Grifter's Game (17 page)

I waited outside, then hit the lobby after they were already in the elevator. I looked around the lobby but this time I didn’t even notice the money-smell in the air. Hell, the Eden Roc was just as plush. And I’d paid the tab there all by myself. Well, almost. At any rate, I was getting tougher to impress.

I saw the bell captain and walked over to him. He looked me over carefully from the new Borsalino to Keith’s shoes on my feet. Then his eyes and mine got together.

“That couple that just came in,” I said. “Did you notice them?”

“I may have.”

Straight from Hollywood, this one. I smiled gently. “Mighty fine-looking couple,” I said. “You know, I bet you aren’t too observant. Here they are, staying here, and you don’t notice them at all.”

He didn’t say anything.

“What I mean,” I said, “is that I’ll bet you twenty dollars you don’t even know what room they’re staying in.”

He thought about it. “Awright,” he said. “Eight-oh-four.”

I gave him the twenty. “That was very good,” I said. “But it doesn’t move me. I’ll bet you a hundred you don’t have a key that would open their door.”

He almost smiled. “No trouble,” he said.

“Not for the world.”

He vanished. He returned. He traded me a key for a hundred-dollar bill.

“If there’s trouble,” he said, “you don’t know where you got that key.”

“I found it under a flat stone.”

“You got it,” he said. “Keep it quiet, huh?”

“Sure.”

He looked me over, very carefully. “I don’t think I get it,” he said.

“For a hundred and twenty you don’t have to.”

He shrugged elaborately. “Curiosity,” he said. “The human comedy.”

“It killed the cat.”

Another profound shrug. “You her husband?”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t think so. But—”

“That guy upstairs with her,” I said. “You’ve seen him? The one with the shoulders and the hair?”

The expression on his face told me just how much regard he had for the boy upstairs.

“
He’s
her husband,” I explained. “I’m her jealous lover. The bitch is two-timing me.”

He sighed. It was better than a shrug. “You don’t want to talk straight,” he said, “maybe I’ll watch television. They’re funnier on television.”

He had a right to his opinion. I found a chair in the lobby and sat in it, giving them time to get started at whatever they were going to do. The ceiling was sound-proofed and I tried to count the little holes in it. I’m not enough of an idiot to count the holes themselves, of course. I count the holes in one of the squares, and then I see how many squares there are on the whole ceiling. And then I multiply it out.

What the hell. It’s something to do.

I finished a cigarette, then got up and put another one in my mouth. I set it on fire and dragged hard on it. I took the smoke way down deep in my lungs and held onto it. Then I let it out, slowly, in a single thin column that held together for a long while. You can get slightly dizzy that way, but the dizziness can make you feel more confident. I felt very confident.

I walked over to the elevator. The op was reading the morning paper. He was studying the morning line. It is a hell of a thing when you live in Nevada and still have to play the horses. I shook my head sadly and he looked up at me.

“Eight,” I said.

He didn’t say anything. He piloted the car to the eighth floor and I got out. The door closed and he sailed down to the main floor again to study the racing form. I hoped he would lose every race. I felt very mean.

I walked one way, came to a room number, and found out that I was headed the wrong way. I turned around and worked my way to 804. There was a
Do Not Disturb
sign on it which somehow seemed very funny. I thought that it would be fun to knock so that they could tell me to go away.

I didn’t.

Instead I finished the cigarette. I walked all the way back to the elevator to dunk it in an urn filled with sand instead of grinding it into the thick carpet. Then I walked all the way back and stood in front of the door some more.

A sliver of light came through the door at the bottom. Not much. As if one little lamp were turned on.

Which meant the stage was set.

I took the key out of my pocket. I stuck it into the lock. It went in soundlessly and turned soundlessly. I said a silent prayer of thanks to the mercenary bell captain. A penknife is effective, but it is not subtle. I felt very much like being subtle.

It was a very nice hotel. The door did not even squeak. I opened it all the way and there they were.

The main light was off but they had left the closet light on, which was very considerate of them. It let me see without squinting. There was quite a bit to see.

