Cinderella Sims, page 6
“I think I’m beginning to get it.”
“From here on it’s simple. McGuire wants to buy a big load of fifty and hundred buck chips. Reed says he can’t handle the deal himself but he knows the men who can. Naturally they’re other members of the con mob. Reed makes the contact and they agree to let McGuire have a hundred thousand worth, cash in advance. McGuire figures to stay in Vegas the rest of his life, gamble every night and come out ahead every night.”
“He must have rocks in his head. A man can’t lose every night and cash out a winner every night without the management figuring which end is up.”
“Of course not. But don’t forget McGuire had Lori keeping his bed warm. He wasn’t in condition to think straight. Besides, he was convinced he could win money on his own hook. He had a system for roulette. Everybody does.”
I sighed.
“Okay,” I said. “They’ve got McGuire forking over fifty grand for a hundred grand worth of fake chips which, obviously, don’t exist. What do they do next? Just skip town? I suppose it would work but it might be pretty sloppy.”
She shook her head. “They were cuter than that,” she said. “Reed left and the guy who was supposed to be swinging the deal also left. Another guy, the one who was supposed to be partners in the deal, stayed with McGuire. Then two other guys break in.”
“Also part of the con mob?”
“Of course. Only they’re posing as police officers. They say they’ve overheard the whole thing, Reed and the other one are in jail, and they’ve come to arrest the partner—his name was Finch—and, also, McGuire.”
“Keep talking.”
“Finch explains that he and McGuire don’t know anything about it, that they got roped in without understanding the setup. The cop starts to soften and Finch pushes it. He offers a bribe. One cop wants to take the money and the other one doesn’t. They put on a nice little act until the ‘decent’ cop comes out ahead. Finch makes the payoff, flashes a roll and pays off both the cops. This makes it look better than if they asked McGuire for the money.”
“I get it.”
“Then the cops do it up brown. They explain that they’re going to have to pretend that Finch and McGuire skipped before they got there. They warn the two of them to stay out of Nevada for the rest of their lives, that they’re safe as long as they stay out of the state because their prints and pictures won’t go on the wire. The cops walk out, Finch goes to his room and McGuire, an honorable man, gets his wallet and pays Finch half the bribe money.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Doesn’t McGuire whine for his fifty thousand?”
“How can he? He’s wanted for fraud and a million other things. The people who took his money are supposedly under arrest and his money’s supposedly impounded by the police. If he does tumble to the whole thing, by that time everybody connected with it is a million miles away spending McGuire’s money.”
It was perfect, almost too perfect. It was based on the fundamental principle underlying every con game in the world—find a mark who wants a fast buck, make him work his way in hard, let him win a little at the start; play him along, let him sell himself on the one big deal that will set him up for life, get his stake and blow him off neatly so that he can’t bitch to the law.
I smoked another cigarette and thought about it. It could work—and, evidently, it had worked. It wouldn’t take on just anybody—you needed a mark who was dumber than most. But, as Barnum put it, there’s one born every minute.
It was lovely.
McGuire was left completely on the hook. His money was gone and he didn’t know who had taken it or how to get it back. The only two people he knew were Lori and Reed, and neither of them wound up with the dough. And he’d be in such a hell of a rush to get out of town that he wouldn’t even stop to think about them.
Fifty thousand dollars. It was a lot of dough. And, I realized with a start, it was the precise amount on my list. Fifty thousand dollars in the bank. That’s what it said, right there at the top of the list.
Lovely.
I killed my cigarette and looked across at her. Her face was expressionless, her eyes empty, her mouth neither smiling nor frowning. I wondered just where she fit in, whether she was lying or telling the truth, how she knew so much and what in the name of the Lord she was afraid of. There didn’t seem to be anything for her to worry about, for God’s sake. All she did was play patsy in an unassuming sort of a way, and even so she hadn’t done anything the least bit illegal.
And she was certainly afraid. You don’t throw a gun on a total stranger for the pure hell of it. She was scared green.
I wondered why.
“That’s it,” she said. “The whole bit from beginning to end. Now do you understand?”
“Almost. There’s one point I’m a little unclear on. Maybe you can straighten me out.”
Her eyebrows went up.
“The con game itself is easy enough to understand. It’s a new one on me but it makes sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“You.”
She looked very puzzled.
“You,” I repeated. “For one thing, how in hell do you know all this if all they told you was the cover story? Secondly, what’s your part in the whole thing? Why aren’t you back cashing chips at West of the Lake or whatever the hell it is?”
She started laughing.
“Look, I—”
Loud laughter, her breasts rising and falling in a delicious sort of way, her eyes filling with tears. I guess the laughter was a valve opening up so that she could let off steam and ease some of the tension. I didn’t mind. If she wanted to laugh it was okay with me.
“Ted,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“Well?”
“I didn’t tell you that part,” she said. “The most important part of all and I left you in the dark.”
“So turn on the lights.”
