County Kill (21 page)

Vicki could have been named anything, originally. She smiled her dummy smile at both of us and said, “Pleezedmeetcha, I'm sure.”

Jake was already pulling up a pair of chairs, so I didn't bother to invite him to join us.

“You must have taken a drubbing, too, eating in a rattrap like this,” he said. “Boy, they murdered me, today.”

“Glad to hear somebody's getting into you,” I said. “I'd buy you a drink, but who'd pay for it?”

“I would,” he said. “What are you drinking?”

“Wine,” I told him, “but I think I've had enough.” I looked over at Ellen, who didn't seem overjoyed at the company. “We're just about ready to go. We've eaten.”

“Go?” Jake said. “Where's there to go? How would you like to come along to a party? And I mean a party. Up in the Valley.”

I looked at Ellen, waiting for her to say the no. But she said, “Why not? It's been a long time between parties.”

She is a girl I can't always figure. Jake gabbled and the blonde smiled from time to time and Ellen looked around the room, and I had another glass of wine. Then Jake and the blonde worked on their steaks and Ellen smoked a cigarette and I looked around the room.

Except for the lack of neckties, it could have been Cedar Rapids. There was a redhead at a far table near the entrance who looked luscious from this distance.

Ellen said, “She's got thick ankles.”

“Who?” Jake asked, looking up from his steak. The blonde continued to eat.

“The girl Pete's considering,” Ellen answered. “Slow horses and fast women, that's our Pete.”

“He does all right,” Jake agreed. “He's never done any better than he's doing right now, for my money, though.”

“Thank you, Jake,” Ellen said sweetly. “We're thinking of getting married.”

“No kddng,” Jake said. “Which one's going to work?”

I said nothing.

The blonde said, “Could I have apple pie à la mode?” “Of course,” Jake said. “You can have anything you want, baby.”

“Even the new Stude, Jake? Do you mean it, Jake?” Some animation in the plaster face.

“Anything to eat,” Jake corrected her. “Will you please stop yapping about that Studebaker?”

Ellen looked at me and past me, a great disinterest in her eyes. My stomach was queasy, with the food and the liquor and the wine, and the blonde's perfume was heavy on the close air. I wanted to get up and walk out. I wanted to climb into the Merc and just drive along the coast highway like I used to in my rod when I was a high-school punk, all alone and full of tomorrow's dreams.

But I sat there, trying not to look at the blonde.

We got out of there eventually, and it was better. The night air was cold, the stars clear as candles.

Jake said, “May as well go in my car. No sense in taking both heaps up there.”

“We may want to leave early,” I said. “I'll follow you, Jake.”

Jake had a Caddy. He was a small man in a big organization, despite his talk about the boys “murdering him.” He didn't book the bets he handled, though he tried to give that impression. He worked on commission.

And drove a Cad. I wondered how many payments
he
was behind.

Ellen was quiet, as I followed the Cad's rudder taillights up Cahuenga Pass. Ellen was unusually quiet.

“Thirty-eight cents for your thoughts,” I said.

“I was thinking of that girl, that Victoria Lincoln,” Ellen said quietly. “Jake's girl. And I'm your girl, currently. I was wondering if I ought to dye my hair.”

“This is one of your bad days, isn't it?” I said. “Are you comparing yourself with that calcimined job?”

“We're a lot alike,” she said, “if you'd look at it honestly. We both seem to serve the same purpose.”

“You're prettier and brighter and you can cook,” I said. “I'd like to be an Eau Claire type, Ellen, but I just can't seem to be anything but Pete Worden. I thought that's what you wanted, a Pete Worden.”

“It's all I deserve,” she said. “I'll snap out of it. Don't worry about me. Don't spoil your fun.”

I didn't answer that. Moody, she is, being Irish, and down to fourteen dollars, and heading where?

I said, “If I had a few more bucks, maybe I could parlay it into something. If we're going where I think we're going, there'll be a crap game. And I feel lucky.”

“I brought the fourteen,” she said. “I thought there was a possibility it might come in handy.”

“You'll need it,” I told her. “Maybe I can hit Jake for a double sawbuck.”