She was on the bed. Her head was back on the pillow and her eyes were closed. Her legs were bent and parted. He was between them. He was earning his keep and working very hard at it. He seemed to be enjoying it. So did she. But there was no way of telling with either of them.

I stepped inside, very thankful that Keith’s shoes didn’t squeak. I turned and closed the door. They did not hear me or notice me in any way.

They were too busy.

For several very long seconds I watched them. Once, long ago, when I had been too young to know what it was all about, I happened to watch my mother and father making love. I didn’t really know what they were doing. But I knew what Mona and her friend were doing and there was something almost hypnotic about the performance. Maybe it was the rhythm. I’m not sure.

Then it was time. I really wanted to come on with something extremely clever but my brain refused to supply anything really appropriate. It was a shame. You don’t get too many opportunities like that one.

But nothing clever came to mind. And I didn’t have all night. So what I said, finally, was about as trite as you can get. Concise and to the point, but not very original.

I said: “Hello, Mona.”

13

They didn’t even finish what they were doing. They stopped at once. He rolled away from her and came up on the balls of his feet while she lay there trying to cover herself with her hands. A silly gesture.

He could have dressed, tied his shoes, and walked right past me. I had no quarrel with him. I wasn’t ready to run around proclaiming my undying love for him, but I wasn’t ready to kick his face in, either. He was out of his element. A bedroom bouncing-bee had turned into more than that and it was time for him to pick up his pants and go home.

That wasn’t his style. He could read it only one way—I had intruded on his privacy, interrupted his sport, made him look foolish. That was the only diagnosis those beautiful blue eyes could report to that muscle-bound brain, and there was only one way that body could react to that sort of information.

He rushed me.

He must have played football once. He came with his head way down and his arms outstretched. Anybody looks silly enough like that but he looked sillier. He was nude, and all men look ridiculous nude. But there was something else. He rushed me, and I stared at the top of his head, and I saw that every last strand of hair remained magically in place.

I kicked him in the face.

He did a little back-flip and wound up sitting on his can. The point of the shoe had come into pleasant contact with his jaw and he was dizzy—unhurt, unmarked, but dizzy.

He tried to get up.

The funny thing is that I still wasn’t mad at him at all. But I knew that I had to show him just where he stood in the overall scheme of things. I did not want him in my hair. I had more important things on my mind than the stupid son of a bitch.

I did not bother playing fair. That would have been stupid. I waited until he got halfway up and then I kicked his face in again. It was a better kick this time. It split his lip and took out a tooth. He wouldn’t be pretty for the next month or so.

He wouldn’t be able to earn a living, either. Because I put the next kick between his legs. He made a little-girl sound way in the back of his throat that turned into a strangled moan before he was done with it.

Then he blacked out.

I turned to Mona. She was all wrapped up in a robe now. I could tell that she was frightened but she managed to hide most of the fear. I had to give her credit.

I waited her out. Finally she tried a smile, gave it up, and sighed. “I’m supposed to say something,” she said. “I suppose. But where do I start?”

I lit a cigarette.

“I would have come to Miami,” she said. “Except I was afraid if we made contact too quickly—”

“Shut up.”

She looked as though she had been slapped.

“You don’t have to talk,” I said. “I’ll talk. But first we get rid of your friend.”

“He wasn’t my friend.”

“You looked pretty friendly there for a few seconds.”

She swallowed. “He wasn’t like you, Joe. Nobody was. You were always the best. You—”

“Save it,” I said. I was annoyed at her for trying that. She should have been able to do better. “We’re getting rid of your friend,” I said again. “Then we talk.”

I walked over to the phone, picked it up and asked for the bell captain. He was there in no time.

“Upstairs,” I said, “in eight-oh-four. A little job I’d like you to do for me. A favor.”

“This is the jealous lover?”

“The same.”

“Still feeling generous?”

“Very. Still greedy?”

A low chuckle. “Be right up,” he said, and rang off.

I checked Hair-and-Shoulders. He was still out. “Dress him,” I told her. “In a hurry. Get his clothes on. You don’t have to make him look beautiful but get him dressed.”

