Gus looked uncomfortable. “Too much trouble, I guess. We keep to our own. We live off the up graders’ scraps—”
“Uh-uh,” Bailey said. “They live off ours—some of them, even at the top.”
“Crusters and Dooses—live off Prekes?” Gus wagged his head. “Your drive is slipping, Bailey.”
“Who do you think backs the big books? There’s money involved—several million every night. Where do you think it goes?”
“Into the bookers’ pockets, I guess. What about it? I don’t like this kind of talk. It makes me nervous.”
“The big books want you to be nervous,” Bailey said. “They don’t want anyone asking questions, rocking the boat. But let’s ask some anyway. Where does the money go? It goes upstairs, Gus. That’s why they let us alone, let us spend our lives cutting each other’s throats—so they can bleed off the cream. It’s good business.”
“You’re skywriting, Bailey.”
“Sure, I admit it’s guesswork. But I’m betting I’m right. And if I am, we can cut ourselves as big a slice as we’ve got the stomach for.”
“Look, we’re doing OK, we play small enough maybe they don’t pay no attention—”
“They’ll pay attention. Don’t think we’re the first to ever get ideas. Staying small is the one thing we can’t do. It will be a sure tip-off that we’re just a pair of mice in the woodwork. We have to work big, Gus. It’s the only bluff we’ve got.”
“Big—on four M.” Gus stared scornfully at the chips he had been fondling.
“That’s just seed,” Bailey said. “Tonight we move into the big time.”
“How?”
“We borrow.”
Gus stared. “You nuts, Bailey? Who—”
“That’s what I want you to tell me, Gus. Here.” He slid a sheet of paper across the table. “Write down the names of every man in the Quarters that might be good for a few hundred. I’ll take it from there.”
6
The dark-eyed man sat with his face in shadow, his long-fingered hands resting on the table before which Bailey stood, waiting.
“Why,” he asked in a soft, sardonic drawl, “would I put chips in a sucker play like that?”
“Maybe I made a mistake,” Bailey said loudly. “I thought you might want a crack at some important money. If you’d rather play it small and safe, I’ll be on my way.”
“You talk big, for a nothing from noplace.”
“It’s not where I’m from—it’s where I’m going,” Bailey said offhandedly.
“You think you’re at the bottom now,” the man snarled. “You can drop another six feet—into dirt.”
“What would that prove?” Bailey inquired. “That you’re too big a man to listen to an idea that could make you rich—if you’ve got the spine for a little risk?”
“I take chances when the odds are right—”
“Then take one now. Buy in an M’s worth—or half an M. You get it back tomorrow—with interest. If you don’t—I guess you’ll know what to do about it.”
The man leaned back; the light glinted from his deep-set eyes. He rubbed the side of his thin beaked nose. “Yeah. I guess I’d think of something at that. Let me get this straight: Aroon is selling slices of a book that will pay twenty-five percent for twenty-four hours’ action . . .”
“That’s tonight. Investors only. Tomorrow’s too late.”
“How do I know you don’t hit the lifts with the bundle?”
“You think I could make it—with all the eyes that will be watching me?”
“Who else is in?”
“You’re the first. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover before sunset, Mr. Farb. Are you in or out?”
The hawk-nosed man touched his fingertips together, scratched his chin with a thumb.
“I’ll go four M,” he said. “Better have five ready by sunset tomorrow.”
Bailey accepted the stack of gold chips. “You’ve made a smart move, Mr. Farb. Tell your man to tail me from close enough to move in if some sharpie tries to play rough.”
Six hours and forty-one calls later, Bailey returned to the Aroon pad with twenty-six M in chips. His reluctant partner goggled, hastened to sweep the loot into a steel box.
“It’s safe,” Bailey said, sinking wearily into a chair. “We bought plenty of protection along with the cash. Every investor on the list has a man or two out there keeping an eye on his stake.”
“Bailey,” Aroon’s voice had a faint quaver. “What if we bomb out? They won’t leave enough of us to tie a tag on.”
