The Paul Cain Omnibus: Every Crime Story and the Novel Fast One as Originally Published (Black Mask) by Cain Paul

Author:Cain, Paul [Cain, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2013-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

Sockdolager*

I’m Finn; thirty-three, white, unmarried, and a professional gambler. By professional I mean up until six or seven years age I was an amateur and turned over most of the money I made—which was plenty—to the bookmakers. That got to be pretty monotonous. I finally broke the monotony by the simple expedient of becoming a bookmaker.

Late last Fall I came out to California—Los Angeles. It was my first trip but it was just like coming home because practically all my friends were here. I took a big apartment in the Strip on the edge of Hollywood—the Strip is where the speakeasys and class nightclubs used to be when there was still reason to speak easily and when you could tell the difference between a class club and a honkytonk—and listened to propositions. I had a bankroll as big as your thigh.

I finally picked the proposition that looked best and it turned out to be—to put it modestly—a pip. Fritz Kiernan and I went into partnership and inside of six weeks we had the juiciest play on the Coast. We had two spots, one in the center of Hollywood and one for ladies only in a house in Beverly Hills.

That Number Two spot was an inspiration. The Santa Anita track had just opened and all Southern California had gone nag-nutty. We got the cream in Number Two; at two o’clock of any afternoon in the week you could stand in the middle of the main room and poke your finger in the eye of anywhere from ten to two dozen picture stars, wives of stars, “cousins” of producers, and just plain rich women. If you think men are natural gamblers you ought to see a lot of gals who can afford it in a bunch. A two grand parlay was chickenfeed.

We got most of the she class play that didn’t go to the track, and after the track closed for the season about a million new horse players had been made and we had wire service to all the eastern tracks and kept on getting it. Our Number One place was holding its head up, too. The proverbially flourishing green bay tree was a stunted sapling alongside of us; we were rolling in dough.

Then one night a couple months ago—it was a Friday because I’d been to the regular Friday night fights at the American Legion Stadium—I was sitting in the Brown Derby with two or three of the boys and a waiter brought a phone over and plugged it in and piped: “Mister Kiernan wants to talk to you.”

I nodded at the girl at the switchboard, said: “Hello.”

Kiernan’s voice was a shade and a half above a whisper: “Listen, Sean… .”

He was one of the even half-dozen people who pronounce my name the way it should be pronounced: Shane.

I listened.

“I’m out at the house—my house… .”

I said: “You sound like you were in a coal mine. Stop whispering.”

There was a meaningless jumble of sound and then: “Somebody took a shot at me… .

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