“We work in chips,” she whispered. “Fives, tens, twenties and fifties. You pay me, and I give the chips. You turn in what you have, if anything, when you leave. I usually get a tip.”
“I’ll start with fifty bucks in fives,” I said. I counted out fifty-five and shook the last five indicating it was a tip. Her mask grin stayed put. Instead of sitting at the table, I watched her walk to the bartender, who took the cash and handed her the chips. The barkeep immediately took my money through the door behind the bar.
The blonde came back, gave me ten white chips, patted my shoulder and said, “Find me if you need more chips. The guys in red are the waiters. Just call them if you want to order a drink. You can pay them in cash or chips.”
There were seven or eight players at the roulette table. The first thing I noticed was the croupier, who never smiled and whose voice never changed. He was a thin guy with a tux and a little mustache. As the night wore on, his French accent disappeared.
I squeezed in next to a tall, lean guy in his early thirties, wearing a perfectly tailored suit with a neat white monogrammed handkerchief in the pocket. He smoked his cigarette in a pearl holder and seemed slightly amused by the table, which didn’t look in the least funny to me.
“How you doing?” I said, pushing a white chip on the black.
The lean guy looked at me with a raised eyebrow and answered with an upper crust English accent that seemed somehow wrong for Cicero.
“I’m losing,” he said, “but through my losses I’m developing a plan. All it takes is money and a great deal of patience.”
He lost his red chip and I lost my white one.
“You have enough money and patience?” I sniffled.
“A reasonable supply of the former and an almost infinite supply of the latter. Fortunately, I’m obsessed with the Romantic fantasy that I will someday break the bank and save the British Empire.”
We both lost again. He didn’t appear to mind. I decided he was imitating George Sanders playing a cad, or maybe George Sanders imitated this guy when he played a cad. English’s superior sneer seemed permanently fixed under a once broken nose, which added a soldier-of-fortune air to his good looking long face.
My next monumental sneeze raised a grumble from a be-ringed matron on my right. I blew my nose and lost five bucks more in atonement. English raised his right hand elegantly, and a waiter who had been stuffed into a maroon jacket two sizes too small galloped over on the dark tile floor. The slot machines provided his musical accompaniment.
“Have you a halfway decent wine?” English asked him, making clear what he expected the answer to be by the doubting arch of his brow.
“Yeah,” said the waiter, confirming his assumption.
English handed the waiter a white chip and told him to bring a glass of wine, preferably something French from the Loire, with a glass of orange juice and a raw egg.
The waiter said, “Right,” and walked away. English leaned over to me.
“He’ll come back with Chianti,” he said, losing ten bucks more on number seven.
I skipped a couple of spins and looked around the room for someone who might be Gino or for Nitti’s men. If Gino was there, I decided, he was behind that door on the other side of the bar. Even if I could make it past the enormous barkeep, I had a feeling things were behind that door that could cause me grief.
The wine, juice, and egg arrived. English held the dark glass to his nose and frowned.
“California, no more than a year old,” he sighed. “But it will have to do. Actually it has to be swallowed quickly, so it doesn’t matter if there’s nothing to savor.”
With all eyes on him including that of the croupier, he cracked the egg into the juice. Instead of drinking the contents of the two glasses, he handed them to me.
“Gulp it down like a good lad,” he said around his cigarette holder. “Then bolt down the wine.”
I raised a hand to protest, and hit the matron, who countered with a sharp push on my back. English guided the drinks into my hand. I drank them. What the hell. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did.
“Five minutes, you’ll be able to take on an orangutan,” he said, returning to his bet.
“I may have to,” I replied, wiping orange juice from my mouth with a table napkin.
He looked at me archly, and after ordering a Bourbon and branch water went on with his determined march to bankruptcy.
In five minutes I felt much better and had lost my fifty bucks in chips. I waved to the blonde, who walked over to me, lighting the way with her capped teeth. When she leaned, I gave her another fifty, wondering how I’d get the money back from Louis B. Mayer.
“I’d like to talk to Gino,” I whispered.
“Gino who?”
“Gino Servi.”
“Who are you?” she said.
“Tell him a friend of Chico’s.”
“I’ll see if this Gino is around.” She never lost her smile.
English regarded me with exaggerated new respect. I was about ten years older than he was, but he made me feel like a kid.
“That was very nice,” he said, pulling in his first win since I had sat down. “Sounded a little like something out of
“More like
“Gino will see you at closing time. Three o’clock, if you want to stick around.”
I said I would. My watch told me I had a couple hours to kill, and my wallet told me I’d never make it at the present rate. I started to spend my money on wine, eggs, and juice, drank the wine more slowly, and managed to lose a hundred and fifty bucks while I learned some things about English. We were quite a pair. He was upper class with a few generations of a lot of money. My old man had been a small Glendale grocer who left my brother and me a pile of debts when he died. English had been educated in Europe. I had missed finishing my second year in junior college when I joined the Glendale cops. He knew his way around the world. I knew Los Angeles County and about a hundred miles around it.
When the dials under the scratched lens of my trusty watch told me it was almost time, my cold was under temporary and artificial control. By a quarter to three, there was no one in the place except Joe the bartender and me, the platinum lady, the English guy, and the cleanup crew.
The blonde told English it was closing time. He threw the croupier a red chip, handed the blonde his remaining chips to cash in, downed his Bourbon and branch water, and spoke softly to me.
“Give you a lift?”
“I’m going back to downtown Chicago, but I may be tied up here for a few minutes.”
“No trouble,” he said. “I’m going that way. I’ll just wait right outside for you.”
The blonde brought him his cash, his coat, and a goodby smile. Two minutes later I was alone with the cleaning staff of the Fireside. Ten minutes after that I was just alone. Someone turned off the lights except for a few over the bar and night lights in each corner. The long white shadows out of darkness were great for my nerves.
There was a noise at the pillar. It opened and a man in a white shirt and no jacket came out. His shirt was wrinkled with sweat, and his hair was plastered down from oil or the steam bath of the inside of that pillar. He walked over to the exit door and casually leaned against it. The door opened and the man who looked like a juke box came in, peered around the room with his head forward, found me, cleaned his glasses on his sleeve, and stood on the other side of the exit door. Outside a car went by with a loose gasket and a drunken kid yelled, “Yahh!”
A few seconds later the door behind the bar opened and three figures came out, outlined in strong light behind them. They closed the door and disappeared in the darkness near the bar. My irises kicked back, and I saw two of the men were the familiar winners of the Lon Chaney and Lou Costello look-alike contest. The third guy was the mustached villain from Nitti’s room in the New Michigan Hotel.
“You Gino Servi?” I asked. My voice took a half bounce back off the walls. No answer. The five men looked at me as if I were a dog act about to begin.