“Take the fourteen,” she said. “We'll be partners. I'll string along with you, Champ, until you're licked.”

Out Lankersheim to the San Fernando Road, out where the estates are, the big wheels. Producers and stars and oil kings. And racketeers.

It was the place I'd suspected, a sprawling ranch house set back in a grove of eucalyptus, a simple western home of five bedrooms and five baths, with fifty-foot living-room, with playroom, with kidney-shaped pool and well-lighted patio.

Nick Arnold's place, and Nick was probably Jake's boss. I'd been here before. The parking-area held nothing you could pick up under four grand. Until I brought the Merc into it.

You don't get three nights a year when you can use a patio in this country, but it was lighted just the same. Maybe Nick didn't want anyone to overlook the pool. It was about 55 degrees now.

The host wasn't at the door nor was anyone else. The four of us went into the deserted entrance hall. The smoke hit us there, and the noise, and the under-tinge of alcohol.

In the immense living-room, Nick stood near the fireplace. It was a wide fireplace, with a knee-high hearth of fieldstone, a mammoth thing. But it didn't dwarf Nick Arnold.

He'd been a wrestler and a club fighter. He'd been a night-club operator in Chicago, and had been acquitted on white-slave charges for lack of evidence. He'd fought his way out of Chicago's south side to this, asking no quarter and giving none.

He saw us in the entrance way and came over. “How's it going, Jake?” he said heartily, and chucked Vicki under the chin. “And Ellen,” he said, smiling his prettiest, and turned to me.

“How are you, Pete? It's good to see you, boy. Gives some tone to this wing-ding.” He held out his hand, and I took it.

Because my name is Worden, Nick's got the idea I'm SOCIETY in L.A. and environs. Class conscious, Nick is. I said, “Glad to be here, Nick.”

The living-room was spilling over with people, despite its size. Women in evening gowns and men in tails, three men in tails, without counting Nick. The others wore sport clothes. Informal California living, only the women in evening wear.

A butler came along with a tray of drinks, and we all grabbed one.

“They're dancing in the playroom,” Nick said, “and shooting crap in the garage. Have fun, kids.”

“Dancing,” Ellen said. “That's my idea of fun. Come on, flat nose. Let's give it one whirl.”

We left the others there in the entrance hall, and went into the playroom. The table-tennis tables had been placed up against one wall in there and loaded with food and liquor. There were chairs along the other three walls, and two loud-speakers giving with Lombardo recordings. That's Nick's idea of refined music, Guy Lombardo.

This much I'll give him, he's a good man to dance to, a virtue he shares with Wayne King. We danced.

The lights were dim in the room, and Ellen was close to me, and we dance well together. You're aware of Ellen when you dance with her, because of her topography, but not otherwise.

We said nothing, but she looked more contented and sighed once or twice, and I relaxed some, myself. I could have been back in Santa Monica High, at the Junior Prom. Though I don't remember any gals like Ellen at Santa Monica High.

Running between the rain drops,
dum de dum de dum de dum — I
cried for you, what a fool,
da da da da. No jive in Pete Worden, no rumba nor samba nor dipsey doodle. Too young I was to remember the Charleston and too old to take a crack at jitter-bugging. Just a good, serviceable fox trot with rhythm and some grace. And my current love in my arms.

Close your eyes, Pete Worden, and pretend this is the Country Club, and you're a good solid citizen, a foreign correspondent or like that, with a good wife and a couple kids who look like John. A Saturday night dance at the Country Club, and you're going to get pleasantly lit and maybe make a minor pass at some old classmate's wife, and get a bit of hell for it in the morning from your own beloved, but nothing she'd make a major issue of.

Close your eyes, Pete Worden, and forget the 101,528 people who chanted your name at the Coliseum the day you beat the Irish. Forget Joe Devlin, and the arm he left at Attu. Forget the headlines of today, and the blood of yesterday, and the faces of all the girls you've held in your arms like this.

“Hey,” Ellen said, “you look happy, for a change. I'll bet you're thinking of some girl.”

“You,” I told her. “You're the best dancer from Eau Claire I ever danced with.”

