Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972
- Автор: Breese Edward Y., Бриттен Уильям
- Год: 1972
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972». Краткое содержание книги:
Tara had come recently to New York from a small, sleepy town in the Midwest. She had brought with her a charging enthusiasm for new adventure, an insatiable curiosity.
A pretty girl who is also unspoiled is usually a jackpot find in jaded old New York, so when I discovered during the small talk between letters that, like myself, Tara was unmarried and at loose ends, I launched our first date.
The first was followed by several more, and soon we were as cozy a pair as you could find. Tara was coming on strong about love everlasting, including hints of a permanent arrangement — like marriage, for instance. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea, so I stalled.
One Monday Tara had brought sandwiches and we were having lunch alone in the filing room of L.H. & B. Tara had been pressing me to save my money for the day when I might want to take a little house on Long Island, buy furniture and settle down. I told her that a bachelor didn’t need a little house on Long Island. To further express my independence, I had remained apart from her over the weekend, dating a gal who had no apparent interest in matrimony.
Faking indifference, Tara had gone with a girlfriend to this party she was presently describing over lunch. The party was hosted by a big spender known as Earl Craddock, Tara said. Earl was a distinguished-looking widower who had a swank pad on the East River. Moreover, she related gleefully, one glance at her had practically blown his mind.
Between dainty bites of her sandwich, I also learned from Tara that Craddock had wall-to-wall money scooped from various enterprises about which he was vague, though he made no effort to conceal his interest in a large bookmaking operation. Most of the action, he informed Tara, came from office workers who like to bet the ponies, people employed by large corporations such as our own Lindquist, Holt and Barsdale.
Having reported these fascinating details, Tara paused, lighted a cigarette and said, “I’ll bet there are a whole bunch of horse players right here at L.H. and B.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Why? You planning to open your own book?”
“Well, not exactly,” she said without so much as a twitch of amusement. “But I thought maybe we could drum up some business for Earl.”
“We could, huh? Why should we line up suckers for Craddock?”
She made a charming face. “Because, darling, he’ll give me a nice fat percentage of the take. I’ll canvass the girls, and if you’ll tout the men, I’ll put the profits in a special savings account — for us. Because some rainy day in the future, who knows what we might need it for. Right? So will you do it?”
Wondering if I would still be around on that ‘rainy day,’ I said, “Since the state seems about to license off-track bookie joints, I suppose the law against taking bets on the nags has become a joke, but I still don’t want to risk making book for Craddock. I’m not looking for trouble.”
“What trouble?” Tara laced her hands around the knee of one exquisite leg and smiled sweetly. “Cliff, dear, we will take no bets. We will do nothing more than inquire softly among our fellow slaves whether anyone would like to place a little wager on the galloping steeds. During lunch hours, a chubby, baldheaded guy by the name of Sammy Kasko will be seated in a rear booth of the coffee shop below. And Sammy, a Craddock runner, will write up the betting slips and take the cash. See?”
“Mmm,” I said. “Well, that’s a horse of an entirely different color. We don’t book, we simply refer. All the same—”
“Really, darling, what’s holding you? Just whisper it around, then step aside and let Sammy take over.”
“OK,” I said. “Seems harmless enough. For you, I’ll give it a little push.”
In a few days I had at least two dozen of the working stiffs below executive level visiting the Kasko booth in the coffee shop. The scheme had taken off like a big bird and the first payoff would soon be delivered. I wasn’t excited over this windfall, however, because my share wouldn’t come due until the day of the big rain — the day after the wedding — right?
Funny the way it all fell together with only a suggestion to the right people. The word traveled so fast you would think the information was spread by way of an office memo. The word not only traveled fast, it traveled far — and that was the rub. It traveled too far, right into the sacred sanctum of Sanford Wickham, the vice-president in charge of sales.
A stuffy little man who was born ancient, Wickham is most dangerous on those rare occasions when he smiles, and he was smiling when I answered the summons to report to his office.
It began with a lecture on the evils of gambling, continued with the accusation, apparently made by some joker who had lost a bundle, that I was the self-elected company bookmaker and that Kasko was my runner.
Allowing no pause to hear my defense, his smile wider, Wickham then pronounced sentence: “Therefore, Hanson, though you have an excellent record in all other respects, under the circumstances I have no alternative but to ask for your immediate resignation.”
Naturally, I did not implicate Tara, and for some curious reason she came out of it unscathed, her job intact. She was tearfully contrite, insisting that it was all her fault. I agreed.
Tara was a walking disaster, and I had to escape while there was still something left for me to salvage. So I avoided seeing her, composing various excuses. At first she pouted and pleaded, but she finally got the message, and for a time she left me alone.
The rent was overdue and everything worth pawning was in hock when I uncovered a job with a small competitor of L.H. & B., at a major cut in salary — after which, life was far from sweet, but it was bearable.
Then I got a phone call from Tara — and an ultimatum. She had been keeping heavy company with Earl Craddock, that moneybags who lifted his coin from bookmaking and from mysterious sources unknown. She was going to marry the man, Tara needled, unless I broke from my shell and returned to her nest with an affidavit of love and a promise of eternal togetherness.
I conveyed to her the impression that I was deeply moved and flattered by her devotion, but to straighten out my tangled finances and recover my emotional stability after the traumatic loss of my job with dear old L.H. & B., I would need time. Give me a year, two at the most, I begged, then we would discuss it again.
That did it! Before you could say Earl Craddock, she had signed up with him and they were en route to Europe on their honeymoon.
I gave an enormous sigh of relief.
Three weeks passed in a beautiful vacuum of orderly routine. Then came a hastily scrawled letter from Tara, mailed in Rome.
My dearest Cliff,
Just a few frantic lines because that beast who dares to call himself my husband is having me watched by a couple of apes he brought along in the disguise of “servants.”
You just won’t believe what has happened! I’ve discovered that Earl is not merely a bookmaker, but an absolute gangster — a jack-of-all-crimes. His specialty is supplying dealers with great mountains of uncut dope. And the whole secret purpose of this miserable excuse for a honeymoon is to buy drugs for smuggling to the U.S. Can you imagine!
The very idea of it made me sick, sick! So in London I tiptoed off to catch a plane home. But those “servant” hoods followed and muscled me right back to Earl. Here in Rome I tried to sneak off again. I was caught once more and delivered to Boss Craddock. He rewarded me with such a wicked beating, I must wear sunglasses to hide the puffy, purple bruise around my eye!