“Not with me,” I said.

  He moved his right shoulder. I saw a blur of motion. Something hit me on the side of the jaw. The blow jarred me all the way down my spine.

  “Try that, wise guy,” he said.

  My eyes were jarred out of focus; but I started both fists swinging and waded in. A left landed somewhere on his face. A right grazed his temple, then a mule kicked me. I went back against the machines and felt as though a ten-story building was using me for a basement.

  I looked through eyes that kept showing double distorted images of what was happening. I saw the attendant lash out with a quick right, and the weaving shoulders of the other man slid past the blow and inside. I saw his back grow rigid. I heard a meaty sound as though a butcher had slammed a leg of lamb down on the chopping-block. The attendant’s head shot up in the air. His feet left the floor. For a moment, it seemed as though he was taking off like a skyrocket, and I looked to see him go through the roof.

  He rocked the whole bank of slot machines as he hit.

  I heard a policeman’s whistle, then some big man had me by the arm. He slammed me around some, and I tried to fight back.

  A man’s voice came through to my consciousness. “—one of them. We’ve had an eye on ‘em for two weeks now. They’ve looted the place clean. Working a cup. It’s a racket.”

  “Come along,” the law said. A big hand twisted my coat collar and jerked.

  I wanted to talk, but I couldn’t get words to come the way they should. The girl who had been playing the machines and the man who had hit the attendant had gone. The attendant lay on the floor. His eyelids were quivering, and I could see the whites of his eyes beneath those fluttering lids.

  There were faces gathered around in a circle of openmouthed curiosity.

  The hand twisted my coat, hard. I took a deep breath and managed to start ,talking, but the words sounded funny, as though I was listening to someone else say some of the things I wanted to say.

  “I’m from Los Angeles. I haven’t been in Las Vegas for an hour. I came in on the Salt Lake plane. I never saw this place before. I played a dollar’s worth of nickels into the machine, and hit the jackpot with the last nickel.”

  There was silence. Gradually my head was clearing. The man who was holding me glanced at a newcomer who looked as though he might be the manager of the place. The manager said, “Talk’s cheap. These crooks always have a swell alibi cooked up.” But his voice didn’t have quite the ring of assurance it should have had.

  The green-aproned attendant who lay sprawled out on he floor stirred, got up on one elbow, and looked past us with glassy eyes that seemed to stare right through the wall of the building.

  The manager bent over him. “Now listen, Louie, we can’t muff this. Are you all right?”

  The attendant mumbled something.

  “Look, Louie, we’ve got to be sure now. Is this one of them? Is this the guy?”

  The manager pointed at me.

  The groggy attendant said, “That’s him. He’s the brains of the gang. They’re cup-and-wire workers. I’ve seen ‘em before. This guy’s the leader. The others came in first an’ cased the joint.”

  “Come on,” the law said to me. “You’re going places.” My head had cleared now. “This,” I said, “is going to cost somebody money.”

  “Okay, let it cost. Come on and take a ride. We want to show you our city. Coming in on the afternoon plane the way you did, you haven’t had a chance to see it.”

  The big hand of the law caught my coat again, started pushing me toward the door.

  The manager said, “Wait a minute, Bill,” and to me, “What’s your name?”

  “Lam—Donald Lam. I’m in business in Los Angeles.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “I don’t care to tell you that.”

  They laughed then.

  I said to the officer, “You’ll find a card in the wallet in my right-hand hip pocket, but don’t read it out loud.”

  The officer pulled a wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and took a look at my identification card as a private detective. That sobered him. He showed the wallet to the manager. I saw the manager’s face change expression.

  “Did you say you came in on that Salt Lake plane?”

  “Yes.”

  He said, “Bring him over here, Bill.”

  The curious faces melted away from in front of us and closed in behind as though they had been wisps of fog, clinging to a road. The manager picked up a telephone, got his number, said, “Was there a Donald Lam came in on that plane from Salt Lake today? … There was? .. . A chap in the twenties, regular features, wavy hair, weight about a hundred and twenty-seven pounds, about five-feet-five. … The hell! … Okay, thanks.”

