Free Detective by Parnell Hall Page B

the Chemical Bank at 113th Street, which has a cash machine. I’d never been to an illegal casino but, smart detective that I am, I figured money might come in handy.
    The line at the machine wasn’t that long. I double-parked, hopped out, pulled out my Chem Card, and five minutes later the machine spewed out 200 dollars in nice crisp twenties, the maximum withdrawal you were allowed in any one day. I noticed on the receipt that my bank balance had dropped from $329.15 to $129.15.
    The nice thing about the cash machine was that my wife wouldn’t know I’d used it until the statement came at the end of the month. Just so long as she didn’t write too many checks and discover she was overdrawn.
    I drove down into the eighties, which I figured was safe enough, found a parking spot on West 87th Street, and left the car. I caught the IRT at Broadway and 86th Street, rode down to 50th Street, walked to the Sheraton, and was standing right outside when Murphy drew up front in a cab at 8:05.
    “Hop in,” he said. “Next stop, Playland.”
    I got in and the cab headed downtown. Murphy and I exchanged a little small talk, but I could see something was on his mind.
    “I’ve been thinking about your proposition,” he said finally.
    I’d been afraid of that. It was one thing to spew out a bullshit line of goods to try to get something out of somebody, but it was something else to keep up the facade after they’d had time to think it over.
    “Oh yeah,” I said.
    “Yeah,” he said. “There’s gotta be a way to check the references.”
    “There is,” I told him. “Just hop on the big bird to F-L-A.”
    “I can’t do that,” he said, and I was extremely grateful. “I mean without doing that. There must be some way I can check you out from here. Some way you can assure me of payment.”
    “No problem,” I told him. “I’ll just win 50 G’s tonight at the table, and we’ll use that as collateral.”
    We laughed about that, and while it didn’t satisfy him, it put off the conversation until the taxi drew up in front of an old factory building on Crosby Street. I got out and stood on the sidewalk while Murphy paid off the cab. If there was a casino in the area, I wouldn’t have known it. The place looked dead.
    “Right this way,” Murphy said, taking my arm and heading for the front of the factory building, which had to be one of the darkest buildings on the block, which was saying something. Next to the door was an old rusted bell button which looked as if it had been years since it had been connected to anything. Murphy pressed it. Nothing happened. No ring from deep within the building. No light flashing on. I had a faint flash of paranoia, wondering if somehow Murphy had figured out who I was, if this was somehow his idea of a bad joke, or worse, if he was somehow more deeply involved in this than I thought he was and had been given instructions to “take care of me.”
    Before I had too long to dwell on this, there came a clanking sound from overhead. I looked up, and saw an old-fashioned, open-sided freight elevator slowly descending from the 4th floor. There was a guy in it, operating it, and while he wasn’t pulling a rope hand-over-hand to make it move, the actual mechanism couldn’t have been much more sophisticated than that. The elevator clanked to a stop and the guy opened the door.
    “Hi, Jack,” Murphy said. Then, indicating me, “He’s with me.”
    We stepped inside and Jack closed the iron gate. He pulled the lever and the platform lurched slowly upward.
    The elevator squeaked to a stop on the 4th floor. Jack opened the iron gate on the opposite side from where we got in and we all stepped off into a small, dimly lit alcove. Jack pressed against the far wall, which proved to be a door, and let us into another small, dimly lit alcove. Jack closed the door behind us, made sure it was tightly latched, and then opened a similar door on the far wall.
    I was immediately assaulted by noise and