Texas by the Tail Page 6

“Yes?” Mitch said innocently. “Something wrong, Frank?”

  “You didn’t have any intention of playing! You didn’t even know where the action was!”

  “We made a deal, Frank.”

  “I know. But watch yourself, Mitch. Make that the last fast one of the evening.”

  Red saw the by-play from the bar. She coupled it and colored it with their earlier encounter with the gambler, and the result was not flattering to Downing.

  She bared her teeth, rather than smiled, as Mitch introduced them. He started to help her down from the bar stool, and her elbow pulled firmly from his grasp. His brows raised slightly. Ironic humor twinkled at the back of his eyes. He had been around for a very long time, and was a very long way from his place of origin. The situation appealed to him, and he knew how to make the most of it.

  The action was on the third floor. Downing guided them to a private elevator, and its operator gave them one unobtrusively searching glance, photographing them in his mind. Debouching from the car, they were met by another man, a suave but huskier version of the elevator operator. And again there was that swift photographing glance.

  He opened a door on the opposite side of the hall, stood back, with a little bow, and pulled it shut after them.

  The room was approximately octagonal in shape; sunken, a few feet from the entrance, by three broad steps. There were no windows. A bar-buffet, with a Negro attendant, half-circled a corner of the room. Flanked by four long, low lounges, set back at a comfortable distance, was an oblong dice table.

  A half-dozen people stood around it, one of them a stout middle-aged woman. With a nod to his companions, Mitch wandered over to it. Downing and Red sat down on a lounge.

  Laughing inwardly, the gambler gave her a confidential wink. “How about a good stiff drink, honey? You look like a gal that could slug it down.”

  Red shook her head. “No, thank you!”

  “It don’t cost nothin’,” Downing said craftily. “Get yourself pie-eyed, and it won’t cost you a penny.”

  “No!”

  She tried to ignore the gambler, keeping her eyes on Mitch, watching the easy way he made himself one with the group around the table. But Downing would not be ignored. He kept up the dumb act, even nudging her with his elbow, until he again had her exasperated attention.

  “…and you know somethin’?” he was saying. “I think you’re a heck of a pretty gal.”

  “Gee, Dad!”—she gave him an icy grin. “You’re a daisy!”

  “It’s sure been a hot day, ain’t it?” Downing went on. “Sweated so bad I had to wash my feet.”

  “Why you poor thing, you!” Red said. “Didn’t it make you awfully sick?”

  “Well, yeah it did kind of. You know what I always say? I always say it ain’t the heat but the humidity.”

  “Do you?” Red said. “Do you always say it ain’t the heat but the humidity?”

  “Yep. Yessir, that’s what I always say.”

  “Well, you’d better write it down somewhere,” Red said. “You might forget it, and then where would you be?”

  Downing pulled a look of heavy suspicion. He asked her if she was trying to razz him or somethin’. “I’ll bet you are,” he said. “I’ll bet you’re tryin’ to razz me or somethin’.”

  “An intelligent gentleman like you? Perish the thought!”

  “You can’t fool me,” Downing said darkly. “I reckon you don’t like me very much, do you?”

  Red turned on him, giving him the full effect of her scornful eyes. “No, I don’t like you, Mr. Frank Downing,” she said. “To be honestly frank, I don’t like you a darned bit!”

  “Well, there’s nothing like being honestly frank,” Downing murmured. “Unless it’s redundant.”

  Red started. She blushed, tried to look indignant and suddenly giggled. “Why, you—you—!”

  “Something wrong, lady?” Downing said innocently.

  “There certainly is!” Red declared. “Just where have you been hiding?”

  “Me? I been here all the time, ma’am. Sittin’ right next to the humidity.”

  “Then that’s quite long enough,” Red said firmly. “You get right up from there and bring me a drink!”

  Downing laughed and got up. He brought drinks for both of them, along with a plate of hors d’oeuvres. A brisk conversation sprang up between them, and a feeling of liking as well. One of those peculiarly strong likings, which so often evolve from meetings that have started off badly.

  Meanwhile, the man nearest Mitch had picked up the dice.

