“Your life,” he said. “I’m giving you the odds.”
Taking a chance, waiting for a clue how to play my hand, I picked up two more dice. “I never cheated you, Raven.” I shook the dice in the cup and rolled them on the desk.
“Hummmm!” Raven sucked his teeth. “Not so good this time.” He picked up the second pair of dice. “You get one more chance.”
I stared at the loaded dice. The dice stared back at me, black eyes glaring out of white faces, many eyes on many faces that seemed to stare in every direction of the room. But I could not touch them. Every spot on the dice was an eye accusing me of cheating, ready to betray me. I could not touch the dice. I raised my hands, but the dice frightened me. Raven stared across the desk into my eyes. He leaned toward me slightly.
“Roll the last pair!” he shouted. His face was drenched with sweat.
I backed away from the desk. Raven picked up the crooked dice and ran around the desk.
“Why did you save these? Because you know about them? Because they belong to you and you didn’t get a chance to take them with you?”
He shook the dice in my face. They knocked against one another, rattling in my ears, like the devil knocking at the door of a doomed man’s heart.
“You damn crook!”
He raised his knee into me and when I bent over, he uppercutted me in the chest. In pain I sank to the floor. Agony made me double my knees up against my chest. I clenched my teeth together to keep from crying out in pain. Every beat of my heart seemed to send a pain through my stomach. Raven kicked me. I grabbed my side, groaning on the floor. My one thought was that if I did not fight back, he might let me go lightly. If I fought back, I hadn’t a chance against his goons. I lay on the floor waiting for him to tell me to get up.
“Get up!” he said. “Stand up like a man!”
He slammed the top down on the suitcase and threw it across the room. Anna ran to pick it up. Her pocketbook dangled from her shoulder by a long strap. I pulled myself to my feet. Blackie and Slim stood watching me.
“You mean I can go now?” I asked.
“Go? You’re going all right,” Raven said. “When you go, you’ll be so marked up, the whole world’ll know not to trust you.” He turned to Anna. “Don’t you think guys like him ought to be marked, so people will know how to be more careful?”
“What about the broad?” Blackie asked.
“She can keep me company while you take smarty pants here down to the cellar and put some identification marks on his face.”
They seized me by my arms. Anna ran up to Raven and grabbed his arms, pleading into his face.
“What are going to do to him?” she cried. “Don’t hurt him. He didn’t mean to cheat you or anybody. He did it for me. He was only trying to be a big guy for me. Please! Please, Mister! Let him go! I made him do it by nagging him and driving him. I’ll take him away, anywhere, only let him go. I... I’ll do anything you say!”
The tears running down her face, the whimper in her voice, gave me strength; I could take anything they gave me. They couldn’t hurt me.
“Don’t beg for me, Anna!”
That hurt me more than anything, having her beg like that, and offer to do anything. How many guys had a girl like that?
I was sorry for all the times I’d beat her.
“Go ahead, you idiots!” screamed Raven, as if he had not heard her cry. “What are you waiting for?”
They turned me around and pushed me toward the door. There was a noise behind us, a cry from Raven, and a cry from Anna. The goons turned me loose; we all whirled around. Raven lay on the floor, and Anna was pulling at the drawers of his desk. The goons each went for their rods, but I was behind them. I grabbed them and knocked their heads together, before they got the rods out of their pockets. By that time, Raven was on his feet, and Anna had found a revolver in his desk, and was pointing it, waving it wildly about the room.
“Over here! Over here with your boss!” She ordered them around like a cop might do. Then to me: “Get their guns.”
I lifted their rods.
“Now hunt around to see if you can’t find something so we can tie them up to keep them for a while.”
I searched around the office but could find nothing.
“Try the cellar,” she said.
Raven and his boys stood against the wall with their hands hanging loosely at their sides.
“You don’t get away with this,” he said. “This is robbery.”
“Move,” Anna said, “and I’ll shoot you.”
Even though she’d never picked up a bottle or drew a knife or pulled a gun on me when we fought, I knew she’d shoot.
Somehow, though, I didn’t believe I’d ever have the nerve to bust her one in the mouth again.
On the train, she turned to me; the soft pressure of her thigh increased against my leg.
“Darling,” she said, “you were going to let them beat you and take the money, weren’t you?”
“What else could I do?”
“But it was your money. You won it. You did win it, didn’t you?”
“Of course.” We both smiled.
“I hate a sore loser,” she said. “I hate a sore loser worse than I hate a two-bit, two-for-a-nickle punk.”
It Never Happened
by William O’Farrell
His name was Welles, but it wasn’t. He came from Louisiana, but he didn’t. He looked like a bum — but he had a hundred and fifty grand in his pocket...
1
The night was thick and soggy with a threatened rain. He drove through the thick night down the coastal highway, going much faster than the law allowed, yet taking no chances and functioning with an instinctive cunning of which he was only partly aware. Approaching Long Beach, he eased up on the accelerator and went through the city like any other late driver going home. Only when the car had again nosed out on the open highway and was headed south toward San Diego did his foot sharply feed gas into the carburetor again.
No red light blinked behind him. No siren shrieked him to a stop. A little after midnight, thirty-five miles north of San Diego, he saw a house. It was a house that he had never seen before but he knew instinctively that it was empty. There were no lights in the windows. He turned the car into the drive.
A double garage was at the driveway’s end, and that was empty too. He forced it open with a tire iron, ran the car inside and shut the door. Then he climbed behind the wheel, let his head fall back and closed his eyes. For a while he rested.
For a little while.
But pictures formed in his mind, nebulous figures like gray, accusing ghosts. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of them. They pressed in closer. He sat up straight, opened the glove compartment, took out a pint of Scotch. He drank, the whiskey trickling over his chin. It warmed him, pushed the ghosts away. Presently he slept.
His head was throbbing when he awoke and there was nausea in his stomach and his mind. The ghosts were back again, and in the instant between sleep and waking he saw a woman’s face. Her reproachful eyes looked directly into his. He groaned, fell over on the seat and vomited. As suddenly as she had come the woman disappeared.
There were a couple of drinks left in the pint. He took a white pill from a bottle in his pocket and washed it down with whiskey. When his headache grew a little less intense he began acting in an orderly, decisive manner as though according to a pre-arranged plan. From the glove compartment he took a second pint and put it in his pocket. He felt his wallet but did not open it. He knew how much money it contained. He knew how much was pinned to the inside of his shirt. He opened the door at his side and climbed out of the car.
He started to leave the garage but turned back, unstrapped the car’s registration from the driving shaft. He unscrewed the license plate and took it with him when he went outside.