Robert Alter - Carny kill

"I haven't got that much," Duff said in a small, tense voice.

"How much have you got?"

"Well-" Duff thumbed through his bills hurriedly. "About a bill-somewhere around there."

"Shove it in, old dear," Mike said.

"What about the rest of it? Pull it down a bill. I can't meet two."

Mike picked up his coffee cup and leaned back in his chair.

"I'm not an unreasonable man, McDuff. Tomorrow's payday. I'll trust you for the odd yard."

Duff didn't like it at all, none of it. I couldn't blame him. He picked up his hole card and looked at it close to his vest. Then he showed it to Jerry with a mute look and Jerry raised his brows in a Christ-only-knows expression. Duff looked at Gabby and Smitty. They were staring at him like a couple of expectant hanging judges.

Bill Duff was beat. He folded up is hand. "Take it," he said.

Mike tipped back his head and let out a laugh. It was a high trill of pure delight. Then he got up and picked up his winnings and stuffed them any old way in his pockets, like the Scarecrow of Oz, and handed me his hole card.

"Give it to Bill at Christmas, Thax," he said. "I've got a late date on."

He walked away and I looked at the card while all the other guys in that room looked at me. I could damn near feel Duff's eyes smoldering in my face.

"Well?" he demanded.

I didn't say anything. It was better than the punch in the mouth I figured I owed him to just quietly hand him the card. It was very red and it had two faces. It didn't go with a low spade straight flush at all.

I drew Jerry out into the hall. He was still all ga-ga over that last hand.

"Have you ever seen anything like it?" he wanted to know. "I tell you that Ransome is wild! That was the bluff of the century."

Maybe. But I'd known Bill Duff a long time. He was the kind of cheap flashboy who begged for a cleaning. Anyhow, I had something else on my mind.

"Listen, Jerry. How are you in the Jimmy Valentine scene? Can you bust a box, if you have to?"

He drew back from me as if appalled by the question.

"Mister Thaxton! Are you suggesting that I, Gerald Malone, would stoop to cracking a safe?"

"Yeah, yeah," I said impatiently. "But can you?"

"No," he admitted and he looked disgruntled about it. "I don't have the touch, dammit. But Eddy does, if it's a simple box. What I mean, he doesn't go in for the soup and detonator bit. What's the pitch?"

"There's nothing in it for him," I said. "I'm looking for information, not for loot. So I don't think what we take will be missed. Nobody should call copper because of it."

"That's good. Because Eddy isn't looking for law problems."

"What would he want for the job? I could spring with my paycheck that's due tomorrow."

"Aw for crysake, Thax, you're talking to Jerry. Eddy works for me."

I put my hand on his shoulder.

"Well, amigo, one thing's for sure. I'm at least going to get you some new nylons for your girl."

This Eddy reminded me of the mousy little beak-nosed character who used to play in all the gangster movies twenty-five years back. Nervous, stuttery, with the predatory look of a voracious moray eel.

"What-what kind of a box is it?" he wanted to know.

The three of us were standing in the inky shadows of the alleyway between the storehouse and the bunkhouse. Lloyd Franks' office was right above us. Eddy's busy little birdeyes batted here, there, anywhere except on the face of the person he was talking to. He made me jumpy.

"I don't know, for godsake," I said. "I'm no box man."

"Yeah, but is it a wall-a wall job or an upright, or-or a combo or what? Know what I mean? What-what is it?"

"It's not in a wall and it's a combination box," I told him.

"Well, all-all right, then." He rubbed the fingertips of his right hand against his pantsleg. "I-I just want to know, see? What kind-what kind it is, see?"

"C'mon," Jerry said. "Let's get going before one of the security guards comes staggering by."

Truth to tell, I had my sincere doubts about this Eddy. He was so goddam nervous and jittery. But I dropped all doubt as soon as he took on the first locked door with his little pick-tool. He had that thing open quicker than I could have turned the knob.

We went up the stains with a fountainpen-sized flash to guide us. Eddy kept mumbling to himself and rubbing his fingertips on his pants, while Jerry complacently hummed an old song about that masturbating, fornicating sonofabitch Colombo.

The thing I liked about Jerry is that he never once asked me why I wanted to break into Franks' office and crack his safe. It gave me a good feeling. A man who will trust you on face value is a rare find in today's society.

The door to Franks' office gave Eddy about as much trouble as I would expect to find in opening a cracker box. We stepped into the large room and I flashed the light at the distant safe. Eddy approached the box on a right oblique, sizing it up as he went.

"Yeah," he muttered. "It'll-it'll take-take a couple a minutes. Know what I mean? Couple a minutes."

I nodded sagely in the dark. He was the real article as far as I was concerned. He could do no wrong. I held the light for him as he gave the dial the first practice spin.

"Turn it-turn it off, huh?" he whispered. "It distracts my concentration. Know what I mean? My concentration."

Jerry was sitting in Franks' chair nonchalantly going through Franks' desk, drawer by drawer, using the moon through the window behind him to see by. He was still humming about that no-good Colombo.

"The captain had a cabinboy, he loved him like a br-other. And each night between the decks they climbed upon one an-o-ther."

Eddy had his left ear against the combination dial, listening to the tumblers. He sandpapered his fingertips a couple of times on the rug and tried again.

"Seven-seventeen right," he mumbled to himself, "four left."

He had it open. I hunkered down with the pocket flash and started through the papers. I was looking for an envelope and I turned it up in less than a minute. Jerry had left the desk and he and Eddy were both watching me expectantly.

I didn't say anything. I slipped the envelope in my pocket and stood up and nudged the safe door closed with my knee. Eddy knelt down and wiped the dial with a handkerchief.

"What brand of hooch do you like, Eddy?" I asked him. "I owe you a gallon of it."

His eyes blinked from right to left and back again.

"No-no thanks. I never-never touch it, see? Not a-not a drop. It makes-makes you nervous. Know what I mean? Makes you too nervous."

The next day was a sleighride. Nobody was murdered and I didn't stumble over any bodies and Ferris left me alone. I worked at my stand with my little shells and that went well too. No beefs.

I closed up when the Viking horn gave its asthmatic moan, shook my head when Gabby made a have-a-drink gesture, and strolled over to the stripshow. The last round of marks was just filing out the front and it was rather interesting to watch their faces and catch what they had to say.

One lanky built slack-faced loner came out wearing a glassy sly eyed look and I thought it would probably be just as well if he had a police call that night or else some silly little fourteen-year-old gadabout switchtail was liable to find herself being raped from one convenient end of the beach to the other.

But it was none of my business. I went around to the back and waited for Billie.

Bev came out first and said something to me which she seemed to think was humor but was really only plain dirty, but I managed to cough up a laugh for her because her boyfriend was a friend of mine. Then she went away and Billie came out.

"Hi, Thax. What have you been up to tonight?"

"I've been drilling a hole in the side of the building here, so I can peek at you nautch girls."