  He was apparently the big winner of the evening, the pockets of his dinner jacket bulging with currency. An oldish-young man, with prematurely gray hair, he dug out a fistful of bills and dropped them on the table.

  “Let’s see. Four, five, six…” He sorted it with one finger. “Seven, seven-five. Shoot it all.”

  Money showered down on the green felt. Rattling the dice, he announced that he was shooting seventy-five hundred, with a thousand still open.

  “Only a thousand, people. Don’t make me fall back before I fire.” His eyes swept the group, hesitated at Mitch, then tendered an invitation. “A thousand open. All or any part.”

  “It’s only money,” Mitch smiled, and he took out his wallet.

  The dice rolled. Came out with a hard eight. The man followed with a four, a six, another four—another hard four—and bounced back with his hard eight. Another hard eight.

  He let it ride. Fifteen thousand dollars. There was two thousand open that time, and Mitch took it.

  The dice rolled and stopped with two deuces up. Another hard four! Three of them in less than as many minutes! To Mitch it was like a red flag.

  It could be on the level, of course. It couldn’t be anything else in a place like this. But still…

  He watched the progression of numbers, the dice combinations as they rolled out. Six—four-two. Six again—and again four-two. And here came another hard eight! Then, two deuces—a hard four! That made four of them now, four hard fours! And it made the man a winner.

  Mitch stood stunned, certain of the truth but unable to associate it with the circumstance. The man wasn’t a hustler. These people knew him; he was obviously a friend of long standing. At any rate, no hustler would be so crude. He wouldn’t have to. It was too dangerous. The dice handler depended on skill, not some device which he might be caught with.

  Laughing, the prematurely gray man gestured, indicating that he would shoot the whole thirty grand. Then he saw Mitch’s expression, and his smile drew in, and he acted. Swiftly he swept the money up with his dice hand, jamming it into his already-bulging coat pocket. With the same movement, his hand came out of the pocket and spun two dice out on the table.

  “Pass the dice,” he smiled pleasantly at Mitch. “I hope you’ll have my luck, sir.”

  “It isn’t luck,” Mitch said. “You’re using crooked dice.”

  “What?” A perplexed smile-frown. “That’s not a very good joke, my friend.”

  Mitch nodded, agreeing that it wasn’t. He asked to see the dice the man had been using. “The ones in your pocket, I mean. You switched them when you were handling your money.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Downing rise, march Red firmly toward the door while she looked anxiously back over her shoulder. That was the right thing to do, of course, but it added nothing to his assurance. There was a hint in it that he, Mitch Corley, had pulled a giant economy-sized goof.

  “I mean it,” he said doggedly. “You won that money with crooked dice.”

  “Did I? Does anyone else feel the same way?”

  No one did, and they made it clear. They seemed to move a little closer to the gray-haired man, staring coldly at Mitch; a kindred group, facing a common enemy.

  “You’re free to search me, if you do.” The man looked around at them, beaming. “I’m always willing to oblige a friend.”

  “Don’t be silly, Johnnie,”—an embarrassed murmur. “What the hell, J
ohnnie? We’re all pals here.”

  The gray head turned to Mitch, focused amused eyes on him. “It looks like you made a mistake, my friend. Possibly you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

  “There’s no mistake. Now, I’ll take a look at those dice!”

  “Help yourself. The dice are on the table.”

  “I mean the ones in your pocket. I’ll take a look at them, or I’ll take three thousand dollars!”

  “No,” the man smiled firmly. “That isn’t what you’ll do, at all.”

  Mitch took a step toward the man. The man fell back into a fighting crouch. At the same instant, a steely grip closed over Mitch’s arm and whirled him around.

  It was the stocky, broad-shouldered man who had met him and Red at the entrance to the clubhouse. The maître d’, perhaps, or a captain of waiters.

  “Yes?” he said, in his faintly musical voice. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  Mitch told him curtly. The stocky man shook his head.

  “That’s impossible. Just who are you to make such a charge?”

  “You know who I am,” Mitch snapped. “You saw my guest card tonight.”

  “May I see it again, please?”

  Mitch handed it to him. The man scanned it, ripped it in two, and dropped the pieces on the floor.

