I looked at the clock. I couldn’t help it. It was 8.19.
‘All right,’ I said. What else? It would buy time, at least. Time for me to think of some way to beat it
out of here, with or without the money.
Cressner picked up the telephone beside him and dialled a number.
‘Tony? Plan two. Yes.’ He hung up.
‘What’s plan two?’ I asked.
‘I’ll call Tony back in fifteen minutes, and he will remove the. . . offending substance from the trunk of
your car and drive it back here. If I don’t call, he will get in touch with the police.’
‘Not very trusting, are you?’
‘Be sensible, Mr Norris. There is twenty thousand dollars on the carpet between us. In this city murder
has been committed for twenty cents.’
‘What’s the bet?’
He looked genuinely pained. ‘Wager, Mr Norris, wager. Gentlemen make wagers. Vulgarians place
bets.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Excellent. I’ve seen you looking at my balcony.’
‘The screen’s off the door.’
‘Yes. I had it taken off this afternoon. What I propose is this: that you walk around my building on the
ledge that juts out just below the penthouse level. If you circumnavigate the building successfully, the
jackpot is yours.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘On the contrary. I have proposed this wager six times to six different people during my dozen years in
this apartment. Three of the six were professional athletes, like you-one of them a notorious
quarterback more famous for his TV Commercials than his passing game, one a baseball player, one a
rather famous jockey who made an extraordinary yearly salary and who was also afflicted with
extraordinary alimony problems. The other three were more ordinary citizens who had differing
professions but two things in common: a need for money and a certain degree of body grace.’ He puffed
his cigarette thoughtfully and then continued. ‘The wager was declined five times out of hand. On the
other occasion, it was accepted. The terms were twenty thousand dollars against six months’ service to
me. I collected. The fellow took one look over the edge of the balcony and nearly fainted.’ Cressner
looked amused and contemptuous. ‘He said everything down there looked so small. That was what
killed his nerve.’
‘What makes you think -‘
He cut me off with an annoyed wave of his hand. ‘Don’t bore me, Mr Norris. I think you will do it
because you have no choice. It’s my wager on the one hand or forty years in San Quentin on the other.
The money and my wife are only added fillips, indicative of my good nature.’
‘What guarantee do I have that you won’t double-cross me? Maybe I’d do it and find out you’d called
Tony and told him to go ahead anyway.’
He sighed. ‘You are a walking case of paranoia, Mr Norris. I don’t love my wife. It is doing my storied
ego no good at all to have her around. Twenty thousand dollars is a pittance to me. I pay four times that
every week to be given to police bagmen. As for the wager, however . . .’ His
I thought about it, and he left me. I suppose he knew that the real mark always convinces himself. I was
a thirty-six-year-old tennis bum, and the club had been thinking of letting me go when Marcia applied a
little gentle pressure. Tennis was the only profession I knew, and without it, even getting a job as a
janitor would be tough – especially with a record. It was kid stuff, but employers don’t care.
And the funny thing was that I really loved Maria Cressner. I had fallen for her after two nine-o’clock
tennis lessons, and she had fallen for me just as hard. It was a case of Stan Norris luck, all right. After
thirty-six years of happy bachelorhood, I had fallen like a sack of mail for the wife of an Organization
overlord.
The old tom sitting there and puffing his imported Turkish cigarette knew all that, of course. And
something else, as well. I had no guarantee that he wouldn’t turn me in if I accepted his wager and won,
but I knew damn well that I’d be in the cooler by ten o’clock if I didn’t. And the next time I’d be free