“The most important part. The reason I’ve bothered telling you the whole thing, and I leave out the most important part of all. It’s silly.”
“Look, Cindy. Tell me.”
She smiled.
“Come on.”
“Could I have a cigarette?”
I gave her a cigarette.
“Light?”
I lit hers, then took one of my own.
“Ted,” she said, blowing out smoke. “Poor Ted. You don’t understand.”
“The suspense,” I said, “is killing me.”
“Ted,” she said. “I have the money in my room. In a little black satchel. All the money. Fifty thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills and it’s all mine!”
I did not take it like a man. I took it like a low blow. I sagged in the middle, doubled up in something quite close to agony and flopped from my chair to the floor. I felt as though someone had run over me with a garbage scow. I know people don’t get run over with garbage scows, not unless they make a practice of swimming the East River. But that’s how I felt.
“I took it,” she said breathlessly. “We all met in the hotel room and I got out of there with the money. The joke was on them—all the work they put into the job, and little Cindy Sims walked off with the boodle. The joke was sure as hell on them.”
“How?” I croaked.
“Just picked it up, picked it up and walked off with it. They never even suspected. Never tumbled to it for a minute. They thought I was some kind of a moron, a nice chick to have around the place but nothing to worry about. I guess they know better now, the bastards.”
“Wait,” I said. “Hold on a minute. How did you find out about it all?”
“It was easy, Ted. Too easy.”
“How?”
“Ed Reed,” she said. “The little bastard who worked on McGuire. The oily, slimy, slick-talking son of a bitch. He told me all about it.”
“Why in hell should he—”
“He was bragging, Ted. It made him feel like a big shot. He was a sucker the same way as McGuire was.”
“But why you?”
“Because I was sleeping with him.”
It hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt—she was just some lonely frail who had blown in out of the night, but still it hurt. I don’t know what I suspected—a virgin, maybe, although virginity had never been my particular kick. I won’t even try to analyze it. It hurt.
“It was horrible, Ted. He picked me up pretty skillfully and he was lots of fun at first—a big spender, a happy sort of a guy if you didn’t notice what went on behind the mask. Later I learned to notice. But not at first.
“Then, after the first trip to bed, he got ugly. He wanted me to do…unnatural things. Things I didn’t like. They make me sick to my stomach to think about them. You know the things fairies do to each other?”
I nodded.
“Those things. And worse. He wanted me to whip, him, to hurt him. It was all pretty sickening.”
“But you did it.”
She nodded. “By this time I knew the swindle. I already had my mind made up, Ted. I was getting my share. I was going to wind up with the dough.”
“And you did.”
“So I did.”
I looked at the bundle of innocence sitting on my bed and thought of the bundle of money in her room, thought of the cold blood under that warm exterior, of the mind and the body and the money and a few other things. I thought of what it must have been like with her and Reed in bed. It must have been pretty unpleasant for her, although it must have been pretty goddamned great for Reed, damn him. I envied him. I envied anybody who had something like Cinderella Sims in bed with him.
She would be good, damned good. I stared hard at her, saw the way the top half of her made a man’s flannel shirt stretch all out of shape, saw the way her behind was snug and tight in the dungarees.
And, evidently, there was something left that Rosie Ryan hadn’t managed to drain out of me altogether. Because I wanted Cindy, wanted her desperately, wanted her inside and out with a want that was more than mere sex, although there was sure as hell a lot of pure sex mixed in with whatever else was there. I wanted her and it must have shown in my eyes because I could read an answer in her eyes, an answer that said she knew what I was thinking.
“So you got the money,” I said. I didn’t particularly feel like talking but I forced it. “So you got the money. Where does the problem come in?”
“They’re after me.”
“The law?”
She shook her head. “As far as the law is concerned, no crime was ever committed. Nobody complained. McGuire certainly won’t complain.”
“The con mob?”
“Of course. They went to a lot of trouble for this one, spent one hell of a lot of money getting things set up properly. And they’re not the type of people who let their dough slide down the drain. That’s not the way they play. They’ll hound me forever and kill me if they get a chance. And I don’t particularly feel like dying, Ted. I’m too young for that.”
“Do they know where you are?”
“I don’t know. Reed has contacts everywhere. He’s got more connections than a plumber, the dirty son of a bitch. I thought you were one of his contacts when you spotted me. That’s why I had to come up and hold a gun on you. I almost killed you, almost shot you in the back. But I had to find out first whether or not you’d gotten in touch with Reed yet. It’s good I asked.”
“No kidding.”
“I think he knows I’m in New York. He knows me under another name—that’s why I went back to my old name here, Cinderella Sims. That’s not the name I was working under in Tahoe.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“No ideas at all?”
She shrugged. “Ideas are cheap. I had a million ideas at first and none of them panned out. I was going to jump the border for Mexico and stay there. He’d never even bother looking down there. I’d be safe.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I don’t know. God, from the minute I grabbed that money everything started to go wrong. I got to the airport and took the first flight out. It happened to go to New York. That’s why I’m here.”
