The Reverend Crane Ward, among the onlookers at the roulette table, caught Michael Shayne’s eye and shook his head in amazement. Shayne, playing idly, had been winning steadily. After an hour and a half, he was thirty thousand dollars ahead. A crowd had collected around him. Women kept touching him, in the hope that some of his luck would rub off. He lost on a combination bet, then won again heavily. There was a general exhalation of breath around him as the croupier’s rake, which usually moved in the opposite direction, pushed another impressive stack of chips toward him.
Shayne bet two fifty-dollar chips on the next spin and lost.
Christa, beside him, in a glistening silver evening gown with no back, was as excited as the others around the table. Shayne staked another hundred dollars and lost. He won again when he increased his bet, and now he began to pay more attention to his surroundings. He surveyed the room casually.
He had no trouble picking out the professionals by a certain quietness of manner. He recognized several of them who at one time or another had worked in Miami Beach.
The croupier was waiting for his play.
“What’s your name, croupier?” Shayne said.
The man, a small, sallow Italian, wet his lips. “Tony Gambino.”
Shayne reached out, but delayed before placing his bet on the table. “I haven’t kept up. Who has the concession here now?”
“Why, Al Luccio.” He corrected himself immediately. “Mr. Luccio.”
“Send for him.”
“Isn’t everything satis-”
“Send for him.”
Shayne dropped the chips on black, and the wheel spun. Black came up, to squeals of delight from Shayne’s little cheering section.
“Michael, you marvelous man!” Christa cried.
While she was stacking the chips, a thin bald man with a cigar appeared at Shayne’s elbow.
“How are you, Al?” Shayne said without looking around.
“Not bad, Mike. And yourself? You seem to be lucky tonight.”
“And all with that complimentary ten bucks. You’ve got a nice store here.”
“The best,” Luccio agreed quietly. “Are you picking up now, Mike?”
“No. The reason I called you over, Al, besides wanting to see a familiar face, is to talk to you about social conditions in St. Albans. I remember how generous you used to be when the Miami ladies passed the hat for some worthy cause.”
“Yeah, well-a lot of that was public relations,” Luccio said modestly. “You know how it is.”
“And I suppose you keep up the good work down here.”
Luccio said quickly, “Why don’t we discuss it in my office? This is no place-”
Shayne wagged his head, and when he spoke next his speech had thickened. He made a loose, drunken gesture.
“Anything I have to say, I’ll say in front of these wonderful people. I’m not going to give you a big speech, but when I was walking around this afternoon, I saw plenty of kids who could use a pair of shoes. Fine-looking kids. Al-I want you to cash in these chips and see to it that the dough gets where it’ll do the most good.”
He interrupted himself to ask Christa for a total.
“Just over forty-seven thousand.”
“As much as that!” Shayne exclaimed happily. “Al, this is going to do your public relations a world of good. Let’s nail this down. Not that I don’t trust you,” he assured the gambler, turning to look at him for the first time, “but there’s always a chance of a bookkeeping mistake. Who can give me the name of a good local outfit that can use forty-seven thousand fish?” He looked around. “Anybody.” A woman across the table said hesitantly, “There’s a free clinic in Old Town. The doctor who runs it is always short of money.”
“Perfect,” Shayne said. “Give Al the address. He’s known all over the Caribbean as a man who’s satisfied with the house percentage, and I think we have enough witnesses so he’ll make sure the clinic gets the full forty-seven thousand. I want to thank you, Al, for running an honest game and giving me this opportunity to help people who may not be quite as fortunate as the rest of us. I’ll be moving on tomorrow, but you’ll be staying. It’s really your money, in a sense. I’m only a vehicle. I know your name is going to be mentioned in a few mothers’ prayers.”
“Yeah,” the gambler said unenthusiastically. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Mike, even if it usually costs me money.”
Shayne cocked an eyebrow at Christa. Leaving the chips where they were, she rose and came with him. The slot machines continued to clank and whir, but the rest of the action in the big room had stopped.
Alone with Shayne in the automatic elevator, Christa let out her breath in a long whistle. “You really think they were planning to jump you?”
“Sure. I spotted a couple of specialists. The wheel has an overhead photoelectric control.”
“You were winning, not losing. It never occurred to me that the wheel might be crooked.”
“The idea was to set up a legitimate excuse so I could be found with a fractured skull and the cops wouldn’t tie up the plane.”
“And Luccio would get his money back.” She shivered. “I was completely taken in. Still,” she added wistfully, “forty-seven thousand dollars! Wasn’t there any way you could put it in the hotel safe?”
Shayne shook his head. “All they were trying to do was get me tabbed publicly as a big winner. The money wouldn’t be there when the cops looked for it.”
She hugged his arm. “To me that’s six years’ salary. And you swindled it in an hour and a quarter. But he was right, you know-you are lucky.”
In their room, she kicked out of her shoes and picked up an earphone. “I saw Naomi in the lobby, but not George.”
Shayne loosened his tie. It would take time for his adversaries to plan and mount another action, but he would be hearing from them again, he knew. The Miami plane bringing Tim Rourke was due in another half hour. Christa was Shayne’s immediate concern. An obvious strategy would be to try to reach him through her. His obvious counterstrategy was not to let her out of his sight between now and the time the plane left for Venezuela in the morning.
She was watching him. After a moment she slowly took off her earrings. Shayne had a feeling that this was going to be one of his most agreeable assignments in a long time.
One of her hands flew to an earphone. “This wretched equipment,” she said after a moment, disappointed. “Now the static is making noises like a person being sick.”
She brought him to her side with a gesture. “The phone’s ringing.” Picking up the second earphone, Shayne heard George’s voice say sullenly, “Hello.”
After a moment he continued, “Does it have to be tonight? To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling too well.”
Again he listened.
He snapped, “OK, I’ll be there,” and hung up with an oath. There was a retching sound, then, a little later, a rush of water.
Hearing nothing more, Shayne put down the earphone and shook a cigarette out of his pack.
“Darling, I have something I wish to say,” Christa said later. “And I happen to be quite serious, so listen to me seriously. If there were more of us than two, either you or I would go out and follow George to see where he goes. But we are without a car, without contact with the local police. I think logic calls for us to spend the night here, with the door locked and a gun under each pillow.”
“I decided the same thing when you took off your earrings,” Shayne said.
“I am trying to say something, Mike, so will you please not look as though you already know what it is? It might be something you don’t expect.”