"Shooting Script" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lyall Gavin)

THREE

The casino in the Sheraton is a tall, sober, well-lit room on the ground floor where government-licenced croupiers sometimes allow you to give them your money in exchange for about as much excitement as you'd get buying a tin of supermarket beans. And without you ending up with the beans, of course.

It doesn't get any more dramatic anywhere in San Juan. There was a time when it looked like heating up a little, when some of the hard boys Castro had tossed out of the Havana casinos came in to show the ignorant natives how many aces there could be in a pack. But they'd forgotten the joker: the FBI office. Some got their feet on the ground long enough to get their faces behind bars; the rest had rebooked for Las Vegas before they were off the airliner steps.

They'd have been superfluous anyway. The San Juan hotel casinos stand a living and prospering monument to the tourists' determination to lose enough money to feel wicked, and you don't need crooked gambling for that. You don't even need a house percentage when most of your customers come in prepared to lose ten, twenty, or fifty dollars – and stay there until they do, because to quit when they're ahead would be unsporting and show they weren't real ramblin' gamblin' men at all – just tourists.

One day I'll patent the idea of firing all the croupiers and scrapping all the tables and just hang up a waste-basket labelled: 'It is strictly forbidden to throw your money in here.'FU dierich.

At nine-thirty in the off-season summer the room was a lot less than crowded. There were a few people at the two roulettetables, a handful at the blackjack, and the usual noisy group at the craps. You don't pay any entrance fee, and the tables themselves change your cash for chips, so I just walked hi acting like any tourist acting like Edward G. Robinson acting like Al Capone.

That made me normal.

Nobody seemed to be in República Ah- Force uniform, but you can squeeze a small overnight bag into the cockpit of a Vampire 5, so they needn't have stayed militaristic. On a 'good-will' visit, it would have been unlikely anyway. And looking at faces wasn't much help either. Anybody flying jets for a Caribbean air force was as likely to have been born in Warsaw or Chicago as in Santo Bartolomeo.

I was wondering how many people I could ask, 'Excuse me, but did you happen to bounce me in a jet this afternoon?' before they sent for the house doctor, when a hand suddenly shoved a couple of dice under my nose and a voice said, 'You always had more luck than you deserved, Keith matey. Breathe a bit of it into these.'

Hand and voice had come out of the small, tight group around one of the craps tables, and for a moment I couldn't see who was behind them. But I knew that Australian accent, and I knew that hand: a big, steady paw, deeply tanned, covered with fine blond hairs and the small white scars of a lifetime spent grabbing for levers and switches in unfamiliar cockpits.

I waved a hand over the dice and intoned: 'A mother's dying curse on these playthings of the devil.'

An American tourist glared at me, shocked. "That, suh, is an insult to both motherhood and craps.'

There was an Australian chuckle and the dice rumbled on the table.

The stick-man chanted: 'Thu-ree. The shooter craps out.'

The crowd stirred, the shooter backed out and turned round.

'Still keeping your luck to yourself, Keith?' And we looked each other over for the first time in ten years.

He hadn't changed much. Broad, stocky, steady, like the hand. A snub square face with a tanned and oddly coarse skin, pale blue eyes, short curly fairhak. And a cheerful, watchfulexpression of enjoying this moment and making damn sure the next one didn't creep up on him unseen.

Ned Rafter, Australian gambling man and fighter-pilot-for-hire. You find the game or the war and Ned'll find you.1 He said: 'How're you doing, matey, all right?'

'All right.' We didn't shake hands; pilots don't, much -maybe it's too serious, too final.

I didn't ask how he was doing – I didn't need to. He was wearing a pearl grey silk suit of a cut you couldn't find within a thousand miles or several hundred dollars of the Caribbean. And I didn't need to askwhat he was doing, either.

'I think we met a little earlier today,' I said. 'Next time hoot your horn before overtaking.'

