Carny kill Read online

  Carny kill

  Robert Edmond Alter

  Robert Edmond Alter

  Carny kill

  1

  It was one of those tourist traps that have turned the coast of Florida into a glittering facade. They hide the naked sight of the hundreds of thousands of voracious cash registers behind the tinsel. That way the innocent tourists won't be stampeded into running for cover in fear for their wallets.

  This place was on the outskirts, on the tidelands, where acreage is cheap. It was a big, bristling, brawling take-off on the Disneyland idea out in Southern Cal. You might almost call it a steal.

  It was owned and operated by an old carny man named Robert Cochrane, and he was a pretty canny Irishman. If Disney had a Jungle Ride, Cochrane had a Swamp Ride. The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House at Disneyland became the Tarzan House at Neverland. That was the name of the trap. Neverland. Remember Peter Pan's fun-andgames island?

  Like most of those places that are designed for the tourist who wanders around with money falling out of his pockets, it looked fine on top, impressive. Then you start scratching the surface and the dirt you find under your fingernails is the same grime you'll find in any clipjoint.

  That's why I felt at home.

  They had a regular old fashioned carnival attraction tucked behind a monstrosity called Dracula's Castle- where all kinds of wired spooks sprang at you with earsplitting screams and where your girl's skirt was blown up around her ears so all the sailors and pimply-faced highschool dropouts could gawk at her panties. I made for it like a homing pigeon.

  But something was wrong. It was like I'd walked into a familiar room and found that somebody had moved a couple pieces of furniture out of place.

  They had the illusion show and the shooting gallery and the fat lady and the tattooed man and the stripshow. Everything was there but it was out of tune. The stripshow barker for example. He was as noisy and as flashy as he should be but he wasn't trying to turn his tip with that air of insistent urgency you usually expect to find in a sideshow. He seemed to be making a joke of it.

  Then I got it. It was all a joke, a part of the facade. The carny attraction was only there for atmosphere. So Ma could turn to Pa and say, "Why it's just like a regular sideshow, ain't it, Elmo?" Just good wholesome fun. Something else Cochrane had learned from Mr. Disney.

  A soldier and two girls and a man and wife with their two girls, and then two girls who didn't seem to belong to anybody, were all ganged around the shooting gallery and the soldier was making an embarrassed sap of himself by missing all the little white rabbits as they glided by on their pivots.

  One of the soldier's girls turned and looked at me-that sort of under-and-around look that's been handed down from girl to girl for God knows how many thousands of years-and she had on a sweater that must have belonged to her little sister, it was that tight, and she might have been all of sixteen.

  I decided to make the soldier look even better.

  "Step aside, folks," I said in my barker voice. "Let the man see the rabbit'

  The op behind the counter had the kind of mute, predatory face that belonged in a shooting gallery. He gave me a quick flat look and handed me a twentytwo in exchange for my quarter.

  The soldier didn't think much of me. He said so with his eyes. I grinned at him. Then I winked at the girl on his left. The one with the sweater that wouldn't stop.

  I looked at the twentytwo and it looked all right. Then I bapped at the first little rabbit and turned him aboutf ace on his pivot. It seemed to be an honest rifle. When the rabbit slid out of his burrow again I went to work on him and kept him turning right-left, right-left until the magazine was empty.

  I handed the rifle back to the op.

  "Where do I find The Man?" I asked.

  His eyes drifted to the left as though he were thinking about something else-anything, including reaching for the billy he probably kept under the counter.

  "Something wrong?" he asked quietly.

  "No beef," I told him. "Need a job."

  "Carny?"

  "Yeah." I named a couple of outfits.

  "Spiel?"

  "Um. And sleight of hand. The usual."

  His eyes flicked at me again. Then he raised himself against the counter and called over our heads to a girl who was passing through the outer crowd.

  "Billie! 'Mere, huh?"

