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Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, they say, and I illustrate that here, in another story written in July, 1960 and submitted under the title, “Give Me a Break.” Scottie printed it in the March, 1961 issue of Guilty under the byline of Mark Ryan and the title of “Death of a Gambler,” which is, I suppose, an improvement, though it would have been more interestingly ambiguous if it hadn’t been attached to a first-person story.
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DEATH OF A GAMBLER
Penniless in Las Vegas, could I achieve my objective?
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I got into Vegas around three in the afternoon, on the last leg of a couple of thousand miles hitchhike. Imagine, me, Charlie Dodge, hitchhiking to Las Vegas. But the air fare is close on a hundred bucks, and a hundred bucks was something I didn’t have. At least not now. Not any more.
I used to spend a hundred bucks on dinner. But that was a couple of million years ago, before my luck went bad.
Las Vegas at three in the afternoon on an August day is like a furnace. The sun seemed to take up half the sky. The temperature was around 105, and every breath of air was like a blast out of Hell. The guy I was hitching from was a college kid, University of Kansas or someplace like that. He was around twenty. Had been working all summer, had saved up a couple of hundred bucks, and was bound for Vegas to run his bankroll into a wad. Nice kid. Stupid, but nice. He picked me up on the road in Colorado somewhere, and ran me clear through Utah and down to Vegas. Drove like a madman, but that didn’t bother me any. I was in a hurry to get where I was going.
“Well, we’re here,” I said, as we turned up the Strip.
“Yep. Good old Las Vegas.” He grinned. “God, it’s hot here.”
“You just wait,” I told him. “If you think it’s hot now, wait till three in the morning. Wait till you owe the management nine hundred bucks more than you’ve got in your pocket. Then you’ll find out what hot means.”
“Oh, that don’t worry me, friend, I’m sure to win.”
“Sure you are. You and ten million other people. But somebody’s got to lose. The owners don’t run a public charity here. Somebody always loses.”
“Not me. I got a system.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said. I was getting a little bored with the kid and his system. And up ahead I spotted the big pastel-green dome of the Melody Club. Joey Amalfi’s Melody Club. That gave me a big charge, seeing Joey Amalfi owning a club in Vegas. Little runny-nosed Joey Amalfi, who I taught everything to. And me hitchhiking because I didn’t have the air fare.
“Here’s where I get off,” I said.
“Right here?” He slowed the jalopy. “Well, it’s been swell having you along, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Smith. John F. X. Smith.”
He grinned. “Sure, Mr. Smith. Well, the best of luck to you in Vegas.”
“Thanks, kid. Same to you. Hope that system works out okay for you.”
“Oh, it will, mister. It’s mathematically sound. I spent all spring computing it. Next time I drive back this way I’ll have fifty grand and a new Cadillac.”
He had the gleam in his eye. He couldn’t wait to get to those tables. Well, he’d learn better sooner or later. I waved at him and trudged off the road as he drove away in a cloud of desert sand.
–
I wasn’t heading for the Melody Club, at least not just yet. Even this time of year, you needed a reservation if you wanted a room there. It was the newest and hottest place in Vegas, they had told me. Eighteen bucks a night and up. Well, I didn’t have that kind of money to throw around, not any more.
But there was a little motel about a hundred fifty yards from the Melody Club, and it had a sign up that said air-conditioned rooms were four-fifty a night. That was more my speed these days. I walked over and pushed open the front door. It was a relief to get out of the oven heat outside.
The fellow behind the desk was reading a racing form. He looked up and gave me a friendly Nevada-type smile.
“Howdy.”
I nodded. “Got a room?”
“Got plenty of them, friend. Want me to show you one?”
“Never mind. I’ll take it. Four-fifty, the sign says?”
“Plus tax. Comes to four-sixty-three, all things included. That okay?”
“It’ll do,” I said.
“Got a car outside? Baggage?”
I shook my head and hefted the little blue airline bag that was my only baggage. “I travel light,” I told him. “Hitched in from back east.”
