I looked at myself in the mirror and I was pretty sharp. I felt a lot better, too, and I wondered for a minute if that was because I knew she was having a tough time of it, too.
I was hungry and I knew I could eat, so I snapped out the lights and went downstairs to get a steak and pick up the race results.
Chapter III
The next morning I woke up late, around noon, and ordered breakfast sent up to my room. I had some work to do and I was up to getting at it, so I took a quick shower. By the time I finished shaving, the bell hop was setting up my breakfast on a table in front of the window.
I put on a robe and slippers and sat down. The bell hop stood around and grinned at me while I started eating. He was a young, blond kid with eyes like blue marbles and a clean-looking skin. He thought I was pretty hot stuff, I guess, because I knew a lot of sport writers and politicians and slept late in the morning and had my breakfast in my room.
I pointed a fork at the dresser where there was some change.
“Pick yourself out half a buck,” I told him, “but don’t buy one of them FHA homes with it. They’re a bum investment.”
He grinned at that and went over to the dresser. He came back tossing the half buck up and down in his hand and still grinning.
He said, “You got anything hot for today, Mr. Ford?”
“Don’t get in my hair, Junior,” I said. “If I knew which of them crazy horses was going to win I’d play ’em myself. Then after about a month, I pick up my million bucks and go live in Miami.”
“Aw, you know which ones are going to win.”
I buttered some toast and grinned. He was a pretty smart kid.
“All right, put that half I gave you on Blue Angel in the Fourth at Pimlico. He’s a cinch unless he breaks a leg. And even if he breaks a leg he’ll be in the money.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Ford.”
“All right, now let me finish this food in peace. Junior.”
He grinned and went out, looking happy. I ate the breakfast and looked through the race news. The food was right and I felt clean and comfortable.
Out of curiosity I looked up Blue Angel. He was ten to one, and I didn’t know anything about him, but he had a chance. He had four legs and none of the others had more. He might win and then Junior would think I was a hell of a sharp guy. If he didn’t, what difference would it make?
I finished a second cup of coffee and then lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deep into my lungs. I felt good and I knew it was because I was going to see Alice at six o’clock. I didn’t think what it would be like when she left me to go back to him, but I knew without thinking that the hell would start all over again. I just pushed that thought out of my head. She’d be here and that’s what counted.
I got up from the table and went over to the desk I used for my work. I had two phones there, one to the wire service that gave fast news from the track and the other to the syndicate’s exchange where I laid off bets that were too big for me to handle.
I was a phone bookie and I liked it a lot better than when I had my own joint out North. I had a book then in back of a cigar store and I had to be there all the time, keep up the scratch sheets and listen to a lot of mugs that stood around and blew cigar smoke in my face all day.
After I got a pretty good bunch of customers lined up I quit the joint, moved here to the hotel and handled all my business by phone. It was simple. A guy I knew would call up, give me his bets, and that’s all there was to it.
I was in with the syndicate, like everybody else, because, like everybody else, I had to be. Trying to run a book without being in with the syndicate would be like trying to swim with an anchor around your neck. You’d get just as far and wind up the same way in both cases.
They took a percentage of my bets but I used their exchange to lay off the big money I couldn’t handle, and they bought me the heavy protection, like judges, police captains, and the other big shots.
The hotel was in the Loop, a pretty nice joint, and it set me back a lot because I had to pay off the manager, the house detective and a few cops, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t have to see a lot of mugs, the hours were good and so was the money.
I went over my bets for the last few days, figured out who I owed money to and put the cash in envelopes with the names on the outside. I sealed the envelopes and put them in a little pile, and when I went out for dinner I’d leave them in my box so the lucky guys could pick them up.
I didn’t have much new stuff because I’d been out of circulation for the last few days and that wasn’t so good. A guy wants to bet on a horse when he feels like it and if one bookie isn’t around he’ll try another.
So I went over to the outside phone and called some of the customers I was sure had been trying to get me the last couple of days. I told them I’d been out of town and fixed things up as well as I could.
Those six calls gave me four bets. Three of them were on favorites, pretty good bets, but the last was big, five hundred bucks on a twenty to one shot.
That was the kind of bet I had to lay off to the syndicate. I couldn’t afford to hold all of it and risk getting clipped for a ten thousand dollar payoff. I just didn’t have that kind of money. I called the syndicate’s wire and gave them the whole bet. They’d lay it off around the country in small amounts, so that if the horse come in nobody would take a bad beating.
I worked the rest of the afternoon making up for the two days I’d been out, getting my figures straightened out and taking a few more bets on the phone.
Around five I laid off and took a long shower and shaved. I used plenty of after-shave-lotion and powder and then I put on a pair of gabardine slacks and a silk sport shirt. That was about five-thirty, so I sat down and looked through the papers. I couldn’t keep my mind on the print so I poured a double shot of bourbon, put in about an inch of ice and stretched out on the bed.
The liquor gave me a nice warm feeling. I laid there and thought about Alice. She’d be along in less than half an hour.
I felt swell right then. I’d worked all the day, I had a drink in my hand, there was money in the bank and Alice was coming.
At six o’clock I wondered what was keeping her and suddenly I knew that if she didn’t show I was going to be in bad shape. The money in the bank, the drink in my hand — neither meant a damn thing. Alice was all that mattered.
By the time I finished the drink I was starting to sweat. She would call if she couldn’t make it and I started praying the phone wouldn’t ring.
At six-fifteen there was a knock on the door. I crossed over and jerked it open fast. She was standing there in a white dress, looking hot and tired.
She came into the room and I closed the door and then we stood looking at each other for a minute without saying anything. She looked a little scared.
“Funny,” she said, with a crooked smile, “it seems sort of wrong now, doesn’t it?”
“Is that the way you feel?”
She came closer to me and she didn’t look scared any more. She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned against me. “No, Johnny, that’s not the way I feel. I feel like I’m coming home after being away a long time.”
I sat down in the big chair and pulled her onto my lap.
“That’s my baby. You look tired. Was it a tough day?”
“Not so bad. But hot.”