The Honest Dealer

Chapter Twelve

The third Mrs. Catch ’Em Alive Mulligan (née Gloria Hutney) had owned a little place near Manhasset, Long Island, that contained twenty-three rooms. Off Catch ’Em Alive’s personal bedroom was a bathroom that was exactly twice the size of the entire house in which Detective Mulligan of the Las Vegas Police Force now resided.

The house contained a bedroom, a kitchenette and a living room eight feet wide and twelve long. It had a concrete floor that was only half covered with a Navajo rug.

The fourth Mrs. Catch ’Em Alive was some years younger than her husband, a dark, rather plain girl who washed her husband’s shirts and darned his socks. She read Palpitating Love Stories and listened to the soap operas on the radio.

She was reading her pulp magazines when she saw the headlights turn into the sagebrush patch that was her front yard. She put down the magazine and got up when the headlights went off. Then she heard Catch ’Em Alive’s step on the concrete veranda and opened the door for him.

He came in and patted her shoulder. “Hi, babe,” he said. He didn’t kiss her, which meant that something was bothering him. Mrs. Mulligan returned to her seat on the little sofa and folded her hands in her lap. Her dark eyes were fixed on her husband.

Catch ’Em Alive took off his hat and dropped it on the sofa beside his wife. His coat followed. Then he loosened his necktie and went into the little kitchen. He opened the tiny icebox, got out a bottle of beer and removed the cap. He poured some of the beer into a glass, then carried the glass and bottle back into the living room.

He dropped into a chair opposite his wife and sipped the beer. When he finished the glass he refilled it from the bottle. During this time neither her nor his wife spoke a word.

But at last Mulligan finished the second glass of beer and set it and the empty bottle on the floor beside his chair. He got to his feet, a solid squarely built man with only a bit of a paunch.

He said, “Babe, do you like Las Vegas?”

Nell Mulligan replied quite simply, “Yes.”

He nodded and began pacing the floor. “I thought you’d say that. You like the town because I like it. You think I like it, because I’ve always said I do.”

“Don’t you?”

Mulligan stopped his pacing. “No, I don’t like Las Vegas. And I don’t like the desert. I’ve been all over the world, Babe — Borneo, The Congo, Siberia, Paris, London, New York. I’ve rubbed elbows with the important people of the world. I drank a Duke under the table once and I hate this goddam place. I caught lions in Africa, tigers in India and now I catch drunken Saturday night drivers.”

Nell Mulligan’s eyes never left the face of her husband. She had been married to him only a year, but she knew that Mulligan was not happy. Too many times had she seen his face when he was staring at the concrete floor or the adobe wall, his thoughts five thousand miles away.

Mulligan began pacing again. “Things have been going on around here. They won’t admit it and when you ask them they give you a surprised look, but I’ve picked up a word here, another there. And I’ve been watching and putting this and that together. Harry Bloss was killed and a man who knows something about his death came into town today and ran up a dollar — a dollar I gave him — to fifteen or twenty thousand. And Honsinger’s bleeding.”

“Isn’t Harry Bloss the man who was here a few weeks ago?” Nell Mulligan asked. “The dealer from El Casa Rancho?”

“Yes, and I’m kicking myself now for not drawing him out. He was worried about something, but he wasn’t a talking man. But I should have known and made him talk. He knew about it then...”

“What do you mean by it... a scheme?”

“What else? Las Vegas itself is honest. Gambling is big business and the percentages are enough for the houses; enough and more. They don’t have to be crooked. With the investment some of the places have they couldn’t afford to be. But there’s money here, and wherever there’s money you’ll find fellows trying to get it. Put a ten-dollar bill on top of a greased pole and somebody’ll figure out how to climb that pole. I knew a fellow in Liverpool who could make a pair of dice sit up and talk for him. He was the only man I’ve ever known who could throw the dice against a wall and call his shots. He never missed. I asked him how long it took him to learn that trick and he told me ten years. In less than ten years a man can learn to be a lawyer or a doctor, or he can work his way up to the top in a business. But some men spend ten years learning how to bump dice against the wall.”

“You mean somebody’s beating the games in Las Vegas?”

Mulligan turned up both of his palms and held them like that while his shoulders hunched up. “I’m trying to tie things together. When Bloss left, a bunch of new dealers showed up around town. Honsinger put on two men, Elmer Dade hired one... Harry Murphy... You know what I think, Nell?”

“What?”

“I think some of the dealers got together.”

“But what would be the point in that?”

“Dealers get fifteen dollars a day. They’re not allowed to play on the other side of the table — even in the other places, so there’s no chance for them to ever get lucky and make a killing... You know what I’d do if I was a dealer and wanted to make a pile? I’d get me a friend who’d never been here before, and I’d have him come to my game and I’d let him win a lot of money. Then I’d split with him afterwards.”

“But how much would the house let you lose before they’d watch you?”

“Oh, they watch the dealers right along. Even when they’re winning. But there are ways of doing it. And suppose I had three-four friends on the other side of the table... and maybe there were a half dozen dealers in on it, all around town. Our friends could go from place to place, with a few thousand at each, then make the rounds again. In two days we could get quite a lot of money and we wouldn’t care at all if we lost our jobs.”

“And you think that’s what happened?”

Mulligan nodded. “I’m sure of it. I think Honsinger, Dade, Murphy and a couple of others got nicked for heavy sugar... and I think that sugar is still somewhere around and I intend to get it. It’s anybody’s money, there’s nobody can say so much was taken from him and so much from him. If I can get that money it’s mine.”

“And then?”

“Then I leave Las Vegas. I’m going back to civilization and you’re going with me, Babe.”

All the while Mulligan had been talking his wife’s face became duller and duller. And now when he was finished, she said,

“Whatever you say...”