throwing her weight about and giving orders, but it didn’t last long.
The first visitor she had was Gallway Harris Brown, the steel millionaire. He came bursting
into the office like a runaway train: a short, fat, purple-faced bird with battle in his eyes and
cuss words queueing up behind his lips.
I happened to be in the office at the time, admiring the view, while she was lording it at the
desk.
She smiled at him as he came pounding in, but he took as much notice of her as he would
the invisible woman. He burned a trail across the carpet towards me.
“Hey! You, Ricca ?” He had a voice like a sea captain. It pretty near shattered the windows.
I said I was Ricca.
“I’ve no hot water in my cabin this morning. What kind of dump are you running?”
Still smiling, but her eyes snapping, Della came over.
“Perhaps I can help you …” she began.
That’s as far as she got. He jumped around and glared at her, cutting her off with a wave of
his hand.
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“Listen, young woman, when I make a complaint I deal with men, understand? This guy’s
Ricca, isn’t he? Well, then, you keep out of it. I’m going to swear at him.”
There was nothing for her to do but to take three graceful steps to the rear and try to look
ornamental. She was smart enough not to argue with a thousand dollar profit a week. But in
spite of her smile, she looked as if she been bitten by a snake - a rattlesnake at that.
I smoothed him down and had his water fixed. I said if it ever happened again, he would
have the whole of his stay with us on the house.
“That’s a bet, Mr. Brown,” I said. “No hot water; no cheque. Right?”
He snorted, stamped around, then finally grinned.
“That means I’ll get hot water.”
“You’ll get hot water.”
It seemed the way millionaires liked to be treated. He went around telling the story, and the
other visitors came to me with their troubles.
“You go to Ricca,” he said. “He’ll fix it. That guy’s a smart crook.”
And they did come to me. They stopped me in the corridors or on the terrace or in the bar,
and I fixed things for them. When they went to the office and I wasn’t there, they said they
wanted me and would be back. Louis didn’t pull any punches, either.
“Better let Mr. Ricca handle the staff, Mrs. Wertham,” he said. “It works better that way. A
man can handle this set-up better than a woman.”
She was smart enough to see that the business would suffer if she continued to boss it, and
she turned the office over to me.
“Go ahead, Johnny. You’re in charge of the casino now. But don’t get any big ideas. I’ll
keep the keys, and when you want money I’ll open the safe.”
She also kept control of Bay Street. They didn’t know Paul was dead, and they were scared
of her. She went over there three evenings a week to watch her interests, as she called it, and
they needed watching. That suited me fine. While she was there, I was with Ginny.
It didn’t take me long to find out I was in love with Ginny. After I had got over the scare of
dumping Reisner, she was all I thought about. I knew it was the real thing. I knew I was gam-160
bling with my life even to think of her, but that didn’t stop me. No other girls, Della had said,
and that didn’t stop me either.
A couple of days after I had first met her, I wrote to Ginny. I told her I was sorry about the
way I had left her.
“I guess I must have sat in the sun too long,” I wrote, hoping she would believe me. “I was
feeling terrible, and I didn’t want to scare you. I’ve been in bed, but I’m fine now. I hope
you’ll forgive me, walking out on you like that. May I come and see you and apologize?”
By the time she received the letter I had fixed up a three-room apartment on Franklin
Boulevard, a quiet district in Lincoln Beach, and that’s where I told her to write.
With a hundred dollars and all found I wasn’t exactly broke, but I wasn’t rolling it in. I did
a little gambling now and then, playing on one of the crooked tables. The croupiers let me
win, and every so often I picked up a couple of hundred bucks when I needed it most. But I
didn’t drive it into the ground. I was careful not to take too much off the house. I argued it
was a good thing for the suckers to see the boss win now and then, and that was my story if
someone tipped Della what was happening.
With my hundred bucks and the odd money I won’t just about afforded the rent of the
apartment and its running expenses.
I told Ginny I had been transferred from the Pittsburgh office of the insurance company I
was working for, and had been given the job of starting an office in Lincoln Beach.
I made out I was working every hour of the day, trying to get things started, and she
believed me. I hated lying to her, but there was no other way round it. I was in love with her.
I wanted to marry her, but before I could do that I had to have money, and I had to have my
freedom.
If Ginny hadn’t had such a good job, it might have been easier. I felt I couldn’t ask her to
run off with me until I had enough money to take care of us both. I played it wrong. Knowing
what I know now, she would have gone with me if I hadn’t a cent. But you find out that kind
of thing too late: anyway, I did.
Whenever Della went over to Bay Street, I’d skip into the Buick and beat it down to
Franklin Boulevard. I’d call Ginny on the phone, and she’d either come over or I’d go over to
her place. I heard a lot of music while I was with her, and when she was with me, we played
chess. That’s a game I had never played, and she taught me. Don’t think I hadn’t other ideas
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in my head when I was alone with her, besides listening to music or playing chess, but that’s
the way she wanted it to be, and that’s the way it was. Some evenings we went to Raul’s. I
figured we were safe there. It wasn’t the kind of place Della would ever show up in, nor were
we likely to run into anyone from the casino there.
I soon found out that Ginny was as much in love with me as I was with her. Her two weeks
stay at the beach cabin was coming to an end. That worried both of us.
“What shall we do, Johnny?” she asked. We were at the Franklin Boulevard apartment.
“Just how soon do you think we can get married?”
We had got that far in eleven days.
I had been beating my brains out on the same problem. I had two things to do before I
could marry her. I had to get my hands on a large sum of money, and I had to find some place
where we could go where Della wouldn’t think of looking for us.
When Della had dragged me into this set-up she had promised me a quarter of a million.
“Word of honour,” she had said. I had carried out my part of the bargain, but she hadn’t
carried out hers. I now considered that quarter of a million was mine by right. If she wouldn’t
give it to me, I was going to take it. But before I could lay my hands on it I had to find out the
combination of the safe, and that wasn’t easy. There was half a million in cash in that safe,
and it was a good one. Unless I found the combination I had no more chance of breaking into
it than I had of swimming the Atlantic.
It was a problem, and I didn’t know how to solve it. All I could hope for was to hang on
and wait for a break. The other thing I had to do before I married Ginny wasn’t anything like
so difficult. I had that already doped out: where to go when the time came.
I figured I could lose myself in Cuba. The moment I got my hands on the money, I’d
charter a plane, and Ginny and I would fly to Cuba. I reckoned we’d be safe there. Della