Floyd gave a very sick laugh. “Minus about two grand. The horses haven’t been running right for me.”
“And me,” I said, “I haven’t drawn a decent hand in poker in months.”
I got a bottle out from the cabinet and we sat drinking at the table and telling each other how black the future was for us. We weren’t just Lew’s bodyguard and Lew’s bookkeeper. We were big men in the organization, and Lew paid us real good. We had real respect in this town, I tell you. But Lew turns straight and we’re nothing but a couple of working stiffs on the labor market, scrounging for every lousy buck. This was a very soft life, except for Floyd at income tax time.
“There’s only one thing to do,” Floyd said after a few drinks. “We got to sour her on him. We’ll tell her all about him.”
“She reads the newspapers.”
“I said all about him,” Floyd said. “Things only we know. The real dirty stuff. You go to her, Willie, and tell her.”
I shook my head. “No good. He’s promised her to quit, and there’s no dame more devoted to a guy than a good woman reforming him. This goes double for kindergarten school teachers.” I reached for the bottle that by now was close to empty and said, “Let’s turn it around. Sour him on her.”
“You have an idea, Willie?”
“Yesterday I ran across Deuce Melody on the street,” I said.
“And who may he be?”
“Deuce Melody is a con artist,” I said. “A very handsome guy that slays the ladies, especially the elderly ones, by having dimples in his cheeks when he smiles. I met him two, three years ago in L.A. where he hangs around on account of that’s where most of the suckers live. We were in a poker game together and after the game he fixed me up with a hot little redhead to kind of make up for all the dough he won off me.” I took a drink. “Well, Deuce Melody was driving through town yesterday when the transmission of his car went. They said it’ll take two days to fix it. He’s never been here before. Lew doesn’t know him and he doesn’t know Lew. He wouldn’t know whose girl Esther Hunt is. He’s our boy, Floyd.”
“Are you thinking, Willie, he can make time with her?”
“Not a chance,” I said, “even with his dimples.”
“Then what are you getting at?”
I told him, and behind his thick glasses his watery eyes got scared sick.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“You got any other idea how we can hang onto our jobs?”
Floyd emptied the bottle and said, “No, I haven’t.”
So next day I went to see Deuce Melody in the motel outside of town where he’d told me he was staying. I could’ve left a message for him to meet me in a ginmill where I could’ve been comfortable waiting, but of course I didn’t want we should be seen together in public. I had to hang around three, four hours before he showed. Then I slipped into his cabin after him.
“My car will be ready in an hour,” he said. “Nothing doing in this crummy town. I figured I’d be on my way.”
“Is a chance to pick up an easy hundred bucks nothing doing?” I said.
“What is it, a divorce case?” he said. “Will I have to come back here to testify?”
“You can leave right after and never come back,” I said. “Better that way. It’s just that a pal of mine wants to get dirt on his girl friend so he can pull her off his neck without her raising hell. One hundred bucks.”
“Tonight?”
“Tomorrow night, I’m hoping.”
Deuce pushed his hand through his curly hair. “To spend another night in this ghost town it will cost three hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“Is she pretty?” he asked.
“A knockout. But this isn’t for your pleasure.”
“Pleasure is where you find it,” he said, showing his dimples. “It’s a deal.”
The breaks are with me next evening. Yesterday evening that was. Lew and Esther Hunt didn’t have a date on account of he wasn’t wasting any time getting out of the rackets. He had Floyd Finch over his place going over his books with him so he’d know how big a bundle he could retire with, and later on he was going to have Augie Pitcher and other wheels over to break the news to them. So the coast was clear and at six-thirty I was ringing Esther Hunt’s doorbell.
Timed it exactly right. She was finishing dinner she’d eaten by herself. Her place was a tiny two-room dump, but kind of neat.
“Seeing you and Lew are getting married.” I said, “I came to make sure there are no hard feelings between us.”
“There are certainly none on my part,” she said. “I never disliked you. Only what you represent.”
“I’m glad to hear this, Miss Hunt,” I said, “on account of I’m going on the straight and narrow too.”
“Why, that’s wonderful, Willie,” she said.
“Let’s have a drink on it,” I said.
“I don’t drink whiskey,” she said. Which I knew she didn’t. “But I was about to have coffee. Will you have a cup with me?” Which is what I’d hoped she’d say.
She poured the coffee. While she was in the kitchen getting some cake to go with it, I emptied into her cup the powder I’d gotten from a druggest pal. It wouldn’t hurt her any. Anyway, not by making her sick or anything.
Also while she was gone I snapped the catch on the door lock so it would be unlocked.
You know something? It wasn’t so bad having a cup of coffee with her. I mean this was the first time we were alone together and she had a very sweet way about her. But what the hell, I had my own problems.
When pretty soon she started to yawn and get sleepy-eyed, I got up and said good-bye and left.
I phoned Deuce Melody at his motel where there was a private phone in each cabin and told him everything was under control and to start out in fifteen minutes. I waited in a doorway across the street. Deuce showed in forty minutes, this being about what I’d figured it would take him. I watched him go into Esther Hunt’s building, then got in my car and drove over to the block on which Lew Angel lived.
I didn’t go up to his apartment. Went into the corner drugstore and dialed his number. By then it was eight-thirty. Augie Pitcher and the others would be there already for the meeting. Floyd was also still there, giving himself an alibi.
I made my voice sound thin and high like an old lady’s. I said, “Is this Mr. Lew Angel?”
“That’s right,” Lew said. On the wire I heard the buzzing of voices of the others in the room with him.
“Mr. Angel,” I said, “right this minute your girl, Esther Hunt, is carrying on something scandalous in her apartment with another man.”
“You’re nuts,” he said.
“She looks like such a nice girl,” I said in that cracked old voice, “but such carrying on. I mean all the time men coming and going in her apartment. Right this minute.”
“Madam, who are you?”
“Never mind my name. I live in the same building with Esther Hunt, and I feel it my duty to let you know how she’s two-timing you.”
“Madam,” he said, “You’re a lousy liar.”
I could hear it was quiet in the room now, like they were all listening. I said, “You can insult me all you want, young man, but you can go there and see for yourself.”
And hung up.
I stayed in the phone booth a couple minutes more, then walked over to the front of the building like I hadn’t a thing on my mind. Lew was coming out in a big hurry when I got there. This was my alibi.
“Willie,” he said when he spotted me, “where’s your car?”
“Right over there,” I said.
“Drive me to Esther’s place,” he said.
He didn’t say another word all the way, just sat in my car staring straight ahead. I’d hardly stopped the car in front of her house when he was out of it and running. At the street door he stopped and came back slowly.