The Grifters

'… one more thing,' Simms was saying now. 'This is your home, see? Renting like you do, it's just the same as if you were in an apartment or house. It's your castle, like the law says, and if you should want to have a guest, you know, a lady guest, why you got a perfect right to.'

'Thank you for telling me,' Roy nodded gravely. 'I don't have anyone in mind at the moment, but I usually make friends wherever I go.'

'0' course. A fine-looking young fellow like you is bound to have lady friends, and I bet they got class too. None of these roundheels that crumb a place up just by walking through the lobby.'

'Never,' Dillon assured him. 'I'm very careful of the friends I make, Mr. Simms. Particularly the lady friends.'

He was careful. During his four-year tenancy at the hotel he had had only one female visitor, a divorcee in her thirties, and everything about her-looks, dress, and manners-was abundantly satisfactory even to the discriminating Mr. Simms. The only fault he could find with her was that she did not come often enough. For Moira Langtry was also discriminating. Given her own way, something that Dillon frequently refrained from giving her as a matter of policy, she wouldn't have come within a mile of the GrosvenorCarlton. After all, she had a very nice apartment of her own, a place with one bedroom, two baths and a wet bar. If he really wanted to see her-and she was beginning to doubt that he did-why couldn't he come out there?

'Well, why can't you?' she said, as he sat up in bed phoning to her. 'It's no further for you than it is for me.'

'But you're so much younger, dear. A youthful female like you can afford to humor a doddering old man.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere, mister'-she was pleased. 'I'm five years older, and I feel every minute of it.'

Dillon grinned. Five years older? Hell, she was ten if she was a day. 'The fact is, I'm a little under the weather,' he explained. 'No, no, it's nothing contagious. I happened to trip over a chair the other night in the dark, and it gave me a nasty whack in the stomach.'

'Well… I guess I could come…'

'That's my girl. I'd hold my breath if I wasn't panting.'

'Mmm? Let's hear you.'

'Pant, pant,' he said.

'You poor thing,' she said. 'Moira'll hurry just as fast as she can.'

Apparently, she had been dressed to go out when he called, for she arrived in less than an hour. Or, perhaps, it only seemed that way. He had got up to unlock the door preparatory to her arrival, and returning to bed he had felt strangely tired and faint. So he had let his eyes drift shut, and when he opened them, a very little later seemingly, she was entering the room. Sweeping into it on her tiny, spike-heeled shoes; a billowing but compact bundle of woman with glossily black hair, and direct darkly-burning eyes.

She paused just inside the threshold for a moment, self-assured but suppliant. Posing like one of those arrogantly inviting mannequins. Then, she reached behind her, feeling for and finding the doorkey. And turning it with a soft click.

Roy forgot to wonder about her age.

She was old enough, was Moira Langtry.

She was young enough.

His silent approval spoke to her, and she gave a little twitch to her body, letting the ermine stole hang from one shoulder. Then, hips swaying delicately, she came slowly across the room; small chin outthrust; seemingly tugged forward by the bountiful imbalance within the small white blouse.

She stopped with her knees pressed against his bed, and looking upward he could see nothing but the tip of her nose above the contours of her breasts.

Raising a finger, he poked her in one then the other.

'You're hiding,' he said. 'Come out, come out, wherever you are.'

She sank gracefully to her knees, let her dark eyes burn into his face.

'You stink,' she said, tonelessly, the blouse shimmering with her words. 'I hate you.'

'The twins seem to be restless,' he said. 'Maybe we should put them to bed.'

'You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to smother you.'

He said, 'Death, where is thy sting?' and then he was necessarily voiceless for a while. After an incredibly soft, sweet-smelling eternity, he was allowed to come up for air. And he spoke to her in a whisper.

'You smell good, Moira. Like a bitch in a hothouse.'

'Darling. What a beautiful thing to say!'

'Maybe you don't smell good…'

'I do, too. You just said so.'

'It could be your clothes.'

'It's me! Want me to prove it to you?'

He did, and she did.

4

When he first settled in Los Angeles, Roy Dillon's interest in women was prudently confined by necessity. He was twenty-one, an oldish twenty-one. His urge toward the opposite sex was as strong as any man's; flourishing even stronger, perhaps, because of the successes that lay behind him. But he was carrying light, as the saying is. He had looked around extensively and carefully before choosing Los Angeles as a permanent base of operations, and his capital was now reduced to less than a thousand dollars.

That was a lot of money, of course. Unlike the big-con operator, whose elaborate scene-setting may involve as much as a hundred thousand dollars, the short-con grifter can run on peanuts. But Roy Dillon, while remaining loyal to the short con, was abandoning the normal scheme of things.

At twenty-one, he was weary of the hit-and-get. He knew that the constant 'getting'-jumping from one town to another before the heat got too hot-could absorb most of the hits, even of a thrifty man. So that he might work as hard and often as he safely could, and still wind up with the wolf nipping at the seat of his threadbare pants.

Roy had seen such men.

Once, on an excursion special out of Denver, he had run into a 'mob' of them, poor devils so depleted in capital that they had had to pool their resources.

They were working in a monte swindle. The dealer was cast as the 'wise guy,' whom the others were determined to take. While he turned his head to argue with the two shills-holding the three cards open on his palm-the roper had drawn a small mark on the top card, winking extravagantly at Roy.

'Take him, pal!' His stage whisper was ridiculously loud. 'Put down that big bill you got.'

'The fifty or the hundred?' Roy whispered back.

'The hundred! Hurry!'

'Could I bet five hundred?'

'Well, uh, naw. You just better make it a hundred to start.'

The dealer's conveniently outstretched hand was getting tired. The shills were running out of arguments to distract his attention. But Roy persisted with his cruel joke.

'How big is the marked card?'

'An ace, damnit! The other two are deuces! Now-'

'Does an ace beat deuces?'

'Does an-! Hell, yes, damnit! Now, bet!'

The other passengers in the bar car were catching on, beginning to grin. Roy laboriously took out his wallet, and took out a C-note. The dealer counted out a crumpled mass of ones and fives. Then, he shuffled, palming the marked ace for a marked deuce, and switching one of the deuces for an unmarked ace. One that was