The croupier leaned across the table and very carefully stacked her money and chips. He placed her bet for her on the red diamond. He placed his hand along the curve of the wheel.
«If no one objects,» Canales said, without looking at anyone, «this is just the two of us.»
Heads moved. Nobody spoke. The croupier spun the wheel and sent the ball skimming in the groove with a light flirt of his left wrist. Then he drew his hands back and placed them in full view on the edge of the table, on top of it.
The red-haired girl’s eyes shone and her lips slowly parted.
The ball drifted along the groove, dipped past one of the bright metal diamonds, slid down the flank of the wheel and chattered along the tines beside the numbers. Movement went out of it suddenly, with a dry click. It fell next the doublezero, in red twenty-seven. The wheel was motionless.
The croupier took up his rake and slowly pushed the two packets of bills across, added them to the stake, pushed the whole thing off the field of play.
Canales put his wallet back in his breast pocket, turned and walked slowly back to the door, went through it.
I took my cramped fingers off the top of the railing, and a lot of people broke for the bar.
THREE
When Lou came up I was sitting at a little tile-top table in a corner, fooling with some more of the tequila. The little orchestra was playing a thin, brittle tango and one couple was maneuvering self-consciously on the dance floor.
Lou had a cream-colored overcoat on, with the collar turned up around a lot of white silk scarf. He had a fine-drawn glistening expression. He had white pigskin gloves this time and he put one of them down on the table and leaned at me.
«Over twenty-two thousand,» he said softly. «Boy, what a take!»
I said: «Very nice money, Lou. What kind of car are you driving?»
«See anything wrong with it?»
«The play?» I shrugged, fiddled with my glass. «I’m not wised up on roulette, Lou… I saw plenty wrong with your broad’s manners.»
«She’s not a broad,» Lou said. His voice got a little worried.
«Okey. She made Canales look like a million. What kind of car?»
«Buick sedan. Nile green, with two spotlights and those little fender lights on rods.» His voice was still worried.
I said: «Take it kind of slow through town. Give me a chance to get in the parade.»
He moved his glove and went away. The red-haired girl was not in sight anywhere. I looked down at the watch on my wrist. When I looked up again Canales was standing across the table. His eyes looked at me lifelessly above his trick mustache.
«You don’t like my place,» he said.
«On the contrary.»
«You don’t come here to play.» He was telling me, not asking me.
«Is it compulsory?» I asked dryly.
A very faint smile drifted across his face. He leaned a little down and said: «I think you are a dick. A smart dick.»
«Just a shamus,» I said. «And not so smart. Don’t let my long upper lip fool you. It runs in the family.»
Canales wrapped his fingers around the top of a chair, squeezed on it. «Don’t come here again — for anything.» He spoke very softly, almost dreamily. «I don’t like pigeons.»
I took the cigarette out of my mouth and looked it over before I looked at him. I said: «I heard you insulted a while back. You took it nicely… So we won’t count this one.»
He had a queer expression for a moment. Then he turned and slid away with a little sway of the shoulders. He put his feet down flat and turned them out a good deal as he walked. His walk, like his face, was a little negroid.
I got up and went out through the big white double doors into a dim lobby, got my hat and coat and put them on. I went out through another pair of double doors onto a wide veranda with scrollwork along the edge of its roof. There was sea fog in the air and the windblown Monterey cypresses in front of the house dripped with it. The grounds sloped gently into the dark for a long distance. Fog hid the ocean.
I had parked the car out on the street, on the other side of the house. I drew my hat down and walked soundlessly on the damp moss that covered the driveway, rounded a corner of the porch, and stopped rigidly.
A man just in front of me was holding a gun — but he didn’t see me. He was holding the gun down at his side, pressed against the material of his overcoat, and his big hand made it look quite small. The dim light that reflected from the barrel seemed to come out of the fog, to be part of the fog. He was a big man, and he stood very still, poised on the balls of his feet.
I lifted my right hand very slowly and opened the top two buttons of my coat, reached inside and drew out a long.38 with a six-inch barrel. I eased it into my overcoat pocket.
The man in front of me moved, reached his left hand up to his face. He drew on a cigarette cupped inside his hand and the glow put brief light on a heavy chin, wide, dark nostrils, and a square, aggressive nose, the nose of a fighting man.
Then he dropped the cigarette and stepped on it and a quick, light step made faint noise behind me. I was far too late turning.
Something swished and I went out like a light.
FOUR
When I came to I was cold and wet and had a headache a yard wide. There was a soft bruise behind my right ear that wasn’t bleeding. I had been put down with a sap.
I got up off my back and saw that I was a few yards from the driveway, between two trees that were wet with fog. There was some mud on the backs of my shoes. I had been dragged off the path, but not very far.
I went through my pockets. My gun was gone, of course, but that was all — that and the idea that this excursion was all fun.
I nosed around through the fog, didn’t find anything or see anyone, gave up bothering about that, and went along the blank side of the house to a curving line of palm trees and an old type arc light that hissed and flickered over the entrance to a sort of lane where I had stuck the 1925 Marmon touring car I still used for transportation. I got into it after wiping the seat off with a towel, teased the motor alive, and choked it along to a big empty street with disused car tracks in the middle.
I went from there to De Cazens Boulevard, which was the main drag of Las Olindas and was called after the man who built Canales’ place long ago. After a while there was town, buildings, dead-looking stores, a service station with a nightbell, and at last a drugstore which was still open.
A dolled-up sedan was parked in front of the drugstore and I parked behind that, got out, and saw that a hatless man was sitting at the counter, talking to a clerk in a blue smock. They seemed to have the world to themselves. I started to go in, then I stopped and took another look at the dolled-up sedan.
It was a Buick and of a color that could have been Nile-green in daylight. It had two spotlights and two little egg-shaped amber lights stuck up on thin nickel rods clamped to the front fenders. The window by the driver’s seat was down. I went back to the Marmon and got a flash, reached in and twisted the license holder of the Buick around, put the light on it quickly, then off again.
It was registered to Louis N. Harger.
I got rid of the flash and went into the drugstore. There was a liquor display at one side, and the clerk in the blue smock sold me a pint of Canadian Club, which I took over to the counter and opened. There were ten seats at the counter, but I sat down on the one next to the hatless man. He began to look me over, in the mirror, very carefully.
I got a cup of black coffee two-thirds full and added plenty of the rye. I drank it down and waited for a minute, to let it warm me up. Then I looked the hatless man over.