  “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Corley. I advise you to leave immediately.”

  “Now, wait a minute!” Mitch raged. “What kind of a place is this, anyway? I get cheated out of three thousand dollars, and you—Just who the hell are you to push me around?”

  “No one has pushed you around, Mr. Corley. Any disturbance has been caused by you.”

  “We’ll see what the manager has to say! Now, I want your name!”

  “Of course,” the man nodded. “The name is Jake Zearsdale.”

  8

  Red had fallen asleep, at last.

  Mitch moved quietly from her side, tucked the covers back around her and went into the front room. He fixed himself a drink. Taking it over to a window, he stood looking out over the city. Troubledly, staring unseeing at the sleeping metropolis, he sorted through the night’s happenings.

  There had been nothing to do but leave the club quietly, of course. Cheated of three thousand dollars, a serious loss at this particular time, he could only leave, hoping that this would be the end of the matter. Which, according to Frank Downing, it might not be. The gray-haired man, Downing told him, was a long-time friend and business associate of Zearsdale. And Zearsdale was a man who cherished a friend and cracked down hard on an enemy.

  Red and Downing were waiting at the club entrance when he came out that night. The gambler was cynically amused by what had happened.

  “Maybe we could go into partnership, Mitch. There ought to be big money in renting you out as a chump.”

  “Now, you just stop that, Frank,” Red scolded. “Mitch did exactly the right thing!”

  “Did he? Then how come he’s got that egg all over his face? So much that it even rubbed off on me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mitch said. “I hope I haven’t spoiled anything for you, Frank.”

  Downing said that only time would tell about that. If the club had members who used six-four-eight dice, he wasn’t sure that he wanted membership anyway.

  Mitch declared that the man had been using them, all right. Downing shrugged, nodded.

  “If you say so. He probably saw that big chump sign you’re wearing.”

  Red punched the gambler on the arm. Mitch said, “All right, Frank, just what should I have done? What would you have done?”

  “I’d have watched the dice awhile before I did any fading, if I’d been sap enough to buck a game like that in the first place.”

  “You mean I should have been looking for a cheat among those people?”

  “Well, maybe not,” Downing admitted. “But you should have kept your mouth shut after you got clipped. What did you expect this Johnnie Birdwell to do?—confess that he was a mechanic? Did you think his friends were going to toss him over and side with you?”

  Mitch couldn’t argue the point. Obviously, in view of the way things had turned out, he had been wrong to holler. Along with the loss of his three grand, he had also lost the potentially lucrative opportunity to return to the club and had possibly gotten himself a powerful enemy.

  “So okay, I’m a chump,” he sighed. “What do I do about it?”

  “Shoot yourself. What else?” Downing laughed and held out his hand. “Take it easy, you two. And come and see me whenever you’re in Dallas.”

  He meant it. The gambler did not pretend friendliness when he felt unfriendly. So that at least, Mitch thought, was a break. To have had Downing sore at him on top of everything else—the shortage of money, the lack of immediate prospects—

  Well, there was one prospect. Winfield Lord, Jr. And there was a way, seemingly, to collect on Lord’s nominally worthless checks.

  Mitch returned to bed, slightly cheered. But very slightly. A vague feeling of unease gnawed at him, a premonition that tonight’s misadventure portended still further trouble. Zearsdale?—Well, just what could Zearsdale do, anyway? The oilman would find Mitch Corley’s nose very, very clean. Much cleaner, doubtless, than that of the workaday citizen. The Mitch Corleys of the world could not afford the petty nastiness, the shady little deeds, which were generally shrugged off as the everybody-does-it norm. They, the world’s Corleys, shuddered at the notion of stealing towels from a hotel or betraying a confidence or making time with a friend’s wife.

  “There was always a risk in such shenanigans, and the professional gambler had enough risks as it was. Zearsdale, then, if he was inclined to make trouble, would have a hard time finding a vulnerable spot.

  Of course, Mitch was vulnerable by the fact of being what he was. Of living as he and Red lived. So…

  She rolled over in the bed, and put her arms around him. “Don’t worry any more, darling,” she whispered. “Everything will be all right.”

