you?”

Three horizontal creases indented Shayne’s forehead. His left hand went up to the side of his head, and thumb and forefinger tugged, at his earlobe. His gray eyes were very bright and interested, and they fixed themselves on Griffin’s austere face across the desk from him.

“I don’t think so. You’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m telling you to stay away from her, Shayne.”

“Why?” The redhead’s voice was dangerously calm.

Griffin started to reply angrily, but checked himself. He spread out his hands, palms upward, placatingly. “You can start asking questions, Shayne. I can’t stop you… I wouldn’t try to stop you. But, don’t.”

Shayne said, “Nuts. It’s good cognac, Griffin. I appreciate it.” He drained his glass and took a sip of ice-water, and then stood up.

“I’m going to ask Mrs. Peralta the questions. There’s only one answer I want from you, and I want it straight, Griffin. During the time Mrs. Peralta’s been coming here… has she ever gone over the line and plunged deeply?”

He replied flatly, “No. She’s never dropped more than five C’s any one night. She’s got ice-water in her veins, Shayne.”

“When it comes to gambling,” Shayne amplified harshly.

“Yeh. That’s what we were talking about, isn’t it?”

Shayne said, “That’s not what I’m going to be talking to her about. Thanks for the drink.” He turned away abruptly and went to the door with silence behind him.

The roulette room looked just the same as before. Shayne strolled across to the far table and stopped directly behind Laura Peralta who was seated at the end of it. She had a stack of a dozen or fifteen five-dollar chips in front of her. He watched over her shoulder while she spread six of them out in a seemingly haphazard pattern on combinations of the numbers closest to her. The ball went around while other, smaller bets, were being placed about the table, and settled into a slot at the upper end.

The croupier raked in Laura’s chips, and she listlessly played with the stack remaining in front of her. She turned her head and glanced sideways and up at Shayne with no start of surprise, as though she had known he was standing behind her.

She said, “Hello,” composedly. “It won’t be long now. This is my last stack.”

Shayne said, “It certainly won’t be long if you keep on playing them that way.”

The ball started around the wheel again, and she turned back to the table and began arranging chips again in the same haphazard manner. “Do you know a better way to play roulette, Mr. Shayne?” She hesitated pensively with her last two chips in her hand, then dropped them on a single number just an instant before the ball dropped into the zero.

Shayne said wryly, “There are betting systems that lose money a little more slowly.”

The croupier raked in her chips and she pushed her chair back and said to him, “Thank you for a pleasant evening, George.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Peralta. And good night.”

She turned to Shayne and asked challengingly, “Who wants to lose money slowly?”

Shayne shrugged. He took her arm and said, “I’ll buy you that drink.”

“Several drinks,” she amended, moving her rounded hip against his thigh as they went toward the archway.

“As many as you want.”

The door of the manager’s office was open, and Alexander Griffin stood on the threshold watching them go by together.

Outside the archway, Shayne hesitated, glancing down at his companion. The entrance to the cocktail lounge was directly in front of them. Laura Peralta squeezed his arm and turned him toward the outer doorway.

She said throatily, “Take me some place, Mike. Some place that’s rancid and depraved. You do know about the seamy side of life, don’t you?”

He grinned down at her, fumbling in his pocket for half a dollar and his hat check which he exchanged with the girl at the counter for his Panama. He told her gravely, “I’ll try to think of a joint that fits those descriptive adjectives.”

“Take your car,” she told him. “I think I’m going to get drunk tonight.”

“What about yours?”

“They’ll drive it home for me and leave it. Jimmy,” she called out to a parking lot attendant, “see that my car gets home.”

“Sure, Mrs. Peralta,” the attendant replied cheerfully, and Shayne led the way around a row of parked cars to Timothy Rourke’s nondescript heap. He said, “It sounds like a regular thing.”

She said, “If you mean do I usually go off with some man and leave my car here, the answer is ‘no,’ Mike. On the other hand,” she went on composedly as he opened the door for her, “I am a very favored customer and they take very good care to see that no harm comes to me. Which includes driving me home and depositing me there whenever I get too tight to drive myself.”

Shayne went around and slid in under the wheel. “I can understand why you’re a very favored customer,” he told her grimly.

She put her hand tightly on his biceps as he stretched out his arm to turn on the ignition. “Why don’t you kiss me, Mike? Why don’t you pretend that I’m your best girl? And then let’s just see what happens.”

He said, “All right,” and turned slowly to slide his right arm around her shoulder. She pushed up against him and lifted her face with closed eyes and open lips, and her fingers circled the back of his neck urgently.

She worked her open lips and her tongue against his mouth, and Shayne’s arm tightened roughly about her shoulders. She was a hunk of passionate, quivering woman flesh, and both of them were breathing hard and unevenly when they slowly drew apart. The tips of her fingers trailed around the side of his neck and along his jaw, and moonlight glinted in her wide-open eyes as they stared into his for a full thirty seconds. Then she laughed lightly and turned and moved away from his encircling arm and composedly took a cigarette from her handbag. “That’s the first time I’ve been kissed in the front seat of a little, old, battered-up car for a good many years, Mike Shayne.”

“Like it better than a Cad?”

“Much better. Though I don’t get kissed in Cads very often these days either.” She flicked on a lighter and held it while Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth, lit his and then her own. She closed the lighter and dropped it back into her bag, inhaled deeply and then blew out a thin stream of smoke.

Shayne made no move to turn on the ignition again. He folded his arms across the steering wheel and asked, “What’s this all about, Laura?”

“All what?”

“Everything.” His voice was angry. Then he gentled it. “Do you enjoy gambling?”