'I know it's Dummy,' the bodyguard said. 'Since when did he get to be one of our writers?'
'He wants to know where we're drawing today,' the pickup man said.
Since the police had tightened up on gambling, the lottery was floated to a different place every day.
'Don't tell him nothing,' the bodyguard said. 'He's a stool pigeon.'
A writer squeezed ahead with his bag of money and play slips and the pickup man said, 'Woodbine.'
The bodyguard gave Dummy a push, and the pickup man didn't look at him again. Dummy gave no sign that it mattered.
Fifteen minutes later he got out of a taxi in front of a hotel way uptown in the Harlem Heights on St. Nicholas Avenue near 154th Street. The sign over the entrance read Hotel Woodbine. Dummy paid the driver and went inside.
Two men came in with heavy luggage and were sent to a suite reserved in advance. Two women followed with modernistic cases that might have been sound recorders and were sent to the same suite. They came in taxis, two at a time, well-dressed men and women, until the entire staff of sixteen had arrived.
Four bodyguards took seats about the lobby, one of them in the chair beside Dummy. He leaned over and whispered through his cupped hand, 'Don't dig your grave, stoolie.'
Dummy got up and moved to another chair. He knew the setup, and he was not interfering. Upstairs in the two-room suite, the office staff would set up four adding machines and an electric addressograph. There were eight pickup men, who collected the play slips and money from two hundred number writers. The pickup men turned in the books to the women operating the adding machines. The totals were tabulated and checked against the money turned in.
While this was taking place, two men set up the drawing machine. It was a small felt-lined keg with a sliding door, mounted on a winch and turned by a crank. Small black balls made of gutta-percha, lettered in luminous white paint from 0 to 9-three of each number, making thirty figures altogether-were put into the keg, and the door securely closed. The crank was turned over ten times, the door was opened and a blindfolded man put his hand in the keg and drew out one ball. This was repeated three times, and the three numbers thus drawn, in the order in which they were drawn, comprised the winning number for that day.
The blindfolded man who drew the number was not a member of the staff. A different man was picked each day from among the two hundred writers or from the regular players.
When the number was drawn the play slips were rapidly checked and the winning slips put aside for the payoff.
Then the addressograph was set with the name of the house and the winning number: Tia Juana
321
As many slips-called hit-slips-were printed as time would allow.
The winning play slips were paid off and assembled in eight collections. The equipment was repacked. The office staff, the man who drew and the eight pickup men left hurriedly. The operator and his two lieutenants remained to wait for the eight payoff men, who took the place of the pickup men. The payoff men arrived, collected the payoffs and left. The operator and his lieutenants came out last with the take.
Dummy watched them come and go. He knew that, in addition to the four bodyguards in the lobby, there were two more in the Mercury sedan outside and probably others stationed out of sight. He didn't make any sudden moves, but he timed his movements so that he was just leaving as Slick came down and started out the door.
He slipped Slick a sheet of paper from his scratch pad on which was written: the punk is doublecrossin you.
Slick glanced at it, looked up quickly at Dummy and said, 'Come on,' with the quick, sure decision of a man who knew the score. The pale yellow eyes sent a chill down Dummy's spine. He obeyed automatically.
They went down the stairs, and Slick nodded in the direction of 154th Street. He walked a little apart from Dummy, on the right side and a little apart. The two guards in the Mercury sedan never took their eyes from them. Nothing was said.
They walked in silence to the corner, and Dummy glanced at Slick for directions. Slick bent his head in the direction of his car, parked two doors up the street.
They arrived at the Chrysler hardtop, and Slick said in a low, controlled voice, 'Stand still a moment.'
Dummy had his back turned and was facing the car. He didn't see the motion of Slick's lips, and he had taken it for granted that Slick wanted him to get into the car. He put his hand on the door handle and had started to open the door when suddenly he felt a hand grip his shoulder and his body spun violently around.
Up the street a motor roared, and a car sped down the incline and cut in front of the Chrysler with dragging brakes. A big scar-faced Negro in a red sport shirt and a Panama straw was out of the door and in the street with a snub-barreled. 38 revolver in his hand before the car stopped skidding.
Dummy felt his guts shrink.
'I'll handle it,' Slick said coldly to the gunman. 'It's a private matter.'
'You're new here, son, so I'll tell you,' the gunman said in a flat Southern voice. 'There ain't no private matter when you're carryin' the house's money.'
Slick ignored him. 'You're a dummy, eh?' he said to Dummy.
Dummy nodded.
'You can read lips, though.'
Again Dummy nodded.
'Put your fingertips on your shoulders and your elbows out,' Slick ordered.
Dummy did as he was ordered.
Slick frisked him with quick, sure movements.
'He's clean,' he said to the gunman.
'Watch out for him,' the gunman said, getting back into the car. 'He might be a stoolie.'
Slick gave him a thin, cold smile.
Two colored men were passing on the opposite side of the street. They made as though they hadn't seen a thing.
The front car backed up and pulled up by the corner.
Slick went around and got behind the wheel of his Chrysler and turned south on Saint Nicholas Avenue. Far down the incline of the black-topped avenue, stretching toward the east, rooftops in the Valley of Harlem could be seen.
Slick turned toward Dummy as they purred past the basement entrance to Bucky's Cabaret and asked, 'What makes you think so?'
Dummy made motions like writing and pointed toward his pocket. He wasn't taking any chances. Slick smiled thinly and nodded. Dummy fished out his stub of pencil and dirty scratch pad.
He wrote: he got the mattress in his room all cutup money was in it, and held it up for Slick to read.
'How do you know that?' Slick asked. i seen it, Dummy wrote.
'No, I mean the money,' Slick said. it figgers the money was gone before the jew got there, Dummy wrote.
Slick pulled up for a red light at 145th Street. A real cool black chick in a beige blouse and aqua slacks gave him the eye. But he had business on his mind.
'How do you figure that?' he asked Dummy as he started up again.
Dummy wrote rapidly: nobody aint found it he didn get mattress from the jew must got it afore the jew got there rufus didn get it that for sure.
'It ain't for sure he got it, either,' Slick said. 'The bitch might have hid it somewhere else. She might still have it-how do you know?'
Dummy began grunting with excitement. no she aint got it she lookin for it.
'How do you know she's looking for it?' Slick asked. 'She's in jail. Can you read minds?'
Dummy made sounds like a stopped-up drain. He started to write, but he didn't have space on that sheet and tore it off. Slick reached for it, drew it from his fingers and slipped it into his side coat pocket.
