“And I’m not selling anything, Gulbie. Here, have ten dollars.” I handed him a bill. He took it, looked at it suspiciously and tucked it in his shirt pocket.
“Thanks,” he said. “Who do I have to kill?”
I had some unsold, out-of-date tickets in my pocket. I took them out. “Know what these are?”
“Them green things? Wait a minute, now, I think so. Hold on just a minute. Yeah. Those are pool tickets, to win money with.”
“Where can you buy them, Gulbie?”
“Why, down where I get my chow. Haiger’s Market. I seen fellows buying them there.”
“You want to make some more money, Gulbie?”
“Guess I don’t mind if I do.”
“What I want you to do, Gulbie, is buy some of those green tickets next week. Ten dollars worth. Understand?”
He nodded in a bewildered way. “I buy ten dollars worth. How do I make any money?”
“Don’t open them in the store. Bring them back here and save them. I’ll come around and open them for you. Then you cash them in; they’ll give you a lot of money, Gulbie. I’ll be around to remind you of all this. Okay?”
“How much do I make?”
“Maybe as much as fifty dollars. How does that sound?”
He smiled shyly. “Sounds pretty good, Jake. Yes sir.”
I stared hard at him for a few minutes, making up my mind. Yes, Gulbie would do very well indeed. I could control him, and afterwards I could confuse him so badly that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone a thing about it.
His foot touched the bottle and tipped it over. With incredible speed he caught the neck of the bottle before a drop spilled. I had forgotten that animal quickness of his.
“Want a drink?” he asked politely.
He stood in the doorway as I scrambled up the path. I turned and looked back. The rain made red and green halos around the semaphore, and the tracks shone like silver. I could hear the stolid chuffing of the switch engines down in the yard, the clunk and rattle of the couplings as trains were being made up.
Back inside the car, I sat and smoked for a minute or two before turning and heading back to town. The big plan was beginning to roll, but I didn’t want to be a chump; I didn’t want that smart money Anna had found to ease me out before I was even in. Priority one was to protect myself from a cross within a cross.
I wondered if Johnny Naga could be part of the smart money, changing horses in midstream. Time to check. Johnny Naga collected his three thousand a week and paid off all the consolation winners.
I found him, as usual, behind his own bar, the outside neon flickering redly, repeating, “JOHNNY’S PLACE” over and over and over.
The bar was always packed with the squareheads from the neighborhood, largely a beer type business. In addition to backing the distribution angle of the pool, Johnny runs a baseball and football pool setup on the side.
He is a wide, redfaced man in his fifties, with a broad mouth. His head is the general shape of a pear with the little end of top. His voice is highpitched and when he giggles, which he does a great deal, his big belly jounces. He talks with a faint Slovak accent, as do most of the people in the neighborhood where his bar is.
There is more than enough dough laying around for Johnny to take it very easy indeed, but his favorite indoor sport is tending his own bar and kidding with the men he’s known all his life and pretending that he’s no better off than they are. But they all know that Johnny Naga is rolling in it.
I pushed my way into the bar, and he saw me immediately and gave a little jerk of his head toward the back room. I picked up a beer on the way and carried it back in there with me. The back room was empty. I drank the beer and put the empty glass on the table.
In a few minutes, Johnny came puffing back, wiping his hands on his white apron.
“How you doin’, Brine?” he asked in his high voice. He can’t seem to say Brian.
“Just fair, Johnny. What’s new?”
“Brine, you know this Skippy Jorio?”
“One of the route boys, isn’t he? Used to be a fighter?”
“That’s a one, Brine. This week I got to put in his dough myself. He tell me to go to hell. Seventy-one bucks he owes, Brine. You get it?”
“Oh, fine!” I said in disgust.
“Brock, he says you help, Brine. Your job. Brock, he says one route man goes out of line, maybe all of them do.”
I sighed. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs at 519 Fonda. With a woman. She gets the money I think.”
The opening was as good as any. I said, “Sometimes, Johnny, I think we’d be further ahead if we ran this show ourselves and paid out the big winners and cut out the darn syndicate. Then we could afford to write off a lousy little seventy-one bucks.”
He looked at me and suddenly he wasn’t smiling. “Don’t talk like that, Brine. Bad talk, I know. Don’t mess with those boys. Out of town. Rough. You don’t mean.”
I gave him a close look. Either he was as good as Lynn Fontaine, or he was seriously jarred by my idea. I decided it was the latter. Scratch one prospect.
“I was just kidding, Johnny,” I said.
His smile came back. “Good thing,” he said, slugging me on the shoulder and nearly paralyzing my arm.
Before calling on Skippy Jorio, I made the usual precautions. It took me fifteen minutes to locate our local eagle, Mr. Wallace Rome. Finally I caught him at the Coral Club. Rome is one of those tall, swarthy young men with feline grace, a sunlamp tan, a small black mustache and startling white teeth. He has made a very good thing out of close-to-the-line practices, sucking up to the politicos, and playing the social game.
He answered the phone with liquid charm, and then shifted to bored irritability when he found out who he was talking to. “All right, all right. You don’t have to draw pictures,” he said. “Any trouble and I’ll cover you. You’re working for me while you make the collection.”
“Don’t forget to put all this on the bill,” I said.
He hung up.
Five nineteen Fonda was in the middle of a row of buildings facing the freight yards. They seemed to lean against each other for support. A cheap restaurant, with white tile across the front, looked like a clean bandage on a dirty wound.
The way up was locked, but the wood was rotten and a little steady pressure tore the lock free. I went quietly up the stairs, crouched and listened at the door. A thread of light came from under it, and I heard a woman’s drunken giggle. I backed up three steps, then hit the door with my shoulder. It crashed open and Skippy Jorio, in the act of pouring a drink, whirled, dropping the glass. A plump girl in a rather dull state of undress sat on a couch. She didn’t stop giggling; her eyes were shut.
Skippy threw the bottle at my head, and came in fast. I sidestepped the bottle, yanked my gun free and slammed him in the side of the head as he reached me. Then I had to sidestep him; he tried to knock the side off the building with his skull.
Fatty still giggled insanely, but her eyes were open. I found some loose bills in Skippy’s side pocket, and among them was a fifty and two twenties. Fatty stopped giggling when she saw the cash.
I took all he had and, as he started to moan, I went down the stairs fast, walked quickly to the car and drove away. Object lesson. The news would get around fast enough, thereby discouraging the next citizen who tried to hang onto the funds.
Johnny Naga took his seventy-one with beaming thanks and I tucked the collection fee into my wallet.
An hour later I was full of steak, and streached out on my bed in my room at the Murrisberg House, but sleep wouldn’t come. Somewhere on the road Brock Sentano was headed back toward Murrisberg. Anna Garron was probably back in her room at Sentano’s place, the blank tickets carefully hidden away. And somewhere, some monied citizen was licking his chops in anticipation of the riches to come.