“I get it.”
“Then the cops do it up brown. They explain that they’re going to have to pretend that Finch and McGuire skipped before they got there. They warn the two of them to stay out of Nevada for the rest of their lives, that they’re safe as long as they stay out of the state because their prints and pictures won’t go on the wire. The cops walk out, Finch goes to his room and McGuire, an honorable man, gets his wallet and pays Finch half the bribe money.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Doesn’t McGuire whine for his fifty thousand?”
“How can he? He’s wanted for fraud and a million other things. The people who took his money are supposedly under arrest and his money’s supposedly impounded by the police. If he does tumble to the whole thing, by that time everybody connected with it is a million miles away spending McGuire’s money.”
It was perfect, almost too perfect. It was based on the fundamental principle underlying every con game in the world — find a mark who wants a fast buck, make him work his way in hard, let him win a little at the start; play him along, let him sell himself on the one big deal that will set him up for life, get his stake and blow him off neatly so that he can’t bitch to the law.
I smoked another cigarette and thought about it. It could work — and, evidently, it had worked. It wouldn’t take on just anybody — you needed a mark who was dumber than most. But, as Barnum put it, there’s one born every minute.
It was lovely.
McGuire was left completely on the hook. His money was gone and he didn’t know who had taken it or how to get it back. The only two people he knew were Lori and Reed, and neither of them wound up with the dough. And he’d be in such a hell of a rush to get out of town that he wouldn’t even stop to think about them.
Fifty thousand dollars. It was a lot of dough. And, I realized with a start, it was the precise amount on my list. Fifty thousand dollars in the bank. That’s what it said, right there at the top of the list.
Lovely.
I killed my cigarette and looked across at her. Her face was expressionless, her eyes empty, her mouth neither smiling nor frowning. I wondered just where she fit in, whether she was lying or telling the truth, how she knew so much and what in the name of the Lord she was afraid of. There didn’t seem to be anything for her to worry about, for God’s sake. All she did was play patsy in an unassuming sort of a way, and even so she hadn’t done anything the least bit illegal.
And she was certainly afraid. You don’t throw a gun on a total stranger for the pure hell of it. She was scared green.
I wondered why.
“That’s it,” she said. “The whole bit from beginning to end. Now do you understand?”
“Almost. There’s one point I’m a little unclear on. Maybe you can straighten me out.”
Her eyebrows went up.
“The con game itself is easy enough to understand. It’s a new one on me but it makes sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“You.”
She looked very puzzled.
“You,” I repeated. “For one thing, how in hell do you know all this if all they told you was the cover story? Secondly, what’s your part in the whole thing? Why aren’t you back cashing chips at West of the Lake or whatever the hell it is?”
She started laughing.
“Look, I—”
Loud laughter, her breasts rising and falling in a delicious sort of way, her eyes filling with tears. I guess the laughter was a valve opening up so that she could let off steam and ease some of the tension. I didn’t mind. If she wanted to laugh it was okay with me.
“Ted,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“Well?”
“I didn’t tell you that part,” she said. “The most important part of all and I left you in the dark.”
“So turn on the lights.”
“The most important part. The reason I’ve bothered telling you the whole thing, and I leave out the most important part of all. It’s silly.”
“Look, Cindy. Tell me.”
She smiled.
“Come on.”
“Could I have a cigarette?”
I gave her a cigarette.
“Light?”
I lit hers, then took one of my own.
“Ted,” she said, blowing out smoke. “Poor Ted. You don’t understand.”
“The suspense,” I said, “is killing me.”
“Ted,” she said. “I have the money in my room. In a little black satchel. All the money. Fifty thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills and it’s all mine!”
I did not take it like a man. I took it like a low blow. I sagged in the middle, doubled up in something quite close to agony and flopped from my chair to the floor. I felt as though someone had run over me with a garbage scow. I know people don’t get run over with garbage scows, not unless they make a practice of swimming the East River. But that’s how I felt.
“I took it,” she said breathlessly. “We all met in the hotel room and I got out of there with the money. The joke was on them — all the work they put into the job, and little Cindy Sims walked off with the boodle. The joke was sure as hell on them.”
“How?” I croaked.
“Just picked it up, picked it up and walked off with it. They never even suspected. Never tumbled to it for a minute. They thought I was some kind of a moron, a nice chick to have around the place but nothing to worry about. I guess they know better now, the bastards.”
“Wait,” I said. “Hold on a minute. How did you find out about it all?”
“It was easy, Ted. Too easy.”
“How?”
“Ed Reed,” she said. “The little bastard who worked on McGuire. The oily, slimy, slick-talking son of a bitch. He told me all about it.”
“Why in hell should he—”
“He was bragging, Ted. It made him feel like a big shot. He was a sucker the same way as McGuire was.”
“But why you?”
“Because I was sleeping with him.”
It hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt — she was just some lonely frail who had blown in out of the night, but still it hurt. I don’t know what I suspected — a virgin, maybe, although virginity had never been my particular kick. I won’t even try to analyze it. It hurt.
“It was horrible, Ted. He picked me up pretty skillfully and he was lots of fun at first — a big spender, a happy sort of a guy if you didn’t notice what went on behind the mask. Later I learned to notice. But not at first.
“Then, after the first trip to bed, he got ugly. He wanted me to do... unnatural things. Things I didn’t like. They make me sick to my stomach to think about them. You know the things fairies do to each other?”
I nodded.
“Those things. And worse. He wanted me to whip, him, to hurt him. It was all pretty sickening.”
“But you did it.”
She nodded. “By this time I knew the swindle. I already had my mind made up, Ted. I was getting my share. I was going to wind up with the dough.”
“And you did.”
“So I did.”
I looked at the bundle of innocence sitting on my bed and thought of the bundle of money in her room, thought of the cold blood under that warm exterior, of the mind and the body and the money and a few other things. I thought of what it must have been like with her and Reed in bed. It must have been pretty unpleasant for her, although it must have been pretty goddamned great for Reed, damn him. I envied him. I envied anybody who had something like Cinderella Sims in bed with him.
She would be good, damned good. I stared hard at her, saw the way the top half of her made a man’s flannel shirt stretch all out of shape, saw the way her behind was snug and tight in the dungarees.