The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
“This where Tonty’s anchored?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what the hell you think I’m doing here? You want me to spell it out for you?”
The crack widened to reveal a flat face split in a grin between thick ears. “My, my. Were riding high tonight, ain’t we?”
“You want my money or not?”
The crack spread still wider, and the grinning gorilla shuffled back out of it. “Sure, Frankie, sure. Every little bit helps.”
Frankie went in past the gorilla and down the long cement-floored room to the craps table. It was still early, and the big stuff wasn’t moving yet. Just right for forty bucks. Or thirty-nine, deducting a double shot.
Frankie got his belly against the edge of the table and laid a fast side bet that the point would come.
It came.
He laid three more in a hurry, betting the accumulation and mixing them pro and con without thinking much about it.
The points came or not, just as Frankie bet them.
When the dice came around to him, he was fat, and he laid the bundle. He tossed a seven, made his point twice, and tossed another seven, letting the bundle grow. Then, playing a hunch without benefit of thought, he drew most of the bundle off the table.
He crapped out and passed the dice.
Across the table, Joe Tonty’s face was a slab of gray rock.
His eyes flicked over Frankie, and his shoulders twitched in a shrug.
“Your luck’s running, Frankie. You better ride it.”
“Sure,” Frankie said. “I’ll ride.”
It kept running for two hours, and Frankie rode it all the way. When he finally had a sudden flat feeling, a kind of interior collapse, he pulled out. Not that he felt his luck had quit running for keeps. Just resting. Just taking a breather. He descended the iron steps into the alley and crossed over to Market for a nightcap at Nick’s. A little later, in the living room of the apartment, he counted eight grand. It was hard to believe, little Frankie with eight big grand all at once and all his own. Not even any withholding tax.
He was shaken again by the silent delirium that was becoming an integral element of his chronic mood, and he went over to the closet and opened the door, looking up at the old man in his urn.
“Thanks, Pop,” he said. “Thanks.”
Chapter 5
He slept soundly and got up about noon. After a hearty lunch he went out to the track with the eight grand in his pocket. He was in time for the second race, and he checked the entries. But he didn’t feel anything, so he let it go.
Checking the entries in the third, he still didn’t get any nudge. Something seemed to be getting in the way, coming between him and his luck. Maybe, he realized suddenly, it was the warm pressure of a long flank against his.
He turned, looking into brown eyes that were as warm as the touch of flank. Under the eyes there was a flash of white in a margin of red, and above them, a heavy sheen of pale yellow with streaks of off-white running through it. At first Frankie thought she’d just been sloppy with a dye job, but then he saw that the two-toned effect was natural.
“Crowded, isn’t it?” she said.
Frankie grinned. “I like crowds.”
He was trying to think of what the hair reminded him of when he got the nudge. His eyes popped down to the program in his hands and back up to the dame. Inside, he’d gone breathless and tense, the way a guy does when he’s on the verge of something big.
“What’s your name, baby?”
The red-and-white smile flashed again. “Call me Taffy. Because of my hair, you see.”
He saw, all right. He saw a hell of a lot more than she thought he did. He saw number four in the third, and the name was Taffy Candy. One would bring ten if Taffy won, and even Frankie, who was no mental giant, could add another cipher to eight thousand and read the result.
Don’t give yourself time to think, that was the trick. If you start thinking, you start figuring odds and consequences, and you’re a dead duck. He stood up and slapped the program against his leg.
“Hold a spot for me, baby. If I’m on the beam, it’ll be a big day for you and me and a horse.”
He hit the window just before closing time and laid the eight grand on Taffy’s nose. At the rail of the track, he watched the horses run, and he wasn’t surprised, not even excited, when Taffy came in by the nose that had his eight grand on it. It was astonishing how quickly he was becoming accustomed to good fortune. He was already anticipating the breaks as if he’d had them forever. As if they were a natural right.
Like that girl in the stands, for instance. The girl who called herself Taffy. Standing there by the rail, he thought with glandular stirrings of the warm pressure of flank, the strangely alluring two-toned pastel hair, the brown eyes and scarlet smile. A few days ago, he wouldn’t have given himself a chance with a dame like that. He’d have taken it out in thinking. But now it was different. Luck and a few grand made a hell of a difference. The difference between thinking and acting.
With eight times ten in his pocket, he went back to the stands. Climbing up to her level with his eyes full of nylon, he grinned and said, “We all came in, baby, you and me and the horse. Let’s move out of here.”
She strained a mocking look through incredible lashes. “I’ve already got a date, honey. I’m supposed to meet a guy here.”
“To hell with him.”
Her eyebrows arched their plucked backs, and a practiced tease showed through the lashes. “What makes you think I’d just walk off with you, mister?”
Frankie dug into his pocket for enough green to make an impression. The bills were crisp. They made small ticking sounds when he flipped them with a thumbnail.
“This, maybe,” he said.
She eyed the persuasion and stood up. “That’s good thinking, honey,” she said.
Chapter 6
A long time and a lot of places later, Frankie awoke to the gray light that filtered into his shabby apartment. It was depressing, he thought, to awaken in a dump like this. It was something that had to be changed.
“Look, baby,” he said. “Today we shop for another place. A big place uptown. Carpets up to your knees, foam-rubber stuff, the works. How about it, baby?”
Beside him, Taffy pressed closer, her lips moving against his naked shoulder with a sleepy animal purr of contentment.
So that day they rented the uptown place, and moved in, and a couple of months later Frankie bought the Circle Club.
The club was a nice little spot tucked into a so-so block just outside the perimeter of the big-time glitter area. It was a good location for a brisk trade with the right guy handling it. The current owner was being pressed for the payment of debts by parties who didn’t like waiting, and Frankie bought him out for a song.
It was a swell break. Just one more in a long line. Frankie shot a wad on fancy trimmings, and booked a combination that could really jump. With the combo there was a sleek canary who had something for the eyes as well as the ears.
The food and the liquor were fair, which is all anyone expects in a night spot, and up to the time of Linda Lee, business was good.
After Linda Lee, business was more than good. It was booming. The word always goes out on a gal like Linda. The guys come in with their dames, and after they’ve had the quota of looking that the tariff buys, they go someplace and turn off the lights and pretend that the dames are Linda.
Linda Lee wasn’t her real name, of course, but it suited her looks and her business. Ostensibly the business was dancing. Actually it was taking off her clothes. In Linda’s case that was sufficient. As for the looks, they were Linda’s, and they were something. Dusky skin and eyes on the slant. Black hair with blue highlights, soft and shining, brushing her shoulders and slashing across her forehead in bangs above perfect unplucked brows. A lithe, vibrant body with an up-swept effect that a guy couldn’t believe from seeing and so had to keep coming back for another look to convince himself.