“Yeah... Fill her up again.”
The man tilted a tube of cartridges into the magazine of the repeater.
“Ever hear of a guy named Pete the Polack?” asked Corning.
The man’s hand jiggled. Shells spilled to the floor. He cursed in a high-pitched whine, stooped to the floor.
“No,” he said, when he had straightened.
“Used to run a concession out here,” said Corning, carelessly. “I thought he’d be glad to help me. I know some friends of his.”
The man slipped the loose shells into the gun, kept his eyes away from Corning’s.
“Used to be a heavy guy with a mustache out here. He sold out to me. I think they called him Pete, but I ain’t sure. He’s been gone for a while now. I never did get to know much about him. He ain’t ever been back since I bought in.”
He slid the tube into place, cocked the gun and handed it to Ken Corning.
“What sort of a publicity stunt was you figuring on?” he asked.
“Going to put up a prize for the best blonde working-girl shot in the city. She’s got to shoot at a regulation target. Gets one hundred dollars and a loving cup. The shots are free if she makes over a certain score, otherwise she pays. She should get about half price.”
“Profits all gone now,” the man said. “Things ain’t gone down in this game, costs are still high... Where do I come in on the free shots — the ones that go over a certain score?”
“You’ll pay that in return for your publicity,” Ken Corning said, knocking down a moving duck. “I’m going to give the thing a lot of space in the newspapers. It’ll bring a lot of people in here, spectators.”
“To see the shooting?” asked the gallery man skeptically.
Ken Corning held the trigger back against the trigger guard, worked the pump of the gun with swift motions of the forearm.
“No,” he said, as the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, “to see the blondes.”
The proprietor of the gallery looked at the vacant spaces in the places where the imitation clay pipes had been.
“You ain’t bad with a rifle yourself, brother.”
“Not so good. A little out of training,” Corning told him. “A month or so would get me back so I could do something worth while. How about it?”
“What’s the publicity?” asked the man back of the counter.
“I’m going to start a selling campaign on a hair-bleaching process that makes silky blondes out of brunettes and restores natural color to hair and all that sort of stuff.”
“So that’s why you want ’em blondes,” said the man. “What’s the rest of it.”
“And the winner of the big prize,” Ken Corning told him, “is going to be the sales manager of my company. She’s going to get a lot of free publicity first. The best blonde shot in the city.”
“Sounds goofy to me,” the man said.
“All publicity schemes are goofy,” Corning assured him; “the idea is to think up something new, so you can get the advertising. All of the logical things have been thought of already. The new things you think of are goofy.”
The man back of the counter said nothing, but continued to look at Corning.
Corning took a dollar from his pocket, and slid it across the counter.
“Now listen,” he said, “I don’t want any misunderstanding about this. I’m going to have a bunch of blonde working-girls come in here to shoot. I’m going to have a crowd around the place. The shoot is going to be advertised as between the hours of seven o’clock and eleven o’clock tomorrow night, first come, first served. At eleven o’clock the girls who have had the two highest scores are going to shoot off the finals — and the one who’s going to win that final shoot is going to be my sales manager, do you understand?”
“Just how do you mean?”
“Just what I say — she’s going to win.”
“Suppose the other girl should be a better shot?”
“She probably will. My sales manager can’t hit a flock of barn doors.”
The bright eyes watched Corning with feverish concentration.
“How the hell is she going to win if she can’t shoot?”
“Because,” said Corning, “she isn’t going to be shooting at the target at all. She’s going to be shooting at the backstop, but the target she’s shooting at is going to be one that’s been prepared in advance. You’re going to pretend to put a plain target on the carrying wire that takes the target back, but it isn’t going to be a plain target. It’s going to be one that’s had six shots put right through the black bull’s-eye in the center of the target. Each contestant is going to fire six shots. Naturally, my girl’s going to win. She’s going to have the highest score.”
“A frame-up, eh?” said the man.
“Of course it’s a frame-up,” Corning told him impatiently.
“I’ve got to get some coin out of it, then,” the man told him.
“How much coin?” Corning asked.
“Fifty bucks, and the shots have got to be paid for at full price.”
“You’d be getting rich,” Corning protested.
“The hell I would,” the man said. “In the first place, you ain’t going to have over a dozen girls to compete — not if they have to pay for their own shots if they don’t make better than a certain record. There ain’t a dozen women in the city who know how to handle guns. You should know that yourself. Watch a woman come to a shooting gallery. She never does it unless there’s some man who drags her in, then, most of the time, she shoots with her eyes closed.”
“All right,” Corning told him, wearily, “have it your own way. I can’t be bothered with a lot of details.”
Corning opened a bill fold and took out five ten-dollar bills.
“My name’s Steve Richey,” he said.
The man on the other side of the counter extended his left hand for the money, placed his thin, feverish right hand inside of Corning’s palm.
“My name’s Ted Fuller.”
“The shoot,” said Corning, “starts tomorrow night at seven o’clock and lasts until eleven. There’ll probably be a crowd. My girl is going to show up for her qualifying shoot just a little before anyone else gets here. We’ll fake the qualifying target, and it’s up to you to see that she wins.”
“Don’t worry,” Fuller said, pushing the money into his pocket, “she’ll win. It may look kind of raw, but she’ll win.”
“I don’t give a damn how raw it looks,” Corning told him. “I want the publicity.”
Corning found a rooming-house which suited his purpose, at 329 Maple Avenue. He registered under the name of Stephen Richey, then he rang up his office and heard Helen Vail’s voice over the telephone.
“Listen,” he told her, “you had a blonde friend who used to come into the office once in a while. I’ve forgotten her name. She was the kind that would photograph well. I think her name was Marian, but I’m not sure.”
“That’s right,” Helen Vail told him, “Marian Sharpe. She’s a good scout.”
“All right,” Corning told her, “I want her. I want her to go to a rooming-house at 329 Maple Avenue, and ask for Stephen Richey. That’s the name I’m registered under. I’ll be waiting for her. Think you can get her?”
“Sure; she’s out of a job and needs money.”
“Okey,” Corning told her. “Now here’s another one. You’ll notice that all of the newspapers are carrying an ad in the ‘Help Wanted — Female Department’ announcing a competition to determine the best shot among blonde working-girls in the city. I want you to see that Mary Bagley has her attention called to that ad.”
“Want me to suggest that she try for the prize?” Helen Vail asked.
“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” he told her. “I simply want you to see that her attention is called to the ad. Then, if she decides she’s going to try to win the prize, I want to know it. But I don’t want you to bring any pressure to bear on her. Think you can do that all right?”