Philly Webb parked the anonymous Buick a block from the Vigilant building, walked the block, and knocked on the garage door in the side wall. It slid upward, and Handy McKay, hood off, grinned at him and motioned him to come in. “Only two guys,” he said. “Fred’s upstairs with them.”
“I do kind of like this,” Webb said. “Parker does come up with them, doesn’t he?” He and Handy had worked together in the past, ten or more years ago, but this was the first time they’d both been together on the same score with Parker.
“I was saving my comeback for him,” Handy said. “There’s some cards in the next room.”
Out at Best’s Jewelry, the Vigilant guards touched their visors in salute to the customer, got back into the Polara, and headed home. The driver took it slow and easy now, with the blue light turned off, and chose to head down London Avenue even though it was a block or so out of the way.
It was a quiet night, moonless and dark. London Avenue was deserted except for two guys drooling over the pictures outside one of the dirty-movie houses. “They’re on line kind of early, ain’t they?” one of the guards said, and they all laughed.
“Twelve o’clock,” Elkins said. “But wait for that car to go by.”
At Vigilant headquarters, Philly Webb and Handy McKay were playing draw poker with a pinochle deck. “Royal flush,” Handy said.
Webb, with a little smirk, spread out his hand. “Five aces.”
“Damn it.” Handy tossed his hand in with true annoyance. “The cards are dead,” he said.
From upstairs came a buzzing sound. Looking up, Webb said, “There goes the movie house.”
Upstairs, Ducasse stood frowning at the wall display with its flashing light and droning buzzer. He called to one of the guards in the corner, “How do I turn that off?”
“Fuck you,” said the guard. They were both upset at learning that Ducasse and Handy weren’t crazy men, after all.
Ducasse went over and kicked the guard on the shin. “Don’t talk dirty,” he said. “How do I turn that thing off?”
The guard, wincing with pain, tried to outstare a man with a hood over his face, but when Ducasse drew his foot back again he said, “There’s a switch on that desk. Turn it off and then back on again.”
“Good,” said Ducasse.
Downstairs, Webb and Handy played cards until they heard the garage door lifting. Then they pulled their hoods down over their faces and stood to either side of the dayroom door, their pistols held down at their sides.
The guards came in talking together, taking it easy, and all four were in the room before they saw the strangers. It suddenly got very quiet, and Handy, doing it his way, said, “Okay, gents, just take it easy. We don’t want any guns going off.”
* * *
There were no slot machines. The image they tried for at Tony Florio’s Riviera was discreet class, but not so discreet that the mugs wouldn’t recognize it. James Bond elegance, that was the approach. The mugs, seeing maroon-velvet draperies, assumed it was elegant. The mugs, seeing slot machines and equating slot machines with pinball machines in truck-stop diners, assumed it was cheap. So there were no slot machines.
But there was a lot of maroon velvet. Dalesia and Hurley and Mackey followed the waiter upstairs and through maroon-velvet drapes into the main gaming room, a long low-ceilinged room lined with heavy draperies. All that cloth, plus the thick green carpeting, muffled noises in the room until the place sounded like a stereo system with the bass control up full.
“The cashier to your right, gentlemen,” the waiter said, bowing slightly, smiling and gesturing. “And good luck to you.”
“Good luck to you, too,” Hurley said.
The waiter went away, and the three men took a minute to look over the room. There were six crap tables, only three of them in action. Two roulette wheels, both operating. On the far side of the room, card games at several green-baize tables. The players were about two-thirds men, and most of the women seemed to be married to the men they were with. It looked to be a professional-class crowd, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, managers, with most of the men in jacket and tie. Very few of the customers appeared to be under thirty-five, and those few mostly emulated their elders in dress, deportment, and hair length. The room wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty either; it was probably operating at half capacity.
Dalesia said, “Good mob for a Monday night.”
“Maybe we ought to invest,” Mackey said.
Dalesia grinned. “No, I don’t think so. I think they’re a bad risk.”
The three of them walked over to the cashier’s window. It was an oval hole in the wall, flanked by the ever-present maroon drapes. In the center of the grayish bullet-proof glass, at mouth level, was a microphone, and just above the window a speaker brought out the cashier’s voice. It was like a drive-in window at a bank; they put money in a metal drawer, which the cashier drew back to her side, then pushed out again with the chips in it. They each took a hundred dollars in five-dollar blues, and the cashier’s metallic voice said over their heads, “Good luck to you.”
“And good luck to you, too,” Hurley said.
They wandered the room for a few minutes, looking at the action. The crap tables and roulette wheels were run by men, but all the card games were operated by women, showing a lot of breast and a lot of plastic smile. “That’s what I call poker tits,” Dalesia said. “Harder to read than a poker face.”
Mackey said, “Well, if I’m going to throw it away fast, I can’t do better than roulette. See you.”
Mackey wandered off, and Hurley and Dalesia kibitzed a blackjack game for a few hands. The girl dealing flashed them a couple of smiles while waiting for players to decide whether to hit or stay, and after a minute or two Hurley said, “Think I’ll settle in here till spring,” and took one of the empty chairs at the table.
Dalesia roamed some more, considered the lone chemin de fer table with its slender black-haired girl dealer, and went on to one of the crap tables. They used the full Las Vegas layout, and most of the female customers were here, betting the field and the hard way. Dalesia, whose one superstition was that he had a mystical relationship with the number nine, made a sensible bet on the Don’t Pass Line and a dumb bet on the nine to come. He glanced at his watch while the shooter breathed on the red transparent dice, and saw he had twenty minutes in which to lose the hundred dollars.
Over at one of the roulette wheels, Mackey was frowning like a steam engine and writing numbers in a notebook. He was betting on every other spin, and these were alternating between a square bet somewhere in the second twelve and the line bet at the top, the 1, 2, 3, 0 and 00. He was losing practically every time, but his frown of concentration never changed. He looked exactly like yet another chump with a system, and all the employees in the area became aware of him within five minutes. So did several customers, a couple of whom began to follow his betting even though he was losing.
At the blackjack table, while the other players looked at their cards or the dealer’s breasts, Hurley watched her hands. She was good and smooth, but she didn’t seem to be doing anything mechanical. Not that she had to; most of the players here didn’t know how to stand on anything less than a twenty. Hurley hung back with his low teens whenever the dealer’s up card was low, never hit on sixteen or higher no matter what she had showing, and slowly inched ahead of the odds. But it was a slow way to make money.
Mackey went through his hundred dollars in eight minutes. Still frowning, still checking things off in his notebook, he went back to the cashier’s window, absent-mindedly fumbled his wallet out of his pocket, and said, “Better let me have—” He paused, fingered the bills in the wallet, and regretfully drew five twenties. “Just a hundred,” he said.