  “Of course it will.” He patted the satiny plumpness of her bottom. “I’m sorry if I waked you up, honey.”

  “That’s okay. Want me to give you something to make you sleep?”

  He did and she did, and it did. But the sleep seemed almost as brief as the treatment which brought it about. One minute he was dozing off, the next—or so it seemed—Red was shaking him, telling him that he would have to hurry because breakfast was already on the way up.

  He arose promptly, and headed for the bathroom. Grumpily wondering why he had been called so early, but recognizing that Red would have had her reasons. Husband-like, he had learned long ago that if Red thought he should know something or remember something, it was best to pretend that he did; otherwise, he would find himself guilty of possibly the worst crime on the wifely calendar—ignorance of something of great importance to her, which should therefore be of equal importance to him.

  He had shaved and was in the shower when Red poked her head in the door. Was he about ready? Breakfast had just arrived. He called that he’d be there in a shake, hoping she would jog his memory with a clue. When she didn’t—hearing her reclose the bathroom door—he called to her again.

  “Uh, about how much time have we got, honey?”

  “Well…were we going to try to get there by noon?”

  Get there? Get where?

  “Whatever you think.” He turned off the shower and began toweling himself. “Uh, where shall we eat lunch?”

  “Well—Oh, I know! We’ll take it with us. I’ll have the dining room pack us a big hamper.”

  “Fine, oh, fine,” Mitch said, desperately searching his memory.

  “Maybe I should call ahead, too, huh? So we’ll be expected.”

  “Uh, yes, you do that,” Mitch said.

  The door closed. He got out of the shower, and reached for his robe. And suddenly he remembered. Why, of course! They were driving up to his son’s school today. This was the day they were seeing Sam, his son—and he had
forgotten! Hurrying out of the bathroom to breakfast, Mitch felt a wrench of conscience. How bad off could a guy be, anyway, to forget a visit to his own son?

  They had breakfast, and dressed. Mitch in tweeds and a dark sport shirt, Red in a fawn-colored travel suit with a head scarf of off-ivory silk. As they took the elevator downstairs, Mitch asked her to remind him that the quarterly payment on his income tax was about due. Red said she would do it, and that he was not to talk about anything unpleasant for the rest of the day.

  Turkelson himself was at their car, supervising the tucking-in of a Thermos-type hamper. Mitch addressed him as boy, and handed him a dime tip. The manager accepted it with as much bowing as his portliness would permit, then exploded into laughter as they drove away.

  It took them perhaps an hour to get out of Houston and the city’s heavy traffic. Then, having reached the highway, he settled the Jag down to a more-or-less steady seventy miles an hour. It was a warm day, but a little cool in the swiftly moving car. Red moved close to Mitch, her small shoulder pressing against his. Glancing up into the car’s mirror, he surprised her in a look of such love and devotion that a quick lump came into his throat.

  “Mitch,” she said softly. “You’re the dearest, darlingest, nicest man that ever lived.”

  “What took you so long to catch on?” Mitch grinned.

  “I’ve known it right from the beginning. Sometimes I forget, I guess, and then something happens like this morning—You’d forgotten about coming to see Sam, hadn’t you?”

  Mitch nodded guiltily. “I should have had my ass kicked.”

  “You were a darling,” Red insisted. “You pretended to remember because I expected you to. To keep me from being hurt or disappointed in you.”

  Mitch said that that was the way he was—perfect. The thought, not highly original, flicked through his mind that the more different women were, the more they were the same. How many times, for example, had Teddy and his mother and Red done just about the exact opposite of what he had expected them to do? Teddy would smile at him when he expected a slap. His mother would slap him when logic prophesied a smile. Red—well, Red had just rewarded forgetfulness with tenderness. As proof of her love for him. All this was not to say, of course, that a woman would always do the thing contrary to a man’s expectations. No, a woman was not going to be as easily understood as that! The subtle kinship which united her with her sex had a sweetly mythic as well as a contradictory quality. About her was the kind of wide-eyed, innocent, infuriating, deliciously irrelevant relevance that associated Easter bunnies with painted hen’s eggs.