Say it with Bullets by Richard Powell

Author:Richard Powell [Powell, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

This was Reno. It was filled with people trying to hit jackpots on slot machines and hoping to break the bank at roulette and blackjack and faro. Compared to a character named Bill Wayne, they were betting on sure things. First he had to find Frankie Banta, which was beginning to look like one chance in a hundred. Then he had to convince Frankie he hadn’t killed Russ and Ken, which was one in a thousand. Finally he had to coax Frankie to spill everything. One chance in a million.

The other people in Reno were merely gambling with money, and if they lost they could go back to Woonsocket or Wichita or Wenatchee and make some more. He was gambling with time: five minutes here, ten there. Any moment he might dig down for more and find he had just lost his last second.

It was ten at night and he had been hunting Frankie for almost seven hours. At eight the next morning, the Treasure Trip bus would roll west, heading for Yosemite National Park. He didn’t like the idea of staying behind to play a lone game; he would have been sunk back in Salt Lake City if Holly hadn’t saved him. But staying behind when the bus left was a minor worry. His major worry was that things seemed to happen fast to his former pals as soon as he hit town. Frankie Banta might be running short of time, too.

The bus had reached Reno early that afternoon. As soon as the party checked in at a tourist court, he slipped away and started hunting for Frankie. The address he had was a rooming house and it was a dud. Frankie had been kicked out months earlier for dropping behind in his rent. Five bucks bought another address from the landlady, but five bucks didn’t go far in Reno and the address was no good. He went back and bought a better address for ten bucks. This one was all right but Frankie wasn’t in his room. The second landlady said Frankie was a bellhop at one of the hotels but she wasn’t sure which. He did pick up one useful fact: the landlady said Frankie hadn’t been out of town in all the time she had known him. So that cleared Frankie of the murders.

He went paging the guy at the Mapes and Riverside and finally, long after dinnertime, found he was employed at one of the smaller hotels. Oh no, he wasn’t there. You didn’t hit jackpots that easily. Frankie was off duty.

For ten bucks the bell captain had some ideas. “It’s like this, mister,” he said. “Frankie is slot machine silly. All he does in his spare time is play them. That is, he plays them when he has some dough. When he doesn’t, he goes around making notes on how different machines pay off. Always trying to find a machine he can beat. He keeps saying he’s gotta make a stake. I never could figure what for.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.