Part 32 (1/2)
”Yeah! Oh, yeah! That's it. I remema”” Horace stopped abruptly and pulled back from the table.
”So you're Bill Lacey's kid?” Vale said pointedly.
”Nice box,” Lacey remarked, and smiled a little less enigmatically. ”I like to box. I like boxing. I like Jorge Ramirez tonight at the Garden.”
”Ramirez, he's an eight-to-one shot!” Horace protested.
”Ramirez, the Bold Avenger,” said Vale dryly. ”Very apropos. You trying to put me outa business, Kid, huh?”
Lacey smiled an unenigmatic smile of a.s.sent.
”The Bold Avenger's a long shot, all right, but you're so hot that I'm gonna cut your odds in half. In addition, you're on rolling odds. If you announce your choices, your odds go down with the others. You understand? Now, maybe you wanna go to someone else.”
”Sounds like you're chickening out,” said Lacey.
”I never turn down a bet, kid. But those are your odds.”
”You're on.”
”How much?” asked Vale, tearing off another square of paper and licking the tip of his number 1-1/2 pencil.
Lacey tapped the top of the box again. ”You're looking at it.”
Tommy Vale was looking, not at the box but at the face of the man named Lacey. ”I gotta make a call.”
Lacey grinned. ”Not broken yet, are you, Tommy?”
Vale stood up and went for the phone. He dug into his pockets for the change but a moment later spoke to Horace in a low, grim voice: ”Got a quarter?”
Once more Lacey laughed the laugh of the asthmatic cat, the laugh of the man strangled. He reached deep into the pocket of his white linen trousers. ”Add it to the bet, Tommy. Sixty grand and a quarter.”
He held the coin up between two fingers, and Vale plucked it from there with a strangled politeness. ”I don't extend credit.” Lacey smirked.
”But that's your policy, isn't it?”
Vale smiled weakly but made no reply. He dialed his call, then huddled away from Horace and Lacey.
Horace punched out a series of numbers on the calculator and produced a dismal little tune of enormous payoffs. ”This new technology . . .
Cripes,” he said, looking up at Lacey, ”win this one . . .No wonder Tommy's on the phone.”
”Guess I'm lucky,” said Lacey.
”Guess so,” said Horace. ”But you didn't get that from your old man.
One thing Bill Lacey wasn't, was lucky. He was a nice guy, though.
Another thing you didn't inherit from him, either.”
”He was a fool,” said Lacey.
”Oh, yeah?”
”Yeah.”
”You should respect the dead,” said Horace, raising an admonitory finger.
”He shouldn't be dead,” said Lacey. ”Tommy Vale should be dead.”
”Is that what you have in mind, kid?” asked Vale, returning from the telephone.
Lacey smiled, showing no discomfort in being overheard.
”There are ways of doing things, and there are ways of doing things.”
”Listen, kid, I didn't kill Bill Lacey. I didn't throw him off the bridge. He took the easy way out of a bad situation.”
”You wouldn't see him a quarter. You had his back to the wall!”
”He put his back to the wall! No one told him to bet over his head. And I don't muscle no one.”
Nervously Lacey got up, pus.h.i.+ng past Horace. ”Just have my money here tomorrow.”
”If you win,” said Vale.
”So,” Vale said calmly, ”you can't go wrong, it seems.” He pushed across the table two boot boxes filled with untidily wrapped packages of twenty-dollar bills.
”You wanna go on taking bets?” Lacey's suit looked brighter, only because his skin looked dingier than the day before.
Vale tapped half an inch of ash from his cigar. ”I told you, I never turn away a bet. That's my reputation.
I stick with it. *Course, I get to choose the odds. And for you . . . the odds are gettin' short.”
”How about even money? One for one. Double or nothing.”
”Now you're talking.”
”On your life,” said Lacey.
A peanut went the wrong way down Horace's throat and he choked, but Tommy Vale didn't flinch. ”I see. The Bold Avenger. What's the bet, kid?”
”I bet you're dead by eight o'clock tomorrow morning.”
”That's easy. Shoot me dead and take the money.”
”At your autopsy the coroner will find you have died of natural causes.”
Horace shook his head sharply no. Vale ignored him.
”That's fair. I'm in good health . . .” Vale looked at his cigar, then crushed out the glowing tip in the ashtray. ”You get your dough.