When I said that, his expression changed just a trifle, growing a little cold. But he shoved the register pad at me and said, “You can sign in here, and then I’ll show you to your room. And we prefer payment in advance, please. How long do you expect to here?”
“Can’t rightly say. Maybe a day, maybe a week?”
He softened. “Depending on how your luck goes?”
“You guessed it,” I said. I took five bucks out of my wallet, handed it to him, and signed the register with the name I was using these days. He gave me my change, a quarter, a pair of nickels, a pair of pennies.
You can’t go far in Las Vegas without running into slot machines. There was a row of the one-armed bandits here in the motel office against the far wall. With rooms so cheap, the guaranteed 60% take from the slotters helped fatten the place’s profits. I figured I’d contribute my share. I walked over and put a nickel into the end machine and yanked the handle. It came up two lemons with a cherry in between.
The deskman laughed. “Should have warned you. Somebody hit that machine for a jackpot this morning. It won’t cough up again till the year two thousand.”
Without answering, I dropped my quarter into the machine at the other end and watched the dials go spinning. Cherry. Cherry. I held my breath.
Cherry. A flood of quarters came pouring out.
“Son of a gun,” the motel man muttered.
I gathered in my take. Not even ten bucks, but it looked big to me. “Guess my luck’s taken a turn for the better,” I said softly. “I’ll go to my room now.”
–
It wasn’t much of a room, just a little box with a private bath, but it was cool and had a bed, which was all I wanted. I got out of my clothes and under the shower, and washed all the sweat and road dust from me.
A hell of a thing, Charlie Dodge in a four-fifty motel room in Vegas. I could remember times when they’d reserve a suite for me just in hopes I’d show up. But that was a long time ago. Nine years is a hell of a long time, the way things happen out west. Like nine centuries.
I dried off and stretched out on the bed and tried to remember the old days. The days when I’d walk into a club with ten grand in my pocket, and come out with fifty grand, even after throwing a big party for everyone at the table. I was a big spender, but I was a big winner too. A man with the magic touch.
A lot of it was luck, sure, like the time I rode Double Zero three times in a row and won all three. The odds against that are millions to one. But a lot of it was just good sense. I had a feel for the tables. I could tell where the cash was going to flow, and I got there fast.
Then came the mix-up over the Nat Webster killing. I didn’t have a thing to do with it, wasn’t even looking when someone shot Webster’s head off. But the smoking gun was found on the floor at my feet, and it was a gun registered in my name, and everybody knew I hated Nat Webster’s guts. It was what you called circumstantial evidence.
And then at the trial somebody produced a confidential memo from my files warning Webster that if he didn’t pay me what he owed me I’d have to take steps to safeguard my interests.
I don’t know who used my gun to shoot Webster. I don’t know who snaked that memo out of my files and handed it to the cops. But I had a pretty good idea.
Joey Amalfi was the only one who could swing it.
Joey. My protégé.
The day Nat Webster was shot, I was worth maybe two hundred grand. Before the trial was over, I had spent more than half that much on lawyers. The rest of the dough was in concealed accounts here and there, not under my name. Eighty grand, maybe, stashed away.
But I got stashed away, too. The prosecutor wanted a first degree rap, but my lawyers earned their pay and talked it down to a manslaughter charge. They argued that it wasn’t in my interests to kill a man who owed me that much money. The killing had been accidental. I was just threatening him.
In the face of the overwhelming evidence, it was the best they could do for me. I got a ten-to-fifteen year sentence. But after eight years of good behavior I was released.
Eight stinking years.
And when I came out, I didn’t have a penny. My eighty grand of stashed dough had vanished. I didn’t have a bank book, didn’t have a single way of laying hands on the money.
Meanwhile Joey Amalfi had been doing okay for himself, I heard. He had come into some money, word had it, and had bought himself a one-fifth interest in a Las Vegas casino. Over the years he had done well, bought out most of his partners, and now had turned the place into a regular goldmine. A red-hot strip show and lots of exotic games.
It all seemed pretty odd to me. But I wasn’t accusing anybody. Not me. Not friendly old Charlie Dodge. I just wanted to pay my old pal Joey a visit. Find out how he’d been making out during all the years I was out of circulation.
