"Thompson, Jim - Grifters, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

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 unmarked, that is, to the naked eye.
The showdown came. The three cards were slapped face down on the table. Roy studied them, squinting. "I can't see so good," he complained. "Let me borrow your glasses." And deftly, he appropriated the dealer's "readers."
Through the tinted glass, he promptly identified the ace, and pulled in the money.
The mob slunk out of the car, to the jeers of the other passengers. At the next town, a wide place in a muddy road, they jumped the train. Probably they had no funds to ride farther.
As the train pulled out, Roy saw them standing on the deserted platform, shoulders hunched against the cold, naked fear on their pale, gaunt faces. And in the warm comfort of the club car, he shivered for them.
He shivered for himself.
That was where the hit-and-get landed you, where it could land you. This, or something far worse than this, was the fate of the unrooted. Men to whom roots were a hazard rather than an asset. And the big-con boys were no more immune to it than their relatively petty brethren. In fact, their fate was often worse. Suicide. Dope addiction and the d.t.'s. The big house and the nut house.
She sat up, swinging her legs off the bed, and got a cigarette from the reading stand. After it was lit, he took it for himself, and she got herself another.
"Roy," she said, "look at me."
"Oh, I am looking, dear. Believe me, I am."
"Now, please! Is--is this all we have, Roy? Is it all we're going to have? I'm not knocking it, understand, but shouldn't there be something more?"
"How could we top a thing like that? Tickle each other's feet?"
She looked at him silently, the burning eyes turning lackluster, staring at him from behind an invisible veil. Without turning her head, she extended a hand and slowly tamped out her cigarette.
"That was a funny," he said. "You were supposed to laugh."
"Oh, I am laughing, dear," she said. "Believe me, I am."
She reached down, picked up a stocking and began to draw it on. A little troubled, he pulled her around to face him.
"What are you driving at, Moira? Marriage?"
"I didn't say that."
"But that's what I asked."
She frowned, hesitating, then shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm a very practical little girl, and I don't believe in giving any more than I get. That might be pretty awkward for a matchbook salesman, or whatever you are."
He was stung, but he kept on playing. "Would you mind handing me my first aid kit? I think I've just been clawed."
"Don't worry. Kitty's had all her shots."
"The fact is, the matchbooks arejust a sideline. My real business is running a whorehouse."
Overhead and income were always in a neck-andneck race. One sour deal, and they were on the skids.
And it wasn't going to happen to Roy Dillon.
For his first year in Los Angeles, he was strictly a square john. An independent salesman calling on small businessmen. Gliding back into the grift, he remained a salesman. And he was still one now. He had a credit rating and a bank account. He was acquainted with literally hundreds of people who would attest to the excellence of his character.
Sometimes they were required to do just that, when suspicion threatened to build into a police matter. But, naturally, he never called upon the same ones twice; and it didn't happen often anyway. Security gave him self-assurance. Security and self-assurance had bred a high degree of skill.
In accomplishing so much, he had had no time for women. Nothing but the casual come-and-go contacts which any young man might have. It was not until late in his third year that he had started looking around for a particular kind of woman. Someone who was not only highly desirable, but who would be willing to--even prefer to--accept the only kind of arrangement which he was willing to offer.
He found her, Moira Langtry, that is, in church.
It was one of those screwball outfits which seem to flourish on the West Coast. The head clown was a yogi or a swami or something of the kind. While his audience listened as though hypnotized, he droned on and on of the Supreme Wisdom of the East, never once explaining why the world's highest incidence of disease, death, and illiteracy endured at the fount of said wisdom.
Roy was a little stunned to find such a one as Moira Langtry present. She just wasn't the type. He was aware of her puzzlement when she saw him, but he had his reasons for being there. It was an innocent way of passing the time. Cheaper than movies and twice as funny. Also, while he was doing very well as it was, he was not blind to the possibility of doing better. And a man just might see a way to do it at gatherings like these.