“Come along,” the law said. A big hand twisted my coat collar and jerked.
I wanted to talk, but I couldn’t get words to come the way they should. The girl who had been playing the machines and the man who had hit the attendant had gone. The attendant lay on the floor. His eyelids were quivering, and I could see the whites of his eyes beneath those fluttering lids.
There were faces gathered around in a circle of open-mouthed curiosity.
The hand twisted my coat, hard. I took a deep breath and managed to start talking, but the words sounded funny, as though I was listening to someone else say some of the things I wanted to say.
“I’m from Los Angeles. I haven’t been in Las Vegas for an hour. I came in on the Salt Lake plane. I never saw this place before. I played a dollar’s worth of nickels into the machine, and hit the jackpot with the last nickel.”
There was silence. Gradually my head was clearing. The man who was holding me glanced at a newcomer who looked as though he might be the manager of the place. The manager said, “Talk’s cheap. These crooks always have a swell alibi cooked up.” But his voice didn’t have quite the ring of assurance it should have had.
The green-aproned attendant who lay sprawled out on the floor stirred, got up on one elbow, and looked past us with glassy eyes that seemed to stare right through the wall of the building.
The manager bent over him. “Now listen, Louie, we can’t muff this. Are you all right?”
The attendant mumbled something.
“Look, Louie, we’ve got to be sure now. Is this one of them? Is this the guy?”
The manager pointed at me.
The groggy attendant said, “That’s him. He’s the brains of the gang. They’re cup-and-wire workers. I’ve seen ’em before. This guy’s the leader. The others came in first an’ cased the joint.”
“Come on,” the law said to me. “You’re going places.”
My head had cleared now. “This,” I said, “is going to cost somebody money.”
“Okay, let it cost. Come on and take a ride. We want to show you our city. Coming in on the afternoon plane the way you did, you haven’t had a chance to see it.”
The big hand of the law caught my coat again, started pushing me toward the door.
The manager said, “Wait a minute, Bill,” and to me, “What’s your name?”
“Lam — Donald Lam. I’m in business in Los Angeles.”
“What sort of business?”
“I don’t care to tell you that.”
They laughed then.
I said to the officer, “You’ll find a card in the wallet in my right-hand hip pocket, but don’t read it out loud.”
The officer pulled a wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and took a look at my identification card as a private detective. That sobered him. He showed the wallet to the manager. I saw the manager’s face change expression.
“Did you say you came in on that Salt Lake plane?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Bring him over here, Bill.”
The curious faces melted away from in front of us and closed in behind as though they had been wisps of fog, clinging to a road. The manager picked up a telephone, got his number, said, “Was there a Donald Lam came in on that plane from Salt Lake today?… There was?… A chap in the twenties, regular features, wavy hair, weight about a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, about five-feet-five… The hell!.. Okay, thanks.”
He hung up the telephone, said to the officer, “Bring him upstairs, Bill.”
He opened a door. We climbed stairs to a cool office which looked out through broad windows on the constantly increasing activity of the town’s main stem. We all three sat down. The manager picked up a telephone and said, “Get Louie up here right away.”
He hung up the telephone, and almost immediately I heard steps on the stairs, then the door opened, and the attendant, still looking punch groggy, came into the room.
“Take a good look at this chap,” the manager said.
The attendant took a good look at me, said, “He’s the guy they ran in to make the clean-up. That means he’s the brains of the gang. He was cupping the machine.”
“How do you know?”
“I could tell by the way he was standing, the way he leaned against the machine.”
“You didn’t see any cup?”
“Well, no. But he was with the other two, talking with the girl.”
“Where are the other two?”
The attendant blinked his eyes and started to turn his head. Then he stopped quickly as though something hurt him when he tried to turn his neck.
“They got away.”
The manager said impatiently, “What the hell? I hired you because you said you could handle this stuff. You’re supposed to know all the rackets and all of the gangs who work ’em.”
The attendant was getting the cobwebs out of his brain. “Listen,” he said, “that guy’s a prize fighter. I didn’t make him at first. Then when he threw that punch, I recognized his style. That’s Sid Jannix. He was in line for a title once, but they framed him. He’s good — plenty good.” He looked at the officer, and then at me, and said, “This guy is the brains — but he’s a new one on me.”
“This is a hell of a time to say so,” the manager said. “Why didn’t you grab their cups so you’d have some evidence?”
The attendant was silent.
“Was that what you were trying to do when you grabbed my wrist and felt up my arms and jerked my coat off?” I Asked.
The manager’s face kept getting darker. The attendant didn’t say anything.
After a moment, the manager said disgustedly, “Okay, Louie, get the hell out of here.”
Louie left without a word.
The manager turned to me. “Now,” he said, “this is too bad.”
“For you.”
“For one of us,” he admitted. “I’m in so deep, I’m not going to quit. Suppose you tell me about you.”
“What about me?”
“Who you are, what you’re doing here, and how I know this isn’t a racket.”
“What isn’t a racket?”
“The whole play. You can’t stick me without bringing your life’s history into court, anyway, so you may as well spill it now.”
I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m here on business. I’m employed by the B. Cool Detective Agency. Bertha Cool and a client are up in the Sal Sagev Hotel right now. Give her a ring if you want to. Bertha Cool’s been in a sanitarium for months. This is her first day out. I’ve been running the Los Angeles office. I’m here to try and find a certain person. The person was out when I called. I killed time playing the slot machines.” They tried to interrupt me, but I droned right on. “I put in a dollar without getting a smell. The last nickel gave me two cherries. I scooped out the winnings, and the next nickel hit the jackpot. I never saw either of those other two people in my life, and I don’t know a damn thing about the slot-machine racket. I’m telling you all this because I don’t want you to be able to stand up in front of the jury and say that I didn’t co-operate by giving you everything. It’s your move now. Go ahead.”
The manager looked at me for a minute, then picked up the telephone, and said, “I’m calling your bluff.”
“Go ahead.”
He called the Sal Sagev Hotel. “You got a Bertha Cool registered there?” he asked. “That’s right, from Los Angeles. Let me talk with her.”
He held the phone a moment, then suddenly said to the officer, “Better make this official, Bill, just in case.”
“Uh huh,” the officer said.
His thick fingers enveloped the telephone. He swallowed the receiver in his big hand, and raised it up to his left ear. Watching his face, I could tell when Bertha came on the line.
“This is Lieutenant William Kleinsmidt of the Las Vegas police. You’ve got a man working for you whose first name is Donald?… I see… What’s his last name?… How about a description?”