Thomas Perry - The Butcher's Boy

THEY WENT OUT TO THE parking lot and got into Little Norman’s white Mark IV, then drove to the Marina Hotel.

At the bar, which was set back and above the casino, Little Norman said, “Grab a table where I can see the action; I’ll be back in a second.”

He said, “Where are you going?”

“Just a quick phone call, kid. I’m looking after your interests.”

He waited as Norman plowed through the knots of gamblers to a bank of telephones near a men’s room. When Norman got there, he dialed and then turned back to face him, smiling as he talked.

The waitress leaned across him with Little Norman’s drink, actually placing a breast on his shoulder for an instant. Everything here was different, he thought. It was calculated to put things that secretly delighted just out of reach, always as though it had been a fortuitous chance. They probably had a class that taught them to do that, as the last girl in the line of the dinner show at the Lido had her G-string snap, always in the last few bars of the performance.

Little Norman said, “To your health, kid,” and took a drink.

He responded, “And yours,” and drank too, but only enough to wet his mouth and let the ice click against his teeth. There wasn’t much point in overdoing it, and he would overdo it if he had to drink one for one with Little Norman. Besides, he had been on the road for over a month, and he never drank on the road. You had to keep your head clear on the road.

On the other side of the casino the crowd around one of the crap tables was two deep and growing. The man who was rolling was wearing a sport coat, but had stuffed his tie in a pocket and opened his shirt at the neck. He rolled again and a little cry went up from the table that was just loud enough to reach the bar. More people strolled over attempting looks of detachment, but joined the crowd and riveted their eyes to the table. From where he sat in the bar it was hard to tell whether they were betting or watching. The quick, mechanical movements of the croupier didn’t reveal anything to him. From this distance they all just looked hungry.

“You a gambler?”

“I may try my luck a little later,” he said. “Why?”

“Some people in that line of work are, some aren’t. Henckel once lost twenty thousand in one night. Personally I didn’t like it much until after I quit. Couldn’t see the point in it. When you’re old you need some kind of excitement that doesn’t involve your body.”

Another cry reached them from the crap table across the casino, not a cheer, exactly, but a wordless, spontaneous howl from all the throats gathered around the table, as though it were the collective sound of their blood pressures going up in unison.

“You’re no more retired than I am, Norman,” he said. “Just got a steady job now.”

“It ain’t so, kid,” said Little Norman, his eyes suddenly open wide and his smile gone. “I’m sixty-one years old. But once I was good. One of the best. Quiet and reliable. Maybe the best button man in the Midwest.” Then his eyes narrowed and the opaque smile returned. “Not as good as you, though. I was real surprised to see your face like that. I never expected to see you looking like that. Not ever.”

“It happens,” he replied.

“I didn’t say it couldn’t happen,” said Little Norman. “What I said was I didn’t think I’d see it. That’s a loser’s face.”

Across the casino the man rolled again; this time he rolled into a silence, a deep-drawn inbreathing like a wall of anticipation. From the bar it was hard to tell whether he made his point, but the silence seemed to draw spectators even faster, like particles rushing to fill a void. When the stickman leaned across the table, bestowing and gathering in single economical movements, the man was still visible, standing with his back to the bar. But then the crowd shifted a little and he disappeared behind it.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Hard to tell about winning until you count the money.”

“That’s a fact,” said Little Norman. He gulped down the last finger of Scotch in his glass and stood up. “Be seeing you, kid. It’s always a pleasure.”

“Thanks for the drink, Norman.”

“Any time,” he said as he stepped down to the casino floor. For a long time it was possible to watch his head and shoulders moving along above the crowd, but then he was gone.

11

He finished his drink and left the hotel. There wasn’t any particular reason to leave. He wasn’t hiding from anyone and didn’t have anywhere else as a destination. It was just the normal thing to do, as automatic as the urge to blink his eyes, as automatic as going outside and then waiting beside the door to see if the next one out paused for a second to see which way he’d gone. He was on vacation for two more days. That was no time to let himself slide into a position where he’d feel uncomfortable.

He walked across the parking lot to the street, and joined the anonymous hundreds moving along the Strip from casino to casino. Just before they got to the MGM Grand Hotel he parted from his companions and took a shortcut through a closed gas station, then stopped in the shadows behind it. Nobody came after him, so he went on. If there was a watcher, he at least had sense enough to keep his distance and not be annoying.

He went in the front entrance of the Grand Hotel and moved quickly to the other end of the gigantic casino, where the blackjack games were proceeding in an atmosphere of spurious calm. At one table a man piled his remaining chips on the square in front of him and waited, one foot already on the floor to push his chair away from the table. The dealer’s deft fingers peeled cards out of the shoe and made them re-materialize in front of the players, and the man found himself sitting behind a ten and a four. He didn’t seem surprised or disappointed by it, just watched while the second ten appeared and the dealer’s hand snatched away the chips. Then his foot pushed off and he relinquished his chair.

The dealer’s face didn’t seem to notice that the man was gone, or that he’d ever been there. Only his marvelous hands took note of the fact that there were no chips on one of the betting spaces, and passed by without leaving any cards. The face didn’t acknowledge it when another man sat down in the seat to wait for the next deal. One of the hands snatched the five crisp twenties and tamped them into the cash slot, while the other left a stack of chips where the money had been. If the dealer’s eyes had passed across the new face with its terrible bruise and the cut just above the hairline, they didn’t linger there. The eyes were only there to direct the hands, and there was plenty for the hands to do.

When he sat down at the table he checked his watch. It was eleven thirty. It didn’t make much difference to him where he spent the next few hours, but it was important not to lose track of things. He set out a single five-dollar chip and watched the hands of the dealer deposit his cards on the table. They were a queen and a ten, so he stood pat and waited while the dealer’s king and five drew another king and busted. The hands fluttered over the green felt surface of the table, rearranging chips and cards, rewarding and punishing with the same even, imperturbable movements, but in any case obliterating the decisions that had just been made along with the combinations of numbers and symbols that had prompted them. Each time there was a new set of decisions, and then the hands performed their mechanical reckoning and dealt again. He kept a rough tally of how well he was doing, and it was no worse than he’d expected. The dealer had started on a losing streak, and busted about half of the first twenty hands. After that the normal order of probabilities had reasserted itself and the house’s regular five-percent advantage had resumed. When he glanced at his watch again it was one thirty. Two hours was enough. He gathered his red chips and headed for the cashier’s cage. When he went out the front door he had six twenties and a ten in his shirt pocket. It was mildly pleasing to him. He was no gambler and the minimum bets he had stuck to had just kept him there passing the time. But he figured it was better than losing.