  This girl wasn't sixteen. She wasn't wearing a sweater. She looked as sharp as a New York City model. She had floss candy hair that made you hungry. She stopped and looked toward us inquiringly, then walked our way, her highheels clicking rhythmically on the cement.

  That's when the soldier decided to show his girls just who was as tough as a horseshoe around there.

  "You wink at her, buddy?" He meant the sweater girl.

  "No," I said.

  He came a little closer and managed to give the movement a touch of swagger.

  "Yeah but I seen you," he said.

  "Then why ask me about it-if you sawed me?"

  "Listen, buddy," he said.

  I didn't want to fight him. There was no point in it. I was pretty sure I could take him, the way a fighter can sometimes tell with his opponent the first moment he comes in against him. There's no profit in proving something to yourself that you already know.

  I said, "Let's forget about it," and I turned to face the girl with the cottoncandy hair.

  She was looking at my face and her eyes slid over my right shoulder and widened a little. I guess the soldier had decided to exhibit some muscle about then, because I heard the shooting gallery op say, "Ixnay, soldier. Or I'll have three guards on you before you can say Jesus."

  The soldier said something about my mother's marital status and gathered up his girls and left. I wasn't paying any attention. I was looking at the girl called Billie.

  You meet a girl like this, who looked as if she had just stepped out of the center-spread of Playboy magazine with her clothes on, and you can damn near feel your lousy fiftytwo-dollar suit grow wrinkles and you wish to God you had shaved later in the day instead of the first thing in the morning.

  "He wants to see Rob. A job. Take him, huh?" The shooting gallery op finished his telegram message and this Billie looked at me again and said, "Sure."

  I said thanks to the shooting gallery op and Billie and I walked off together.

  One of the things I liked about her is that she didn't use that wouldn't-you-like-to-lay-me look that's been handed down for thousands of years. When she looked at me it was straight on. It wasn't cold or to hell with you, buster. It was impersonal and it was honest.

  "Billie," I said. "That's a perfect name for a prostitute."

  "What's that crack supposed to mean?" A little fire came into her eyes. They were gold-flecked. It was still daylight. That's how I could tell the color of her eyes.

  "No inference meant," I said. "That's just the way your name struck me. If I were going to write a book and I wanted a whore in it, I'd call her Billie."

  She smiled. "Too stereotyped. Too obvious. I'd fool everyone and call her an old-fashioned name. Like Emily."

  I didn't tell her I'd once known a whore named Emily. She hadn't been old-fashioned though.

  The barker on the illusion show bally platform was an adenoidal-looking man who used his adenoma-voice as part of his stock in trade. He was spieling to a group of marks about the spider lady.

  "She scrabbles, she climbs, she spins a web."

  Then I looked at him again. He was looking over his marks at me. I didn't say anything or make a sign. I kept on walking with Billie. But she had noticed.

  "Something?" she asked incuriously.

  "Uh-uh." There was no sense in telling her that Bill Duff and I once worked in a carny together. That Bill Duff
used to hang around my wife like a bee around honey. That Bill Duff lost an eyetooth one night when I lost my patience.

  "What do you do around here, Billie?" I asked.

  "I'm one of the nautch girls. I do a specialty dance. Only it's more the Twist than anything Far East."

  "I'll bet you're good."

  She smiled up at me. I'm fairly tall. So was she but even in her spike heels I was up to her.

  "I'll bet you bet," she said.

  "I'll come see you in action sometime," I said.

  "Not if Rob gives you a job you won't." She was firm about that.

  They had a tavern which really wasn't a tavern and they called it the Klondike. It was right out of the 1898 gold rush. Lots of Yukon atmosphere. They had a floorshow where the girls in the big feathered hats whirled around and threw up their skirts and saluted the audience with their bottoms. A sort of halfassed cancan. They served only soft drinks. It was pretty cute.

  Billie took me around to the back. There was a closed door with the usual mysterious word Private on it, and she said: "You'll find Rob upstairs."

  "All right," I said. "Now I know where to find Rob. Where do I find you?"

