When Deighan walked in a few minutes before two, the banks of slots and the blackjack tables were getting moderately heavy play. That was because it was Friday; some of the small-time gamblers liked to get a jump on the weekend crowds. The craps and roulette layouts were quiet. The high rollers were like vampires: they couldn’t stand the daylight, so they only came out after dark.
Deighan bought a roll of quarters at one of the change booths. There were a couple of dozen rows of slots in the main casino — flashy new ones, mostly, with a few of the old scrolled nickel-plated jobs mixed in for the sake of nostalgia. He stopped at one of the old quarter machines, fed in three dollars’ worth. Lemons and oranges. He couldn’t even line up two cherries for a three-coin drop. He smiled crookedly to himself, went away from the slots and into the long concourse that connected the main casino with the new, smaller addition at the rear.
There were telephone booths along one side of the concourse. Deighan shut himself inside one of them, put a quarter in the slot, pushed o and then the digits of his home number in San Francisco. When the operator came on he said it was a collect call; that was to save himself the trouble of having to feed in a handful of quarters. He let the circuit make exactly five burrs in his ear before he hung up. If Fran was home, she’d know now that he was all right. If she wasn’t home, then she’d know it later when he made another five-ring call. He always tried to call at least twice a day, at different times, because sometimes she went out shopping or to a movie or to visit with Sheila and the kids.
It’d be easier if she just answered the phone, talked to him, but she never did when he was away. Never. Sheila or anybody else wanted to get hold of her, they had to call one of the neighbors or come over in person. She didn’t want anything to do with him when he was away, didn’t want to know what he was doing or even when he’d be back. “Suppose I picked up the phone and it wasn’t you?” she’d said. “Suppose it was somebody telling me you were dead? I couldn’t stand that.” That part of it didn’t make sense to him. If he were dead, somebody’d come by and tell it to her face; dead was dead, and what difference did it make how she got the news? But he didn’t argue with her. He didn’t like to argue with her, and it didn’t cost him anything to do it her way.
He slotted the quarter again and called the Shooter’s number. Four rings, five, and D’Allesandro’s voice said, “Yeah?”
“Mr. Carson?”
“Who?”
“Isn’t this Paul Carson?”
“No. You got the wrong number.”
“Oh, sorry,” Deighan said, and rang off.
Another quarter in the slot. This time the number he punched out was the Nevornia’s business line. A woman’s voice answered, crisp and professional. He said, “Mr. Mannlicher. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
“Never mind that. Just tell him it’s about what happened last night.”
“Sir, I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Tell him last night’s poker game, damn it. He’ll talk to me.”
There was a click and some canned music began to play in his ear. He lit a cigarette. He was on his fourth drag when the canned music quit and the fat man’s voice said, “Frank Mannlicher. Who’s this?”
“No names. Is it all right to talk on this line?”
“Go ahead, talk.”
“I’m the guy who hit your game last night.”
Silence for four or five seconds. Then Mannlicher said, “Is that so?” in a flat, wary voice.
“Ski mask, Smith & Wesson .38, grenade in my jacket pocket. The take was better than two hundred thousand. I got your ring — platinum with a circle of diamonds.”
Another pause, shorter this time. “So why call me today?”
“How’d you like to get it all back — the money and the ring?”
“How?”
“Go pick it up. I’ll tell you where.”
“Yeah? Why should you do me a favor?”
“I didn’t know who you were last night. I wasn’t told. If I had been, I wouldn’t of gone through with it. I don’t mess with people like you, people with your connections.”
“Somebody hired you, that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Who?”
“D’Allesandro.”
“What?”
“The Shooter. D’Allesandro.”
“...Bullshit.”
“You don’t have to believe me. But I’m telling you — he’s the one. He didn’t tell me who’d be at the game, and now he’s trying to screw me on the money. He says there was less than a hundred and fifty thousand in the sack; I know better.”
“So now you want to screw him.”
“That’s right. Besides, I don’t like the idea of you pushing to find out who I am, maybe sending somebody to pay me a visit someday. I figure if I give you the Shooter, you’ll lose interest in me.”
More silence. “Why’d he do it?” Mannlicher said in a different voice — harder, with that edge of violence it had held last night. “Hit the game like that?”
“He needs big money, fast. He’s into some kind of scam back east; he wouldn’t say what it is.”
“Where’s the money and the rest of the stuff?”
“At his cabin. We had a drop arranged in the woods; I put the sack there last night, he picked it up this morning when nobody was around. The money’s in his desk — the big rolltop. Your ring, too. That’s where it was an hour ago, anyhow, when I walked out.”
Mannlicher said, “In his desk,” as if he were biting the words off something bitter.
“Go out there, see for yourself.”
“If you’re telling this straight, you got nothing to worry about from me. Maybe I’ll fix you up with a reward or something. Where can I get in touch?”
“You can’t,” Deighan said. “I’m long gone as soon as I hang up this phone.”
“I’ll make it five thousand. Just tell me where you—”
Deighan broke the connection.
His cigarette had burned down to the filter; he dropped it on the floor, put his shoe on it before he left the booth. On his way out of the casino he paused long enough to push another quarter into the same slot machine he’d played before. More lemons and oranges. This time he didn’t smile as he moved away.
5
Narrow and twisty, hemmed in by trees, old Lake Road branched off Highway 28 and took two miles to get all the way to the lake. But it wasn’t a dead-end; another road picked it up at the lakefront and looped back out to the highway. There were several nice homes hidden away in the area — it was called Pine Acres — with plenty of space between them. The Shooter’s cabin was a mile and a half from the highway, off an even narrower lane called Little Cove Road. The only other cabin within five hundred yards was a summer place that the owners had already closed up for the year.
Deighan drove past the intersection with Little Cove, went two-tenths of a mile, parked on the turnout at that point. There wasn’t anybody else around when he got out, nothing to see except trees and little winks of blue that marked the nearness of the lake. If anybody came along they wouldn’t pay any attention to the car. For one thing, it was a ’75 Ford Galaxy with nothing distinctive about it except the antenna for the GTE mobile phone. It was his — he’d driven it up from San Francisco — but the papers on it said it belonged to Bob Prince. For another thing, Old Lake Road was only a hundred yards or so from the water here, and there was a path through the trees to a strip of rocky beach. Local kids used it in the summer; he’d found that out from Bellah. Kids might have decided to stop here on a sunny autumn day as well. No reason for anybody to think otherwise.