–
Around six-thirty, after a light nap, I got dressed in my one decent suit, shaved clean for the first time in a while, and headed up the road toward the Melody Club. I had eighty bucks to my name, all that was left from one bank account that hadn’t been eaten up.
The Melody Club was big and shiny and new-looking. The casino was separate, a dome building straight out of the Arabian Nights, and behind it was the ten-story bulk of the hotel connected with it. I went in. My first stop was the coffee shop. I had a hamburger and some coffee. Eighty-five cents. It gave me a jolt to realize that I had just spent slightly over one percent of my whole worldly assets on a hamburger and a cup of coffee.
It was a little past seven when I went into the casino itself. Things were still pretty quiet. There was the usual crop of diehard old ladies, the widows with bankrolls who start at the tables around five in the evening and play grimly through till one or two in the morning. It keeps them happy and most of them just about break even in the long run.
Other than that, there was the usual flotsam of tourists and rubbernecks who stood around waiting to see others lose money or win it. The croupiers waited for the big flow, which would start about nine o’clock and keep going till the small hours.
At the back of the casino was the night club; dinner was being served now, and later there would be the strip show. I wasn’t interested in that. Looking never has appealed to me as much as doing.
A busty female wearing shorts that ended at her crotch came up to me and asked me if I needed chips or change. I shook my head and said, “Can you tell me where I’ll find the manager’s office?”
She pointed behind me. “Over there.”
“Thanks, honey.” I headed for it.
The door was closed. I knocked and was invited in. The manager was a dapper guy with a waxed mustache, the sort who probably wore a tuxedo at his christening. He gave me a friendly but distant kind of official look.
“I said, “I’d like to see Mr. Amalfi, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Amalfi is tied up in urgent business just now. Do you have an appointment?’
“Not—exactly.”
“Would you care to leave your card, then? I’ll have Mr. Amalfi’s secretary contact you as soon as his schedule opens up a little. Are you staying at the Melody Club?”
“No.”
“May I ask where we can reach you, then?”
I didn’t feel like telling him I was camping at the motel just up the road. I moistened my lips and said, “Look, buster, suppose you get on the phone and tell Joey that his old friend Charlie Dodge wants to see him. And none of this don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you routine.”
He looked nettled. “I’m afraid it’s impossible to disturb Mr. Amalfi—”
“Tell him it’s Charlie Dodge,” I said. “Will you do me that one little favor? Because if you don’t, I’ll see to it that you go out on your ear when I finally do get to talk to Joey.”
He started to say something. Then he choked it off, picked up the phone, talked into it in a low voice. I heard him repeat my name. When he hung up, he looked kind of troubled.
“Mr. Amalfi will see you right away,” he said. “I’ll have someone take you to his suite.”
–
One of the busty change-girls was my guide. She was a leggy blonde with a full, heavy pair of bazooms, and I looked her over good and handed her a buck tip when we emerged from the elevator at the top floor of the Melody Club.
“That’s Mr. Amalfi’s office right up there.”
“Thanks, sweet.” I was half-tempted to make a date with her for later. I hadn’t had anything as nice as that in a long time. But I could wait. I didn’t want to hang around Vegas any longer than I needed to.
I went to Joey’s suite.
It looked like the royal palace of Saudi Arabia. Joey himself came scuttling up to pump my hand.
“Charlie, you old son! I heard you were out, but I didn’t know you’d be coming this way so soon or I’d have fixed a big spread for you!”
“That’s real nice of you, Joey,” I said. I looked at him. He had changed a lot in nine years. So much that I hardly recognized him. When I first met him he’d been twenty and punkish-looking. Now he was around thirty-three and looked like the prosperous businessman that he was. He’d gained about fifty pounds and grown a little mustache.
He had a self-assured, easy-going manner that comes from having plenty of money. He had a fine suntan and his nails looked like they’d been manicured half an hour ago. “You look like you’ve been doing fine, boy.”
