Madball (24 page)

He started toward the midway. He was so excited now that he didn't care if he ran into Jesse, or even if he ran into Mr. Evans and Mr. Evans recognized the box under his arm. If Mr. Evans asked for it back Sammy would just laugh at him and point the gun at him and Mr. Evans would run away.

Money and the gun gave Sammy a sense of power he'd never felt before. Something new, very heady. He felt as strong and as smart as anybody he might run into
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and he had the gun besides. Its weight in his pocket felt good.

Gripping the shoe box tightly under his arm, he hurried toward the model show top to look for Miss Trixie. She probably wouldn't be there, but wherever she was he'd find her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

TRIXIE CONNOR PUT the final touch on her lipstick, standing close to the full length mirror in the dressing room of the model show. She looked all right, she decided. Her face was a bit sharp, but it always had been; she couldn't do anything about that. She stepped back for a full length view of herself and pirouetted. The full length view was good. She was small but her body was perfect. She'd been called a "pocket Venus" more than once and she loved the phrase. Almost as well as she loved the body it described. Loved it and loved to show it. Posing was pure pleasure for Trixie. Her only beef with her job was the fact that in most towns the Law insisted upon at least nominal covering, a gauzy bra and a G-string. In places where the Law was tough, really Sunday School, and the girls had to wear opaque bras and wider G-strings, Trixie wasn't happy. But then again there were the few places where they could pose really naked
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of course with a hand and a forearm held like September Morn held them (but she could always manage to drop her arm a little, as though accidentally, just as they started to draw the curtain)
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and when the carney played in such places she was cheerful and happy. Of course she'd posed for artists too, and that was good in a way because she could pose completely naked and not have to pretend to be coy about it, but it wasn't good really because there was only one man looking at her and most of the time looking at her as something to paint and not something to want. Posing for art classes was a little better but not much. Carney posing was best because the marks all looked at her the way she wanted to be looked at, the way that gave her kicks.

The carney paid well, too, and that was important because next to herself Trixie loved money. Some day she was going to have a lot of money, big money, money enough to do anything she pleased
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and she had some ideas about what that would be although they weren't as definite as the plan itself, the plan for getting the money.

The plan hadn't worked yet, but it would work soon, maybe this coming winter. It was so simple that it had to work sooner or later. All through the carnival season, for the three seasons now since she'd thought of the plan, Trixie had saved her money. Her outside money, that is. Since her pay for modeling was enough for her to live well and dress well, she saved every dollar she could make on the side, after hours, selling what all men wanted, carneys and marks alike. It wasn't something that she wanted to do but she didn't mind doing it; in fact, once in a while she mildly enjoyed it. For three seasons now she'd saved every dollar she'd made that way and it had always amounted enough to let her carry out the plan.

The plan meant spending the winter
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or as much of it as her stake would allow
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at a swanky Florida winter resort, a place to which only people who were filthy rich went. She picked a different place each year, but always a very expensive resort hotel with a patio swimming pool. The more it cost the better, even though her stake would last a shorter period. She spent her afternoons sunning herself and acquiring a golden tan beside the pool. (And mornings lying nude under a sun lamp in her room so the tan would be all over and wouldn't mar her body for posing.) Sooner or later, spending her winters like that, she'd catch herself a rich man who'd want her so badly that he'd marry her. She'd come close already, a dozen times. And God knows there'd been no lack of propositions short of marriage; plenty of them had wanted her for a mistress and she could have had her choice of penthouse apartments. But she wanted more than that
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or, rather, less than that. She wanted to marry a rich man so she wouldn't have to live with him, not longer than a month or so, anyway; then she could get a divorce and a financial settlement and be independent. Like Tommy Manville's ex's. Someone like Tommy Manville she wanted. But nothing less than a marriage certificate to go with him; how could you divorce a man and hook him unless he married you first? And it was strictly her business if she was a chippy all summer so she could afford to be strictly virtuous all winter, or whatever part of all winter she could afford to spend among the rich. The two things evened out, didn't they? One paid for and complemented the other and she enjoyed both lives. Someday the combination would pay off, someday she'd hit the jackpot.

She looked at her watch. Ten minutes after one, ten minutes late for her date. But the mark would wait that long; he'd probably wait half an hour or an hour before he decided she wasn't coming. If he didn't want her badly enough to do that, he wouldn't be good for the kind of dough she expected to take him for anyway so he
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ouldn't be much of a loss. It was good for a man to be kept waiting and wondering at least for a little while.

She put the lipstick back in her purse and, seeing the note there, took it out and read it again. It had been in an envelope that had also held a ten-dollar bill. The mark had given the envelope to the ticket taker, and had probably handed him a buck to deliver it to her. She got notes from marks a dozen or more times a week
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all three of the girls did. Nine out of ten of them she just tore up but once in a while one looked as though the mark
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ould put cash on the line and had enough of it to interest her, so she followed through. This one had definitely interested her because of that ten-dollar bill.

The note
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she read it again now
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read: "Dear Trixie Connor
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(he knew her name, of course because the Poses and the poser were announced each time just before the curtain was pulled. 'Miss Trixie Connor as Queen of the Roses'; that was the pose in which she
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ore four roses
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one was in her hair, if you're curious.) This is my calling card. There are a few more like it if you would like to meet me tonight after the show. I don't know how late it runs but one o'clock ought to be safe. At one o'clock I'll be parked on Beech Street just around the corner from the carnival lot, in a light blue Buick coupe. Please come, honey. You won't be sorry."

