Love's lovely counterfeit - James M. Cain [32]
"Scandalous?"
"That's it. But once they went on record about it, they didn't really care. It was just a little bit against the law, if you know what I mean. That meant it was just as illegal as some D.A., or enforcement officer, or maybe both of them working together, said it was. That meant you could make a deal. Not all over, maybe, but most places. You remember about that?"
"Oh yes, quite vividly."
"O.K., then beer went, didn't it?"
"You mean it became legal?"
"That's it—anybody could sell it, and the racket went. So the boys had to find something. So for a while they made a mess of it. They tried stick-ups, and kidnapping, and Murder, Inc., and a lot of stuff that didn't pay and that landed plenty of them in the big house and quite a few on the thirteen steps. And then they got wise to gambling. Of course, that wasn't exactly new."
"I wouldn't think so."
"No, that cigar-store front with a bookie behind, and that guy on the corner, selling tickets to a policy game, and the big bookie places downtown—most of that had been going on a long time. But beer, when it made its comeback in the drug stores and markets and groceries, that gave the boys an idea. Why not put gambling in the drug store too? Why not bring it right to the home, so Susie and Willie and Cousin Johnny can drop their nickel in the slot? And when they went into it a little they found out that pinball was like beer. The great American public frowned on it, but didn't really care. It was against the law, but not very much. So that meant they could make a deal. So they did. And all over the United States you'll find these machines, in drug stores, cafes, ice cream parlors, bowling alleys, and restaurants. They're outlawed in New York now, and Los Angeles, and a few other places, but everywhere else, they're wide open."
"Wait a minute, you're going too fast for me."
"Yeah? What's bothering you?"
"Who owns these machines, Mr. Grace?"
"O.K., now I'll give it all to you, quick. You understand, anybody can make amusement machines, and plenty of them are made locally—juke boxes, shovel games, pinball, whatever you want. They're made in those little tumbledown places over on the other side of the carline, where you wouldn't hardly believe there'd be a factory at all. But most of them, the good ones, with shiny gadgets on them and patent attachments, come from Chicago. That's the center, and two or three of the big houses there make ninety percent of the national product. Some of them are O.K. The juke boxes, for instance, they're not against the law anywhere, and they got good tone quality if you like tone. I don't."
"Me neither."
"But the rest, the pinball machines, no manufacturer in Chicago takes a chance on what some D.A. is going to do. They've got to be owned locally, and they've got to be paid for in cash. In Lake City, they're owned by about the sickest bunch of jerks you ever saw—stooges for Caspar, that could scrape together a few hundred dollars to buy some machines, and that had to scrape it together, for one reason or another. Then they were set. They had their machines, and they gave him his cut, and the machines paid, clear of the fifty percent to the drug store man, and Solly's cut, and one or two other little rake-offs we've had, three or four bucks a month to the owner. That meant that in a year he had his money back and the rest of it was gravy. The drug store man, he was sitting pretty. He had two or three machines in, and they paid seven-eight-nine bucks a month apiece, and that was a good slice of the rent. And it was cash. And—"
"It's still going on, isn't it?"
Ben, who had been striding around, giving Mr. Yates the benefit of his researches and reflections for the last few weeks, sat down now with a cryptic smile. "As to that, suppose you tell me.
"I—what would I know about it?"
"They're still going, of course, but whether they'll be going, or what the situation is going to be after the new administration goes in—that depends pretty much on your partner, Mr. Bleeker, the new D.A."
"I can't tell you what he's going to do."