“It’s certainly been a swell few years for me,” he said. “But have a drink? Sit down, tell me all about your plans, Charlie. It’s great to see you again!”
For a couple of minutes I let him do the talking. He told me all about the expansion plans, the beautiful redhead he kept company with these days, the two wives he’d had and shed, the trip to Acapulco that he was taking next week to see about buying into a hotel down there. I listened to him go on and on. He didn’t seem troubled by the fact that he was a millionaire and I was dirt, now.
When he got tired of telling me what a big man he was these days, I said, “Joey, I want to borrow ten grand from you.”
All the light went out of his eyes. “Huh?”
“I’m stony broke. I got out of stir with next to nothing. All my bank accounts are blocked. I got no proof of anything. I’m a ruined man, Joey.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Charlie.”
“I figured you’d be. And that’s why I need ten grand. As a stake to help me get started again.”
He chewed his lip. “You know I’d love to help you, boy. But it so happens I got a lot of my capital tied up in speculations right now. Ten grand would be kind of tough.”
“The casino takes in that much every hour.”
“Yeah, but that dough belongs to the corporation. I couldn’t touch it just like that.”
“Sure you could. For me.”
“Charlie, I tell you honestly I wish you hadn’t asked me for the dough. I hate like hell to turn you down, but—”
“Ten grand isn’t much for you, Joey,” I pleaded. “Hell, I took you off the streets, showed you the ropes, set you up for what you are today. You can spare the money. It isn’t a gift. I’ll pay you back, every cent, just as soon as I’m in the chips again.
“You remember my magic touch. Hell, I’ll be able to run that bankroll into fifty grand before morning. I’ll go across the street so I’m not taking it from you. And then I’ll pay you back. I swear, Joey.”
He shook his head, the smug bastard. He made me wheedle and beg. He made me crawl.
Well, I crawled. This was the only place in the world where I could get the dough I needed. I had to have that stake. So I licked his boots for it and finally he said, “Okay, Charlie, you’re breaking my heart. You can have the money. Pay me back when you can.”
He took out his wallet and started thumbing through the dough. Damned if he didn’t pull three thousand-dollar bills out and hand them to me. “That’s all I’ve got on me,” he apologized. “But you take this down to the cashier at the casino and he’ll give you the rest.”
–
Ten minutes later I had handed Joey’s chit to the cashier and he gave me a puzzled look and a stack of hundred-dollar bills, seventy of them. I had some dough for the first time since coming out of stir.
I was boiling mad. Here was this little punk I’d taken in and taught the business, and now he was a millionaire and making me sweat for dough. Grinding me down into the dirt. But I wasn’t the same guy I had been ten minutes ago. Now I had a stake. Now I was back in business, me and my magic touch.
One thing about me, I can keep a promise. I didn’t stay at the Melody Club. I went across the road to the neighboring casino, the Chateau Frontenac, and bought some chips. It was still plenty early in the evening.
I was rusty. Inside of twenty minutes I was down sixty bucks, which wasn’t the way I used to do things. I hung on another ten minutes, dropped fifty more clams, and decided I’d better cut my losses and shift tables till I warmed up.
But I had a couple of other errands to do, anyway.
First stop was the phone booth. I dropped a dime in and dialed the number. A downtown Las Vegas number. It was an easy number to remember, but I had never had occasion to use it before. I knew about it, though. From the old days.
A cautious voice answered.
“This is Charlie Dodge,” I said. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Charlie Dodge is in prison.”
“Not ,” I said. “You free tonight?”
“Between ten and eleven, yes.”
“Okay. Meet me at the Chateau Frontenac and I’ll be at the chemin-de-fer table. You’ll recognize me, huh?”
“Sure. But it’ll cost you, Dodge.”
“I’ve got it,” I said.
I hung up. The next stop was a travel agent’s booth in the lobby of the hotel.
I said, “Is there a flight available from here to L.A. tonight?”
“Hard to tell. I’ll check and see,” the agent said.
He phoned the airport. “They’ve got one seat on the 11:30 flight. That okay with you?”
“Is there a later one?”
