Author: James O. Causey
Year: 1960
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Rating:
Original Rating:
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Genres/categories:
Fiction
Purchase/reserch links:
ISBNs:
9780955976582
0955976588 |
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For a moment I sat fighting for breath, watching Robin cross the dance floor with that lilting pelvic swing that made you want to cry.
Then, shivering, I downed my drink. It tasted like water. The bartender hovered over me, nervously.
"Please, Norm. It's after eight."
"Shut up," I said, staring across the quiet splendor of the Arbor Room. Robin was mounting the band dais. She stood sheathed in black satin smiling at the patrons-the way she had smiled at me just now. Her voice still shuddered inside me like music, aching and sweet: "He knows, darling. I think he's going to kill you."
The quartet hit a grinding blue note like thunder. Robin began to sing.
She had a kind of magic. It was in the way her voice crept through the air like a mood, like a dream; the way people slowly set down their drinks to listen. She began moving her hips, trying to dance, and the black satin gown impeded her like a halter. She frowned as the drumbeats faded to a whisper, then smiled savagely as she ripped the satin from hem to waist. Her legs flashed free while the drums beat in your brain and the audience screamed.
"Nice, Norm?"
Ingrahm sat next to me, smiling. He was a frail man with eyes like wounds and a beautiful silver toupee.
"Too nice for me, is that it?" I asked bitterly.
"You mustn't drink on duty." His voice was velvet. "It's an off night, the customers want action."
Ingrahm never got excited, never raised his voice. He was soft-spoken, as befitted an emperor. His empire included the Aladdin Club. It included Robin. And me. I sat crucifying him with my eyes, feeling the hatred bubble inside me like lava. He said, "You've been indiscreet, but we'll talk about it later. Go find a table."
It was the way he said it, that remote smile. I went.
I walked numbly past the bar through the swinging glass doors and across the parking lot to the casino. It was almost nine and about half of the thirty tables were occupied. The house girls threaded their efficient way among the tables, collecting chips for the next half-hour of play. Garth Anders, the casino chief, was marking game openings on the blackboard. He smiled hello. Garth was a small blond man, nervous and quick. He had worn that same friendly smile last week when he fired a cashier for being fifty cents short in her night's tally.
I selected a lowball table, five-dollar limit, ten after the draw. A house girl sold me chips. Prom the adjoining table Angelo Ventresca nodded, his pock-marked face impassive. As Ingrahm's number-one errand boy, Angelo rarely shilled.
Angelo was a very special type. I had met men like him at Santa Anita, Las Vegas and Del Mar. Wherever the money flows easily, you see men like Angelo. They are invariably big men, but they move with the lithe grace of a featherweight. It's as if nature was experimenting with the survival possibilities of Neanderthals in a jungle of concrete and steel. A nimbus of violence hovers about them. Their eyes usually give them away. Angelo's eyes were dark and as hard as obsidian; he had the unwinking gaze of a carnivore.
For a time I played in a kind of sick fury, wondering how Ingrahm had found out about Robin. Last night Ingrahm had been out of town. Robin's last show was at midnight. Afterward, she had gone straight home, and I'd phoned her ten minutes later. I'd gone to her apartment at one-thirty and crept out at dawn. No one had seen me enter or leave. How had he found out?
It didn't matter. What mattered now was that I would be punished. Ingrahm was not the kind of man who relished being cuckolded-at women or at cards.
Two years ago I had stalked into the Aladdin shabby and dirty, with the grime of a boxcar on my jeans and six dollars in my pocket.
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