He'd be a live one all right if he'd been willing to gamble a sawbuck just to get her attention and without knowing whether she ever put out for money or not. A few times she'd had five-dollar bills in notes the same way, and had done all right with the guys who'd sent them, but this was the first time anyone had enclosed a ten. She could count on at least another fifty out of him and maybe a hundred, especially if he wanted her to stay with him all night. A hundred bucks would be a nice addition to her winter fund. It was more than she could make in a week of sleeping around with carneys on the lot. Carneys aren't suckers; five bucks was par and twenty was just about the top she could ever get from one and that only for an all night stand.

She shoved the note back into her purse and took a final look in the big mirror before she turned off the light and left, stepping carefully under the canvas so it wouldn't muss her hair. She'd better hurry now; it was almost one-fifteen and he might decide fifteen minutes was long enough and that his ten bucks had been a bad investment.

She hurried between the tops, past the bally platform and out onto the midway, out into the light.

A voice called her name and she stopped and turned. It was only Sammy, poor halfwitted Sammy, coming toward her, almost running. He had a shoe box under his left arm and his face looked
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different.

"Miss Trixie! I was just coming for you. I want-"

She spoke rapidly. "Sammy, I can't talk to you now. I'm late for a date." She turned and started walking again.

But Sammy was walking alongside her, walking as rapidly as she was. He opened the shoe box even as she turned to him to tell him to go away and not to follow her; he reached in and held out in front of her a handful of-

They were right under a light bulb. She could see it plainly and she couldn't be wrong. It was a handful of money
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a handful of twenty and fifty-dollar bills!

Trixie Connor stopped as though she had walked into a stone wall.

Almost by reflex action her hand darted out and grabbed that handful of bills
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Sammy's fingers released them without struggle. The quickest glance showed her it was real money, not stage money or queer; the bills were all well worn and they looked right and felt right.

She forgot all about the light blue Buick coupe.

She quickly unsnapped her purse and stuffed the money into it as she whirled to face Sammy.

"Sammy, where did you get that money?"

He grinned at her. "I found it, Miss Trixie."

"Let me see that box!" She clutched at it but Sammy held onto it firmly; he was stronger than she.

He said quietly, "I'll let you see, Miss Trixie." As she let go he took off the lid and let her look. The light bulb overhead threw light into the box. Trixie gasped. Hundreds and hundreds of bills were stacked in there. Big denomination bills, most of them. At a quick glance it looked like maybe a hundred thousand dollars, maybe half a million.

Her mind clicked into overdrive. She did what she should have done seconds ago; she looked around quickly to see if anyone was watching them. No one was, and that meant for sure that nobody else knew Sammy had that money. They'd be sticking close to Sammy and planning to get it away
from him. As she was right now.

It didn't matter where the money came from. Nothing mattered but how to get it for herself.

She put her hand on his arm and pulled him out from under that glaring and dangerous light, back into the shadows between the tops. Sammy pulled willingly.

Nothing like trying the simplest thing first. She put her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. "Sammy, do you want to go to bed with me?"

"Gee, sure, Miss Trixie. That's what I give you the money for. It's enough, ain't it, what I give you?"

She could have said no and got another handful, but it was more important not to make him suspicious or even to let him wonder if she was greedy. She said, "Sure, Sammy, that was enough. For that much you can spend all night with me. And let's go to a hotel downtown."

"Whatever you say, Miss Trixie."

"Now listen to me, Sammy. You keep that box closed, don't let anybody else see inside it. Understand, Sammy? And let me do the talking, all the talking
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to the taxi driver, to the hotel clerk, to anybody we have to talk to. And let me pay for things so you won't have to open the box. We can straighten that out later between us. Do you understand, Sammy?"

"Sure, Miss Trixie. Gee, I never stayed at a hotel before, so you know what to do and I don't. You mean we're going to take a taxi? I never took no taxi before either."

"That's why you should let me handle everything, honey. Yes, we'll take a taxi if one goes by and we can hail it. If one doesn't we'll walk; it's only about twenty blocks to town. We can walk twenty blocks, can't we, honey?"

"Gee, sure, Miss Trixie."

"But now listen and let me explain some things before we start so you won't make any mistakes. We want to do this so we won't take any chances of a hotel detective walking in on us, anything like that to spoil things. I've got a couple of suitcases and we'll take them; we'll go back and get them first thing. And at the hotel we'll register
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I mean I'll register for both of us, as brother and sister, and we'll ask for separate rooms."

Her mind was working furiously now, trying to figure all the angles at once, anything that could go wrong. Brother and sister it had to be and for separate rooms. No hotel clerk would swallow their registering as husband and wife.

"Sammy, can you pretend you're deaf and dumb?"

"How, Miss Trixie?"

"Just don't talk, don't talk at all, while we're in the taxi or registering in the hotel. Just let me do everything."

She was pulling him by the arm now, walking fast, thinking fast, checking every angle. First the suitcases
- and get the shoe box into one so nobody who might recognize it would see it. Thank God she had some sleeping tablets in one of the suitcases already and part of a bottle of whisky. At the hotel she'd give him a doctored drink so that once he slept he'd sleep long and soundly and by the time he woke she'd be hundreds of miles away, switching trains and planes and buses, making a trail that couldn't be followed. Because somebody
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cops or robbers; it didn't matter which
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would be coming after that money. But give her even a few hours start and they'd never catch her.

"Sammy, honey, come on, hurry."