  He hung up the telephone, said to the officer, “Bring him upstairs, Bill.”

  He opened a door. We climbed stairs to a cool office which looked out through broad windows on the constantly increasing activity of the town’s main stem. We all three sat down. The manager picked up a telephone and said, “Get Louie up here right away.”

  He hung up the telephone, and almost immediately I heard steps on the stairs, then the door opened, and the attendant, still looking punch groggy, came into the room.

  “Take a good look at this chap,” the manager said.

  The attendant took a good look at me, said, “He’s the guy they ran in to make the clean-up. That means he’s the brains of the gang. He was cupping the machine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could tell by the way he was standing, the way he leaned against the machine.”

  “You didn’t see any cup?”

  “Well, no. But he was with the other two, talking with the girl.”

  “Where are the other two?”

  The attendant blinked his eyes and started to turn his head. Then he stopped quickly as though something hurt him when he tried to turn his neck.

  “They got away.”

  The manager said impatiently, “What the hell? I hired you because you said you could handle this stuff. You’re supposed to know all the rackets and all of the gangs who work ‘em.”

  The attendant was getting the cobwebs out of his brain. “Listen,” he said, “that guy’s a prize fighter. I didn’t make him at first. Then when he threw that punch, I recognized his style. That’s Sid Jannix. He was in line for a title once, but they framed him. He’s good—plenty good.” He looked at the officer, and then at me, and said, “This guy is the brains—but he’s a new one on me.”

  “This is a hell of a time to say so,” the manager said. “Why didn’t you grab their cups so you’d have some evidence?”

  The attendant was silent.

  “Was that what you were trying to do when you grabbed my wrist and felt up my arms and jerked my coat off?” I Asked.

  The manager’s face kept getting darker. The attendant didn’t say anything.

  After a moment, the manager said disgustedly, “Okay, Louie, get the hell out of here.”

  Louie left without a word.

  The manager turned to me. “Now,” he said, “this is too bad.”

  “For you.”

  “For one of us,” he admitted. “I’m in so deep, I’m not going to quit. Suppose you tell me about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Who you are, what you’re doing here, and how I know this isn’t a racket.”

  “What isn’t a racket?”

  “The whole play. You can’t stick me without bringing your life’s history into court, anyway, so you may as well spill it now.”

  I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m here on business. I’m employed by the B. Cool Detective Agency. Bertha Cool and a client are up in the Sal Sagev Hotel right now. Give her a ring if you want to. Bertha Cool’s been in a sanitarium for months. This is her first day out. I’ve been running the Los Angeles office. I’m here to try and find a certain person. The person was out when I called. I killed time playing the slot machines.” They tried to interrupt me, but I droned right on. “I put in a dollar without getting a smell. The last nickel gave me two cherries. I scooped out the winnings, and the next nickel hit the jackpot. I never saw either of those other two people in my life, and I don’t know a damn thing about the slot-machine racket. I’m telling you all this because I don’t want you to be able to stand up in front of the jury and say that I didn’t co-operate by giving you everything. It’s your move now. Go ahead.”

  The manager looked at me for a minute, then picked up the telephone, and said, “I’m calling your bluff.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He called the Sal Sagev Hotel. “You got a Bertha Coo! registered there?” he asked. “That’s right, from Los Angeles. Let me talk with her.”

  He held the phone a moment, then suddenly said to the officer, “Better make this official, Bill, just in case.”

  “Uh huh,” the officer said.

  His thick fingers enveloped the telephone. He swallowed the receiver in his big hand, and raised it up to his left ear. Watching his face, I could tell when Bertha came on the line.

  “This is Lieutenant William Kleinsmidt of the Las Vegas police. You’ve got a man working for you whose first name is Donald? … I see…. What’s his last name? … How about a description?”

