Billy was the younger of two boys, his father being a druggist with his own small store down in Beach Grove. The older boy, Dick, had gone off to be a Greenwich Village beatnik at an early age, but Billy had been more the stay-at-home type. The family had assumed that he would be going to college, but when two months after high- school graduation his mother and father both died in a bus accident on their way home from a druggists’ convention in Columbus, Ohio, Billy suddenly discovered he had no true desire to go to college, nor to do much of anything else. He had inherited the house in Mars Hill and the drugstore and about twenty-two thousand dollars; he was eighteen years old; and he had no ambition. He sold the drugstore, split the inheritance with Dick, continued to live at home, and devoted more and more of his time to his hobby of coin collecting.
The transition from hobbyist to dealer had been gradual, and he’d already been a dealer in a small way months before he first took a table at a coin convention. His business had expanded until he could usually make a living from it, with only those few slumps when he’d taken to fencing stolen goods. Until Claire had come into his life he’d had neither desire nor need for a great deal of money.
Claire showed up because Dick had a wife out there in New York, and the wife had an airline pilot brother, who a couple of years ago had chosen to live in the Indianapolis area. For some reason Dick had suggested that the pilot look Billy up, which he did, bringing his good-looking wife Claire along, but Billy and the pilot hadn’t hit it off together at all, and Billy saw neither of them again until over a year later, when Claire called to ask if he could recommend a local undertaker.
When he heard that the pilot was dead, something stirred in Billy’s mind, and the most violent physical lust he’d ever experienced shook him like a fox shaking a rabbit. He craved Claire, craved her beyond rationality. For as long as possible he hid this craving behind a facade of helpfulness, and when at last he did make his shaky, clumsy, terrified proposition she had cut him dead with such cold viciousness that he retreated at once to helpfulness again, trying to make believe that nothing had ever been said on either side.
It was a while after that that Claire had come to him and told him she needed seventy thousand dollars. She wouldn’t tell him why, and she wouldn’t make any real promises, but the implication was very clear that if Billy could come up with the needed money his earlier proposition would be reconsidered in a much kindlier light.
And now here he was, stealing other people’s coins, surrounded by hard, violent, self-assured men, betraying all the people who had ever befriended him. At the other end of the room was Claire, who had never even allowed him to kiss her, and moving back and forth was the man named Parker, who Billy was sure had actually been to bed with Claire.
But he didn’t care. He told himself he didn’t care, not about that, nor about the betrayal of his friends, nor about anything else. Soon this would all be over, the robbery finished. Parker gone, the money coming in, and then everything would be all right. Claire wasn’t going to get a penny until after she’d been in Billy’s bed, he’d promised himself that, and he was going to stick to it.
In the meantime, the work was almost finished. Billy was hot inside his coat, perspiring, but he didn’t dare take it off because he’d disobeyed Parker’s orders. His gun, a chrome-handled Colt Commander .38 automatic, was in its holster under his left arm. He’d bought it before attending his second convention as a dealer, he’d worn it almost constantly for a while, he still wore it at every possible excuse, and it seemed to him that tonight’s work required its presence more than any other time before this. So he had it on, Parker or no Parker, and he also had his coat on, and inside it he was perspiring.
But it was all almost over. Parker himself came over and said, “It’s ten to three. When you’re done with that case, carry it down to the truck. We’re clearing out.”
“Good,” Billy said, and meant it. He’d been more nervous than he liked to admit, and he was glad it was coming to an end.
It only took him a minute more to finish packing this case, so he would be leaving before any of the others, Parker or Lempke or Claire. He picked up the case, which seemed to weigh a ton, L and carried it over to the hole in the wall, where he had to put it down, go backwards through the hole, and then pull the case through after himself.
The tour office was very dark, after the brightly lit bourse room. Billy stood there a few seconds, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and then he saw Jack French standing over by the door, wearing hat and topcoat.
Billy was surprised and confused, but not frightened. “French!” he said, “What are you doing here?”
“Come over here,” French said, and motioned, and Billy saw he was holding a gun in his hand. Billy, without thinking, dropped the case and reached for his gun.
He died astonished.
Seven
UNTIL SHE heard the sound of the shot Claire had thought there was nothing left for her to find out. But then she heard it, muffled and indistinct but unmistakable, and she thought, “Somebody just died.” And her knees gave way. She slid down sideways through the air, glancing off the edge of the table she’d been clearing, hitting the floor hard on her left shoulder, rolling onto her back and then just lying there, staring up at the ceiling.
She never actually lost consciousness. But she had no strength in her body, no will in her mind, no control over her emotions. Inside, she was gibbering with terror and guilt. Reality had just hit her a paralyzing blow.
Because it wasn’t a game, this venture she was on. Nothing in life was a game, nothing, and she hadn’t known that until this second.
It had seemed a game when she was growing up, and the name of the game was let-‘em-have-less-than- they-want, and if she lost that game sometimes what did it matter? And later on the name of the game was glamorous-life, and even when Ed died it didn’t really change things, because he had died hundreds of miles away on some mountainside, his death as glamorous as his life, his death merely another way of playing the game.
And when the clod Billy came snuffling around, just at the time she learned how little Ed had left her, that she wasn’t merely broke but actually in debt, the name of the game became confidence, and that was just another way to have the glamorous life and to give them less than they wanted. Claire the con woman, romantic and elusive.
The number seventy thousand had come out of the air. Actually she owed about eighteen hundred dollars and was prepared to skip out on that, but Billy had done some boasting about how much he had salted away and it had seemed to Claire she’d do better at the game of life with a healthy stake, so she’d given him a mysterious song and dance, a couple of half-promises, and it turned out Billy didn’t have that sort of cash on hand.
But Claire could already taste the money. With a lot of money she could leave Indianapolis, travel, see a lot more of the good life that Ed had been her entree to, while without the money she was stuck in this town, she’d have to hunt around in too much of a hurry for a second husband, the game would turn sour.
