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“Double or nothing?”
“Later.” Winking, he fired a fake pistol into the other guy’s expansive gut, then ambled off, taking his drink with him.
Actually he would love to try and win back his losses, but the sad fact of the matter was, he was strapped for cash. The last series of games, all of which he’d lost, had left him several hundred dollars poorer. Until his cash flow problem abated, he couldn’t afford to gamble.
Nor could he indulge in the finer things of life. That last hundred would have gone a long way toward taking the edge off his nerves. Nothing fancy. Just a few lines. Or a pill or two. Oh, well…
It was a good thing he still had the counterfeit credit card. He could cover his living expenses with that, but for extras he needed cash. That was a little harder to come by. Not impossible. It just required more work.
And Bobby had his heart set on less work and more relaxation. “It won’t be long now,” he told himself, smiling into his highball glass. When his investment paid off, there would be years of recreation to look forward to.
But his smile was short-lived. A cloud of uncertainty moved across the fantasy of his sunny future. Unfortunately, the success of his money-making scheme depended on his partner, and he was beginning to doubt her trustworthiness. In fact, doubt was burning his gut as fiercely as the cheap whiskey he’d been drinking all evening. When it came right down to it, he didn’t trust her any farther than he could throw her.
He sat down on a stool at the end of the bar and ordered another drink. The maroon vinyl seat had once borne a leather grain imprint, but it had been worn almost slick from supporting decades of hard drinkers. Except for needing to keep a low profile, he wouldn’t have patronized a low-class tavern like this. He had come a long way since hanging out in joints of this caliber. He had moved up from where he’d started. Way up. Upwardly mobile, that was Bobby Trimble.
Bobby had cultivated a new image for himself, and he wasn’t about to give it up. One couldn’t help what he’d been born into, but if he didn’t like it, if he knew instinctively that he was destined for bigger and better things, he could sure as hell shake one image and create another. That’s what he had done.
It was this acquired urbane appeal that had landed him the cushy job in Miami. The nightclub owner had needed a guy with Bobby’s talents to act as host and emcee. He looked good and his line of bullshit drew the ladies in. He took to the job like a duck to water. Business increased significantly. Soon the Cock’n’Bull was one of the most happening nightspots in Miami, a city famous for happening nightspots.
The nightclub had been packed every night with women who knew how to have a good time. Bobby had cultivated and then nurtured its raunchy reputation to compete with the other ladies’ entertainment clubs.
The Cock’n’Bull made no apology for having a down-and-dirty floor show that appealed to women, not ladies, who weren’t afraid to really let their hair down. On most nights, the dancers went all the way down to the skin. Bobby kept his tuxedo on, but he talked the talk that whipped the women into a sexual frenzy. His verbal come-ons were more effective than the thrusting pelvises of the dancers. They adored his dirty dialogue.
Then one night a particularly enthusiastic fan climbed up on the stage with one of the dancers, dropped to her knees, and started doing the nasty thing on him. The crowd went wild. They loved it.
But the vice squad working undercover didn’t.
They secretly called for backup, and before anyone realized what was happening, the place was lousy with cops. He had been able to sneak out the back door—but not before helping himself to all the cash in the office safe.
Because of a fondness for the racetrack, and a recent streak of very bad luck, he had been in debt to a loan shark, who wouldn’t have understood that the club’s closing amounted to a temporary cessation of income, which would have been reversed soon. “Soon” wasn’t in a loan shark’s vocabulary.
So, with the club owner, the cops, and the loan shark on his tail, he had fled the Sunshine State, with nearly ten thousand dollars lining the pockets of his tuxedo. He had his Mercedes convertible painted a different color and switched the license plates on it. For a time, he traveled leisurely up the coast, living well off stolen money.
But it hadn’t lasted forever. He’d had to go to work, plying the only trade he knew. Passing himself off as a guest of the luxury hotels, he hung out at the swimming pools, where he worked his charm on lonely women tourists. The money he stole from them he considered a fair exchange for the happiness he gave them in bed.
Then, one night, while sipping champagne and sweet-talking a reluctant divorcee out of her room key, he spotted an acquaintance from Miami across the dining room. Excusing himself to go to the men’s
room, Bobby had returned to his hotel, hurriedly packed his belongings into the Mercedes, and got the hell out of town.
He laid low for several weeks, forgoing even the hustling. His reserve cash dwindled to a piddling amount. For all his affectations and polished mannerisms, when Bobby looked in the mirror, he saw himself as he’d been years ago—a brash, small-time hustler running second-rate cons. That self-doubt was never so strong as when he was broke, when it set in with a vengeance. One night, feeling desperate and a little afraid, he got drunk in a bar and wound up in a fight with another customer.
It was the best thing that could have happened. That barroom brawl had been observed by the right person. It had set him on his present course. The culmination was in sight. If it worked out the way he planned, he would make a fortune. He would have the wealth that befitted the Bobby Trimble he was now. There would be no going back to the loser he had been.
However—and this was a huge “however”—his success rested with his partner. As he had earlier established, women were not to be trusted to be anything other than women.
He drained his drink and raised his hand to the bartender. “I need a refill.”
But the bartender was engrossed in the TV set. The picture was snowy, but even from where he sat Bobby could make out a guy talking into the microphones pointed at him. He wasn’t anybody Bobby recognized. He was an unsmiling cuss, that was for sure. All business, like the welfare agents who used to come nosing around Bobby’s house when he was a kid, asking personal questions about him and his family, butting into his private business.
The guy on TV was one cool dude, even with a dozen reporters stepping over each other to crowd around him. He was saying, “The body was discovered this evening shortly after six o’clock. It has been positively identified.”
“Do you have—”
“What about a weapon?”
“Are there any suspects?”
“Mr. Smilow, can you tell us—”
