Free You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

juice. Instead of drinking the contents of the two glasses, he handed them to me.
    “Gulp it down like a good lad,” he said around his cigarette holder. “Then bolt down the wine.”
    I raised a hand to protest, and hit the matron, who countered with a sharp push on my back. English guided the drinks into my hand. I drank them. What the hell. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did.
    “Five minutes, you’ll be able to take on an orangutan,” he said, returning to his bet.
    “I may have to,” I replied, wiping orange juice from my mouth with a table napkin.
    He looked at me archly, and after ordering a Bourbon and branch water went on with his determined march to bankruptcy.
    In five minutes I felt much better and had lost my fifty bucks in chips. I waved to the blonde, who walked over to me, lighting the way with her capped teeth. When she leaned, I gave her another fifty, wondering how I’d get the money back from Louis B. Mayer.
    “I’d like to talk to Gino,” I whispered.
    “Gino who?”
    “Gino Servi.”
    “Who are you?” she said.
    “Tell him a friend of Chico’s.”
    “I’ll see if this Gino is around.” She never lost her smile.
    English regarded me with exaggerated new respect. I was about ten years older than he was, but he made me feel like a kid.
    “That was very nice,” he said, pulling in his first win since I had sat down. “Sounded a little like something out of Little Caesar. ”
    “More like Dead End, ” I answered, pushing a chip forward on the red. For the next twenty minutes, I began to lose more slowly, which I considered a major moral triumph. The platinum lady came back and whispered to me.
    “Gino will see you at closing time. Three o’clock, if you want to stick around.”
    I said I would. My watch told me I had a couple hours to kill, and my wallet told me I’d never make it at the present rate. I started to spend my money on wine, eggs, and juice, drank the wine more slowly, and managed to lose a hundred and fifty bucks while I learned some things about English. We were quite a pair. He was upper class with a few generations of a lot of money. My old man had been a small Glendale grocer who left my brother and me a pile of debts when he died. English had been educated in Europe. I had missed finishing my second year in junior college when I joined the Glendale cops. He knew his way around the world. I knew Los Angeles County and about a hundred miles around it.
    When the dials under the scratched lens of my trusty watch told me it was almost time, my cold was under temporary and artificial control. By a quarter to three, there was no one in the place except Joe the bartender and me, the platinum lady, the English guy, and the cleanup crew.
    The blonde told English it was closing time. He threw the croupier a red chip, handed the blonde his remaining chips to cash in, downed his Bourbon and branch water, and spoke softly to me.
    “Give you a lift?”
    “I’m going back to downtown Chicago, but I may be tied up here for a few minutes.”
    “No trouble,” he said. “I’m going that way. I’ll just wait right outside for you.”
    The blonde brought him his cash, his coat, and a goodby smile. Two minutes later I was alone with the cleaning staff of the Fireside. Ten minutes after that I was just alone. Someone turned off the lights except for a few over the bar and night lights in each corner. The long white shadows out of darkness were great for my nerves.
    There was a noise at the pillar. It opened and a man in a white shirt and no jacket came out. His shirt was wrinkled with sweat, and his hair was plastered down from oil or the steam bath of the inside of that pillar. He walked over to the exit door and casually leaned against it. The door opened and the man who looked like a juke box came in, peered around the room with his head forward, found me, cleaned his glasses on his sleeve, and stood on the other side of the exit door. Outside a car went by with a loose