  He held the phone and looked at me as though checking things off. Once he grinned, and I knew that Bertha’s description would have the unmistakable salty tang that characterized all of her utterances.

  “And you operate a detective agency in Los Angeles? Thanks very much, Mrs. Cool…. No, he hasn’t done anything. I was just checking up, that’s all— Well, just a minute. Hold the phone.”

  He clamped the palm of his right hand over the transmitter, looked up at the manager, and said, “It checks. She wants to talk with him.”

  The manager heaved a weary sigh. “Put him on.”

  The officer handed me the phone. The hard rubber was hot and moist where his big hand had been touching it. I said, “Hello.”

  Bertha said, “What the hell have you done now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Baloney!”

  I said, “I got a line on our party.”

  “Talked with her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that isn’t going to get us any bonus.”

  “I know. She wasn’t in.”

  “Well, what the hell have you been doing?”

  I said, “I’ve been out to see the other people. Then I went to see this party. She was out. I dropped in to a casino while I was waiting, and played the slot machine.”

  “Did what?” Bertha screamed over the telephone. “Played the slot machine.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Because this party that I’m looking for is supposed to hang around the slot machines in that joint.”

  “Now you listen to me, Donald Lam,” Bertha yelled. “You don’t have to play slot machines in order to find a woman. The trouble with you—” Suddenly her voice changed. “How much did you play?”

  “Nineteen nickels without even getting a smell. I didn’t even—”

  She interrupted me. “And it serves you right. Don’t try to charge that as an expense. Whenever you do any gambling, it’s on your own. I’m not interested. You’re—”

  “And then,” I interrupted, “I won three nickels with the last play.”

  “And then shot the three nickels I suppose,” Bertha said sarcastically.

  “And the last nickel,” I said, “hit the jackpot.”

  There was silence. Then Bertha’s silky voice said, “How much did you win, lover?”

  “I don’t know, because about that time the law came down on me. I’m supposed to have been milking the slot machines.”

  “Now you listen to me, Donald Lam. You’re supposed to have brains. If you haven’t got brains enough to keep yourself out of jail, you’re fired. Can’t you realize that we have to work fast?”

  - “Sure,” I said, and hung up.

  The manager looked at Lieutenant Kleinsmidt. “How does the description check, Bill?”

  “It checks. She says he’s a pint-sized parcel of dynamite with the nerve of a prize fighter and a punch that wouldn’t jar a fly loose from a syrup jug—but he’s always trying.”

  The manager heaved a sigh that seemed to come from his boot tops. “All right, Lam, how much?”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. A complete release.”

  “I couldn’t set a price.”

  “You’re crazy. You probably work for ten dollars a day. Fifty dollars would square everything. You—”

  “You heard what Bertha told the officer.”

  “I’ll make it a hundred, even money.”

  I got up and smoothed my clothes down. The nickels in each of my side pockets sagged the cloth of the coat. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Harvey Breckenridge. I want you to understand, Lam, there’s nothing personal about this. When you’re running a place such as we run, we have to contend with—”

  I shoved my right hand out at him. “All right, Mr. Breckenridge, no hard feelings. After all, it’s just a matter of business. I’ll-have my lawyer get in touch with your lawyer.”

  “Now listen, Lam, let’s be reasonable. There are slickers who go around the country milking the slot machines. They cost us thousands of dollars every year. We keep laying for them, but they’re damned hard to catch. Louie, this attendant of mine, came to me a week ago looking for a job. He said he knew all the gangs who are in the game. He was boxing champion in the Navy, and he’s a little too handy with his fists. He just lost his head, that’s all. I guess the guy’s slap-happy. Now, why not be reasonable and—”

  “I’m the one that’s reasonable,” I said. “You’re the one that isn’t. I’ve been exposed to ridicule. I’ve been humiliated. Not only that, but you called up my employer and forced me to explain the circumstances to, her. She’ll—”

  “Oh, hell, take five hundred dollars in cash and sign a receipt and we’ll call it square.”