“Why don’t you fly down to Mexico?”
“I waited too long. Now I’m sure they know I’m in New York. I’m scared stiff. I’ve been living here for a month now and I’ve been at five different addresses in that time. At first I stayed in a hotel but then I figured it was too easy to be seen that way. Now I’m living across the street. I won’t even go downtown, just stay in the neighborhood and keep in my room as much as I can. I don’t dare stay here for more than a week.”
“Because you might be spotted?”
She nodded soberly.
“It’s rough.”
“I’m scared,” she said. “I’ve never been afraid like this and every day it gets worse. It’s silly—fifty thousand dollars and I don’t even dare enjoy it. I can’t go shopping, can’t do anything. I just sit around and go out of my mind.”
I put out my cigarette.
“Ted,” she said. “Ted, I told you all this for a reason. I need help.”
“What kind of help?”
“I don’t even know. I just know I need somebody who can figure out a way for us to get clear with the money so that I don’t have to keep on running like this for the rest of my life. I can’t take much more of this. It’s wearing me down. I have trouble sleeping, it’s getting so bad.”
“You think I can help?”
“We stand a better chance with two of us. I won’t have to go out anymore, for one thing. And they don’t know you. That gives me a cover right there.”
I thought about it.
“I’ll give you half,” she said. “Twenty-five thousand, if we get out of this. It’s worth it to me. I just can’t stand the running any more. You get me out of this and half the money’s yours.”
I got up from the chair. My head was starting to reel a little and my feet weren’t quite as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar. But I made it over to the bed and sat down next to her.
I could smell her. She smelled as though she’d just had a bath, fresh and clean and sweet.
“Is it a deal, Ted?”
I thought about it. Twenty-five thousand dollars was one hell of a lot of money. I was buying trouble but the price seemed to be right.
Almost right, anyway.
“I want more,” I heard my self saying.
“Isn’t half enough? My God, Ted—that’s a lot of money. I want some left for myself.”
“The money’s fine. That’s not what I meant. I want what Eddie Reed was getting. I want you in bed.”
She looked up at me and her eyes were shiny with laughter. “Ted,” she said. “Ted, Ted, Ted. That part of it goes without saying.”
“When do we start?”
She grinned.
“Here we are,” she said, “and here’s a bed. It’s been a long time, Ted. Let’s seal the bargain.”
I reached for her.
5
When I kissed her, her hands went around me at once, holding me close. Her arms weren’t tight around me but pressed me close with a gentleness matched only by the feeling of her mouth on mine. Her lips were softer than the rain in her hair and her mouth tasted of nectar and ambrosia.
The first kiss was like that all the way—firm but yielding, gentle and tender but still thoroughly satisfying, exciting and oddly chaste all at once. We kissed with our mouths closed which was something I had almost forgotten how to do, and it was nice.
I let go of her; looked at her. She smiled with her lips and eyes, the shy smile of a schoolgirl. There was something frighteningly virginal about her and I had to force myself to remember that this was the girl who had slept with Eddie Reed and had then made off with a boodle of fifty grand. It seemed impossible.
The second kiss was different. This time my tongue licked at her lips and they parted for me. Her arms were tight around me and genuine passion was pushing the virginal quality into the background. I forced my tongue deep into the hidden recesses of her mouth, tasting the overwhelming sweetness of her, holding her tight against me and feeling her soft warn breasts against my chest.
She went limp when the kiss ended. I took her lovely face in my hands and started kissing her all over it—her eyelids, her cheeks, her little ears, the tip of her little nose. She made purring noises like a fat cat on a thick rug in front of a warm fire.
I kissed her throat, her hair, the nape of her neck. I could feel the passion growing in her and could feel my own passion growing to meet it. Her skin was soft, very soft, and her hair smelled sweet as new-mown hay.
We didn’t talk. She stretched out on my bed and I lay down beside her, still kissing her. Our mouths met and I lay right on top of her, feeling her beneath me. This time her tongue darted into my mouth and her warm body started to move below me.
I ran my hands over her. I liked the feel of her under my hands. I wanted to keep touching her forever until we both went up in smoke.
“Ted—”
I looked into her eyes. “Take off my clothes, Ted.”
My fingers were trembling but I forced them to behave. I unbuttoned all the buttons on the man’s flannel shirt and slipped it back over her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra and the sudden sight of her perfect breasts was almost too much for me. I could only look at them. My fingers itched to touch them but all I could do was stare.
She propped herself up on her elbows and I got the shirt off and let it fall to the floor. With an effort I got out of my own shirt and tossed it away too. Then I lay down on top of her again and we were both naked from the waist up, our flesh touching, our bodies straining to get us as close together as possible.
“You’ve got hair on your chest,” she said. “I’m glad. I like it, Ted. I like the way it feels against me.”
I moved so that the hair on my chest brushed the tips of her breasts and she shook like a leaf. Her eyes were clenched shut and her lips were parted.