She went to work.

“The bell captain’ll be here in a minute,” I went on. “Don’t get cute. You won’t be able to carry it off. I’ll take us both to the chair if I have to.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You sure of that?”

No answer. She went on dressing him and I waited for the bell captain. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, quite discreet, and I let him in.

I gave him another hundred. “Our friend had an accident,” I said. “Too much to drink. Then he fell down and hurt himself. Somebody ought to take him home.”

He looked at Shoulders, then at me. “A lovely accident,” he said. “It couldn’t happen to a more deserving fellow. Not stiff, is he?”

I shook my head. “But tired,” I said. “I’m tired, too. I’d carry him back to his apartment but I really need my sleep. I thought maybe you’d take care of him for me.”

He smiled.

“One more thing,” I said. “The lady and I would like a certain amount of privacy. For quite awhile. No phone calls, no knocks at the door. Can you take care of that?”

He looked at Mona, then back at me. “A cinch.”

I waited there while he picked up Shoulders. He draped him over his own shoulder and smiled sadly at me. Then he carried him out of the room like a sack of wet laundry and I closed the door after him and slid the bolt home.

She turned to look at me. This time her eyes were very wide with the fear showing through them. Breathing wasn’t easy for her.

“Are you going to kill me, Joe?”

I shook my head.

“Then what do you want? Money? You can have half of it, Joe. There’s so much. More than I need, more than you need. You can have half. Is that fair enough? I’ll give you half, I was going to give you half anyway, and—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s the truth, Joe. I—”

“Don’t lie.”

She stopped talking and looked at me. Her eyes were hurt. She was telling me with her eyes that I shouldn’t call her a liar, it wasn’t nice. I should be nice to a pretty girl like her.

“No lies,” I said. “We’re going to play a brand new game. It’s called
To Tell the Truth
. Like on television.”

She looked very nervous. I lit a cigarette and handed it to her. She needed it.

“You were damned good,” I told her. “You were so good that you didn’t even have to cover all the loopholes. You let me see the holes in your story and I wrote them off as coincidences. That was very good.”

I remembered the Hitchcock movie I saw in Cleveland. You can get away with coincidences if your direction is tight enough. And Mona was a fine director.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” I said. “Keith was supposed to be a heroin importer. That was his business. And you weren’t supposed to know a thing about it. That should have sounded fishy right at the beginning. How in the hell would he run a game like that without you knowing? And why would he take you along to Atlantic City while he was working a deal? He wasn’t on vacation—he was hauling a load for Max Treger and you knew the score right from the start. That was a cute bit.”

She looked unhappy.

“Here’s the way I figure it,” I went on. “You were at the station. You saw me pick up Keith’s bags. He didn’t, but you did. You could have stopped me right then and there but that was too easy. Your mind was starting to buzz, wheels were turning. There might be an angle in it for you. So you didn’t say a word.

“So I picked up the luggage, and then you picked me up. You took your time, maybe, but you sure as hell didn’t sit on your hands. You found me on the beach, made a date with me, and met me on the beach that night. And you let me figure out who you were by inches. L. Keith Brassard’s pretty little wife. You let me take two and two and put them together until they came up five.”

“I liked you.”

“You were nuts about me. You were right on hand the next morning with the chambermaid routine. You knew I had the heroin but that was all you knew. Somewhere there had to be something for you. You were sniffing around. Hell, even the way you woke me up was beautiful. You shook me and blabbered about finding Keith’s bags in my closet. It was lovely. You didn’t even have to fake being confused. You were confused, all right. You couldn’t find the horse and that confused the daylights out of you.”

I stopped and shook my head. Saying it aloud was somehow different from running it through my mind. Everything fit perfectly into place and there was no room left for doubt. It all added up with nothing out of place.

“If the horse had been there you probably would have disappeared with it. God knows what you would have done with it—maybe tried to swing a deal on your own, maybe tried to sell it back to Keith or something. God knows. But you saw that you couldn’t get it back. And your mind went on working. Maybe you could use me, get me to kill Keith for you. That was a good idea, wasn’t it?