He smiled slowly. 'You're getting to be a Sunday driver, Keith.' We walked round to the end of the table and he tossed a $20 bill to the croupier. 'Some chips for me mate.'

'Not me,' I said quickly. 'I came here to kick your head off; I may yet. I don't need to lose your money as well.'

'You're talking like a tourist. Nobody loses.' But he picked. up the chips for himself and dumped two little piles quickly on the betting layout of the table. The croupier twitched a small smile, so perhaps Ned had made a rather subtle bet.

I'm no gambler – not on principle, but just because I never get a kick out of taking risks. Anyway, the betting at craps is too complicated for me. The rules are simple enough: on your first throw you win with a 7 or 11, lose on a 2, 3, or 12. If you throw anything else, the rules change: you then go on throwing until you've either won by throwing the same number again, or lost by throwing a 7. No other numbers count after the first roll.

But on a casino table the layout lets you bet not just on winning or losing, but every number, different ways of making that number, and everything else except the chances of a nuclear war and your grandmother getting gallstones. All at different odds, of course.

The dice rolled. Ned lost one pile, but collected a fraction more than his losses on his second pile, so probably ithad been a rather subtle bet.

'The last I heard,' I said conversationally, 'you were out in the Congo. What happened?'

'Stuffed full of crook politics. Anyway, it was only flying T-28s and a few old B-26s. Got dull.' He settled one pile of chips on the layout.

'So why not the Far East? I hear there's quite a good war out there.'

'Yeh – I thought of it. Trouble is, the Americans are keeping it democratic. No outsiders.'

He lost the pile, immediately put another in another place.

'Did you try the other side? Maybe they're not so democratic.'

He gave me a sharp look. 'You think that's funny, matey?'

'Yes – life's one big laugh today. I don't always get bounced by a couple of jets that might be going to shoot. Sets you up wonderfully for seeing the funny side of things.'

He won on his pile; took it back, put another down. 'Ah, you've just been away from things too long, Keith.'

'I'vebeen away too long?' I banged a hand on the rim of the table and got a look from the stick-man. In a quieter voice, I said: 'If I'd turned into you this afternoon, you'd still be trying to walk home on the water. Your Number Two was on the wrong side for that passand much too close. If you'd tried more than a rate one turn you'd have had him flying up your back passage.'

He thought about it, staring at the table. 'Maybe… maybe you're right. These boys are too proud of flying close formation. I'll get 'em out of it. Only been there a month, yet.'

The dice rumbled across the table, were pushed back, rumbled again. The stick-man chanted the numbers; a shooter lost, another stepped forward. Craps is the fastest gambling game there is – apart from dozing at the controls of a fighter in enemy airspace.

Ned went on betting his small piles, winning and losing.

'So,' he said, 'how d'you like flying charter work?'

'Could be worse. There's good flying weather around here. Trouble is the airlines are getting too good. Few years and they'll be running jets down the islands.'

'Yeh.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'I suppose I thought you'd want something a bit more exciting – after fighters.'

'Try paying off a mortgage on your own plane sometime. It gets exciting enough.'

'Never owned me own plane.' The dice rolled – and suddenly Ned had won triple his normal stack of chips. He pushed them promptly across to the croupier. 'She'll do. Cash me in.'

'Quit while you're ahead,' I murmured.

He looked up. 'You did it yourself, once.'

I grinned. Several tourists looked at him sneeringly, as a man who couldn't take it – although taking it was just what he was doing.

He got back a surprisingly large stack of dollar bills. I hadn't expected him to be gambling low – he never had in the past and the silk suit suggested he didn't need to now – but that wad would still have covered two months' mortgage and running expenses on the Dove.

He riffled quickly through it, shoved it into his pocket. 'It right we can't get a drink in the casino?'

I nodded.

He shrugged disgustedly. 'Christ – what government control does. If I collapse on the way to the bar, tell mother I died trying.'

'That, suh, is an insult to both motherhoodand alcohol.'