“Then we’d better not bomb out. Just give me time for a cup of feen, and we’ll start booking them.”
Aroon sweated heavily during the first hour of the night’s play. Of the ten thousand or so that was the normal wager on the twenty-three hundred hour readouts, Bailey diverted two to the private book, scattering the bets so as to disturb the normal pattern as little as possible.
“The longer we can keep the big boys off our necks at this stage, the better,” he pointed out. “We’ll feed them enough to keep ’em happy until we’ve built up some steam.”
“They’re bound to tip after a while,” Gus protested.
“We’ll be ready. Jack the ante to thirty percent next hour.”
By midnight the traffic had risen to over twenty M in wagers on the numbers on the big board; customers, encouraged by the abnormally high rate of pay-off, were reinvesting their takes. Aroon wagged his heavy head as he paid out line after line.
“We ain’t doing so good,” he muttered, watching the digits flicker on the monitor screen. “I never paid off like this in six years of drop work.”
“I’m keeping the balance as sweet as I can and still show a profit,” Bailey reassured him. “We have to build our following fast.”
“We’re barely clearing enough to pay off our backers!”
“That’s right. But I’m banking that they’ll stay on for another whirl. We’re going to need all the siders we can get when the squeeze comes.”
In the following hours, the pot grew to fifty M, to seventy. Now Aroon was booking a full half of the offers on the new ledger.
“It can’t go on long,” he groaned. “We’re cutting too big a slice! Bailey, we ought to take it slow, not make a wave—”
“Just the opposite. We’re running a bluff, Gus. That means show all the muscle you can beg, borrow, or fake up out of foam rubber.”
By dawn, the new book had turned a grand total of almost half a million in bets, for a pay-off of sixty-seven percent and a net profit of forty thousand Q’s.
“We’re clear,” Aroon announced in wondering tones after the count. “We can square our stakers and clean seven and a half—” He broke off as a sharp sound came from the locked street door—a sound of breaking metal. The door jumped inward and three men came through without triggering the defense circuits. Gus came to his feet, started to bluster, but the small man leading the trio showed him the gleam of a slug pistol.
“Easy, Gus,” Bailey said in a relaxed tone. “Let ’em snoop.” Bailey and Aroon stood silent as the three cruised the room, aiming detector instruments at the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
“Clean,” the two underlings reported. “There ain’t no tap here, Buncey.”
“That’s good for you small-timers,” the man called Buncey said in a soft tone. “If you were bleeding the wire, you’d wake up a long way from here—only you wouldn’t wake up. The way it is, we just lift the take and close you down. You’re lucky, see? Vince, Greaseball here will tell you where he keeps the loot.”
“No he won’t,” Bailey said in a level tone. Buncey turned to look him up and down. He dandled the gun on his palm.
“Use it or put it away,” Bailey said. “We don’t bluff.”
“Kid, listen—” Gus started.
“You tired of breathing?” the small man inquired softly, curling his fingers around the weapon.
“Don’t play dumb,” Bailey said. “You’ve been covered like a bashful bride ever since you came in here.”
“Yeah?” the small man said tightly. “Maybe. But I could still blow you down, junior.”
“Does your boss want to spend three chips for a couple of front men?”
“Our boss doesn’t like small-time competish,” the gunman growled.
Bailey showed him a crooked grin. “Dream on, Buncey. We booked in half a million tonight. Does that look like small time?”
“You’re cutting your own throat, cheapie—”
“There won’t be any throats cut,” Bailey said. “Wake up, there’s been a change. Our outfit is in—and we’re not settling for small change. Our backers are taking a full share.”
Buncey snorted. “You’re showing your cuff, dummy. The play’s backed from the top—all the way up. And it’s a closed operation, all tied up, a tight operation. You got no backers. Your bluff is bust—”
“There’s more,” Bailey said. “Sure, your Cruster bosses have always cut the pie their way. But as of tonight, there’s one more slice. And this one stays below decks, where it belongs.”