She smiled, looking whole and happy again. She put something into my hand and we stopped dancing. It was her fourteen dollars, a ten and four ones.

We were next to the entrance to the living-room, and she stood there a moment looking at me. Then she patted my cheek.

“Luck, Pete,” she said quietly. “I'll be waiting.”

I watched her head for the big circular davenport near the fireplace, where Jake and Vicki were sitting with Nick. I saw Nick's broad face light up at sight of her, and saw him rise.

I turned and went back through the game room, toward the breezeway that led to the garage.

About nine men in there, nine men and two boys, no women. A four-car garage, though only two cars occupied it at the moment. There was a big table with a walled edge, not a regular crap layout; that would make Nick look unrefined. A table used for the kind of craps you played among friends, not a house game.

The men ranged from thirty to fifty, and they all
looked
solvent, but who doesn't out here? The boys I couldn't place; they looked like college kids, one short and fat with a crew haircut, one tall and thin with horn-rimmed glasses, the grind type.

They stood against the wall, out of the way, talking quietly. I stood in front of them, watching the play.

The fat kid tapped me on the shoulder. “Pardon me, sir, but aren't you Pete Worden?”

I turned to look at him. “That's right.”

“I
‘m Chris Arnold,” Chubby said, “and this is my brother, Paul.”

“Oh,” I said, “Nick's sons. He certainly talks a lot about you boys.”

The skinny one, Paul, said, “You'd better shake Chris's hand, Mr. Worden. He thinks football players are something special.” Superiority in the tone, contempt in his tone, and no doubt in my mind what
he
thought about football players. Well, maybe he was right.

I shook Chubby's hand, and smiled at Paul. I asked, “You boys play the game?”

“Third-string guard, I am,” Chubby said. “Paul's too intellectual for anything like football.” He hung onto my hand.

“Too light, too,” I said. “My brother was a third-string guard, boy, and a much more worth-while citizen. Keep digging, Chris.”

And I turned back to the table, conscious of the scorn in Paul's eyes. Where had the punk been, what did he know? Why should his scorn bother me?

The dice were cold. I followed them through eight hands and saw the coldness of them. A point and fall off. A crap, a natural, a tough point, and fall off. I passed them the first time, covered the man to my right when he shot ten, and watched him come out on a nine.

A four followed the nine, and then a seven. I picked up the twenty, and realized I'd been holding my breath. I could have been through, right there, playing the ten, for it wasn't the kind of game where you shoot four bucks.

The next man shot twenty, but the man to my right wanted all of it, and I let him have it.

I didn't get a chance to fade, all the way around; the man to the left of the shooter always willing to get on. With these dice, fading was the better proposition.

Then they came to me again, and I turned to rub them on Chris's short hair. “For luck,” I said, and winked at him. and didn't look at Paul the scholar.

I bounced both of them against the walled edge opposite me, shooting ten bucks. I saw the four hop up while one die spun and spun and spun.

And fell with the three uppermost.

“Shoot the twenty,” I said, and turned to rub the dice on the crew cut again.

The man to the left of me said, “If you can cut out the ham, Golden Boy, I'll be glad to cover you.”

About my size though thinner, a dark man with a few pockmarks and muddy brown eyes.

“I don't care who fades me,” I said. “This is a democracy.”

He threw out a pair of tens.

I came out on a four. Well, I'd have fourteen bucks left of Ellen's money. Who makes a four with dice as cold as these? I rolled, and rolled, and no seven showed. I rolled and rolled and a three-one popped up to stare me in the face.

Maybe the dice were changing. A smart man would drag now, but maybe the dice were changing. I'd made a four.

“Shoot the forty,” I said.

“I've got it,” Brown-Eyes said, “and bounce
both
of them against the wall, huh?”

“One's good enough for my friends,” I said, studying him.

“I'm not one of your friends,” he said. “Shoot.” He put two twenties on top of my tens.

I picked up the dice and Chris said, “Hey, Mr. Worden, aren't you going to rub them on my head?”

“The customers are kicking, Chris,” I said. “You gave me my start, boy.”

They went out along the felt, and both of them bounced off the opposite wall. One was a five and the other was a two.