“12:30, but it’s filled up?”
“Okay,” I said. “Book me for the 11:30. And then make reservations for me at the Beverly-Ambassador Hotel in L.A.”
I wandered away to get a drink. When I got back, he had everything neatly confirmed and packaged up—the airline ticket, the hotel reservation, and the bill. I paid him in cash for the ticket and pocketed everything.
“Check-in time at the airport is 10:45,” he said. “If you get there later than 11 you may get bumped from the flight.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
I went back into the casino and found a new table. My luck ran pretty well here, and I soon won back the dough I’d lost earlier, plus a little extra. Then I got a little restless. The important thing to remember when you’re gambling is that you got to cut your losses and go for the main chance. But I noodled around. I tried too hard to straddle my losses and wound up nowhere. By half past nine I had dropped close onto three grand of my stake. I was sweating. Had I lost the old magic touch while I was out of circulation?
I bought a new batch of chips. Then I heard a voice behind me. “How’s it going, Charlie?”
I turned. Joey Amalfi. He had come across to check up on me. I shrugged and said, “I’m down three grand.”
“What happened to the magic touch?”
“Give me time,” I said, sweating. I scattered chips over the board, watched the wheel turn, watched the croupier rake the chips in. Eighty bucks more down the drain.
Joey said quietly, “ Have a good time tonight, Charlie. But just remember I can’t stake you to any more than you’ve already had.”
Then he walked away. The bastard. He’d just come over to needle me.
And I kept on dropping. By ten o’clock I had only sixty-eight hundred bucks left. I was soaked with sweat.
I walked over to the Shimmy table and waited. Around ten minutes later, a short guy with a hatchet face came up to me.
“Charlie Dodge?”
“You guessed it, friend.”
“You called me before. What’s the job?”
I told him. He frowned, pursed up his lips, and said, “It has to be tonight?”
“Absolutely. And after eleven o’clock.”
It’ll cost you five grand. Cash in advance.”
We went into the nearest washroom, and I peeled off Joey’s three one-grand bills and added two grand more in small stuff. Then the little guy faded away.
I went back into the casino. I was down to less than two grand, now. I went over to the blackjack table and started playing for small stakes. I hit it lucky. Inside of ten minutes I won eight bucks. That paid for my plane fare and hotel for the night, anyhow.
At half past ten I cashed in my chips and caught a cab for the airport. My seat had been held, and at 11:30 sharp the DC-3 was in the air winging off over the desert bound for L.A. I reached the Beverly-Ambassador in the small hours of the morning.
The news was in the afternoon editions of the L.A. papers. I bought one in the hotel lobby and didn’t have to look far to find it.
LAS VEGAS CLUBOWNER KILLED
A single bullet last night ended the spectacular career of 34-year-old Joey Amalfi, owner of Las Vegas’ plush Melody Club. His body was found shortly after midnight in his private suite atop the luxury hotel-casino, which claimed never to have had an empty room. Police said he had been dead only a few minutes when discovered by his showgirl friend Barbara Welland. The possibility of suicide has not been ruled out. Amalfi’s meteoric rise in recent years was—
I didn’t bother reading any further. My man had done the job the right way, that was all that mattered.
I walked over to the travel agency booth in the hotel lobby, I said, I’d like to get me a flight to Las Vegas for as soon as possible. Five o’clock, if you can do it.”
He hauled out some schedules. I waited, patting the thick roll of bills in my pocket. Enough to get started on again. All the bad luck was out of my system, now. I could pyramid my eighteen hundred clams into thousands, I knew. I’d get back on top.
The travel agent looked up at me and said, “There’s a flight at six, and another at half past seven. But I don’t know if I can get you on either one, sir. The demand’s so heavy that—”
“Do your best,” I told him. “It’s important. An—ah—old friend of mine just died suddenly there. I want to be on hand for the funeral.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. I’ll certainly make every effort to get you a seat.”
“Yes, please,” I said. “This man did me a great favor not long ago. He gave me a break when I was down, and I’d be nowhere without him. The least I can do is pay my last respects. The very least I can do.”