  "I told you where I work."

  "You said I was too young to see such sights."

  She smiled and it was a very pretty thing and I wanted to reach out and take hold of her and start making love to her right there in front of the private door behind the Klondike.

  "I'll know where to find you," she said. "If you get the job. The word gets around." Then she said, "Oh. You didn't mention your name."

  "I never do if I can help it. So I go by the first half of my last. Thax."

  "Thaxton?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'm Billie Peeler."

  I looked at her. It was too much of a coincidence to be true. She laughed.

  "My agent gave it to me. Only took him an hour of brainracking to come up with it."

  "I figured."

  "Well," she said, "I hope you get the job."

  "Well," I said, "it doesn't really matter, does it?"

  Her greengold eyes gave me a look of mild speculation. "That's entirely up to you-Thax!'

  I wasn't sure I got that. Then I looked at her eyes again and I was sure. And it did matter whether I got that job or not.

  2

  This Robert Cochrane reminded me of a character out of _The Informer_. As Irish as Paddy's potato. Built like one, too. Big, round, rough. He didn't have the faith-andbejasus brogue though, which was a shame. Then he would have been complete. He must have been getting on to sixty.

  "C'mon in and grab a seat. That one-where I can look at you. Carny man, huh?" He grinned at me like a Halloween pumpkin.

  "The word really does get around," I said, and sat in a chair on the other side of his desk. "Or does it show on my face?"

  "Gabby gave me a buzz," he explained. "I like to keep in touch."

  "Gabby," I said. "Oh, the shooting gallery op." It was one of those ironic reversals. The guy who hardly ever opens his mouth is usually tagged Gabby.

  "Spielers I don't need," Cochrane told me right off. "They're a dime a dozen."

  "So are strippers," I said. "But who ever turns a pro down?"

  The light went on in his pumpkin face again.

  "You're good, huh? What have you done?"

  I named a few outfits I had worked for. Then I said, "My wife used to have an act. I spieled for her."

  He was studying me now.

  "What's your name?"

  "L. M. Thaxton. Thax is good enough."

  His grin came back. "I'll bet that first initial covers up a doozy."

  I smiled. "How would you like to be called Leslie?"

  "What about this sleight of hand?" he wondered. "You good at it?"

  I hunched forward and put both my elbows on the desk, picked up a number four pyramid-shaped sinker he used as a paperweight in my left hand and held it up to him. Then I made a flicker of motion with my right forefinger and the split instant his eyes trembled I ducked my left hand at the wrist and showed him my open palm and he was staring at an empty hand.

  A real legerdemain artist is born, not made. Constant practice is vital, sure. But it doesn't add up to a good goddam if the sense of prestidigitation isn't inherent in the performer. The big trick is in directing the attention of your audience at the instant you substitute one thing for another. I had directed Cochrane's attention to my right hand when I shot the sinker down my left sleeve.

  Cochrane was beaming like a kid. Funny thing about him-as old as he was and as long as he'd been around illusionists, he still got a kick out of that sort of thing.

  "It's up your left sleeve, huh?" he said.

  "Sure-it was," I said and I shot my left arm straight out at him and turned over my fist and opened it and it was still empty. He smiled and looked in my right hand and took back his paperweight.

  "You've got the knack," he admitted, "but…" He thought about it for a bit. Then- "Here's a thought. You good at the shell game?"

  I said I was and he said all right, he would put me in the carnival attraction with a stand and the shell game, to add to the atmosphere. Then he became serious.

  "This ain't the old carny you and I knew," he warned me. "We don't pick the marks up by the heels and shake 'em till they're dry anymore. Times have changed."

  "Yes they have," I said. "The shooting gallery op still keeps a sap under the counter and you still pay the law blind money to ignore the nautch girls."

  He grinned. "You're guessing. Sure, we've got a lot of old time carnys working this lot, and they're as sharp as ever. But once you get around you'll notice we got highschool and college kids working here. Nice clean kids that keep the atmosphere homey."

