“I have to go to work soon,” Linda said. “I’m opening tonight, kid, at Bally’s.” She threw her arms out and struck a pose. “Linda Moon, Now Appearing…”
“You sure are. But you didn’t tell me.”
She let her arms drop. “That’s what I’m doing, telling you. Why’re you so surprised?”
“I thought it was down the road, a couple weeks off if you got it.”
“I had to get it. Vincent, I work, I don’t sit around.”
“But right now…” He hesitated. “Whoever it was last night, he finds out you’re at Bally’s… I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She stood at the edge of the recessed tub, hands on round white hips, looking down at him.
“Vincent, I spent half the day with the entertainment director… Where do you think I’ve been?”
“I knew where you were.” He was having trouble, looking up, keeping his eyes on her face.
“Yeah, but did you really care?”
“What’re you mad at?”
“I got the entertainment guy-I wouldn’t leave his office till he said, okay, I can play anything I want, my music, Vincent… Look at me. Quit staring at my crotch. I played a rehearsal set and he loved it-as much as those guys can love anything, but he said go ahead. That’s the thing, I can play what I want… Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, look at me. Do you know what this means?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“I’ve been working my ass off for a shot like this, Bally’s Park Place, my charts, and you want me to hide in a hotel room. You want to protect me, Vincent, then come sit in the audience.”
“What time are you on?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Okay. We’ll come back here after.”
“And take another bath,” Linda said.
The phone rang.
He met Nancy Donovan in the lounge: dark and quiet in here between sets. They’d have a drink first and then she would take him into the casino, show him around.
She told him if he didn’t like his rooms he could choose another suite. Or if there was anything at all he wanted… He said no, it was fine; green and gold were his high school colors. He liked the bathtub a lot; he said you could practically swim in it, do all kinds of things. He said he liked the view, he liked to watch the ocean when it was breaking in with a high surf. They covered the weather and beaches in New Jersey, Florida and Puerto Rico.
She was a much different type than Linda. Both were confident, looked right at you; but Nancy hung back, in no hurry, seemed to choose her words, while Linda came right at you and said what she felt. Sort of like Jackie Garbo, with class. He said, “I had a nice chat with Mr. Garbo. He’s a pretty hip little guy, isn’t he?”
“He hopes desperately you’ll think he is,” Nancy said.
“You don’t care for him too much.”
She said, “As long as he does his job,” and shrugged her shoulders, sitting in her fashion-model slouch. Nancy would model expensive clothes and have the walk down-whatever way the models were walking this year. Linda would model lipstick, her mouth partly open. He had wanted to bite her lower lip right off, without hurting her. They were about the same size, both slim; but he believed their bodies would look different side by side, naked. Linda pulled off her sweater and there were those white beauties with the pink tips looking right at you while her head was still in the sweater. He believed Nancy wore a bra and her breasts would be as tan as the rest of her body. He had never seen a deeply tanned ass. Just as Linda was the first woman he could remember without tan lines at all. Nancy said, “You’re deciding what you want to play.”
Vincent smiled. “How’d you know?”
“I’ll bet you like blackjack.”
“You’re pretty good.”
“Will you play with green chips or black?”
“Green are worth… twenty?”
“Twenty-five. Black a hundred.”
“You ever comp anybody who just plays the slots?”
Teddy walked through Bally’s, the Claridge and the Sands without seeing one lady who was his type. The girl of his dreams would be in the 58-to-65 range, not too big, with dyed hair or a wig and played the slots with a big cup full of coins and a drink on the counter in front of her. A cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth was a good sign, and if she was coarse in her speech, a kidder, that was the best sign of all she was the one for him. Close to eight, the casinos were filling up with the evening rush of greedy spenders and would be going strong with lights flashing and bells ringing for hours. He felt security people, with their name badges and walkie-talkies, looking him over. They weren’t, but that’s what he felt. Like driving and seeing a cop and getting nervous for no reason. He had reason last night to be nervous. Jesus, the way the hotel room door came open in his hand. Not expecting it-that’d scare the shit out of anybody. It was a good plan, it was just the cop had probably got up to take a leak and happened to hear the key turn. But the door had been double-locked so it wouldn’t have worked anyway… He had in mind now another plan. Follow the cop in his car, the Datsun. Pull up next to him at a light and let the cop get a look, surprise the hell out of him. Not wave or yoo-hoo at him, he’d have to be cool, but make sure the cop saw him. Then zip ahead and let the cop follow. Take him out Longport Boulevard and over the JFK Bridge, out in the marshland and pull off the road. The cop comes over to the car, looks in the window right at him, close, eye to eye. Pow pow pow… Soon as he got some money. Shit, he didn’t even have enough on him to buy gas.
Teddy left the Sands and headed for Spade’s Boardwalk, next stop in his quest for the ideal old lady.
Leaving the lounge Nancy held onto his arm, guided him through the lobby to the familiar gold elevators. Vincent said he thought she was going to show him the casino.
“I am, but a way few people ever see it.”
She brought him along the executive hall to the surveillance room: to the bank of monitors, twenty movies playing at one time: deadpan characters suspended, waiting for the turn of a card; the slot players, the “high pullers” at the dollar machines; only the crapshooters animated. Vincent said, “I could spend some time here.” Nancy said, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” She introduced him to Frances Mullen who glanced up from a monitor off to the side. Frances said, “Be with you in a minute.”
“She’s watching the soft-count room,” Nancy said and pointed to the dropboxes that were brought in from the tables at the end of each shift, the money taken out and counted by employees in coveralls, no pockets, then transferred to the main cage. When Frances turned to them she said, “Well, here’s a familiar face. You were playing blackjack the other night-” Vincent saw her expression change as her eyes moved from him briefly and back again, a glance at Nancy close behind him shutting her up.
“I won four hundred seventy bucks,” Vincent said, imagining himself on one of the screens, “and I swear I didn’t cheat.” He was sure Nancy had a picture of him.
She said, “They would’ve caught you if you tried. If the dealer or the pit boss didn’t spot you Frances would. Come on, I want to show you something else.”
He followed Nancy along the hall, through a door and down a metal stairway, a ship’s ladder, into a dark area that resembled the rafters of a building, the crawl space above the ceiling. Except that here you could stand upright, follow a wide catwalk with handrails, and from both sides of it look down through one-way smoked glass at the casino floor: at the tables, the slot machines, the mass of players and strollers less than ten feet below.
“The Eye in the Sky,” Nancy said.
Teddy had read somewhere they had over sixteen hundred slots here at Spade’s. He wouldn’t want to count them; though he could, moving up one row and down another, looking for the girl of his dreams. Jesus, but dollar slot made a racket, those big slugs clanging in the tray. He liked the sound of quarter-slot payoffs better; it sounded more like real money, the coins chinging down on top of one another. Half-dollar payoffs were somewhere in between, a hefty sound and real too.