The sullen little cocksucker in glasses was sitting alone at the table where he nightly dealt draw, shuffling his cards.
I went over and sat down next to him.
“How’s it going?” I said.
His eyes flicked up at me, then returned to watching his hands work the cards.
“It’s going,” he said.
What a sweetheart.
“Mind if I take a little money from you tonight?” I asked.
“You can try.”
“Why should it be any harder tonight than any other night?”
He shrugged.
“You can go blind from that,” I said.
“From what.”
“From playing with yourself.”
He said nothing. Just shuffled.
“Practice up good, now,” I said, and left him.
I’d been trying to bait him, but he wasn’t biting. In the past I’d made a point of being at least noncommittal to him, sometimes treating him damn near friendly. This should have jolted him a little. That permanent foul mood of his usually flared when people got smart with him, and he normally would’ve fired a cutting remark back. Why had he remained so passive? Still not the friendliest fucker in the world, but he’d barely reacted. Was it because it was me? Or was it something else?
I went over to the bar and Lu said, “How’d you like your drink?”
“Terrific. It tasted like an alcohol rub.”
“We aim to please.”
“Is Tree in his office?”
“Yes, but weren’t you going to wait till after closing to talk to him?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Go ahead, then. It’s that door over to the right. Just knock.”
I did, and Tree’s voice behind the heavy wood door asked who it was and I told him.
He buzzed me in.
I shut the door behind me and sat in the chair in front of his desk, which had a portable color TV on it, some copies of Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler, and a tall glass of what was apparently Scotch and maybe some water.
It was a plain, even drab office, with barnwood paneling, a room the size a doctor examines you in and with the same sort of warmth. Besides the big metal desk and the chairs we were sitting in, the room was bare. Except for a big old iron safe that squatted in the corner to the right of Tree like the fat lady at the circus.
Tree turned down the sound on the Untouchables rerun he was watching.
“Change of plans, Quarry?” he asked. “I thought we were going to talk later.”
“How much money do you keep in that thing?” I asked him, nodding at the cumbersome safe.
“A few thousand,” Tree said, a smile working at one corner of his mouth.
“A few thousand. A few thousand like thirty thousand? I figure that’s the minimum you need on hand at a place like this. Or maybe I’m off a little, maybe it’s twenty, twenty-five. But that kind of money.”
“I do have that kind of money, here. But not in that safe.”
“Where, then?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Then he evidently decided if he could trust his life to me, he could trust me with other things.
“There’s a small floor vault under the carpet,” he said. “In that corner over there.”
“I guess you need to take some precautions, with a place stuck out here in the country like this, right? What other kind of security measures do you have? Besides that window behind you.”
The window high on the wall behind Tree had a heavy metal grill on the outside and I assumed the glass to be shatterproof.
“I’m tied in with a security outfit in Des Moines,” he said, “and with the police station, such as it is, in West Lake. Lights go on in both places if anybody tries to break in. We’re five miles from West Lake. Fifteen from Des Moines. Takes four minutes for the West Lake man to get here. The security outfit, Vigilant Protective Service, can get here in twelve minutes. With the alarm system I got, nobody could get in and out with the money in that short a time.”
“You seem pretty sure.”
“So would you, if you had triple-bolted doors, alarms on all of them, on the windows too, and three back-up devices, including some in the floor of this room, under the carpet, that I switch on just as I’m leaving.”
“You’re usually the last one out of here?”
“Yeah. We close at two. It takes a while for the dealers to turn their money in, naturally. But by two-thirty, most nights, all the help’s out of here, and I’m gone by two-thirty-seven. A few nights lately I been cutting out early, to see Ruthy. I got a guy upstairs in the kitchen who closes up for me on nights like that.”
“What’s your arrangement with your dealers? How much do you pay them?”
Tree shrugged. “Percentage of winnings. That’s the only way to fly. Thirty percent, and that’s good and goddamn generous, as a place like this goes.”
“You start off each dealer with a set amount of cash, each night, then, which can be replenished if necessary…”
“Yeah, two thousand each, and that usually holds up, if they’re any good.”
“What if they aren’t?”
‘‘What?”
“Aren’t any good? What if they lose?”
“If a guy has a bad week, I come through for him. It can happen to anybody. I help him out, lay a few hundred on ’im. I keep my people happy, and that way they don’t try to pull anything on me.”
“What if somebody consistently loses?”
“Then I fire his ass, of course. What’s this all about?”
“The other night you said you were thinking of replacing a dealer. Did you say that just to have an excuse for giving me the job, or do you really have somebody worth getting rid of?”
“You tell me, Quarry. You played here for a week.”
“Then I’d say it’s the sour little asshole with the glasses. The college boy.”
“I’d say you’re right.”
“He loses heavily?”
“Not really. But he doesn’t win. He’s been with me a couple of months. Did okay at first, then had a real bad night and I think it kind of threw him for a loop. He’s never really recovered. He lost a few more times after that and then ever since he’s been just sort of breaking even.”
“He lost all the nights I played him.”
“Not according to him. He’s had at least two thousand to turn back in, at the end of the night.”
“He’s giving you money out of his own pocket, then.”
“Why in hell would he do that?”
“To postpone the inevitable… his getting canned.”
“It still doesn’t make any sense. If he’s losing, why would he want to hang onto his chair?”
“He could be a compulsive gambler, and’s hoping to recoup. Or he could be somebody who’s here to do something besides play cards.”
“Oh. Jesus. Is that what he is?”
“Possibly. I don’t know. I do know he’s one of the guys who worked me over a few nights back. The other one’s another college-boy type who’s been a regular here. Blond-haired kid with big ears?”
“I think I know who you mean.”
“Yeah, well the other night, before Lu and I joined you at DiPreta’s, I had a little run-in with that clown. He was following me, and I suckered him into an alley and put him to sleep. Temporarily, that is. He drives a Chevelle.