  He looked at me as if he were trying to see inside me, see what made me spin.

  "I want it to stay that way, Thax." He meant it.

  For a moment I felt an old familiar unease, and I wondered if he had heard about me. Then I figured probably not-otherwise he would want to kick it around before he hired me. There were some outfits up north that wouldn't touch me with an elephant gaff.

  "Sure," I said. "I won't give you any grief."

  I meant it. I liked him.

  Then he named a price and I didn't think much of it and I gave one with a better name, which he countered, and I countered it, and we settled somewhere in between, and then he gave me a card that said I was employed by the Cochrane Enterprises.

  "How's the grouch bag holding?" he asked.

  "All right. I've got a few bucks."

  Damn few. Five bucks was the truth. But I didn't want to start out by touching the boss.

  "Got a place to sack?" he asked. "There's a bunkhouse around behind the Watusi Village. Some of the boys use it."

  I knew those bunkhouses. They're used by the rummies who swamp up the lot and by the alky-paralyzed geek. Though this place wouldn't have one because there is nothing homey about a geek's atmosphere.

  "I'll make out," I told him.

  "All right, Thax. I'll have Gabby set you up a stand. Keep your nose clean."

  "Like a whistle," I said. I really did like him.

  It was dusk when I came out and Neverland was full of clamor. Cochrane's lot got a good play.

  The place was laid out like a wagonwheel with a big garden in the hub. It had a fountain with colored lights and liquid music coming out of the water and that sort of thing.

  The Coke and popcorn and ice-cream vendors wheeled their barrows up and down the flowered lanes and hawked their appeals to the common hunger and thirst of the citizenry. Little, overpainted, short-skirted highschool girls ran around in shrieking batches with armloads of kewpie dolls and peanuts and floss candy, and small gangs of pimply, shaggy-haired teenage boys prowled doggedly after them, laughing and smirking and desperately trying to show everyone just how goddam rough and manly they really were by yelling _Aw hell_ and _My ass_ in their pubertyshrill voices.

  And the luck boys were
there too. It's easy to spot them when you know what to look for. There was one-a big curly-haired, rose-cheeked man who might have passed for a prosperous lawyer-who was holding up his hand to attract the attention of a more or less middle-aged group of marks.

  "The management has requested me to warn you that there's been a report of a pickpocket in here this evening. Please, ladies and gentlemen, watch out for your wallets and purses. And please do not hesitate to inform one of the uniformed guards if you should happen to notice this man. The management will pay a reward for his apprehension. Thank you."

  It was an old dodge. I grinned at the luckboy and held up my five dollar bill and put it back in my pocket.

  I went over and joined the gang of lusty-eyed marks in front of the kootch bally stand, telling myself I might as well get some use out of my Neverland card. But the truth was I wanted to see that dance of Billie's. The girl who collected tickets gave me a funny little look when I flashed my card but I didn't think anything about it.

  The little theater was dark, except for the lighted stage, and it looked like some fairy designer's idea of a lush seraglio with all the Far East draperies on the walls and the scimitars and the swords with the rippled blades and the high domed ceiling with luminous stars painted on it.

  The orchestra sat gook-legged on a Persian rug and they were dressed to look like Malay pirates I guess. They had two-three wood drums and a couple of pick and twang gutstrung boxes that looked like the barbaric cousins of the guitar. And there was a horn.

  Three nautch girls in skimpy harem-type outfits were on stage and they went through their gyrations like they weren't being paid enough for it, showing a lot of meaty white thigh and breast. It wasn't much. I found myself a vacant seat in the back where I figured Billie wouldn't be able to see me in the dark.

  Then she came out and they hit her with a pink spot. She was wearing some lawbreaking sheer turquoise veils and a lot of bangles and heavy makeup and that was about it. She was incalculably voluptuous.

  One of the drums said domm and she slapped her hands and hip-slung a hole in culture that would take a decade of hardbound morality to shore up.