  I said, “No hard feelings. It’s just a matter of business,” and started for the door.

  He didn’t say anything.

  At the door, I turned. “Understand, Breckenridge, I’m not trying to stick you. If I hadn’t been working on a case that was very important, I wouldn’t have cared so much. But you asked me my name in front of all those people.”

  “That didn’t hurt you any.”

  “The girl who was playing that dime machine was the one I was tailing. I’ll have a hell of a time doing anything with her now.”

  That rang the bell. He said, “Hell,” with more disgust in his voice than I’ve heard since the Republicans lost the election. “Come back and sit down.”

  I walked back and sat down. Lieutenant Kleinsmidt was staring at me. I said to Breckenridge, “The law’s in this, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Kleinsmidt asked.

  “You.”

  “The hell I am. I won’t pay you a damn cent.”

  “You’re in it just the same.”

  “I was following instructions,” Kleinsmidt said. “Whose?”

  “His.” He jerked his head toward Breckenridge. Breckenridge said, “How much, Lam?”

  “Ten thousand or nothing. I’d prefer to have it nothing.”

  They looked at me.

  I said, “I may be here for a while. I may want some cooperation. You fellows made things hard for me while I was getting started. I just want you to understand that. You can make up for it later. That would be all I’d want.”

  Breckenridge held his face in a poker mask. “You kidding us?”

  “No. It’s on the square.”

  Breckenridge pushed back his chair, shot his hand across the desk, and said, “That’s damn square, Lam. Shake.” I shook hands. When Breckenridge released my hand, I saw Kleinsmidt’s big paw out in front of me. I shook it,_ too. It was moist and hot, and it had bone-crushing strength.

  “Exactly what do you want?” Breckenridge asked.

  “First,” I said, “I want to talk with Louie. I want to know what he knows about the girl who was playing the machines.”

  Breckenridge said, “Personally, I think Louie is full of prunes. He drifted in here from San Francisco, telling me about how he’d worked in the resorts and knew all the gangs that were working on the slot machines. Evidently, he was a good man with his mitts in the Navy. That’s the trouble. They’ve jarred his brain loose from its moorings. He’s punch drunk.”

  I rubbed my sore face. “He’s got a good wallop,” 1 admitted.

  They laughed.

  The manager picked up the interoffice phone, and said, “Send Louie back up here.”

  Lieutenant Kleinsmidt said, “We meet lots of your kind who don’t want to co-operate. We don’t waste much time with them. You’re different. Anything you want, just ask for it. I’ll see that you get it.”

  Louie came back in.

  Breckenridge said, “Louie, this guy is one of the family. Give him anything he wants. All of his drinks are on the house. As far as you’re concerned, he owns the joint.”

  I could see the surprise in Louie’s eyes.

  I got up and said, “Thanks. I’ll have a talk with Louie.” Louie looked past me to Breckenridge. “You mean anything?” he asked.

  “Anything in the place,” Breckenridge said.

  Louie shifted his eyes to me.

  “Come on,” I said. “I want to look at the inside of a slot machine, and I want to find out how they’re fixed.” Louie began to fit his clothes a lot better. “I can show you the whole dope,” he said. “There ain’t anybody in the West that knows more about ‘em than I do. I know all the gangs, and there ain’t one of ‘em can slip anything over on me. What’s more, the way I handle my mitts, I don’t need to take no run-around. When I see ‘em cupping a machine, I give ‘em the old one-two before they can ditch the evidence and—”

  The manager coughed, a dry, significant, sarcastic cough. Louie quit talking abruptly.

  “Come on,” I said, and pushed toward the door. I looked back over my shoulder. Breckenridge gave me a slow, solemn wink, put his thumb and forefinger to his temple, and made little circles.

  “Got a machine I can play with?” I asked Louie. “I want to take it to pieces. It’s five-fifteen now. I have half an hour.”